Impossible Love: Ascher Levy's Longing for Germany

by RomanFrister (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2003

  $3.35

  'I have invented nothing. Reality turns out to be more fascinating and yet also more terrible than any product of the imagination.' In an old cardboard suitcase found in a flea market in Jaffa, Roman Frister discovered the scraps of paper that were to form the basis of this remarkable history. Using everything from upholsterers' bills to personal letters, he reconstructs the story of the Levy family, who struggled to become one of the richest and most respected Jewish families in Pomerania, Prussia, but whose fortunes were to turn to dust in Nazi Germany. The story of the Levy family reads like an epic novel, but the events that shaped their lives were all too real for the generations of Jews who made a home in Prussia, then Germany. Yet as the power of the German Reich grew, so did the impossible tensions between the love of their homeland and their Jewish identity.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2002

  $3.35

  Some years ago Roman Frister came across an old suitcase in a Tel Aviv flea market; it contained documents and photos pertaining to several generations of the Levy family - Jews living in Prussia from around the middle of the 19th century up until the beginning of the Second World War. He managed to trace some of the descendants and with their help has written their history - a detailed and involving narrative set against the turbulent backdrop of Germany in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is a touching and fascinating portrait of the changing fortunes of one family which exemplified the Jewish experience at the time. We follow them through the hard times and the happier ones, in business, and in their personal lives. This predominantly blond and blue-eyed family who were unstintingly patriotic were constantly victimised purely on account of their religion. As they struggle for acceptance against all the odds, the inevitable and familiar course of German history creeps up on them. It is miraculous that the ten members of the youngest generation all managed to escape and are to this day scattered throughout Israel, England and America. Like THE CAP this is a very beautifully written and meticulously structured book. As history is interwoven with Frister's interpretation of the Levy family's experiences, this intellectually engaging book - in truth a historical document - reads like an epic novel.