Nesthäkchen und ihre Küken

Nesthäkchen #7

by Else Ury

Feuer im Haus der Hartensteins! Nur knapp entrinnen Annemarie, ihr Mann und ihre drei Kinder einer Katastrophe.Ihr Zuhause wird völlig zerstört, doch Annemarie lässt sich nicht entmutigen.

Genres: Childrens, Fiction, German Literature, Germany, Young Adult, Classics

107 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1922

About the author

Else Ury (November 1, 1877 in Berlin; January 13, 1943 in the Auschwitz concentration camp) was a German writer and children's book author. Her best-known character is the blonde doctor's daughter Annemarie Braun, whose life from childhood to old age is told in the ten volumes of the highly successful Nesthäkchen series.
During Ury's lifetime Nesthäkchen und der Weltkrieg (Nesthäkchen and the World War), the fourth volume, was the most popular. Else Ury was a member of the German Bürgertum (middle class). She was pulled between patriotic German citizenship and Jewish cultural heritage. This situation is reflected in her writings, although the Nesthäkchen books make no references to Judaism.
As a Jew during the Holocaust, Ury was barred from publishing, stripped of her possessions, deported to Auschwitz and gassed the day after she arrived. A cenotaph in Berlin's Weissensee Jewish Cemetery (Jüdischer Friedhof Weißensee) memorializes her.

Reviews

[Manybooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, before reviewing books seven to ten of Else Ury's Nesthäkchen series, it does in my opinion behoove to point out that there is in fact a pretty clearly dealigned and also somewhat potentially problematic (and in particular for current, for modern readers, both children and adult) caesura between the first six and the final four Nesthäkchen novels. For in stories one to six of the Nesthäkchen series, Ury does indeed keep both time and place inherently realistic and as such also strongly based on early 20th century Germany and of course in particular Berlin (from about 1906 to circa 1923 when Annemarie Braun marries physician Rudolf Hartenstein). And while from Nesthäkchen und ihre Puppen until Nesthäkchen fliegt aus dem Nest we do of course encounter a fictitious (an entirely imagined) life story of Nesthäkchen (and Annemarie Braun's friends and family), themes and content are very much based on the actual and bona fide history and culture, the reality of early 20th century Germany (including WWI and post WWI societal issues and conflicts).

But indeed after Nesthäkchen marries and Else Ury is describing the Hartensteins' married life, their children and finally also their grandchildren (as well as what happens to diverse family members and friends over the decades), especially that erstwhile sense of historic accuracy and reality starts becoming increasingly frayed, as the novels move on time wise (until almost the early 1980s it seems) but remain staunchly in the 1920s with regard to cultural mores and the ins and outs of everyday life, showing an utopian and imagined future which has no WWII, no Holocaust, no horrors of National Socialism, but also does not really represent a truly in any manner realistic seeming future either. For unlike with for example science fiction, novels seven to ten in the Nesthäkchen series rather do still retain a very much palpable feel of the 1920s, which is especially noticeable the further along in time the novels move, the more Nesthäkchen (Annemarie Braun) ages and her children grow up, marry and finally have children of their own (leaving stories that are interesting and still often retain a good enough and a decent enough feeling of place, but that from a historical sense of time and culture, technology etc. moving forward, just do not really work all that well anymore, with episodes and anecdotes that tend to feel a trifle like Ury has superimposed a 1920s morality onto the future, and while Else Ury of course could not have imagined WWII in the early 1920s when she was writing the final stories of Nesthäkchen, I for one do feel a bit uncomfortable reading about for example a 1945 time frame in Nesthäkchens Jüngste where East Prussia is still part of Germany and where there never had been WWII and Adolf Hitler, as I do feel this kind of triviliases even if course totally inadvertently the horrors of the Third Reich).

Now with book seven, with Nesthäkchen und ihre Küken (which was penned in 1922 and is set in the seventh year of Annemarie and Rudolf's marriage and thus takes place around 1930), you do not as yet feel all that strongly how the sense of time has become less and less realistic and more and more fractured (and mostly so because Germany in 1930 still was very much akin and alike to the 1920s albeit of course Nesthäkchen und ihre Küken does not show the 1929 stock market crash and the increasing popularity of the SA, of the supporters of National Socialism). And yes, even though the sense of time not being as actively authentic and genuine is already starting to rear its head in Nesthäkchen und ihre Küken (with Küken meaning Nesthäkchen's chicks, in other words her three children), for the most part, Ury focusses on Annemarie as a wife and a mother. And therefore, Nesthäkchen und ihre Küken kind of represents a rather typical (and of its time) "wedded bliss" account (not without potential problems, with a devastating fire, illness and issues regarding child rearing and such), but yes, l have indeed found Nesthäkchen und ihre Küken rather tedious and dragging at times and not really all that consistently interesting due to its presented married life thematics (and indeed, with the fact that Else Ury almost constantly has Nesthäkchen's two youngest being depicted as talking in an almost unintelligible toddler-speak gibberish really getting on my reading nerves, since while some instances of this are sweet and humours and add colours, for me, a constant barrage is rather annoying and frustrating, especially if a reader often has to guess at meanings).

[Josiemaus85 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Niedliche Geschichte.

[Liasanya Leseratte · Rating 3 out of 5]

Das siebte Buch der Reihe beschreibt Nesthäkchens Leben als Hausfrau und Mutter von drei Kindern. Dieses Buch hat mich nie so richtig abgeholt. Zum einen, weil man sich nicht so gut hineinversetzen konnte als Kind, Jugendliche, junge Erwachsene; zum anderen weil die Themen sehr viel ernster sind als in den Voraus gehenden Büchern. Wer also idyllisches Familienleben erwartet, wird ein bisschen enttäuscht. Stattdessen passieren einige negative Dinge und kleinere Katastrophen..