|
© The Estate of George Clare 1980
‘It was my first ball. I enjoyed the dancing, the drinking, the gaiety, the amazing speed and ease with which one found partners. I stayed until the band had played the last waltz.
How do I remember my few remaining days of youth and freedom, when I still felt that everything was possible, that I was special somehow, that life was only about to begin?’
From ‘Part Two’
George Clare, Last Waltz in Vienna
Greetings, dear readers, from Slightly Foxed. This week we’ve been drawn back to the SF bookshelves and to George Clare’s stunning memoir, Last Waltz in Vienna.
In February 1938, the grand Konzerthaus in Vienna was in full, glorious swing; bands were playing, there was dancing and singing and plenty of beer. It was the first ball ever attended by the 17-year-old Georg Klaar, and he stayed until the very last waltz. But on 11 March, lorries began thundering into the streets, filled with uniformed men waving swastikas. Austria was now betrayed and had been annexed by the German Third Reich. Barely four years later, Georg Klaar had become George Clare and was serving in the British army, and his parents had been arrested and taken to Auschwitz. Only with hindsight can George discern the complex reasons for his family’s destruction, and for the whole appalling waste of war. This is a profoundly moving, honest and compassionate memoir, remarkably devoid of self-pity, though not of anger.
Please do read on for a selection of related reading suggestions. You can also read more about the events that George Clare describes as his last days of ‘youth and freedom’ in an extract from Part Two of Last Waltz in Vienna on our website.
With best wishes from the SF office staff
Hattie, Jess & Jemima
|
|
Part Two
GEORGE CLARE
Kirtag in St Gilgen was a very different occasion, and though my memories of that Day of Atonement visit long ago were somewhat vague, it still seemed impossible to believe that this was the same building. Austria’s best stage designers had changed it into a very life-like imitation of that famous holiday resort not far from Salzburg. They could not, even if they wanted to, put a good part of Vienna under water and bring the St Wolfgang lake into the Konzerthaus, but the White Horse Inn, the lakeside hostelry known to operetta lovers all over the world, had been reconstructed inside the building, so had the village square, maypole and all, and on various levels there were farms with real cows and horses in their stables, country-inn gardens with buxom waitresses in old-style peasant costumes serving wine and beer, and any number of bands from the genuine ‘tara-ra-boom-de-ay’ to modern ones playing the swing hits from Fred Astaire–Ginger Rogers films by Irving Berlin and Cole Porter, evergreens that have outlasted my youth.
How I managed to get tickets for this ball, sold out months in advance, I have no idea. But I know that this was the ball I wanted to go to. It was known to be more fun than any other and presented no dress problems. At the Kirtag men did not wear dinner jackets or white tie, but lederhosen, peasant jackets, open-necked shirts, in short my usual Bad Ischl summer outfit would do admirably. The ladies wore their peasant dirndls, though admittedly some were of such elegance and made of such expensive materials that no St Gilgen maiden could ever have owned them, unless – as had been known to happen – she found favour in the eyes of some princeling or rich banker.
For a seventeen-year-old at his first ball this was fairyland . . .
|
|
|
|
‘Admirable, combining very cleverly the historical and personal.’ Graham Greene
‘This poignant memoir is written from the heart . . . the truest defence against political hatreds for the future.’ David Pryce-Jones, Financial Times
‘A deeply moving book. I felt enriched and grateful after reading it.’ John le Carré
|
|
|
|
George Clare, Last Waltz in Vienna &
Christabel Bielenberg, The Past is Myself *Save <£6*
|
|
|
I Was a Stranger; The Last Enemy; Love and War in the Apennines; Last Waltz in Vienna & Going Solo *Save <£15*
|
|
|
|
Richard Hillary, The Last Enemy
& Roald Dahl, Going Solo
*Save <£6*
|
|
|
Anthony Rhodes, Sword of Bone
& John Hackett, I Was a Stranger
*Save <£6*
|
|
|
Delightfully illustrated by Horst Lemke, is this affecting memoir, Erich Kästner recreates the Dresden of his childhood where ‘past and present lived in perfect unity’.
|
|
Katrin FitzHerbert tells the gripping story of her family, beginning with her German grandfather and English grandmother, through 1940s Germany and her return to England.
|
|
|
