Description

What was it like to grow up as an urban urchin under bombs in Nazi Germany Did he have a real childhood Did he play pranks on grownups as young rascals do in normal times Could he be shielded against Nationalist ideology In Urchin at War Uwe SiemonNetto answers these questions in the affirmative with humour and drama

The son of a lawyer blinded in World War I he describes the parallel universe in which his bourgeois family lived in Leipzig He vividly writes about the night when his home was bombed out He had to guide his father over puddles of green flames caused by phosphor to his grandmothers apartment where he discovered hours later that of all people Frenchmen had rescued his mother from the flames He tells the story of how he stole a tram after an air raid and how his family buried his grandaunts right hand because that was the only body part rescuers found under the rubble after her house was hit by a blockbuster bomb

Dr SiemonNetto a journalist and academic relates how in a country parsonage he was evacuated to the proNazi pastor beat him up for using French loan words and how he preached on Sundays that Hitler was Germanys saviour prompting the courageous organist to whisper into the authors ears Hes lying He is betraying our Lord

When the Americans occupied Leipzig on Hitlers birthday in 1945 the authors family feasted on half an egg in mustard sauce each

Urchin at War is an Ode to Omi his funny and intrepid grandmother Clara Netto a grande dame who in the air raid shelter taught him basic Lutheran doctrine so well that it led him to interrupt his stellar career as a reporter at age 50 to study theology in Chicago and earn a doctorate in Boston

Urchin at War is the first volume in the 1517 Publishings Urchin Series about the extraordinary life story of a kid and high school dropout who became a soughtafter newsman who covered the Kennedy assassination and the Vietnam War and ended up being a Lutheran lay theologian