Das Buch um fünf Kinder, die in der Weimarer Republik aufwachsen, ist es definitiv wert, gelesen zu werden.
Es ist erstaunlich, wie hellsichtig Anna Gmeyner bereits 1938 war, als sie dieses Buch schrieb. Die fünf Kinder wachsen in verschiedenen Milieus auf und sind gut befreundet. An ihrem Beispiel zeigt sich, wie das nationalsozialistische Denken immer mehr um sich greift, bis es letztendlich zu einer Katastrophe kommt.
Das Buch ist toll geschrieben, hat mitunter nahezu expressionistische Züge. Es ist beklemmend, dennoch muss man es lesen. Gerade im Augenblick kann man an manchen Stellen erschreckende Ähnlichkeiten feststellen. ( )

The story could be set in any times and in many places.

Five children are conceived on the same night, born within days of each other at the same hospital. Their backgrounds are very different, but there are links between their families and they form friendships. It is only with the passage of time that they realise what their parents have always known; that the world will look at them and treat them differently.

This particular story resonates, speaks so profoundly; and that comes from its setting and from its author.

Those five children were born in Germany in 1920. The war was over, there were hopes for a new Germany, but the stringent conditions of Treaty of Versailles that had been signed the previous year would be a heavy burden. The country struggled, but in time a charismatic leader emerged, at the head of a new party offering a path to national pride and a brighter future. His name was Adolf Hitler.

This book, published in 1938, follows the lives of those five children until 1933, when they are twelve years-old. By then the Nazi party was in power, Hitler was Germany’s Chancellor, and the Reichstag Fire Decree had become law, stripping many German citizens of their civil liberties.

Many, fearing for their own futures, fearing that their government would go even further, sought exile abroad.

Anna Gmeyner, Austrian-Jewish by birth, was one of those exiles, and she wrote this book in London. She knew of course that she was writing of a terrible time, but she could not know – though she might suspect – how very, very terrible things would become, for the families of those five children, and for so many other families in Germany and across Europe.

Her book offers a clear, vivid and detailed view of the lives of five disparate families. Each scene is painted clearly and starkly, and, though the narrative those scenes must carry is complex, the author’s clear-sightedness and the skills she deployed to bring each scene to life, meant that I always understood what was significant.

And, though this is always a very human story, social changes are so clearly illuminated. The earlier chapters show the consequences of the War and the Peace, on those who fought and lost, and on those who lived through it. The latter chapters show how that leads to the rise of the Nazi party, and to the appalling shift in society that followed.

Manja, who gives this story its title, is the only girl of the five children, the daughter of a Polish immigrant whose life was thrown off course when her lover killed himself, and who would always struggle with what she had to do to survive and to be a mother to her children.

The four boys have very different backgrounds. Heini is a son of a doctor, who has fine ideals and will always stand by his principles; Franz is the son of a man who will become a Nazi; Karl is the son of a Marxist factory worker; and Harry is the son of a rich industrialist who believes his philanthropy may protect him from his part Jewish heritage. It won’t.

It would be fair to say that their four families represent different sides of society, but the reality of each character and situation, and the naturalness of the links between the different families are such that it never feels didactic.

.... Heini’s father, was the doctor, who cared for both Manja’s and Harry’s mothers after they gave birth; Franz’s father was employed – and dismissed – by Harry’s father; and he endowed Heini’s father’s hospital. And then there were families who lived in the same building; there were children who met at school ....

It feels real, and it feels right that these families stand for so many others.

The children meet each Wednesday and Saturday – at the wall – which is all that remains of a house that once stood above a river. It is there that Manja shows the boys the constellation of Cassiopeia – five stars that they see as symbolic of the ties of friendship between them. As they grow they will come to understand the differences between their families and the tension that brings, but none of that will stop them from being friends.

As the story advances though the changes wrought by the Nazi party have dreadful repercussions for so many. It is terrifyingly, heart-breakingly real.

Manja is vulnerable, the result of her sex, her race, her family situation. I feared for her as I saw the chain of events that led to an and that was both inevitable and tragic.

That, and the whole story was profoundly moving; and the knowledge of what was still to come when this story ended made it still more so.

The author’s first hand experience of Germany during the time she writes about makes her story so vivid, and that she left the country before she began to write leaves me in no doubt that it is honest and authentic.

She told her story so well, using all the skills she must have learned as a dramatist to bring her five families and that Germany that they lived in to life, and in engaging and involving her readers.

I hope – and I have to believe – that she did what she set out to do.

