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The TV presenter, musician and author Reinhold Beckmann (67) read from his book “Aenne and her brothers” in the Rupprecht bookstore.
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TV presenter Reinhold Beckmann read from his novel in Wolfratshausen - a story full of loss, shaped by the war.
As he began to read, the mood changed abruptly.
Wolfratshausen
- Reinhold Beckmann was as relaxed as we know him: "Whoever reads in Wolfratshausen has made it," the moderator, musician and author led the reading from his novel "Aenne and her brothers", which was published last August, in the full occupied Rupprecht bookstore.
In fact, it was his first appearance in Bavaria with the work, which tells the story of his mother Aenne and her four brothers, all of whom died in World War II.
The TV presenter quickly started talking to the guests
Most people from Hamburg are known as the moderator of the sports show for decades, and he also discussed political and social issues with illustrious guests on the weekly talk show “Beckmann” for many years.
So it was no surprise that the speaker and the audience quickly started talking.
You can read all the news from Wolfratshausen here.
His father only started talking about his wartime experiences late in life
But the mood changed abruptly when the author read the first passages from his book.
On 352 pages, the third-born Reinhold has compiled the story of his mother Aenne Beckmann, née Haber, who was born in 1921 in the small village of Wellingholzhausen near Osnabrück, from many individual fragments.
“My mother always talked, my father only started talking about his war experiences after his 75th birthday,” Beckmann told his listeners.
“Aenne preserved her family by telling stories.”
Her life was marked by loss early on.
The biological mother died in childbirth, and a few years later the father died of tuberculosis.
There remained three brothers, a half-sister and a late-born half-brother, held together by a strong pair of stepparents.
The living conditions in the small town near the Teutoburg Forest were simple and harsh; the strict requirements of the Catholic Church gave the villagers little freedom.
Quotes from field post letters in the book
How Aenne's life path ran parallel to the historical events in the 1920s and 1930s in Germany, how life in small Wellingholzhausen changed after the Catholic Church was pushed back by the National Socialists, and how all four brothers were ultimately sucked into the war in different ways were and died, that's what the book tells us.
In it, Beckmann quotes from a total of 105 surviving field post letters from his fallen uncles Franz, Hans, Alfons and Willi to his mother.
The 67-year-old has strung together memories of family members with his own assumptions, alternating literary liberties with historical facts.
Again and again in the book he speaks directly to his uncles, pities and comforts them.
This brings the four of them to life with their far too short life stories, at least for the captivated listeners in the bookstore and future readers.
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“So much unlived life!
The war takes everything.” Reinhold Beckmann, who has also been touring Germany with a band for years, processed this sad conclusion of his family history in the song “Four Brothers”, which he played in November 2021 at the official commemoration of Remembrance Day in the Bundestag.
In Wolfratshausen, too, he unpacked his guitar at the end of the evening, and Beckmann's clear voice dominated the room: "You held your breath when the first letter was in the box." Never again will wars bring so much suffering to families that were there everyone agreed that evening.
Aenne and her brothers - a book for peace.
NATALIA DORONKIN
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