a family business

Some thoughts on

Sten Nadolny
Ullsteinroman
Ullstein 2004

Some family histories are so rich in material that one struggles where to start and how to relate it - a memoir, a group biography, a novel? Sten Nadolny (famous in the last century for The discovery of slowness, a novel about polar explorer John Franklin) has chosen to gently novelise the history of the Ullstein family, the descendents of a Jewish paper factory owner in provincial Fürth, who set up a successful newspaper and later book publishing business in Berlin.

Leopold Ullstein (1826-1899), who made the crucial step from producing blank paper to selling printed paper as well as the move from Fürth to Berlin, had ten children from two wives, and all five sons took on senior roles in the company. After the patriarch's death, and when the generation of his grandchildren also developed ambitions in this direction, it led to some family drama during the Weimar years, and after 1933 the Nazis evicted the Ullsteins from their family business. The book publisher and several of the newspapers still exist today, but not in the hands of the eponymous family.

Nadolny moves smoothly between novel writing (presumably leaning on letters and diaries as well as making up plausible dialogues) and straight history writing, filling us in on family events and the broader historical context. Twelve characters get a potted biography of several pages each. Supporting cast includes basically everybody who was anybody in Germany between 1871 and 1933, from Lorenz Adlon (of hotel fame) to Graf Zeppelin.

Cover of the Ullstein paperback edition, which I found in one of the street libraries in Düsseldorf - they have an amazing ability to provide me with the books I never knew I wanted to read. The lovely cover photo shows all 7 children from Leopold Ullstein's first marriage. Their mother, Matilda Berend (1830-1871), died a few days after the birth of the youngest.

In terms of parallels with my family history (which I'm not going to novelise any time soon) the large family and spirit of enterprise reminded me of the (economically less successful) Krefeld Clan and Imig clan, where we had similar numbers of children in the mid-19th century and also some businesses. Although, crucially, we don't have an example of more than two brothers piled up in the same business. Maybe the businesses weren't big enough to accommodate more family members. Neither of them has a Jewish ancestor yet, but the Kauer clan has one here.