"Autumn Missed" by Anja Jonuleit

Lilli Sternberg and her daughter Maja no longer have any contact with each other for ten years. Their different views of life had led to a rift. One day gets Maja unexpectedly a call her mother from Vienna. Lilli Sternberg can not answer the telephone to explain, but the matter was so urgent that Maya may come to Vienna. Reluctantly makes the daughter of order.

When she arrives in Vienna, her mother is dead. They have killed himself, reported the police.

Just why? Suicide does not fit the nut in Maja’s character image. Now they have to prepare the funeral. It needs mother’s birth certificate. written in Sütterlin, it is hard to decipher. Birthplace: High Forest (mother had always spoken of Bremen), date: May, 1944, Child Mother: Charlotte, child Father: no opinion. Maja had grown up with an awareness of the grandfather was reported in the war missing. They also discovered a photo. It shows Grandma Charlotte with a round-faced, dark-haired baby in her arms – sure her mother Lilli.

On the back is with grandma’s writing: “Both in High Forest, March 1944”. But in the birth certificate in May 1944 is still on the schedule.

You can not believe what she has in mind. Nobody, not even her beloved grandmother, her ever told them. Who you can answer all the questions, explain these mysteries? Now she is completely on their own and sets out to search for clues.

The novel is told from two perspectives that are offset by its typeface from each other.

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One view provides the manuscript of the grandmother with their life story. her before Maja, after intensive detective work, keeps the complete version in your hands is the reader forward. No one may know of Charlotte’s secret love and pregnancy. She flees to High Forest, in one of the homes of the institution Lebensborn. Parents Father it gives to the fallen in the war husband of her sister. This Aryan certificate they can get their child. The secrecy is guaranteed, and after the birth she can stay with the child and work as employees of the Nazis. But what grandmother does in this Lebensborn home, she will pursue her life: You will load a terrible guilt

The second perspective, which takes place alternately with the first through the novel. Maja’s description of their search for clues. Here you can help a neighbor and confidante to her mother. She knows et al Lillis lawyer, her doctor and her bank consultant. But first, she goes to the place where her grandmother had lived with her baby during the war years. She wants to feel something of it and see.

Charlotte was a staunch supporter of the Nazi regime? She meets Roman Sartorius, son of the doctor Heinrich Sartorius working in the home. Dr. Klaus Reuther, a lawyer from Frankfurt, specializing on helping Lebensborn children in finding their true identity. Dr. Prohacek mother has supported during their cancer suffering. Maja will not shake the feeling that they pass all only fragments of their knowledge to Maja. The closer Maja to the truth, the more it finds itself in danger. Someone tracked. No sooner has someone confided, already she looked back again. Your nebulous knowledge clears up from side to side, but here the reader with Maja dances on a dangerous tightrope, from which it can still crash shortly before the finish.

Anja Jonuleit has one of the first to the last page fascinating, written incredibly exciting novel. Totally unexpected acts keep the reader in suspense. Jonuleits language style is catchy, the pages are read much too fast. Interesting insights into the Lebensborn are everyday. Although there was dominated by strict rules, but the women felt like in paradise, because food and accommodations were great. They suffered no distress.

Very liked me was the description of the emotional relationship between mother and daughter Lilli Maja. Mother’s coldness Maja had repeatedly violated; as a result they had to shut off. Nothing should make them more concerned. Now she learns a lot about the past and her mother’s life, which she has not witnessed. By recognizing that their past was different than she had believed Maja gets emotional world out of joint; Sadness, guilt and death of her mother she can not handle. The author demonstrates in this psychograms their linguistic dexterity. An absolutely recommendable reading!