Author: C. L. Parks
Publisher: Page Publishing Inc
ISBN: 1645840913
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 427
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Book Description
The Berliners is a collection of stories revolving around three very different pairs of lovers who find each other at the wrong place and the wrong time. The place: Berlin, Germany. The time: three decades in the twentieth century, each with its own unique social and political implications. The tragedy of true love both found and forbidden cycles in each story. The question remaining to be answered during the course of each plot is whether or not our heroes will be able to overcome the obstacles of war, political division, and racism and finally arrive at both accepting themselves and being accepted by society in their unique time and place. The story of Heinrich and Paul follows their relationship from adolescence during compulsory attendance at a Hitler Youth program and on through their years of self-loathing as members of the Nazi Party and armed forces. The antiheroes of this story struggle to accept themselves and their sexuality while also battling the guilt and hypocrisy of their crimes and inhumanity under the Third Reich. During the 1970s, we witness the serendipitous affair between West Berliner Thomas Gaettens and East Berliner Marita Luettig. Their brief relationship spans the limits of the Berlin Wall and family obligation over personal indulgence. Our protagonists are faced with the difficult prospect of overcoming the barrier that stands between their two worlds. Their dangerous relationship is quickly enveloped in suspicion, fear, and hopelessness under the pressure of the authoritarian government and its powerful police force, the Stasi. Finally, the contemporary tale of Hilal and Peter recounts the turbulent love story of a young German student and Turkish girl from school. This story is based on true events that took place in Berlin in 2006. The conflicts that exist even today between the former guest-worker Turkish population of Germany and the native Germans is reflected in the couple’s confrontation against the conservative, religious views of Hilal’s father. In the final chapters of the novel, our three stories begin to intertwine in modern times. Berlin herself is perhaps the main character of the entire book, bearing witness to this recurring motif of lovers unable to find peace with each other in the capital. The reader is left to question why the universality of this theme seems to exist and reemerge throughout human history, particularly in the history of Berlin and Germany.
Author: Vesper Stamper
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0593428366
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 449
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Book Description
A riveting story about the rivalry between two brothers living on opposite sides of the Berlin wall during its construction in the 1960s, and how their complicated legacy and dreams of greatness will determine their ultimate fate. A city divided. A family fractured. Two brothers caught between past and present. Berlin, 1961. Rudi Möser-Fleischmann is an aspiring photographer with dreams of greatness, but he can't hold a candle to his talented, charismatic twin brother Peter, an ambitious actor. With the sudden divorce of their parents, the brothers find themselves living in different sectors of a divided Berlin; the postwar partition strangely mirroring their broken family. But one night, as the city sleeps, the Berlin Wall is hurriedly built, dividing society further, and Rudi and Peter are forced to choose between playing by the rules and taking their dreams underground. That is, until the truth about their family history and the growing cracks in their relationship threaten to split them apart for good. From National Book Award-nominated, critically acclaimed author-illustrator Vesper Stamper comes a stark look at how resentment and denial can strain the bonds of brotherhood to the breaking point.
Author: Helmut Jacobitz
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0752477641
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
Helmut and Charlotte Jacobitz were born in Berlin during the mid-1920s. They experienced depression and inflation, and witnessed violence as fascists and communists vied for control of Germany. When the Nazis prevailed, they survived the 12 years of the Third Reich. Drafted in 1943, Helmut was wounded fighting in Normandy. Charlotte, meanwhile, worked at the Reichsbank and took shelter against frequent bombing raids. After the Russians surrounded Berlin in April 1945, she witnessed firsthand the brutal battle for the city. The two young Germans met each other after the war, Charlotte joining Helmut to smuggle food into Berlin through the Russian blockade. The family finally immigrated to America, barely escaping before the Berlin Wall sliced the city in half. We Were Berliners combines the personal reminiscences of the Jacobitzs with a lively, detailed overview of historical events as they related to the family, to Germany, and to Europe.
