“What time was all that?”

From a memoir by Luisa Ferber (née Lanzberg), written between 1939 and 1941, as it became clear that obtaining a visa to leave Germany was impossible. Before being “deported” with her husband Fritz in November 1941, Luisa Ferber sent the memoir to her son Max in England:


W.G. Sebald, The Emigrants, trans. Michael Hulse (New York: New Directions, 1996).

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All OCA Sebald posts (Pinboard)

[The line between fiction and historical reality is blurry here. Max Ferber is modeled on the painter Frank Auerbach. Sebald said in an interview that he used a manuscript by Auerbach’s aunt as the basis for Luisa Ferber’s memoir.]