Martin

by Manfred Hausmann

Short anecdotes about an artist's family, in particular the youngest son.

78 pages, Hardcover

Reviews

[Manybooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although the many short little anecdotes (about a German artist, his wife, children and in particular the family's young five year old son, and hence the title of the novel, Martin) are fun, engaging and sweet (and yes, I absolutely do love love love the episode where at Christmas, the family lets Martin believe that he has actually seen the Star of Bethlehem with his improvisational telescope instead of trying to enlighten him that the kaleidoscope of colours he is seeing is because of greasy thumbprints on the glass of his handmade lens) far too often there is just a bit too much saccharine perfection in author Manfred Hausmann's presented narrative, with especially young Martin often being portrayed as a boy who seemingly can do no wrong in his parents' and especially in his mother's eyes. And no, I do not necessarily even believe that Martin is being spoiled rotten, just that in particular his mother and father are in my opinion at least occasionally a bit overly permissive with regard to their youngest son's mischief and shenanigans.

Still, a generally nice enough and tenderly loving family type story, but rather too episodic and with not nearly enough conflict and actual family problems and issues presented by the author for me to personally consider more than a low three star ranking at best for Martin (as sorry, while I do realise that Manfred Hausmann has written about a supposedly in all ways happy and contented family, eine glückliche Familie, the almost constant level of contentedness, while perhaps lovely and tender enough in and of itself also simply presents itself as just a trifle too good to be true, too perfect and unrealistic, with especially the mother and father hardly ever even raising their voices against their youngest son, albeit that Martin does often engage in some pretty badly annoying, even massively mischievous behaviour, such as bombarding a total stranger with icy snowballs, playing with fire, trying to hang up pictures on his bedroom wall using old liver sausage as an adhesive feeling both frustrating and kind of defying belief that this is not ever even verbally much criticised by either parents).

[Maja · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cute little stories all over the place with some deeper meaning! Plus a level of German I can actually read that still teaches me new words

[♑︎♑︎♑︎ ♑︎♑︎♑︎ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am pretty much forced to give this little book five stars, because I can read it in German, because it has adorable line drawings throughout, because it's charming, because it was signed by the author on Sept 25 1953--Sept 25 being my birthday--and because in 1953 the author signed this book with a fountain pen, in a gorgeous glorious script that nobody writes in any longer.

It seems that, like the painter Emil Nolde (who is on my mind because I just read a retrospective of his work), Manfred Hausmann was Nazi-lite, at first buying into the idea that athletic young aryans were a good thing, and then living out the war years in Germany, not exactly as a collaborator, but certainly as someone who did not get in the way of atrocity, either. This personal history makes me wonder about the extreme simplicity and the complete lack of seriousness or cynicism in Martin, which the author wrote in the immediate postwar years. The story's sweetness and lack of guile, so soon after the horrors of the war, raise questions in me that maybe the author didn't intend, like: why was he writing sweet family stories, while at the same time Böll and others were writing vivid horrific accounts of Germany's postwar destruction, and about how difficult it was for the people to grapple with what they'd just done as a nation?