Sanderling

Rang was a Protestant pastor stationed near Pozna in modern-day Poland, then part of Prussia. The church, which he subsequently abandoned, had a mission to Germanise the local population. Weber draws parallels between this apparently benign ambition and the subsequent murderous impulses of the third Reich, although a definitive portrait of her ancestor keeps eluding her. After his apostasy he became friends with several great early-twentieth-century thinkers, including Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Martin Buber and Walter Benjamin, with whom he hoped to create a movement devoted to world peace. Rangs son Webers grandfather became a Nazi. Weber places the story of a grandfather she never met, because he refused to acknowledge his sons illegitimate daughter, alongside that of his father to create a travel diary through time, reaching back to understand her ancestors. With literary and philosophical references including Sontag, Sebald and Nietzsche, Weber, one of Germanys leading contemporary authors, combines her family history with a broader examination of ethics and morality, culminating in a beautiful evocation of All Saints Day in Warsaw.