Tag Archives: Vicki Baum

Headless Angel by Vicki Baum

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Headless Angel over

Headless Angel by Vicki Baum was first published in 1949 and I believe it is sometimes titled Clarinda and it has an intriguing beginning. The prologue starts:

Now that September is blue and hazy upon the land, I like to walk up to my grave in the early afternoon and remain there until in the slanting sun the shadow of my tombstone grows long and lean and begins licking at the hem of my skirt.

It’s Clarinda who is speaking and she is a young married woman living in Weimar where the writer Goethe is a frequent visitor to her house, she has known him since she was a child and he’s a great friend. Clarinda’s husband Albert is a bore as well as a philanderer and when an astonishingly handsome young Spanish man visits the neighbourhood she is bowled over by him and they end up running off together. Too late she discovers that just about everything her beloved Felipe tells her is a lie, he’s a dreamer and a gambler, but she’s still hooked on him.

Because of the political situation in Spain Felipe isn’t able to go back there so it’s to Mexico that they go to live. He’s well known there and pins his hopes on being able to make money out of a mine he owns. It’s the boom and bust existence of a gambler and Clarinda copes with the changes in her life – whether she’s living the life of a princess or a pauper.

The setting is the 1800s around the time of the Mexican wars for their independence from Spain and I was impressed that Vicki Baum, an Austrian Jew had been able to write a book around an era in history that must have been completely alien to her, she moved to the US in the 1930s when one of her books was made into a film. It was a very lucky move for her as her books were banned in Nazi Germany. She must have been drawn to that era in history when men were men – and she could dress her hero in leather finery and a cloak, I couldn’t help thinking of Dirk Bogarde while I was reading this book. He would have been perfect to play the part of Felipe. Think Zorro and you get a picture of how Felipe liked to look, minus the mask.

I really like her writing, I suppose this book could be described as a romance, but it’s more than that and Clarinda is such a good strong character. It’s a shame that Headless Angel doesn’t seem to have been reprinted as I think it must be quite difficult to get hold of a copy, I was just lucky to pick it up in a second-hand bookshop.

Baum’s earlier books were definitely written in German and I would love to know if she eventually switched to writing in English as this book doesn’t mention a translator.

Results of an Accident by Vicki Baum

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Results of an Accident cover

Results of an Accident by Vicki Baum was first published in 1931. It was written originally in German as Zwischenfall in Lohwinckel and was translated by Margaret Goldsmith.

Doctor and Frau Persenthein live in an ancient wooden house which creaks and groans and leans at angles, making it difficult to sleep in a bed without worrying about falling out of it. But it’s a cheap house which is all that the doctor is bothered about. Nick, the doctor is only interested in his medical research and buying more apparatus to help with it. The upshot is that his poor wife Elisabeth never has enough money for food and she has to spend most of her time cleaning up after her husband and his patients. He makes them have mud baths and she has all the towel washing and bathroom cleaning to do. It’s a hard and boring life for Elisabeth and she doesn’t get much joy from their strange five year old daughter Rehle, who is so like her father.

Some well known people are being driven by a chauffeur through the town, they’ve come from Berlin and are on their way to Baden Baden but they crash and are taken to the doctor’s house to be patched up.

The people of the small town are agog, never did they think that a well known and beautiful young actress, a famous boxer and a wealthy and handsome industrialist would be staying in such a backwater.

Their arrival and the fact that they have to stay in Lohwinckel for some time leads to mayhem as the townspeople hang about in the hope of glimpsing the celebrities. For Nick and Elisabeth it could be the nail in the coffin of their marriage.

I enjoyed this one although it did remind me a lot of The Pastor’s Wife by Elizabeth von Arnim. Not only because of the German setting but also the husband who spends all of his time experimenting and trying to prove theories and also a change in the attitude of the wife when she meets people from outside her small world.

Vicki Baum has one of her female characters talking about the possibility of lesbian relationships, something which must have been a very risque subject for books in 1931 when this was published. But so authentic when you think of Berlin of the 1930s, think Cabaret. In fact given that Vicki Baum was Jewish and that she was writing about people who would have been deemed to be degenerates as far as the Nazis were concerned, she was doubly lucky when she was asked by Hollywood to write the screenplay of her 1929 book Grand Hotel, she took the chance to emigrate to the US, thus avoiding the fate which befell poor Irene Nemirovsky.

I’m going off subject here but have you heard that Suite Francaise has been made into a film? Sadly I think the film is one to avoid, according to the reviews I’ve read anyway.

Anyway, I now feel that I have to track down Grand Hotel. Have any of you read it? The only other book by Baum which I’ve read was her 1943 book Hotel Berlin and that was very good although completely different from Results of an Accident.

Berlin Hotel by Vicki Baum

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Berlin Hotel cover

This is the first book by Vicki Baum which I’ve read although I’ve known about her for years. Hotel Berlin, which is sometimes called Hotel Berlin ’43 was published in 1944.

The setting is obviously Berlin and Berlin Hotel is home to General Arnim von Dahnwitz a war hero and career soldier of the old school who has attracted the wrath of his Fuhrer. The general’s lady friend is a beautiful and famous Berlin stage actress called Lisa Dorn. She has had an easy war as her fame means that the shortages and discomforts of war haven’t touched her. She’s so wrapped up in her life and career that she is completely clueless as to what’s going on around her. Slogans are being chalked up all over the city: “You can kill Richter – but you can’t kill his spirit!”

Gestapo men are all over the hotel, hiding behind newspapers and spying on everyone. The hotel has been searched from top to bottom, in fact the whole of Berlin is being searched for Martin Richter who is a young student who was about to be executed along with other student political activists. They had printed some anti-Nazi pamphlets and had been sentenced to death by beheading, Martin has managed to throw himself off the lorry which he was being transported in and has so far evaded recapture.

This is a tense read, in fact I thought it would have made a great wartime film and really expected to discover that it had been made into one, but apparently not.

According to the storyline things were beginning to fall apart in Berlin as early as 1943 and Hitler was already getting rid of his army generals, blaming them for failures in the war’s progress. If so then the following two years must have been nightmarish.