Pavel's Letters

by Monika Maron, Brigitte Goldstein (Translator)

Pavel was Monika Maron's grandfather. But she only remembers him in black and white, as he left his children behind in Berlin when he was deported to his native Poland, and afterwards perished in a concentration camp. As a grown-up with a son of her own, researching a documentary for German television, Monika discovers letters which her grandfather wrote to Monika's mother, Hella. Teasing her family's past out of the fog of oblivion and lies, one of Germany's greatest writers asks about the secrets families keep and about what becomes of the individual mind when the powers that be turn against it.

Genres: Fiction, German Literature, Germany, War, Classics, Literary Fiction, Holocaust

142 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Monika Maron is a German author, formerly of the German Democratic Republic. She moved in 1951 from West to East Berlin with her stepfather, Karl Maron, the GDR Minister of the Interior.

She studied theatre and spent time as a directing assistant and as a journalist. In the late 1970s, she began writing full-time in East Berlin. In her early novels written in East Berlin, her primary theme was life and loathing inside a totalitarian surveillance state. But despite Maron's criticism of the GDR regime, it turned out that she had worked as an informer for the Ministry of State Security, or Stasi — a fact that she addressed in her 1999 novel, Pawels Briefe (Pawel's Letters).

She left the GDR in 1988 with a three-year visa. After living in Hamburg, Germany, until 1992, she returned to a reunited Berlin, where she currently lives and writes.

Her works deal to a large degree with confrontation with the past and explore the threats posed both by memory and isolation. Her prose is sparse, bleak, and lonely, conveying the sensitivity and desperation of her narrators.

In 1992, she was distinguished with the renowned Kleist Prize, awarded annually to prominent German authors, and, in 2003, with the Friedrich Hölderlin Prize.

Her latest novel, Artur Lanz (2020), delves into the emasculation of men as "heroes," and the evolution of "cancel culture" in a liberal mainstream that polices speech and opinions. Maron's characters' views on gender, immigration and Islam made some wonder if the once leftist writer had become Islamophobic or anti-feminist. Maron has also railed against the "gender gibberish" of woke liberals in political essays. She has criticized an "unenlightened Islam" and warned against "tolerance in the face of intolerance." Her political rhetoric echoes the far-right AFD party. Is the opinionated author turning herself into a mouthpiece for the alt right?

"I say what I think," she explained in an interview with public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk. "I arrive at my convictions or opinions by looking at the world or reading about it, or by weighing one opinion against another and somehow orienting myself. Whether that's right-wing or not doesn't matter to me in the end."

Reviews

[K.D. Absolutely · Rating 3 out of 5]

I finished this the evening before my 50th birthday and it helped me in contemplating what I need to do with the rest for the second half of my life.

Like all of you, so far, I have lived my life guided by what I knew was right. However, that knowledge is hinged on so many things that I myself doubted at many points in my life if what I was doing the right. This book, Pavel's Letters shows exactly this dilemma: each member of the Iglarz family doing what he/she thought was right prior, during and after the Holocaust. Novels about the Holocaust always make me reevaluate my life but since it was the eve of my 50th birthday, this book hit the bulls-eye for me.

Pavel the father was a Jew and so when WWII started in Germany and Jews were pushed to live in the ghettos, he was deported back to his native country, Poland. Josefa the mother and her kids, Marta, Paul, Bruno and Hella (the author's mother) were left in East Berlin. During Pavel's two years stay in the concentration camp, he was allowed to write letters to his family but some of them were censored. Also, Pavel did not want himself to be remembered by his children living miserably during his last years on earth so he talked about positive and mundane things in his letter like requesting for a pattern for ladies clothes from Paul, one of his children or pleading his children to take care of his wife, their mother. I know the letters were censored and Pavel could not paint the Holocaust picture with pastel colors but somehow the book gave an illusory images of what we all know happened in those concentration camps.

