I Kiss Your Hands Many Times - Hearts, Souls and Wars in Hungary (Marianne Szegedy-Maszak, 2013)

Author's parents and grandparents came through difficult times in WWII Hungary.  Author, growing up with extended family in NY, had limited understanding of family background until she arranges translation of stacks of letters after her parents died.

I've read lots of WWII stuff - but the story that she frames is one of the most interesting and unique of all.  Partly because it is centered in Hungary - relatively safely away from the fighting until the last year of the war (which I had never thought about).  And Hitler had enough other things keeping him busy such that he didn't put the hammer down on this semi-reliable ally until late in the game.

"I kiss your hands" - a traditional Hungarian departure gesture, also used in the closing of letters.  Aladar - typically guarded in his communications - expressed a bit stronger feelings toward Hanna by adding "many times" in closing letters to her.  Nice.

A few of the threads running through this:

1.  Author's father - Aladar - rising political star in Hungary, from a Christian family.  Encounters Hitler in a couple settings while on government business.  Pretty outspoken against Nazis - which naturally enough didn't help him at certain points in the story.

2.  Author's mother - Hanna - belongs to a Jewish family - incredibly successful business operators, supposedly their operations constituted about 10% of Hungary's GDP (hard to believe).  Wealthy, aristocratic, assimilated, some converted to Christianity - but still, Jews.

3.  As Aladar and Hanna fall in love, anti-Semitic legislation makes the match nigh-impossible.  Hungarian government goes slow on attacking Jews; Nazis finally force the process in 1943 or 1944; too many Hungarians were way too glad to assist.  The Nazi Jew-killing machine was in top condition at this point, and - with plenty of local assistance - murders of Jews in Hungary were accomplished with incredible efficiency.

4.  As the Nazis advance and then, in short order, the Russians start to attack - Aladar ends up in Dachau.  A political prisoner of the Nazis.  Awful experience; he's there when the U.S. army arrives.  Budapest itself badly wrecked, including blowing up beautiful-historic Danube bridges.  The war finally hit home in Hungary with full force.

5.  Prior to Aladar being taken away:  Hanna's family is bargaining with a Nazi - in a deal that was approved by Himmler himself - family members already in camps are released and with most of the rest are allowed to emigrate to Portugal.  In exchange for most of their assets.  Though with a few hostages left behind to make sure the rest behave once outside Hungary.  Aladar not aware of how this is turning out.  (Author explains why Nazis didn't just steal the assets, something to the effect that they were still putting up a show of limited interference with their allies.)

6.  Very touching story in the immediate postwar era - Aladar and Hanna reconnect.  Married in the wreckage of Budapest.

7.  Pretty much immediately after the war, Aladar (still highly thought of) is appointed by the new government to be ambassador to the U.S. - so he and Hanna move to DC.  Hopes for democracy.  Hopes for U.S. intervention.  But the Communists take over Hungarian government in their typical 1940s-thug-style as applied throughout Eastern Europe.  And the U.S. had other priorities - Hungary pretty clearly a lost cause in terms of Soviet domination.  So Aladar is out of a job.  And returning to Hungary is not possible.  But his in-laws start showing up, and they still had both money, and business smarts.  So no danger of missing meals.

8.  Aladar - something of a nervous personality - didn't thrive in the wake of all this.  Not surprisingly.  Did work for Radio Free Europe and Voice of America in relation to Hungary.  It was effective that the author didn't sugarcoat his problems.

9.  The quoted correspondence is pretty amazing throughout.  Hard to imagine educated, articulate folks writing to each other in these circumstances.  Quite wonderful to read.

Author didn't realize until it was too late:  but her parents had quite a love story under truly extraordinary circumstances.

The above doesn't do justice to the book.  I dog-eared dozens and dozens of pages - lots of ideas about history, and just plain nice moments, that I want to keep track of.

Robert Schumann - The Life and Work of a Romantic Composer (Martin Geck, 2010)

As with this book by the same author, I'm trying to read stuff that might give me some kind of window into how composers work.  It's not really working (though the books are enjoyable enough in their own right).

