Berliners
(Sprache: Englisch)
A city divided. A family fractured. Two brothers caught between past and present. Berlin, 1961. Rudi öMser-Fleischmann is an aspiring photographer with dreams of greatness, but he can't hold a candle to his talented, charismatic twin brother Peter, an...
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A city divided. A family fractured. Two brothers caught between past and present. Berlin, 1961. Rudi öMser-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.
Lese-Probe zu „Berliners “
April 1945Stunde Null
When he thought about it years later, it was the book in the piano bench that had tipped him off.
Herr Richter was in the kitchen making a cup of tea while Rudolf waited in the parlor for his viola lesson, bored out of his skull. In the low golden light, the room so flowery, so pink, with its armchairs bedecked in cabbage roses, the ticking clock sent him into an afternoon drowse. Rudolf hated the viola. It had none of the panache of the violin, none of the glitter of the piano, which was his first instrument. He had only convinced his parents to let him take these lessons so he could get closer to Gerta.
Today she wasn t even home, out with Frau Buchner on some errand. So Rudolf, after chewing his nails to nubs, picking at the callus on his left index finger and rosining his bow a third time, lifted the hinged lid of the piano bench and rifled through to see if there was anything interesting.
And there it was. Under the Christmas carols and Volkslieder, a book written in those funny letters he knew only Jews could read, and underneath the title, the translation: Yiddish Ballads.
Rudolf chalked it up to the collection of an eccentric musical couple; people had already begun accumulating artifacts for the time when those people would be extinct. Even though he was given his Hitler Jugend uniform and told to be on the lookout for hidden Jews, it still did not click in Rudolf s mind.
But when, on another afternoon several weeks later, Herr Richter opened the cabinet to put more cigarettes into his brass pocket case, Rudolf spotted a small silver cup not much bigger than a schnapps glass and thought he made out the distinctive shape of a six-pointed star incised on its side. Then he knew.
It had to be true: Gerta Richter was Jewish. All this time, he had been fantasizing not about a girl, but about a Jew. It wouldn t have mattered before, in the days prior to the Nuremberg Laws. But it did now. The thought
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simultaneously repulsed him--mainly because he had been told it should repulse him--and excited him. He had something to report at the next HJ meeting. It pained him, too, because he knew he would have to renounce Gerta. Purge himself of her. He would have to harden his heart and train himself to hate her.
Because he knew he would have to turn Gerta in. It was the Right Thing to do.
That is how Rudolf found himself standing in the midnight dark, watching from the edge of the crowd, emotionless, as the girl he had been in love with since her first day in the children s choir was herded by guns and dogs onto a train with the rest of the filthy Jews of Wurzburg.
That is how, the next day, he was able to march mechanically up the stairs of Gerta s flat with the throng of newly vested HJ and march Maria Buchner back down into the glaring sun of Residenz Square, to make her kneel on the cobblestones, and to personally shove the sign--which he had himself scrawled with the words Jew Lover--over the tangled bottle-blond hair of the famous operatic diva who had sheltered Gerta and her father.
That is how now, during the Battle of Berlin, he was able to grab a smoking Luger from the hands of a dying child soldier, younger than himself, just grab the gun from the bleeding-out boy who reached for Rudolf crying, Mutti . . . Ich will zu meiner Mama. . . .
Grab. Go. Do. Never feel.
Rudolf walked like an automaton through the crumbling city, ducking behind walls that stuck out of the dust like scraggly teeth. He shot anything that moved. Since his first decision to betray Gerta, his heart had become fossilized by thousands of minuscule choices. Years of convincing himself that down was up, east was west, wrong was right. Compassion was weakness. There was now no belief, no theory, no thought at all--only the animal will
Because he knew he would have to turn Gerta in. It was the Right Thing to do.
That is how Rudolf found himself standing in the midnight dark, watching from the edge of the crowd, emotionless, as the girl he had been in love with since her first day in the children s choir was herded by guns and dogs onto a train with the rest of the filthy Jews of Wurzburg.
That is how, the next day, he was able to march mechanically up the stairs of Gerta s flat with the throng of newly vested HJ and march Maria Buchner back down into the glaring sun of Residenz Square, to make her kneel on the cobblestones, and to personally shove the sign--which he had himself scrawled with the words Jew Lover--over the tangled bottle-blond hair of the famous operatic diva who had sheltered Gerta and her father.
That is how now, during the Battle of Berlin, he was able to grab a smoking Luger from the hands of a dying child soldier, younger than himself, just grab the gun from the bleeding-out boy who reached for Rudolf crying, Mutti . . . Ich will zu meiner Mama. . . .
Grab. Go. Do. Never feel.
Rudolf walked like an automaton through the crumbling city, ducking behind walls that stuck out of the dust like scraggly teeth. He shot anything that moved. Since his first decision to betray Gerta, his heart had become fossilized by thousands of minuscule choices. Years of convincing himself that down was up, east was west, wrong was right. Compassion was weakness. There was now no belief, no theory, no thought at all--only the animal will
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Autoren-Porträt von Vesper Stamper
Vesper Stamper
Produktdetails
- Autor: Vesper Stamper
- Altersempfehlung: Ab 12 Jahre
- 2022, 448 Seiten, mit Abbildungen, Maße: 16 x 23,3 cm, Gebunden, Englisch
- Verlag: Knopf Books for Young Readers
- ISBN-10: 0593428366
- ISBN-13: 9780593428368
- Erscheinungsdatum: 24.10.2022
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
"This intimate portrait of two brothers split by the Berlin Wall in 1961 feels like a parable, a warning, a mirror of our modern times." Daniel Nayeri, author of Everything Sad Is Untrue, Printz Award Winner"A richly layered, complex historical novel that poses important questions and provides a chilling lens into a dark period of history." New York Times bestseling author Ruta Sepetys
The novel is rich with well-researched detail, but it is the nuanced characters who really keep the pages turning.... In a divided world that feels hauntingly like our own, Berliners asks the all-important question: What would you do, or not do, for your family? The New York Times
"An excellent, nuanced piece of historical fiction." The Horn Book, starred review
"[Stamper's] portrayal of propaganda and how teens can easily fall prey to this kind of rhetoric is spot on." Booklist
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