What else could you say about her? She shut herself up in her own rooms, and heaven only knew what she did there. ‘She hasn’t the faintest idea,’ people said of her, ‘but she’s beautiful…very beautiful.’ She was the most striking person present at any social gathering, although she hardly ever said a word. She had never heard of anything at all, she hadn’t even guessed at it. She prefers to spend her time in the couple’s private apartment in the estate and read her books.Īnyone who ever spoke to Katharina found her a total blank. Katharina, meanwhile, is shown to be a placid beauty, always in a world of her own. Occasionally, he sends exotic wine, chocolates, tobacco which his wife Katharina stows away at the estate in a cubbyhole. The husband Eberhad is away, in Italy, but rumoured to be in a cushy job rather than fighting on the front line. The Georgenhof estate was not far from Mitkau, a small town in East Prussia, and now, in winter, the Georgenhof, surrounded by old oaks, lay in the landscape like a black island in a white sea. In 1948, in East Germany, Kempowski, his brother and their mother were arrested for espionage.Īll for Nothing is set in the winter of 1945 in East Prussia at a time when the Soviets are advancing upon Germany.Ī German defeat is imminent and yet the war serves as a backdrop it is the inhabitants of the Georgenhof estate – the von Globig family – who form the focal point of the novel. His father was killed in battle during the final days of the war. Kempowski was fifteen years old when the Soviets began advancing toward East Prussia and desperate German refugees looked to escape on ships departing from the East Prussian coast. Kempowski used autobiographical material in his work from the very beginning of his literary career, believing his own experience might be a source of historical understanding. Here’s an excerpt from the introduction in my NYRB Classics edition: All for Nothing was published in 2006 and was the last novel by Walter Kempowski, an author considered to be one of postwar Germany’s most acclaimed writers.

All for nothing kempowski