This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was still a child in 1989 and could hardly grasp the implications of what was happening. Yet, even as a little boy watching events on television thousands of miles away, I could feel that something momentous was taking place. Of course, the fall of the Wall was symbolic not just of a new era for Germany, but also of a more widespread collapse of communist regimes in Europe, and a thawing of relations between East and West.

It was, perhaps, inevitable that, given the weight of expectations created by this occasion, a sense of disappointment and frustration would soon set in. After all, new-found liberty and democracy, however strongly desired, would not and could not solve all political problems. New realities also presented tough challenges to many people, who had lived for decades – possibly tolerably well – under different rules and now had to adapt to what seemed an alien lifestyle. This might explain the appetite for books and movies such as Good Bye, Lenin! which seem to feed on a sense of yearning for life under the GDR, or at least, for some of its less unsavoury aspects. This feeling was widespread enough to justify the coining of a word for it – “Ostalgie”. Now, many would surely agree that “nostalgia for the East” is misplaced and uncalled for – an apology for en evil regime. One could also argue that Ostalgie is not directed at the GDR, but that it is a longing for a “construct”, a fantasy world which never really existed.

In any case, however, it is hardly surprising that even some ex-citizens of the GDR subscribe to a romanticised view of East Germany. After all, despite the suffering occasioned by the GDR’s dictatorial leaders, the suffocating political atmosphere and the privations, many people still managed to go on their daily life: people went to work, fell in love, got married, built families. As the past recedes, it becomes more of a foreign country and its increasing exoticism smudges and rubs off its darker corners.

Memory, memories and the way they articulate the past are an important theme in Sophie Hardach’s Confession with Blue Horses. The novel follows two intertwining timelines. One is set in the final years of the GDR, and introduces us to the Valentin family: art historians Regine and Jochen, and their children Ella, Tobi and Heiko. The Valentins live in East Berlin, in an apartment block very close to the Wall. Both Regine and Valentin have managed to carve out a respectable academic career under the regime, publishing books which have been granted state approval. But they both are becoming restless, and with the help and influence dissident artist friends, they attempt to defect to the West. Their plan goes horribly wrong. This brings us to the novel’s present – the year 2010. Ella who is now in her early thirties and, like her brother Tobi, is settled in London, comes across some documents belonging to her mother. They rekindle her curiosity as to what really happened to her family – particularly her mother and her brother Heiko – after the abortive defection attempt. Ella returns to a changed East Berlin and, with the help of an intern at the Stasi archives, conducts her own investigation, with some startling and unexpected results.

Confession with Blue Horses is a brilliant book. First of all, Hardach has a good story, and she knows how to tell it well. The changes from first-person (when Ella is speaking in the “present”), to third-person narrative, highlight Ella’s central role in the novel, but also bring an element of stylistic variety which keeps the reader interested, as does the alternation of timelines. There are several nail-biting key scenes (such as the night-time escape to the West) which convey very graphically the sense of danger engendered by the regime and its Stasi watchdogs. Hardach never tries to turn her novel into a thriller or spy story – she is more interested in her characters and their motivations than in exciting plot twists. Yet, she does give attention to plot, and the way she gradually reveals salient elements of her story turn this novel into an unlikely page-turner.

More importantly, however, the novel addresses potentially controversial themes with a great sense of balance. Hardach does not flinch from portraying the cruelty of the regime, the harsh punishments meted out to its prisoners and the daily privations of the GDR citizens (queueing for ages for basic goods). And yet, we are also given the points of view of people such as Regine’s mother, a Nazi concentration camp survivor who genuinely believes in the Communist ideal and views the West with suspicion, even as her daughter lies in jail. We even get to hear the point of view of two ex-Stasi guards, who see themselves as having been upright citizens defending the state and the law – they are despicable characters but they are still afforded the chance to defend themselves.

The book also raises related thorny issues. For instance, does knowing the full truth about the dark times of the GDR really lead to healing, or does it just reopen old wounds? Is “remembering” always the best way of honouring the past and its victims, or is it, sometimes, too large a price to pay?

Amongst critically-trumpeted new novels, it might be easy to miss Sophie Hardach’s Confession with Blue Horses. That would be a shame. Look out for it.

(for a fuller version of this review, including music by East German composers, visit https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2019/06/confession-with-blue-horses-Sophie-Ha... ) ( )

This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was still a child in 1989 and could hardly grasp the implications of what was happening. Yet, even as a little boy watching events on television thousands of miles away, I could feel that something momentous was taking place. Of course, the fall of the Wall was symbolic not just of a new era for Germany, but also of a more widespread collapse of communist regimes in Europe, and a thawing of relations between East and West.

It was, perhaps, inevitable that, given the weight of expectations created by this occasion, a sense of disappointment and frustration would soon set in. After all, new-found liberty and democracy, however strongly desired, would not and could not solve all political problems. New realities also presented tough challenges to many people, who had lived for decades – possibly tolerably well – under different rules and now had to adapt to what seemed an alien lifestyle. This might explain the appetite for books and movies such as Good Bye, Lenin! which seem to feed on a sense of yearning for life under the GDR, or at least, for some of its less unsavoury aspects. This feeling was widespread enough to justify the coining of a word for it – “Ostalgie”. Now, many would surely agree that “nostalgia for the East” is misplaced and uncalled for – an apology for en evil regime. One could also argue that Ostalgie is not directed at the GDR, but that it is a longing for a “construct”, a fantasy world which never really existed.

