One could be deceived into thinking this is a book about a house and, in particular, the most prominent feature of that house, a dramatic, glass-enclosed space with sweeping views of a Czechoslovak city here called Mesto (pronounced mn-yes-to in Czech). The house is not a character in this story; it serves double duty as metaphor and stage; a physical constant in an evolving story reflecting, at the outset, the cheerful optimism of its owners and then, the gradual erosion of confidence as the future became progressively uncertain.
Based upon a real house – the Villa Tugendhat – built in 1929 in the city of Brno during an idyllic interlude of optimism and prosperity between the wars, this novel portrays the buoyant lives of its affluent owners, their architect, their family, and their closest friends from the late twenties through WWII and beyond. This is a novel loosely based on the lives of the Tugendhat family. The broad outlines of that family’s history, combined with the historic events and very real images of the house, anchor this story in a deeper reality than it might otherwise have achieved. That’s not a criticism – it’s an accolade to its author’s inspired genius.
This is an excellent book, written with great skill and sensitivity. You will certainly want to read it. If you want to discover its for yourself, stop here. Read the rest of my review, if you wish, after you’ve read the book, and then share your thoughts in the comments below. OK, “Fair warning”.
The story. For Liesel and Victor Landauer to have married in 1928 in the newly minted Czechoslovakia suggests an assured sense of invulnerability and optimism. After all, Liesel is Catholic and Victor is Jewish. It’s easy to believe optimism was the prevailing mood of the country, having emerged independent and energized in 1919, immediately following the Great War. Leisel is from an established, wealthy family, which owns the property on which they will build the “Villa Landauer”. Victor is a successful inventor and manufacturer of “Landauer” automobiles – at the time, a dynamic, nascent industry not unlike the computer industry of the 1970s and 80s. Reflecting the contemporary and widely shared desire to shed the ornamentation of the past and confidently embrace a certain future, Liesel and Victor are determined to build a very modern house. They contract with a Viennese architect named Rainier von Abt, who designs a strikingly modern house – considered by many, a work of art – highly influenced by the “Bauhaus” school, an architectural movement that took hold in Europe and elsewhere between 1919 and 1933. The house, with simple, unadorned horizontal lines, vistas, and verandas, was thought by critics to resemble a retail store or an auto dealership more than a home; but the Landauer House (now a museum) was nothing if not breathtaking in its execution; especially its huge glass enclosed room divided by a golden onyx wall that glowed to red orange when the afternoon sun struck it full on, and chrome pillars, a curved zebrawood wall, and exterior glass that could be retracted like car windows. It was furnished with custom designed furniture that we would recognize in any modern office today, but of exceptional quality and, in 1929, anything but common.
The Landauers built their house, settled in and had two children, Ottilie (their first) and Martin. Life progressed smoothly until Martin’s birth, which was especially difficult. Leisel barely survived – an event that cast a shadow on Leisel and Victor’s marriage; especially their sex lives.
Perhaps the most interesting character – the person drawn most vividly by Simon Mawer – is Hana Hanakova, Leisel’s best friend, who is also married to a Jew named Osker, several decades Hana’s senior. Hana, outrageously outspoken and driven by sexual desires and affection, is particularly sensitive to the vulnerabilities and dangers posed by Nazi aggression that is slowly overtaking them. At one point when the Landauers were entertaining in the Glass Room and at their most content, Hana remarks to Leisel;
‘“Well, it’s too good to last, isn’t it?
“What is”? replied Leisel.
“Everything.”
“What do you mean, everything?”
“The good times. All this. The world we live in.”
She is right, of course. They crowd into the space of the Glass Room like passengers on the observation deck of a luxury liner. Some of them may be peering out through the windows onto the pitching surface of the city below but, in their muddle of Czech and German, almost all are ignorant of the cold outside and the gathering storm clouds…’
Hana is a survivor who, in spite of occasionally reckless, desperate behavior manages to outlast the Nazis, labor camps and most of her friends. For Hana, men are useful, but women are her preferred companions. Eventually, having sown seeds of doubt about Victor’s fidelity, she seduces Liesel.
In this book, everybody has secrets and, at the same time, at a subconscious level, no one is betrayed.
As a Jew and a businessman in the heart of Europe in the ‘30s, Victor has a keen sense of his family’s vulnerability. In light of events in Germany and elsewhere, Victor decides to transfer ownership of the Landauer Autoworks to his father-in-law and to move most of his fortune into Swiss banks. Meeting with his father-in-law to discuss the transfer of his company:
‘It is one of those conversations that are the norm these days, partly apocalyptic, occasionally optimistic, usually full of foreboding. “We’ll come through,’ his father-in-law decides in the end, and Victor has to agree with him. “I’m sure we will. But who knows where we will be by then?”’
Of course, no one can see into the future, one can only sense impending doom and act on it, or not. (While reading The Glass Room, I couldn’t help wonder myself whether we ought to buy property in Canada as a hedge!) But, strangely, while keenly aware of the political storm that will soon sweep through Czechoslovakia, Victor is unaware of his own feelings about Liesel and his family.
