Reading Circle 55: ‚A Small Town in Germany‘ by Julia Boyd

Julia Boyd (& Angelika Patel): A Village in the Third Reich (Elliott & Thomson, 2022)

Welcome to the Reading Circle, with Sandra and Andrew Milne-Skinner.

Over the last few months we have, as a group, read and discussed two books that have both involved the Second World War. One was ‘The Ratline’, by Philippe Sands, the other ‘The Lost Café Schindler’ by Meriel Schindler.

This evening we discuss a third book, A Village in the Third Reich: How ordinary lives were transformed by the rise of fascism. Written by Julia Boyd, together with Angelika Patel, it was published earlier this year, 2022. In fact, in June this year, when I went to Oberstdorf in the Upper Allgäu – where the book is set – neither the Tourist office there, nor the Heimatmuseum yet knew of the book!

The blurb on the back cover reads:

“A stunningly evocative portrait of everyday life in Hitler’s Germany.”

Professor David Reynolds: “Penetrating beneath the clichés about Nazi Germany, here are ordinary people trying to cope with extraordinary times. Their vivid, moving stories leave us asking: ‘What would I have done?’ “

The blurb continues:

“Oberstdorf is a beautiful village high up in the Bavarian Alps, a place where for hundreds of years people lived simple lives while history was made elsewhere. Yet even here, in the southernmost tip of Germany, National Socialism sought to control not only people’s lives, but also their minds.”

“Drawing on archive material, letters, interviews and memoirs, A Village in the Third Reich is an extraordinarily intimate portrait of Germany under Hitler and of the tragedies that befell all of those touched by Nazism. In its pages we meet the Jews who survived – and those who didn’t; the Nazi mayor who tried to shield those persecuted by the regime; and a blind boy whose life was judged ‘not worth living’. These are the stories of ordinary lives at the crossroads of history.”

In this programme, we follow the course of the book, with some 15 readings. These are interspersed with three pieces of music from the 1928 Brecht/Weill Dreigroschenoper, to counterpoint ironically three of the readings. They are:

The programme ends with Liszt’s rarely performed tone-poem Les Préludes, music used by the Nazis in the late 1930s and early 1940s to signal radio broadcasts covering political rallies and news events.