In any case, however, it is hardly surprising that even some ex-citizens of the GDR subscribe to a romanticised view of East Germany. After all, despite the suffering occasioned by the GDR’s dictatorial leaders, the suffocating political atmosphere and the privations, many people still managed to go on their daily life: people went to work, fell in love, got married, built families. As the past recedes, it becomes more of a foreign country and its increasing exoticism smudges and rubs off its darker corners.

Memory, memories and the way they articulate the past are an important theme in Sophie Hardach’s Confession with Blue Horses. The novel follows two intertwining timelines. One is set in the final years of the GDR, and introduces us to the Valentin family: art historians Regine and Jochen, and their children Ella, Tobi and Heiko. The Valentins live in East Berlin, in an apartment block very close to the Wall. Both Regine and Valentin have managed to carve out a respectable academic career under the regime, publishing books which have been granted state approval. But they both are becoming restless, and with the help and influence dissident artist friends, they attempt to defect to the West. Their plan goes horribly wrong. This brings us to the novel’s present – the year 2010. Ella who is now in her early thirties and, like her brother Tobi, is settled in London, comes across some documents belonging to her mother. They rekindle her curiosity as to what really happened to her family – particularly her mother and her brother Heiko – after the abortive defection attempt. Ella returns to a changed East Berlin and, with the help of an intern at the Stasi archives, conducts her own investigation, with some startling and unexpected results.

Confession with Blue Horses is a brilliant book. First of all, Hardach has a good story, and she knows how to tell it well. The changes from first-person (when Ella is speaking in the “present”), to third-person narrative, highlight Ella’s central role in the novel, but also bring an element of stylistic variety which keeps the reader interested, as does the alternation of timelines. There are several nail-biting key scenes (such as the night-time escape to the West) which convey very graphically the sense of danger engendered by the regime and its Stasi watchdogs. Hardach never tries to turn her novel into a thriller or spy story – she is more interested in her characters and their motivations than in exciting plot twists. Yet, she does give attention to plot, and the way she gradually reveals salient elements of her story turn this novel into an unlikely page-turner.

More importantly, however, the novel addresses potentially controversial themes with a great sense of balance. Hardach does not flinch from portraying the cruelty of the regime, the harsh punishments meted out to its prisoners and the daily privations of the GDR citizens (queueing for ages for basic goods). And yet, we are also given the points of view of people such as Regine’s mother, a Nazi concentration camp survivor who genuinely believes in the Communist ideal and views the West with suspicion, even as her daughter lies in jail. We even get to hear the point of view of two ex-Stasi guards, who see themselves as having been upright citizens defending the state and the law – they are despicable characters but they are still afforded the chance to defend themselves.

The book also raises related thorny issues. For instance, does knowing the full truth about the dark times of the GDR really lead to healing, or does it just reopen old wounds? Is “remembering” always the best way of honouring the past and its victims, or is it, sometimes, too large a price to pay?

Amongst critically-trumpeted new novels, it might be easy to miss Sophie Hardach’s Confession with Blue Horses. That would be a shame. Look out for it.

(for a fuller version of this review, including music by East German composers, visit https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2019/06/confession-with-blue-horses-Sophie-Ha... ) ( )

This was a very moving book. The sections set in East Germany in 1987 were especially poignant, given that if Ella's parents had just held on for a couple more years the wall was going to come down anyway. (I was living in West Germany, but not in Berlin, when the wall came down). The descriptions of Aaron's work in the Stasi archive and Ella's meetings with mainly unapologetic Stasi employees were fascinating. In the end the truths that Ella and Aaron uncovered were often a little mundane, which I imagine is exactly how things really were.

Highly recommended. ( )

1987: German Democratic Republic, East Berlin. The Valentin family live in an apartment block near the Berlin Wall. Art historians Regine and Jochen Valentin are becoming increasingly frustrated with their restricted lifestyle and decide to defect to the West with their young children; Ella, Tobi and Heiko. Regine’s parents are retired so are allowed to travel. Her mother, Oma Trude, is a Nazi concentration camp survivor. During the defection, the family is betrayed and Jochen shot dead. Regine is taken into custody, the two oldest children returned to their grandparents, and the youngest child, Heiko, taken into care. Regine suffers years of interrogation and imprisonment. The author then takes us to the year 2010 and to American intern Aaron who is working at the Stasi archives, literally piecing together bags of shredded documents that the Records of the State Security Service didn't have time to incinerate. Ella and Tobi are settled in London. Their mother has passed away, but left some documents that lead Ella back to Berlin. She takes up her mother’s search for Heiko in the fractured archival documents, and Aaron is compelled to help her and in doing so find meaning in his work. I remember seeing the fall of the Berlin Wall on television 30 years ago, the concrete barrier of east vs. west, communism vs. democracy. The stories that we heard, those of guards shooting people who tried to escape, those living in hardship, families ripped apart. And now there is this book, this outstanding book that explores all those issues and what it was like to be part of the ‘before’ and the ‘after’. Author Sophie Hardach was born and raised in Germany, and the detail in her writing shows how very familiar she is with Berlin. She has told a complex story of betrayal, torture, imprisonment, and the realities of life after those events for people who are still dealing with them today. ( )