During an early business trip to Vienna, a young prostitute, Katalin, an attractive, petite Jew, approaches him. Perhaps comforted and drawn to her by her familiar Jewishness, Victor falls in love. For most of the nineteen thirties Victor visit her often, and eventually, instead of meeting in hotels, Katalin brings him to her rented room over a bakery in the Jewish sector where Victor discovers that she has a 5-year old daughter, Marika. Confused and perhaps frightened by his own growing attachment to Katalin, he writes her a generous check and leaves. Did it mean he wouldn’t return? That may have been the implication; but at the time, Victor would not have been able to say. Victor misses her and returns to Vienna a few months later. But, to his shock and dismay, she has disappeared. A few years later, after the Nazi’s invasion and annexation of Austria, and forced to flee Vienna, Katalin and Marika reappear among a small group of refugee in his own living room in Mesto! There’s too much to explain to make this seem anything but the wildest coincidence, but, believe me, it works. Leisel, socially conscious and concerned for the welfare of refugees, arranges for Katalin and Marika to live in a small cottage on her parents property below the Villa Landauer and, shortly afterwards, when Liesel’s governess resigns, brings her into the family as their governess; events which Victor is powerless to prevent without exposing this own infidelity; events that astonish and bemuse him.
Katalin has few options. Under the circumstances, as a Jew without a passport or the means to escape other than to follow the Landauers, she must go along. She has the survival instincts of a cat, and we’re never certain what she feels or what she would have done, had she been able to act on her own. In this, she is like millions of others lacking the resources to escape.
Inevitable, as the Nazis move in and, one by one, the movements and privileges of Jews are curtailed, to be a Jew was to be in increasingly mortal danger. Victor urges Leisel to leave Czechoslovakia before they meet the same fate as so many other European Jews. As a Catholic, Leisel is not in danger, but Victor and her children are. At first she is reluctant to leave but, even one as seemingly unaware of the mounting danger as she seems to be, Leisel realizes that they must leave. So, the Landauers, their children and Katalin and Marika, depart, fleeing to Switzerland just as Hitler is making his grand entrance into Mesto.
In Switzerland they live comfortably for three years until 1941 but, as the war expands and France’s Marshall Petain collaborates with Hitler and Nazi troops occupy most of France, the noose tightens and Victor decides the time has come to escape to America. I’ll leave you with this. Not everyone makes it.
During the war, the Villa Landauer becomes the property of the Nazi state, and is converted into a eugenics laboratory; a Hitler inspired pseudoscience to identify race and ethnicity by measuring physical attributes.
As the war envelops Europe, Hana’s husband’s bank accounts are frozen, or worse, and he is unable to work or even leave the house. To survive, trading on her physical attributes and appetites, Hana becomes a eugenics subject-of-study and, quite intentionally, seduces the Nazi officer-scientist in charge, trading sex for money and for her and Osker’s survival. But, unexpectedly she becomes pregnant -- for years she had believed she was “barren.” In desperation, Hana informs her Nazi scientist, the baby’s father, recklessly insulting and angering him. He informed the SS, and Hana and her husband were arrested and sent to separate camps. We are left to imagine how Hana survives the next three years. Osker, her husband, does not.
During the final chapters of the book, set in the late 60s and again in 1990s, after being boarded up for several years, the Landauer house becomes an annex of a nearby children’s hospital; used as a gymnasium for children with polio, to receive physical therapy. The story shifts for a time to a doctor, Tomas, and the head physiologist, Zdenka. Hana resurfaces as a member of the historical society interested in restoring the property and converting it into a museum. Hearing rumors that the Landauers are alive somewhere in the Americas, a journalist is dispatched to track them down.
The journalist tracks the Landauers (now American citizens with a the name Landors) to Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Liesel, now blind, lives with her daughter and grandson. Her son, Martin is now a lawyer in Boston. They are invited back for the opening of the Villa Landauer Museum and it is there that Hana and Liesel are reunited.
To borrow a term from our current wars, books that “embed” you in a place and time during conflicts that we can only begin to imagine are particular appealing to me. When your response is an urge to visit the places described, and to want to know more about the real lives of the people that inspired the story, you know you have been affected. Add to that the architectural history lesson presented here – understanding how and why the Bauhaus movement took hold; as much a rejection of an oppressive past and devastating war as an expression of something fresh and hopeful – further enriches the story. Now I understand and appreciate the spirit behind those starkly angular offices and homes scattered across the landscape. And now I understand something about what is now the Czech Republic and its historic vulnerability, deep in the heart of Europe.
To hear a discussion of the book on the Diane Rhems Show, go to http://wamu.org/programs/dr/10/01/27.php#29322
To view pictures of real Villa Landauer – the Villa Tugendhat – go to http://www.tugendhat.eu/?lang=en
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