JoanP, I hope all went well with the computer purchase. They have become essential in our lives.
May I add some remarks regarding the "Anschluss".
The word literally means
connection and is far too innocuous in this case.
Austria became part of the Third Reich on March 13, 1938 by
annexation. The world watched and did nothing.
Even Hitler could not legally
expel innocent citizens from Germany or Austria simply because they were Jewish. But he had more subtle, more sinister methods at the ready. Years earlier he had become fixated with racial purity. Not long after he came to power in 1933, an Aryan Law was enacted. When American runner Jesse Owens won the gold medal at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Hitler made derogatory remarks about Owens, who was black.
By 1938 Jews had begun to leave, gradually, unobtrusively. Some went only as far as Switzerland (like Thomas Mann, whose wife was Jewish), many more went to America. (Not one of the six Jewish students in my all-girls school were left at the end of that
year.) After annexation, Austrian Jews also began to leave. Those who stayed in Germany and Austria had to wear a yellow star and were harassed.
Back to the book.
Mittl was not a sympathetic character. He and Dr. Hirschfeldt (who was no paragon either) seem stereotypical to me; Hanna has packed a great deal of information into that chapter. It would have been interesting to hear a little more about David, Dr. Hirschfeldt's brother.
David was clearly a member of a dueling fraternity. Members of that fraternity were instantly recognizable because of the dueling scars in their faces. They wore them proudly as an "academic distinction". (I remember being frightened as a child by the face of one of my father's colleagues, until father explained.)
By the time I arrived at the university in Heidelberg, all fraternities had been disbanded. I still recall the general fear and the awareness of VD. We had learned all about the three types of STD In high school biology class, from the "lightest" (most curable) to the most severe: syphilis, also called Lues, and its stages, ending in dementia. Mittl was in the tertiary stage. There was no hope. (The details could have been a bit less graphic.)
Based on my own experience I do not think that everybody "envied Jews because they were rich". Not all were extravagantly rich.
Envy and hate are detructive.
Regarding titles: Hitler scorned them. The members of the nobility swiftly dropped the "von" between first name(s) and surname. But that was then. Academic titles continue to be used. In a formal address, e.g. "Professor Doktor Muller". (I've never heard "Doktor Doktor" as an address.)
The Italians love titles. An engineer is addressed as "Ingegnere", a doctor as "Dottore" or, if female, as "Dottoressa".
Old habits die hard. But what's the harm? Suum cuique. To each his own.
ADOANNIE, forgive me, but GB was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in
2006 for
March, an imaginative novel about the American Civil War à la Louisa May Alcott, featuring the father (!) we never meet in
Little Women.
Who knows what the filmmakers will do with this book, what they will use and/or choose to omit. I have a very clear impression of the
edgy Hanna in my mind. She does not look like Zeta-Jones.
See you in Venice tomorrow ...
