In a Nest Full of Lies

(Original German title: Vuchelbeerbaamland)

The conflict that propels Reglindis Rauca’s debut novel, In a Nest Full of Lies, centers on her discovery of her grandfather’s ardent Nazi past and her family’s refusal to confront the truth.

SS Hauptscharführer Helmut Rauca, accused of the murder of 10,000 Lithuanian Jews in the city of Kaunas, was extradited by Canada in 1982 to the Federal Republic of Germany. His granddaughter, Reglindis, was still living at the time with her parents in the East German provincial town of Plauen, Saxony. Although the grandfather was vaguely present in her young life through yellowed photographs in the family album, and occasional snapshots and letters with foreign stamps, she was completely unaware of his crimes. In her debut novel, In a Nest Full of Lies, the young author describes the difficulties she faced, torn between the official communist ideology of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in which she was educated, and the pervasive Christian convictions of her parents.

Rauca’s fictional heroine, Mary, is a redheaded youngster. A vigorous tomboy with a vivid imagination, she grows up in the idyllic Saxon countryside of the Vogtland. Class mates decry her as a witch. Her warm, loving mother stoically keeps everything beyond the realm of family and church at arms length. Her father is generous and caring, but Mary senses his hidden anger against the “Commies” who rule the country.

Shunned by fellow classmates as a “weirdo” and repeatedly called upon to be silent by her parents, Mary is disoriented and doesn’t know which way to turn. At times she finds solace in her parents’ religious faith, at other times she finds meaning and direction in the ideology prescribed by the state. In her imagination, her never-present grandfather is a symbol of freedom, who lives in far away Canada and sends letters and postcards from exotic places. But just this grandfather makes headline news when he is returned to the Federal Republic of Germany in handcuffs. Learning that the idol in whom she had seen a pillar of strength, and a symbol of courage and adventure, is, in fact, an internationally hunted war criminal, Mary’s imagined world falls apart. But she summons the courage to face the truth, even at the risk of being ostracized by her immediate family.

The novel describes in detail the idyllic landscape in which Mary was raised and pokes fun at the narrow-mindedness of the people who live there. The author makes playful use of the local Saxon dialect and indulges in biting humor, interspersed with lines from Christian Morgenstern’s nonsense verses, as she moves from crisis to crisis and confrontation to confrontation. The story is not only about the travails of growing up in a communist state but also about the difficult search for self-identity despite the ambiguities and cross-purposes that beset young people caught between conflicting system.

 

Reglindis Rauca, born in 1967 in Plauen, now lives in Düsseldorf. She received vocational training as a nurse's assistant in Dresden and studied acting at the "Ernst Busch" College of Performing Arts in Berlin. Multi-talented, she has appeared on stage in various theatres and is presently occupied as a graphic artist, advertising copywriter and novelist. She is holder of the literary talent award 2008, bestowed on her by the federal state capital of Düsseldorf.

Reglindis Rauca
In a Nest Full of Lies
(Original German title: Vuchelbeerbaamland)
Novel
206 pages, hard cover with dust jacket
ISBN 978-3-89812-542-0

Price 18.00 Euro
Mitteldeutscher Verlag