Towards the end of the book, the author wrote: "In our family, no one remained true to the faith in which he was raised. Pavel did not remain a Jew, Josefa did not remain a Catholic, Hella, Maria and Paul did not remain Baptists, and I, in my time, stopped believing in communism." Aside from choosing their partners especially for Hella and Maria, those are samples of the life-turning decisions these characters made in their lives. Each decision made out of necessity (Pavel trying to escape the arrest) but sometimes out of comfort, Monica leaving communist East Berlin so she can publish her works.

Life is a series of decisions. I know I made some bad ones in my first 50 years but the thing is, I learned from them. Some memories still hurt so I try to whisk them away. Some I still remember with regrets but those have been made and cannot be undone. So, I just reach and grab the wheel, rather fondly remembering the nice ones and see where this other half of my life will bring me.

There are these thought-provoking lines at the beginning of the memoir from Maron:

"We often sense our ability to forget merely as an inability to remember. We suspect forgetting of serving our evil and depraved nature. Forgetting means either guilt or physical decline. The arbitrariness with which something makes a decision over and against our will, whether a memory remains hidden for a while or lingers in the subterranean world of our mind or even whether it will remain sealed for ever, is unfathomable and therefore frightening."

I hope I am not forgetting because of old age nor I am forgetting because of guilt. I am just forgetting the bad memories so I can go on living the rest of my life. Who wants to carry negative emotional baggage? Not me. Not you. Not anyone.

[Ellinor · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is subtitled "A Family History". However, I wasn't sure what Monika Maron was trying to tell. On the one side there are old letters, Pawel's Letters, from her Jewish grandfather. On the other side she also tells about her life in the German Democratic Republic. Of course both are part of this family history but they didn't really fit together. They better would have been told as two separate stories in a collection which would also have made the title less misleading.

[Florian Lorenzen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Monika Maron gehört zweifelsohne zu jenen Autoren, die Zeit ihres Lebens politisch angeeckt sind. Zuerst durfte ihr Debütroman „Flugasche“ von 1981 in der DDR nicht erscheinen, da dieser die dortige Umweltverschmutzung thematisierte. Später kritisierte sie die Merkelsche Flüchtlingspolitik und publizierte in der umstrittenen Edition Buchhaus Loschwitz, weswegen Marons Werke nun bei Hoffmann & Campe erscheinen. Spätestens seit diesem Vorgang wollte ich mir ein eigenes Bild ihres Werkes verschaffen und „Pawels Briefe“ war hierfür nun der Auftakt. In dieser bebilderten Autobiografie begibt sich Maron auf Spurensuche ihrer Großeltern mütterlicherseits, Pawel und Josefa. Pawel war polnischer Jude, der von den Nationalsoz1alisten ermordet wurde. Sein Briefverkehr an Josefa wurde im Vorfeld dieses Buches von Maron erstmals gelesen und fungiert als Ausgangspunkt ihrer Darstellung.

In Gänze konnten mich „Pawels Briefe“ allerdings nicht überzeugen. Zunächst war das Gesamtkonzept des Buches für mich nicht schlüssig. Für eine echte Familienbiografie ist es zu anekdoten- und bruchstückhaft. Da auf gesellschaftliche + politische Beschreibungen und Bewertungen weitgehend verzichtet wird, sagt es aber auch verhältnismäßig wenig über die Verhältnisse dieser Zeit aus. Erschwerend kommt hinzu, dass die Geschichte auf den gesamten 200 Seiten nie so richtig Fahrt aufnimmt. Auch die eher sachlich gehaltene Sprache, die offensichtlich einen Kontrast zu der geschilderten Tragik bilden soll, hat mich weder persönlich angesprochen noch berührt.

Somit war mein erster Monika Maron Read eher unbefriedigend, bin aber weiterhin offen für andere Werke und werde ihr beizeiten eine zweite Chance geben.

