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The Lenz Papers
It is the month of May, 1849. The fortress city of Rastatt in Baden, a small Germany Grand Duchy, rocks with the turmoil of uprising soon to erupt.
Into the noise and confusion of the 'Türkenlouis' Inn enter the people who will act out the story: Andreas Lenz, poet and soldier; Josepha, whose beauty is challenge and allurement to civilians and military; Lenore, daughter of the town's banker, exquisite, intellectual, who would turn camp follower gladly to win the man she loves; Christoffel, peasant become revolutionary, on his way to Cologne to meet young Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the editors of a struggling left-wing journal.
Thus opens this story of one of the most dramatic periods in European history: the brief three months when the revolutions of 1848-1849 gave hope to the common man in at least one part of Germany.
Stefan Heym, with a skillful blending of romance and hard fact, presents a panoramic view of this time of conflict. His talent lends life to the files of history through the lives of men and women. And whether these are the Royal Prince, or the generals, or the street girls, seamstresses, journeymen, journalists, pedlars, peasants, priests, actors who gave mid-ninteenth-century Baden its colour and weave; or the heroes, the cowards, the bureaucrats, the opportunists, the forthright whose actions are a matter of record -- each and every one is important to the telling of the tale.
Mainly through the eyes and pen of the soldier poet Andreas Lenz, the author shows the seed of revolution flowering to a triumphant coup d'etat: faltering under inexperience, disunited leadership and shortage of funds; dying out miserably and pathetically in the heartbreak of unstemmed Prussian reaction. On the eve of this collapse, Lenz finds new courage in the thought that: 'When all is said and done, what remains of the struggle? The changes it brought for better or worse -- whichever -- they melt into the great design of human development...'
It is the great design which extends back to Valley Forge, gathers momentum in the storming of the Bastille, alights briefly on the Grand Duchy in Gettysburg, mans the barricades of the French Commune and finds ultimate expression in the revolutions of the twentieth century.
It is this great design which Stefan Heym traces in The Lenz Papers and which gives breadth and scope to that which we believe to be a historical novel of stature.
(From the dust-jacket)
Into the noise and confusion of the 'Türkenlouis' Inn enter the people who will act out the story: Andreas Lenz, poet and soldier; Josepha, whose beauty is challenge and allurement to civilians and military; Lenore, daughter of the town's banker, exquisite, intellectual, who would turn camp follower gladly to win the man she loves; Christoffel, peasant become revolutionary, on his way to Cologne to meet young Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the editors of a struggling left-wing journal.
Thus opens this story of one of the most dramatic periods in European history: the brief three months when the revolutions of 1848-1849 gave hope to the common man in at least one part of Germany.
Stefan Heym, with a skillful blending of romance and hard fact, presents a panoramic view of this time of conflict. His talent lends life to the files of history through the lives of men and women. And whether these are the Royal Prince, or the generals, or the street girls, seamstresses, journeymen, journalists, pedlars, peasants, priests, actors who gave mid-ninteenth-century Baden its colour and weave; or the heroes, the cowards, the bureaucrats, the opportunists, the forthright whose actions are a matter of record -- each and every one is important to the telling of the tale.
Mainly through the eyes and pen of the soldier poet Andreas Lenz, the author shows the seed of revolution flowering to a triumphant coup d'etat: faltering under inexperience, disunited leadership and shortage of funds; dying out miserably and pathetically in the heartbreak of unstemmed Prussian reaction. On the eve of this collapse, Lenz finds new courage in the thought that: 'When all is said and done, what remains of the struggle? The changes it brought for better or worse -- whichever -- they melt into the great design of human development...'
It is the great design which extends back to Valley Forge, gathers momentum in the storming of the Bastille, alights briefly on the Grand Duchy in Gettysburg, mans the barricades of the French Commune and finds ultimate expression in the revolutions of the twentieth century.
It is this great design which Stefan Heym traces in The Lenz Papers and which gives breadth and scope to that which we believe to be a historical novel of stature.
(From the dust-jacket)
551 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1964
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