"In 1932, the Berlin-born writer Gabriele Tergit set out to memorialise what she saw as a disappearing world: the lives and fates of the city's Jews. By 1945, after fleeing the Nazis first to Czechoslovakia, then Palestine, then Britain, Tergit had finished her novel, but it took until 1951 for The Effingers to be published. Even then, only a few German booksellers wanted it in their shops."
"It was too strange a piece of work for a German public that had watched, if not participated, in the Holocaust. Though overlooked at the time, it has been rediscovered as a classic in Germany, and has now been published in English for the first time. It is a chronicle of three affluent Jewish families in Berlin between 1878 and 1942, with an epilogue set in 1948, based on Tergit's return visit to her destroyed city."
"Tergit understood how dangerous the Nazis were. She was a court reporter and covered Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels on trial in the 1920s this also made her a target, and she fled Berlin after narrowly escaping an SA (Brownshirts) raid in March 1933. It is eerie, reading The Effingers in 2025, that the Nazis' rise to power is something that happens largely on the periphery of the protagonists' lives."
Gabriele Tergit began writing in 1932 to memorialize the lives and fates of Berlin's Jews and completed the novel by 1945 after fleeing to Czechoslovakia, Palestine, and Britain. The Effingers was published in 1951 but initially found few booksellers and was later rediscovered as a German classic and translated into English for the first time. The novel chronicles three affluent Jewish families in Berlin from 1878 to 1942, with an epilogue set in 1948, and draws on Tergit's return to a destroyed city. Tergit covered Hitler and Goebbels as a court reporter, narrowly escaped an SA raid in March 1933, and portrays protagonists insulated from the Nazis.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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