born: |
Saarbrucken, Germany, 1889 |
nee: |
Margot Isbert |
in print as of: |
a short story, ca. 1918 |
educated: |
University of Frankfurt |
married: |
Wilhelm Benary |
children: |
daughter, Eva |
died: |
Santa Barbara, California, 1979 |
recognition: |
- 1st prize, 1953 New York
Herald Tribune Spring Book Festival
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*Titles in blue indicate books of which I don't have a copy. Anyone who could point me in the direction of any of these would have my eternal gratitude. |
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The Novels for Young People |
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Under a Changing
Moon / Unter den Sichelmond; |
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| In this fictionalized version of the home in which her father grew up, set in the 1870s, Benary-Isbert gives us a picture of a changing world as Germany became a nation and a young woman (standing in for the author's aunt) fresh out of convent school is faced with life decisions. | |||
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| The Wicked Enchantment / Anemone und der Böse Kaus | |||
| In this charming fable a girl named Anemone, and a few other people who are aware that something evil is afoot, fight to reveal the evil mayor of the village of Vogelsang for what he is. When I read it as a 12-year-old, I enjoyed the story for itself and for the lesson it taught of not keeping silent in the face of evil. When I reread it as an adult, I saw it for an allegory of what should have happened when Hitler rose to power. One particularly powerful image to anyone who knows much of the inhumanities of Hitler's regime is that of the songbirds of Vogelsang, whom the mayor wishes to exterminate as "useless eaters". | |||
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| The Shooting Star / Sternschnuppe im Schnee | |||
| Our heroine is a youngster sent with her mother to stay in the Swiss mountains to recover from illness. Annegret is a spirited child who makes friends, learns to ski, falls in love with the stars in the observatory tower, and falls likewise into adventures. This interlude very loosely mirrors a period in the author's life prior to World War II. | |||
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| The Blue Mystery / Annegret und Cara | |||
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Annegret is back home after her stay in Switzerland, but still having adventures. With her beloved Great Dane Cara by her side, and the help of friends, Annegret sets out to find out who stole the valuable new Blue Mystery gloxinia from her father's greenhouse. The mystery is very subtly set against the early phase of the Nazi era, but political matters doen't enter into the story enough for most modern youngsters to notice. The Benninger seed company is in Erfurt, where the author lived for many years with her husband, who owned a seed company. Annegret was probably the same age as Benary-Isbert's daughter. |
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A Time to Love / Heiligenwald |
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| It's dark times for Annegret as war gathers on the horizon, her beloved Cara passes on, and she is sent away to boarding school to keep her out of the public school where Nazi idealogy is taught. She does a lot of growing up in this story as she experiences first love and faces loss over her years in school. | |||
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| Dangerous Spring / Gefährliche Fruhling | |||
| World War II is in its last days, and Karin and her family flee their home in the city for a refuge in the country, away from the bombing. As they and the people around them come to terms with the loss of the war, each in his or her own way and according to his or her own feelings about the Nazi regime, our heroine comes of age. | |||
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| The Ark / Die Arche Noah | |||
| The Lechow family comes to Fulda in Hesse as refugees in 1947 with nothing but what they can carry and the contents of a single wheelbarrow. Fourteen-year-old Margret, still stunned by the loss of her twin brother and her dog during the early days of the Russian invasion, uncertain if her father still lives, tries to take care of her mother, brothers and younger sister. Christmas caroling leads to a job as kennel maid and general farm hand at Rowan Farm, where she converts an old railway car into Noah's Ark, a refuge and home for her family and the animals they inevitably take to their hearts. | |||
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| Rowan Farm / Die Ebereschenhof | |||
| The sequel to The Ark in which Margret and her family go through many changes as the young people are growing up and also coming to peace with the war that is now in their past as Germany begins to recover. | |||
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| Castle on the Border / Schloß an der Grenze | |||
| The war is over and Germany is struggling back to its feet when our teenage heroine, Leni, is given over to the custody of elderly relatives after three years of life on her own. Those relatives have inherited a broken-down castle on the border of the Russian zone of occupation, and their home is already a rest point for border jumpers. Soon, with the arrival of Leni's older brother, only lately released from a POW camp in France, comes also a theatre troupe, opening up to Leni the opportunity to fulfill her dreams. Leni does much growing up as she learns once more to love, and learns to think of others besides herself, and only then begins to become the actress she longs to be. Characters from A Time to Love make appearances. | |||
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| The Long Way Home / Ich Komme, Larry | |||
| A boy born during World War II, orphaned and raised by an elderly schoolteacher, has grown up with the promise of a better future: the American soldier who helped him survive as a baby has a home for him, once he's old enough to escape East Germany. That day comes when he is 13, but it is a long trip to California, and an even longer journey before he is truly at home there. Characters from A Time to Love, Castle on the Border and Noah's Ark/Rowan Farm appear briefly. | |||
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| The Non-Fiction Books for Adults | |||
| Sadly, not all the author's books were published in English. Of those written for adults, only one is available in translation. | |||
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| Mädchen for Alles | |||
| This is the engaging story of the author's years working in a museum in her youth as what we would call a "girl Friday"---in German a "girl for everything". | |||
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These Vintage Years / Das Abenteuer des Alterns; also Vom Glück der reifen Jahre |
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Reflections on old age, written in the author's last years as a widow living in California. It could be sad, but it's joyful, accepting and wise. |
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| I am a Grandmother / Die Grossmutter und ihr Erster Enkeln | |||
| The joys of becoming a grandmother. The English-language version has never been published. | |||
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| Ich Reise mit meinen Enkeln | |||
| A travellogue of the author's bittersweet visit to Germany with her grandsons. | |||
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| Das Ewige Siegel: Eine Legende um den Dichter Li Tai Pe | |||
| Biogrpahy of the Chinese poet Li Tai Pe, whose works the author translated into German while living in Switzerland during a protracted illness---without benefit of actually knowing Chinese! | |||
| Margot Benary-Isbert and me: | |||
| I first discovered this author by accident. Browsing through the fiction section of the late, lamented Stonewall Jackson Elementary School library one afternoon in 1969, I discovered a volume with fascinating folkstyle cover art that included a black Great Dane. For that reason alone, I chose Blue Mystery as one of my books for that week. The following week, I went back and got The Ark and Rowan Farm. I had found a new favorite. | |||
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Benary-Isbert's books were not just favorite childhood reads, however: she is one of the trio of authors (Louisa May Alcott and Jane Austen are the other two) I can credit with having affected the life choices I have made and the values I have formed. |
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| This woman saw the world transform in her lifetime, from horse-drawn carriages and oil lamps to missions into space. She lived through heartbreaking turmoil and tragedy, saw her homeland bring itself into shame and misfortune, and lived the personal hardships and tragedies of the refugee. Rather than turn to bitterness, she turned to family love and the things that truly mattered to her: nature, animals, music, poetry, and her faith. Like Louisa May Alcott, she promoted the ideal of individual duty to act in the face of injustice or misfortune. And she made me feel the weight of my responsibilities, just as she allowed me to see the world through other eyes, all the while enchanting me with her tales of times I'll never see and places I've never been. | |||
| Seeing the world through the eyes of her characters, I came to value many of the same things, and many of the lifestyle choices I've made as an adult reflect that childhood influence: a simple country life with my family, my animals and my friends, my gardens and my books, my music and my faith. Benary-Isbert contributed much to my belief in the principle more recently phrased: Think globally, act locally. My environmentalism, the fact that I am a blood donor, and many other choices---so much goes back in some part to the lessons I learned from Margot Benary-Isbert's world and characters. | |||