The Historic Childbook
By : Torben Weinreich
During the 1980s Gerd Rindel wrote eight
historical novels: four take place during the latter part of the 1800s, two
during the German occupation of Denmark in the Second World War, and two are
set at the end of the 1700s.
A series of books about a brother and sister, Bernhardt and Lise, and their life
in Copenhagen during the 1870s, was introduced in 1981 with Øretævens vej, and followed up with Slagsmål og silkebånd (1982), Brændevin og vokseværk (1984) and Midnatsrosen (1985). These are tough and
warm-hearted depictions of life among the ‘lowest’ at a time when trade unions
and political interest groups begin to stir in protest against the wretched
conditions suffered by the working classes. In the books we follow the events
and changes at arm’s length – we are taken, for example, to political meetings
– whereas we become intimately involved in accounts of child labour, life as a
maid servant, conditions in the poorhouses and brothels. Where the historical
material in the first book, which was the author’s debut publication, nearly
undermines the actual story, in the later books it is more integrated into the
narrative. The material no longer weighs the story down.
Gerd Rindel makes no secret of the fact that a lengthy period of
research into the era in question precedes the writing of the novels. This
research also underpins Vinrankernes hus
(1988), about a Jewish boy, Mendel, and his life in the Copenhagen of the
1790s. Mendel is an actual figure taken from history: Rindel has written a
novel based on the life of a merchant named Mendel Levin Nathanson, but as he
writes in an afterword to the book: “What the real Mendel and his family
thought and felt and said lies hidden in the past.” In his next book, Ulvetænder (1989), Rindel moves on to 1818-20;
persecution of the Jews is on the increase and has repercussions for the main
character in the story, a 13-year-old girl called Sarah.
Finally, we have Tusmørkebørn
(1984) and Hvor roser star i flor
(1986). For these books, Rindel has used material from his own childhood during
the German occupation and the period straight after the war. The central
characters are the sisters Maja and Tilde. The children exist, so to speak,
outside the war; daily life for children is disengaged from the life of the
wider society. The conflicts at large are but distant thunder, which now and
then rumbles close to home and causes anxiety and insecurity, but which never roars
immediately overhead.
This is an excerpt from Torben Weinreich’s
article “I statens tjeneste” [In the Service of the State], in Dansk Børnelitteraturhistorie (eds.
Kari Sønshagen & Lena Eilstrup), Høst & Søn 1992.
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