All Things That Deserve to Perish: A Novel of Wilhelmine Germany
In 1896, Elisabeth (Lisi) von Schwabacher, a gifted pianist and the daughter of a Jewish banker, returns home to Berlin after three years of piano study in Vienna. She is headstrong and has modern ideas about women’s role in society. The last thing she wants is the suitable marriage and domesticity her mother plans for her.
Meanwhile, the Junker father of handsome Wilhelm von Boening, soldier and lover of racing and other country pursuits, mortgages his land and dilapidated country house to Lisi’s banker father. Although the worlds of the Junkers with the financially and culturally rich Jewish community are linked, relations are rocky. When Lisi and Wilhelm meet, the touch paper is lit for an explosive relationship.
I approached this novel with anticipation as I was keen to understand German society under Kaiser Wilhelm II, the grandson of Britain’s Queen Victoria. I loved the overall historical sweep of this novel and the home life of Lisi and her parents. There are flashes of insight into the life of the Junkers, the aristocrats who controlled German high society, and the central love story with its cruel misunderstandings kept me turning the pages.
However, the long chunks of letters which replaced dramatic action lessened the appeal. Though Lisi is clearly portrayed as forward-thinking and an outspoken fictional character, her choices about her sexuality and reproduction didn’t sit easily with me, particularly when everything else about the novel otherwise sticks to convention. This uneasy juxtaposition prevents me from recommending this novel except as an example of how historical fiction can often fail to satisfy, though it does demonstrate how Germany so easily fell into anti-Jewish propaganda and the Holocaust.