And I am grateful that her book has a place in the Persephone Books list. ( )

Ich muss gestehen, ich hatte leichte Zweifel als ich mit diesem umfangreichen Hörbuch begann. 873 Minuten - und das zu einem solch ernsten Thema. Ist das auszuhalten? Nein, zumindest nicht immer. Doch dies hängt nicht mit der Länge der Lesung oder des Inhalts an sich zusammen, sondern mit der unbeschreiblich eindringlichen Sprache Anna Gmeyners, die kongenial von Iris Berben umgesetzt wurde. Immer wieder musste ich innehalten, um das Gehörte erst einmal zu verdauen.
Fünf Kinderschicksale in der Zeit von 1920 bis 1934 werden geschildert, jedes so individuell wie Menschen nun mal sind. Manja, das 'Ergebnis' einer spontanen Liebesnacht, voller Lebendigkeit und Liebe dem Leben gegenüber, lebt in einer verarmten jüdischen Einwandererfamilie. Und dann die vier Jungen, deren Familien einen Querschnitt durch die gesamte Gesellschaft bilden: die politisch engagierte Arbeiterschaft, das großbürgerliche, reiche Judentum, die liberalen konfessionslosen Intellektuellen und die faschistischen Kleinbürger. Gemein ist ihnen, dass sie Manja lieben, egal wer aus welcher Familie kommt. Es ist eine schöne, wenn auch von Geldsorgen geprägte Kindheit die da erzählt wird. Doch das Unheil des III. Reiches rückt näher und macht auch vor der Freundschaft dieser Fünf nicht halt. Denn Manja und Harry, einer der vier Jungs, sind nicht rasserein...
Gmeyners Sprache ist voller Poesie und doch so genau, dass man das Schrecken und Grauen dieser Zeit förmlich mit den Händen greifen kann. Iris Berben setzt dies in einer fantastischen Art und Weise um. Rauh und hart klingt ihre Stimme, wenn der faschistische Familienvater seinen Sohn zusammenbrüllt, weich und sanft wenn Manja sich um ihre schwache Mutter kümmert. Einfach brilliant! ( )

Anna Gmeyner wrote "Five Destinies" in 1939 under the name Anna Reiner after she had fled Germany for England.
The story follows 5 children, all born in Germany in 1920 , Franz, Harry, Karl, Heini,and Manja, who through circumstance become friends, despite the different backgrounds of their parents.
As they enter their teenage years the political situation is causing much fear and uncertainty. As a young Jew, Manja is attacked and ridiculed and her young friends are distressed that they are unable to protect her.
The tragedy which follows propels the young boys from their childhood and into the realisation that to remain friends they must part.
A powerful and tender story of the effect of Nazi Germany on its young. ( )

Anna Gmeyner the author of Manja began writing her novel in 1938 while living among a community of European exiles in Belsize Park in London. She had come as a refugee to London in 1935. According to Eva Ibbotson, Anna Gmeyner’s daughter, in her preface to the 2003 Persephone edition Manja was inspired by a one paragraph newspaper report about the fate of a twelve year old girl in a German town.

The novel with its somewhat controversial beginning was well received at the time it first appeared written under a pseudonym. However I think that reading it now – knowing what we do about what happened in Europe in the years after Anna Gmeyner was writing lends it a greater poignancy.

“….Her story is one of heart-breaking poignancy; and although it is individualised with a truly imaginative vitality, we are convinced that her fate is only too typical of what is happening to hundreds of children in these outrageous times” ( 22nd September 1939 Manchester Guardian)

The novel takes place in a German town between the years of 1920 and 1933. In 1920 Germany was a broken country – struggling to recover from the four years of World War I. Manja is a novel about five children, Manja a young Jewish girl from Poland, and the four boys who are her friends. The novel opens with the stories of the conceptions of each of these five children. The families from which these boys come each represent the different political strands that existed in Germany at this time. One is a son of an idealist doctor, one the son of a Nazi, another of a Marxist, while the fourth is the son of a rich industrialist who believes his money may protect him from his part Jewish heritage. It is Manja who unites these boys – and this story is in part the story of their parents and of Germany in the years that lead to the raise of Nazism – but it is also the story of this friendship set against a terrifying backdrop. Manja shows the boys the constellation of Cassiopeia – five stars – which becomes the symbol of the friendship between the children. It is inevitable that their friendship is tested – that the evil that surrounds them at the end of 1933 intrudes – and the reader fears for Manja.

“I know what you mean,” he cried eagerly. “A long time ago at school there was a beetle in the yard, on its back. I turned it over so it could crawl, but there were some boys who kept on turning it back to make it wriggle. Those kind of people are different,”
“But there are so many of those kind of people.”
“Yes, aren’t there? There are suddenly so many,” he agreed. “But Manja if we and everyone like us are cowards, then all the beetles in the world will have to stay on their backs,”
Manja said nothing but pressed his hand. “You’ve turned over a beetle,” she said presently, “it’s crawling again.”

Somehow though, the story is never depressing, gently brutal perhaps – and very powerful. The children meet each Wednesday and Saturday – at the wall – which is all that remains of a house that once stood above a river. In the waste ground of these ruins the children are, for a time, able to enjoy the innocence of childhood. They are growing up however, and the times are changing. I hesitate to say too much that could result in spoilers as I know there are other Persephone readers out there who may be intending to read this one soon. Gmeyner captures the changing times, the fear and hate that pitches neighbour against neighbour with what feels like bone chilling authenticity. Suffice to say I will continue to think about Manja and her fate for a long time. ( )