Review bei Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/C_AL9RitO7S/

[J_BlueFlower · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pavel's Letters is not really a novel, as it seems to deal with the writers - Monika Maron - actual grandfather and his and his families real history. Pavel was born Jewish and laster deported to Poland.
It is like the book deals with two teams at once: What actually happened and the problem of not remembering. Some of the uncovered letters are from Hella (Monika's mother). When shown the letters she doesn't even remember writing them.
The book was next to boring a good part of the time. The first half of the book never really court my interest. It contains too many details about research: Going here, asking there, people not remembering, and we cannot be sure.... and so on and on and on.
The actual letters are interesting. In the first half of the book the ratio of letters to small-talk about research/forgetting is just too low. In the second half after the end of WWII it becomes more interesting: The Monika is starting to have first hand memories of the time and have many insights, especially one about the family faith (that I wan't reveal here).
Conclusion: If you are looking for a quick 1001-book: Here is one, just 142 pages (and not 242 as the Goodread database used to think), otherwise not I book I would recommend.

[Maryann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pavel is Maron's grandfather, a victim of the Holocaust, though he had renounced his Jewish heritage and joined the Baptist church in his adulthood. This book is an exploration by Maron of her grandparents and parents, their interaction with one another, the rise and fall of the Nazis, and the subsequent rise and fall of communism in Germany. That description is much drier than the book, however.

Maron is a great storyteller, though the disjointedness is a bit jarring. The style, though, feels reflective of her experience of exploring family history. I found her perspective of watching her mother join the communist party and truly believe in its goodness, and later her own rejection of the party, very interesting. It gave me new insight into what an incredible time it would have been to live in Germany, the sense of turbulence and disruption and reaction to all that had happened and how they thought they were doing the right things for themselves and their country.

Food: a foraged meal. Mushrooms, nuts and berries found here and there while wandering through the woods.

[Rosemary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ostensibly about Monika Maron’s Polish grandfather, a convert from Judaism to Baptism, and his Catholic to Baptist wife, this book is really much more about the author’s communist mother, who moved from West to East Berlin with her young daughter after World War II, causing the two of them to be locked in lifelong hostilities in which this book seems to be a missile fired by Maron at her mother.

The prose is wonderful, and I did appreciate this as a piece of autobiographical writing, but the title left me wishing we had more of grandfather Pavel’s actual letters. All we seem to get is a sentence or two here and there.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting biography/ memoir about the author’s reconstruction of her family history. She learns about the lives of her parents and grandparents in Germany during the 1930s and 1940s. Her grandparents died during World War Two. Her grandfather Pavel, was a Polish Jew who had converted to being a baptist. Her mother, Hella, a devout communist, struggles to come to terms with her daughter’s emigration to West Germany.

The author tries to learn more about her grandparents lives in Poland and West Berlin before 1939, talking to her mother, reading Pavel’s forgotten letters and visiting Poland.

This book was first published in 1999.

[Chloe O'Hara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting recount of Monika's family from before WW2 to the end of the GDR. My version of the book omits the section where she discusses her involvement in the Stasi, which was an interesting choice. A lot of beautiful imagery and Monika poses a lot of important questions about memory and how history is remembered

[Marie Antoine · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ich glaube ich tue Maron’s Buch im Endeffekt Unrecht mit dieser Bewertung aber ich hatte selten so eine schlechte Zeit beim Lesen eines Buches…

[Em · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Every time I go back, the images in my head battle with each other. In my memory, the houses are taller, the streets wider, the pathways longer; the images of my childhood impose themselves stubbornly on what I am seeing”

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

*Pawels Briefe* ist vor allem ein Buch über das Vergessen, über die Unzuverlässigkeit der persönlichen Erinnerungen. Eingebunden in eine private Version der deutschen Geschichte des 20sten Jahrhunderts stellen sich die Erinnerungen der Erzählerin als ungewiss heraus, sogar wenn sie, von Photographien unterstützt, es nicht sein sollten. Diese Unstetigkeit der Vergangenheit stellt auch das Genre des Buches in Frage, indem sie es irgendwo zwischen Roman und (Auto)Biographie einsetzt. Ganz im Sinne des Postmodernismus ist sich die Erzählung dessen auch von Anfang an bewusst, spielt sogar ab und zu mit diesem unbestimmten und unbestimmbaren Status, z.B. wenn literarische und philosophische Andeutungen oder Zitate sich in den Text einschleichen, und seine Vermittlung *als* Text hervorheben.

