Opi: The Two Lives of My Grandfather

Abstract

In 1937, the Nazi propaganda machine feted Friedrich Wilhelm Hymmen as a literary star. A decade later, he gave up writing fiction altogether as an act of self-punishment for his complicity in the crimes of the Nazi regime. Now his grandson, Melbourne writer Andreas Pohl, tries to find answers to the question of how a talented young man from an educated middle-class family was radicalized into joining the Nazi movement. He discovers a story of how education, talent and keen ambition led to collusion with one of the most murderous regimes of the 20th century. A story about guilt, memory, and the joys and limitations of reinvention. And most of all, a story about whether the love of a grandson can withstand the revelations about his grandfather’s past.