With an extraordinary atmospheric intensity, Laura Doermer tells the life stories of the women in a family from the middle of the 19th century up to the present day.
Laura Doermer tells us of mothers and their daughters and their daughters` daughters- the story of a family held together throughout the generations by the fates of its women.
The story, set in Munich, spans a period from the 1870s up to the present day. It begins with Marie, a lady-in-waiting, who falls into disgrace with the carpenter Adam Fassbender from Baden. At least she manages to coerce him into marrying her, albeit four years after their child is born. In her dreams she gets lucky and escapes from the shabby apartment in Trappentreu Street. However, real life has other things in store - not only for her, but for her offspring. Again and again the same thing happens, the very thing that is best avoided at all costs - in each generation, children are born before a »respectable« family has been founded. The men are either not sure, already married or tyrants. And anyway, the »good times« never come. Marie lives to see the end of the First World War and the birth of her granddaughter shortly afterwards, but by the 1930s she has grown up and has to see her own children through the Nazi years and the Second World War; after that, three generations somehow manage to survive by going scavenging in the surrounding areas of Munich.
Finally, for the family members in the fourth generation, life seems to be slowly improving in the land of the economic miracle. But, at the threshold of the 21st century, they and their offspring are faced with completely new problems ...
You can almost see the people of Trappentreu Street, you can taste their food, smell the musty stairwell, hear the sounds from the street and feel the shabbiness of the surroundings. En passant the authoress brings to life the history of everyday life over a period of one and a half centuries.
Published by Wallstein
Fading Blue.
Novel (1996)
Laura Doermer
born in 1935, lives in Töwang near Munich. Her book about the life of her epileptic son »Moritz my Son«, has sold a large number of copies.
