Streetcar Stop Beethovenstraat

It is a marriage with a complicated constellation: Susanne is wealthy, her husband Andreas is a penniless German writer without a work. They live in the land of the murderers of her parents because she believes a German poet must live in a German environment. Even more complicated is how they met: in Amsterdam, in 1941. At that time, Andreas is sent as a reporter for a Munich newspaper to occupied Holland. He lives in a sublet on Beethovenstraat in Amsterdam and witnesses from his window how night after night Jews are transported away in special tram trains. He tries hesitantly to help, becoming increasingly entangled in Jewish fates – and yet he can prevent nothing. Susanne lives as a persecuted Jew in Amsterdam and was only able to survive because she too became entangled in guilt.

Grete Weil's tram stop Beethovenstraat was the first German-language novel by a survivor about exile, persecution, and the murder of European Jews. She processes personal experiences and writes not only about the dramatic times during the war but also about the difficult life in post-war Germany – with an openness and ruthless honesty that still astonishes today.