Marons Buch versteckt sich nicht hinter komplizierter Prosa. Es ist klar, ist sich seiner selbst bewusst - und das heißt eben, dass es nicht auf einer definitiven Identität besteht oder bestehen kann, die sowieso nicht haltbar wäre. Interessant wäre es, *Pawels Briefe* zusammen mit Roland Barthes *Camera Lucida* und W.G. Sebalds Werken zu bedenken.

[Katya Kasha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't really enjoy this book. I don't know if some of it was lost in translation, but it never really captured my interest. I kept getting frustrated with her for even writing the book when she knew her mother wasn't forthcoming with family history. it never felt like the true purpose of writing the book was clear.

[Kristel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reason Read: Reading 1001 July BOTM. This is a work of nonfiction in which the author Monika Maron looks into the life of her maternal grandparents. The grandfather was a Jew who had converted to Baptist before Hitler came to power and he married a Catholic girl who also converted to Baptist. They had 3 children, Hilla, Marta, Paul. Monika is the daughter of Hilla. Pavel is the grandfather and he was taken from his family and sent to a ghetto because he was Jewish and it did not matter that he was not a worshipping Jew, he still was Jewish. He was eventually killed but how is not known. Monika tries to discover her grandparents through letters and photographs. The three children became communist and lived in East Berlin. Monika eventually rejected communism so this is also the story of a family divided up by political idealism.

Highlights;
"..We often sense our ability to forget merely as an inability to remember."
"tend to think that coincidences and spontaneous decisions of the past have a meaning that is revealed only later,"
"Poverty is as relative a concept as illness: someone who wasn’t killed by it can find comfort in the fact that he is better off than the dead."
"know the feeling of helplessness when I try to explain to someone who didn’t go through this why we nevertheless didn’t go about with drooping shoulders, burdened by the outrage of our daily lives."
"those who imprisoned political opponents, oppressed Christians, banned books, walled in an entire people and unleashed the spies of a colossal secret service. What business did Pavel’s daughters, Hella and Marta, have among such people?"
"true to the faith in which he was raised. Pavel did not remain a Jew, Josefa did not remain a Catholic, Hella, Marta and Paul did not remain Baptists, and I, in my time, stopped believing in communism."

I liked her writing, it wasn't hard to read. I liked that it was set in East Germany (mostly) and that it examined WWII and Hitler from that perspective. I also liked how it questioned how someone could be a faithful communist under the same conditions of Hitler's Germany.

[Joel Cuthbert · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit confounding this one. Read for my class on the Holocaust through German Literature and Film. Apparently, this one is a classic in some regards and comes from a well-regarded voice within German literary circles... I am, however, a relative outsider on that front.

It works to explore all of the fascinating themes about German socio-cultural memory, how do we understand this horrific era, how do we understand individual place and history when many who partook would prefer to leave it in the past?

The book is fractured the way memory might be, constantly circling similar recognizable themes whilst also seeming to insist on being a bit impenetrable. I really struggled to follow a central thread even while there were some remarkable and moving passages. Part of the struggle was keeping the structure of the family whose history is being excavated in clear sight. Who is who and what has happened is a question I kept repeating (maybe somewhat unsuccessfully as that was still the question I was repeating as I closed the book).

In the next two weeks we'll be discussing this in class and likely more rich insights will come out of those conversations, for now, I was a bit flustered and didn't find it as satisfying or provoking as similar explorations of german, and particularly, nazi-era German history.

