Pippins Tochters Taschentuch

Should Josef and Frederika Seifert have thought twice before getting married? The setting is Kitzingen am Main in the late twenties. Josef is a war veteran and teacher, deeply immersed in metaphysics, while Frederika is a wildly frustrated singer and femme fatale who, unable to reach the spiritual sublimations of her husband, begins an affair with his best friend just weeks after their wedding. Is this infidelity to blame for everything that follows? This is the question Lucy, the eldest daughter, asks in letters to her sister (or is it her half-sister?) half a century later. Should her mother have simply taken a stand regarding the music of Richard Wagner to change the course of events? And did the fact that Frederika's lover was Jewish further ignite Josef's fascination with National Socialism? Rosmarie Waldrop has crafted an agile, sensitive, and coarse novel about a decaying family in the rising tide of National Socialism. It delves into desires, disappointments, and betrayals. It explores small causes and large effects. And it reflects on the persistent ambivalence of a past that is not truly manageable.