More about the Three Nations Trilogy

 

While writing “The Luck Of The Weissensteiners” I was becoming fascinated by the concept of Nations.

 

During my research I read Stanislav Kirschbaum’s “History Of Slovakia” and Mary Heimann’s “Czechoslovakia – The State That Failed”.

 

 

 

It was an eye opener to learn how a region in Central Europe could have been part of so many different countries. What made people belong to each other in the ever changing borders, countries and political alliances? Loyalty to a king or a throne, language, shared history or blood?

 

 

 

Bratislava had been the capital of Hungary, then it got renamed into Pressburg, its population was a melting pot of Germans, Hungrians, Austrians, Czechs and Jews. Part of Czechoslovakia, Czecho-Slovakia, then Slovakia, Czechoslovakia again.

 

 

 

Yet the people retained their National Identity through Habsburg rule, Czech domination,  Fascism and Communism.

 

 

 

 

 

As a German I have always been anxious to use the term National because of our Nation’s history. Even as more time passes between Hitler and the peaceful present I can not wave the German flag at football games without feeling slightly self conscious and odd about it.

 

 

 

When the Berlin wall came down I certainly felt no affinity to the East Germans and my family in Brandenburg with their forty years of Communist history had little in common with us but the language and a distant past. Only over time will the broken halves fit together again.

 

 

 

 

 

As the UK is discussing a referendum for Scottish Independence and Argentina demands self governing for the Falkland Islands I find myself more and more confused by the concept of Nations.

 

With so many Scottish people living in the South and so many English people living North, the lines between the Nations seem difficult to draw. Likewise with the Falkland Islands, many of whose current inhabitants are British or want to remain part of the UK.

 

Globalisation erases many of the actual differences between cultures. Migration and years of cultural exchange have altered the concerned areas so much, to me personally it seems odd that emotions about it should run so high. Although I hasten to add that I deeply respect those sentiments all the same.

 

 

 

 

 

And despite it all, the desire to be one’s own Nation remains and can not be argued away. It seems almost

 

human nature to strive to belong to one.

 

 

 

Although this idea of Nations is not the most prominent theme in “The Luck Of The Weissensteiners” it has created the basis for the next parts of the Three Nations Trilogy.

 

 

 

Jewish History

Writing about Jews during the Second World War is certainly far from innovative, whether the characters survive or not. That was one of the main reasons for me to hold back with the story that came to my mind twelve months ago.

Was that market over saturated? Do we need to hear more about that era or have we reached a point where we need to move on and attend to new injustices and more contemporary matters in our writing?

I for one have not tired of hearing the many different personal stories. There are always new angles to a seemingly similar story or fate.

Even after 65+ years of people talking and writing about it I find the scale of the Holocaust still unimaginable and there are still plenty of more tales to be told.

I stumbled upon the role that Slovakia played in the war more or less by chance. I learned a new piece of History that I had never known about. How similar and yet so different life for Jews would have been in a country so close to the Reich. The unique role of Slovakia with an ‘illegitimate’ government and a government in exile was particularly fascinating. Although a partner of Nazi Germany the country was ‘liberated’ by the Red Army and a victim of Hitler.

The Luck Of The Weissensteiners is currently in the last stages of editing and will be published in December 2012

The way I write

The Way I Write:

Most days I sit down as soon as I have walked the dogs in the early morning hours – a compulsive morning person just like my father – and write. The first idea for a story announces itself gradually and suddenly demands to be written down, maybe just in sketches and as a collection of material for specific characters. Then the story begins to tell itself and while the structured part of me wants to hold back and plan the story line and events everything runs away and I have a hard time keeping up with it.
That kind of casual story telling has often caused me grave concern that there are no consistencies in the writing and that nothing will make sense in the end. At page 40, 60 or 80 I stop and go back over the first few chapters. By the end of that rewrite I know where the story is going next and again I have to keep up with it.
At page 120 or 140 the same will happen again and by then I usually am beginning to understand a little more how it all comes together and why I am writing this story in the first place. At that point the idea of a title often is born.
Once the story is finished / has found an ending I go back over it several times, finding mistakes of continuity or other errors. I tend to leave the story like this for a few months before returning to it over and over again.
I feel lucky to be writing in the way I do. Whenever it comes to scenes that need to happen I find myself bored and uncomfortable, preferring the unknown and unexpected to the predictable and planned.

The Luck Of The Weissensteiners off to the copy editor

In the sleepy town of Bratislava in 1933 a romantic girl falls for a bookseller from Berlin. Greta Weissensteiner, daughter of a Jewish weaver, slowly settles in with the Winkelmeier clan just as the developments in Germany start to make waves in Europe. The political climate in the multifaceted cultural jigsaw puzzle of Czechoslovakia becomes more complex and affects the fragile relations between the couple and the families.

The story follows their lot through the war with its predictable and also its unexpected turns and events and the equally hard times after.

This book is part of a Trilogy, currently loosely entitled “The Three Nations Trilogy”. The three novels all deal with similar themes of home and identity in various Central European Countries affected by war and political changes.