[Pip · Rating 4 out of 5]

Monika Maron's step-father was a prominent politician in the German Democratic Republic, so she grew up in a privileged position in the era of Germany being divided into East and West, even attending boarding school for some time. She became a theatre director and author and managed to get a visa to travel to Hamburg two years before the fall of the wall in 1989. Without emphasising her own attitude towards East Germany it is implied that she rejected its totalitarianism, as did her brother, alienating her devotedly communist mother in the meantime. At some point a suitcase full of letters and photos is unearthed and Monika examines how memory can be unreliable, pMonika Maron's step-father was a prominent politician in the German Democratic Republic, so she grew up in a privileged position in the era of Germany being divided into East and West, even attending boarding school for some time. She became a theatre director and author and managed to get a visa to travel to Hamburg two years before the fall of the wall in 1989. Without emphasising her own attitude towards East Germany it is implied that she rejected its totalitarianism, as did her brother, alienating her devotedly communist mother in the meantime. At some point a suitcase full of letters and photos is unearthed and Monika examines how memory can be unreliable, particularly in the case of her mother, who has forgotten their existence despite there being a whole cache of letters from her maternal grandfather, who had been forced into exile and eventual assassination during the period of National Socialism. Two extreme political systems are revealed from the point of view of the personal, which makes this an intriguing book.

[Diane Zwang · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book described as a memoir and is inspired by actual events but it is a work of fiction.“Maron reconstructs their lives from fragments of memory and a forgotten box of letters”.

“It’s focal point is memory and how one can erase or alter it in order to give a more optimistic view of life.”

I felt like this was a book more about the relationship of mother and daughter. The book was also about religion especially during WWII, and communism. I think I would have enjoyed the book more if it was an autobiography and not a fictionalized version of one.

[Daniel Polansky]

An investigation into lives and deaths of the author's maternal grandparents, pseudo-Jews caught up in the shoah, as well as her mother, a prominent member of the East German government against which Maron was a vocal dissident. A thoughtful meditation on the opacity of memory, inter-generational betrayal and the necessity of forgiveness.

[Scythe Rowan · Rating 3 out of 5]

An sich ist das Buch nicht schlecht, nur hat mir ein wenig der rote Faden gefehlt. Die Familiengeschichte, die in diesem Buch dargelegt wird, wird in diesem Buch nicht chronologisch erzählt, sondern springt immer mal wieder in der Zeit hin und her.

[Phil · Rating 1 out of 5]

A shitty facebook post

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

It seems that timing was perfect for during the month of November I have read three books that dealt with war and so far I have enjoyed all of them.

In scope Monika Maron’s Pavel’s Letters is very similar to Dubravka Ugresic’s ‘The Museum of Unconditional Surrender’ that is, an autobiographical tale about someone trying to piece her past by using photographs and letters as evidence. However whereas Ugresic had been able to reconstruct her history well, Maron had more problems as her mother forgot a lot of the important details and her grandfather erased most of his history and left behind a series of letters and a handful of pictures.

The setting for Pavel’s Letters is during wartime Berlin. Maron is writing her novel as the wall is falling down so it is just that she documents the two major events of the Germany’s troubled history. As she finally puts together her past Maron finds out that it is one of suffering and deception, albeit with tender moments.

Pavel’s Letters is a brutally honest book. I deals with its subjects bluntly and there is no time wasted in describing events and yet in doesn’t become self-indulgent or some kind of moan fest, which the novel could have easily turned into. It’s focal point is memory and how one can erase or alter it in order to give a more optimistic view of life. Although clearly this is not the case and the author’s family did undergo a lot of suffering.

I am loving the fact that the last three books have all touched upon the same theme and have been able to give us a unique vision of the events leading to the war be it World War II or the Bosnian one. There will always be some sort of imprint caused, that can affect an outlook of life and the these novels are helping become more aware of these happenings

[~Calyre~ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find two phrases that seem to fit my grandparents. "Be watchful, stand firm in your faith, be courageous, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love."

[Grace · Rating 5 out of 5]

German: Pawels Briefe

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Großartig! Eins meiner besten Bücher dieses Jahr! <3