Nesthäkchen im weißen Haar

Nesthäkchen #10

by Else Ury

Marietta, Nesthäkchens blonde Enkelin, hat sich entschlossen, in Deutschland zu bleiben. Tief und fest hat die zarte Brasilianerin im deutschen Boden Wurzel geschlagen. Wohl geht ihr die Trennung von ihrer Zwillingsschwester sehr nahe, doch die Aufgabe, die sie als die ihre erkannt hat, geht vor. Als Sozialfürsorgerin findet das in Luxus und Überfluß aufgewachsene Mädchen Sinn und Ziel seines Lebens. Auf einer Italienreise trifft Marietta in Genua ihren aus Amerika heimgekehrten Vetter Horst und reicht ihm nach Vollendung ihrer großen Aufgabe die Hand zum gemeinsamen Lebensweg.

Genres: Childrens, Fiction, Middle Grade, Young Adult, German Literature

107 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1925

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

[Josiemaus85 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ein würdiger Abschluss.

[Manybooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

So yes indeed, not surprisingly (and considering what novels seven to nine of Else Ury's Nesthäkchen series have been like with regard to in particular presented content and thematics), the tenth and final of Ury's Nesthäkchen novels, her 1925 Nesthäkchen im weißen Haar feels and actually totally is (in my opinion) once again rather obviously and while to be expected also frustratingly out of temporal synch, set in an imagined by the author mid 1970s Germany around the Golden Anniversary of Annemarie Braun (the Nesthäkchen of the series titles) and Rudolf Hartenstein, but once again and of course feeling totally like a late 1920s novel with regard to gender roles, cultural mores and in particular technology (with for example no airplanes, no television and with in fact the radio being depicted as one of the main technological advancements and Else Ury actually devoting an entire chapter of Nesthäkchen im weißen Haar to this, to the radio).

However unlike with in particular novels eight and nine of the series (Nesthäkchens Jüngste and especially Nesthäkchen und ihre Enkel which I indeed really did not all that much like and found pretty difficult to stomach even with consideration of their 1920s publication dates) with Nesthäkchen im weißen Haar I have still been able to both enjoy and definitely appreciate my perusal (and even if often feeling temporally removed and distracted). For yes, I have definitely found reading Else Ury's featured narrative, about Annemarie's granddaughter Marietta, her budding career as a social worker and how she finally both marries her cousin Horst and is also considering purchasing her great aunt's run-down and struggling estate farm in order to turn it into a sanatorium for poor and often tubercular children a pretty lovely and delightful ending to Nesthäkchen's, to Annemarie Braun's life story (and her family and many friends as well), with I guess my main reason for enjoying Nesthäkchen in weißen Haar considerably more being that Else Ury is not being quite as massively stereotypical in her text and that Brazil and especially that to and for me so massively typecast and annoying Anita Tavares (Marietta's twin sister) only play very much secondary even just tertiary roles in Nesthäkchen im weißen Haar (for truly, the less I have to read about Anita Tavares and Else Ury's rather off-putting at times impressions of and comments on North and South America and the tropics, the more and the better I seem to be able and willing to enjoy her story telling and such).

But indeed, while I do highly recommend Else Ury's Nesthäkchen series, it is definitely the first six novels (and the ones that show a totally realistic sense of both place and also of time) which shine and in my opinion deserve to be ranked as classics of German children's literature (and that the imagined but very unrealistic future of novels seven to ten do in my opinion leave a bit to be desired and are not nearly as full of realism and delight as the first six books are and always will be).