Author: Vesper Stamper
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0593428374
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
A riveting story about the rivalry between two brothers living on opposite sides of the Berlin wall during its construction in the 1960s, and how their complicated legacy and dreams of greatness will determine their ultimate fate. A city divided. A family fractured. Two brothers caught between past and present. Berlin, 1961. Rudi Möser-Fleischmann is an aspiring photographer with dreams of greatness, but he can't hold a candle to his talented, charismatic twin brother Peter, an ambitious actor. With the sudden divorce of their parents, the brothers find themselves living in different sectors of a divided Berlin; the postwar partition strangely mirroring their broken family. But one night, as the city sleeps, the Berlin Wall is hurriedly built, dividing society further, and Rudi and Peter are forced to choose between playing by the rules and taking their dreams underground. That is, until the truth about their family history and the growing cracks in their relationship threaten to split them apart for good. From National Book Award-nominated, critically acclaimed author-illustrator Vesper Stamper comes a stark look at how resentment and denial can strain the bonds of brotherhood to the breaking point.
Author: Emma Harding
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1529376211
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 303
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Book Description
'Sometimes I get fanciful and think the buildings speak. That all their history is locked into the walls and if you listened closely enough, you could hear all the people who'd once been there.' Sigi lived upstairs from Sara at Friedrichstrasse 19 yet before they met, Sara had no idea that Berlin could be so thrillingly irreverent or that sex could be so intoxicatingly wonderful. But then came the war, and hunger, loneliness and barbed wire. It was just as a young girl, a protegee of The Academy of Magical Arts situated in Friedrichstrasse at the start of the century, had predicted. Battered and divided, Berlin, like its people, endured. Hans yearns to be part of the boundary-breaking spirit of the age but he's haunted by his mother's part in the war and the absence of a father. Ilse, who escaped from the East, wants nothing more than the freedom she risked her life for. In 1989 in a wild act of spontaneous joy, Heike leapt from the Wall into the arms of a stranger from the West. Thirty years later, she recognises that what she'd willed to be destiny was nothing more than naivety. Recently divorced, she moves into Friedrichstrasse, to begin a new life. But it's impossible not to hear the echoes of the secrets and lies, visions and misunderstandings, lost loves and fatal mistakes, that have come before her. Time-travelling between decades, through the interlocking lives of six people, Friedrichstrasse 19 relives the tumultuous experience of a city on the frontline of history.
Author: Walter Henry Nelson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Berlin (Germany)
Languages : en
Pages : 454
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Author: Anne Armstrong
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 496
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Book Description
Author: Frederick Kempe
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101515023
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 816
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Book Description
In June 1961, Nikita Khrushchev called Berlin "the most dangerous place on earth." He knew what he was talking about. Much has been written about the Cuban Missile Crisis a year later, but the Berlin Crisis of 1961 was more decisive in shaping the Cold War-and more perilous. It was in that hot summer that the Berlin Wall was constructed, which would divide the world for another twenty-eight years. Then two months later, and for the first time in history, American and Soviet fighting men and tanks stood arrayed against each other, only yards apart. One mistake, one nervous soldier, one overzealous commander-and the tripwire would be sprung for a war that could go nuclear in a heartbeat. On one side was a young, untested U.S. president still reeling from the Bay of Pigs disaster and a humiliating summit meeting that left him grasping for ways to respond. It would add up to be one of the worst first-year foreign policy performances of any modern president. On the other side, a Soviet premier hemmed in by the Chinese, East Germans, and hardliners in his own government. With an all-important Party Congress approaching, he knew Berlin meant the difference not only for the Kremlin's hold on its empire-but for his own hold on the Kremlin. Neither man really understood the other, both tried cynically to manipulate events. And so, week by week, they crept closer to the brink. Based on a wealth of new documents and interviews, filled with fresh-sometimes startling-insights, written with immediacy and drama, Berlin 1961 is an extraordinary look at key events of the twentieth century, with powerful applications to these early years of the twenty-first. Includes photographs
Author: Allison M. Prasch
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226823644
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 310
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Book Description
A fresh account of the US presidential rhetoric embodied in Cold War international travel. Crowds swarm when US presidents travel abroad, though many never hear their voices. The presidential body, moving from one secured location to another, communicates as much or more to these audiences than the texts of their speeches. In The World is Our Stage, Allison M. Prasch considers how presidential appearances overseas broadcast American superiority during the Cold War. Drawing on extensive archival research, Prasch examines five foundational moments in the development of what she calls the “global rhetorical presidency:” Truman at Potsdam, Eisenhower’s “Goodwill Tours,” Kennedy in West Berlin, Nixon in the People’s Republic of China, and Reagan in Normandy. In each case, Prasch reveals how the president’s physical presence defined the boundaries of the “Free World” and elevated the United States as the central actor in Cold War geopolitics.
Author: Moritz Busch
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 610
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Book Description