A few Schumann thoughts:

1.  His efforts (successful) to marry Clara Weick are pretty well-known.  Hard to say that Clara's piano-teacher father was wrong to be a bit wary of young Schumann - who seems at least in his early days to have had a Werther-type Romantic personality.  Which seems to have gotten worse over time.

2.  Schumann was a very successful and creative writer in addition to his composing efforts.  Didn't have any idea he was doing so much musical criticism.

3.  I do find quite interesting the lives of these young folks in Germany in the post-Napoleonic years, the run-up to the 1848 disturbances, etc.  Schumann definitely caught up in this.

4.  The struggles of German composers to live up to, or move beyond, Beethoven.  Haven't appreciated how high his stature was - seemed to make it very difficult or impossible for others to even attempt symphonies.

5.  Interesting stories of his efforts to romance Clara - using pseudonyms etc. to work around the recalcitrant father.  Clara as quite an impressive figure - virtuoso pianist, incredibly supportive wife willing to subordinate her career.  They had a large family.

6.  I've found Thomas Mann's discussions of music very interesting (especially in his take on Faustus); this author refers to Mann's capacity to do this well, and uses an illustration from Buddenbrooks.

7.  How much these folks loved Bach (whose work was rediscovered, if that's the right term, by Schumann's contemporary, Mendelssohn)!  Schumann wrote out The Art of Fugue as a way to try to understand it.  Devoted to  The Well-Tempered Clavier and The Musical Offering as well.

8.  Friendly with Mendelssohn and Liszt.

9.  Became very close to Johannes Brahms - maybe 15 years Schumann's junior.  And who ended up very much in love with Clara, it seems.  This author wasn't pushing to develop a scandal-theme (and who knows if there was much of anything to support it anyway).   Certainly was a helpful support as Schumann deteriorated.

10.  Anxious, nervous personality - ended up in asylum, and died there in 1856 (age 46).  Clara lived another 40 years.

Still don't know much about how he went about doing his work.  Oh well.

The Fall of the House of Dixie (Bruce Levine, 2013)

I seldom pick Civil War-era books, in part because I think I already picked up a fair amount of information about the topic.  Incorrectly.  Levine pulls together all sorts of primary source material to create a highly interesting discussion of what was going on in the South - social and political stuff, not so much from the oft-reported battlefields. I liked it a great deal.

And it wasn't just another consciousness-raising exercise about the awfulness of slavery (not to downplay its awfulness, but that topic has been done quite a few times).  The author gives lots of context around the various social classes in the South, their sometimes-overlapping and sometimes-diverging outlooks, etc.  Very helpful.

Philosophical underpinnings of slavery - how blacks were better off enslaved - did anyone really believe this (or just profess it for convenience sake)?

The power of the Southern states from Revolutionary War era on through the run-up to the Civil War - strong representation in all branches of government.

Complex politics of the Republican Party - the belief that slavery would die a natural death if prevented from spreading to new territories (thus Lincoln's aversion to outright prohibition in existing states).  Southerners believed this as well, leading to border wars and fights over opening up new states and territories to slavery.

Didn't realize that both sides desperately needed the manpower represented by blacks.  Confederacy refused to use them (other than the most menial of labor-support tasks) for pretty obvious reasons:  can you trust armed slaves?; how can you make them a soldier if you believe they are dimwitted, docile and incapable of independent action?; implicit equality with white fellow soldiers is a big problem in this belief system; etc.  North record not the greatest, but some blacks were given the opportunity to fight and took full advantage of it.

The very different uses of (and attitudes toward) slavery within the South.  Plantation society in just a few areas.  Lots of upland whites with no real investment in slavery - their enthusiasm for the war dimmed much more quickly.

Slave owners willingly sending their own sons to war, but refusing to release slaves for support activities.

How Northern attitudes (including Lincoln's) changed over the years - to unabashedly pushing for abolition.  Realized the middle ground didn't exist.

Democrats undermining Republican efforts.  On-the-ground challenges in the South - how to ensure that the war wasn't lost after the South surrendered?  This didn't work out so well (not the topic of this book, though there is another new book out on the topic of Reconstruction).

Touching stories of blacks being freed; families reunited after separation via slave sales; etc.

The South - burdened with, but dependent upon, an indefensible institution - with no choice but to defend it.