A complex marriage in dangerous times, 29 Jun 2008
This short book of 113 pages tells, largely in the form of two diaries, the story of a complex marriage in dangerous times. The couple are Austrian Jews: Hans a not very successful poet and playwright, Inge a more successful scientist, so they inhabit different intellectual worlds to start with and on that level do not really understand each other. In some sense Hans has become tired of Inge, and has an affaire with Hilde, a young communist (though he cannot imagine living without Inge - and Inge cannot imagine living without Hans, whom she loves more than he loves her.)

Inge is nervous about the rising tide of Nazism, and has already sent her young son to safety to relatives in America. She persuades Hans that they, too, should leave Austria. They leave for Paris the day before the Anschluss. Inge does not know that Hilde has already left for that city; so there is misery and uncertainty for her, while Hans seems happy. He also meets there the famous philosopher Walter Benjamin. Then Hilde leaves for Moscow. And now the relationship between Hans and Inge becomes a see-saw: sometimes Hans is loving; sometimes he complains how incompatible they are.

Then the Germans invade France; Hans and Inge flee to the south and then make for the Spanish border. At that point the see-saw between them, part of which has always been that when she feels strong, he feels weak and vice versa, becomes part of the tension of their escape, and it is only now that I got a sense of where the book was heading. The earlier parts struck me as much more novelettish.

They manage to cross to Port Bou the day after the Spanish government had officially closed the border, and they were now to be interned in Spain. It turned out that Walter Benjamin had crossed the same day and was in the same hotel to which Hans and Inge were escorted. Up till then Hans has been the stronger and more vigorous: now the see-saw reestablishes itself and he crumples. How the story ended for Walter Benjamin is well known. This review must not reveal how it ended for Hans and Inge.

(See my Amazon review of Bruno Arpaia's The Angel of History, which is largely about Walter Benjamin.)