The bitter awakening of the Second World War supposed a transit between the echoes of the nightmare. Because, logically, in addition to the war itself, the macabre aroma of an annihilating ideology persisted that had been able to bring out the worst in millions of people, as in a massive abduction.
The German writer Uwe Timm had in his older brother the close example of human disaster through the ideological. That Karl-Heinz Timm, his older brother and reference, was a member of the SS and that he finally died back in 1943 in the middle of the conflict, awakened in Uwe Timm the leitmotif of much of his work. Nothing deeper than the disappointment with a brother to require refuge in literature.
Issues as rugged as the eugenics practiced institutionally by the Nazi regime, with genocide as the quickest path towards that artificial selection of the races that "should prevail" led Timm to write this book focused on the last days of Nazism, in the dark spring 1945.
Until there we traveled with Michael Hansen, in the service of the allies to investigate the German scientists who harbored that eugenics as a background to the war. Michael is an American of German roots, ideal for inserting himself into German society without arousing any misgivings. His contact with Wagner, a connoisseur of the eugenic foundation of the Nazi regime, theorized by Professor Ploetz.
Wagner and Ploetz were friends. Only the former was oriented towards Marxism while Ploetz marked the path of that artificial selection, the darkest of the eugenic options that consisted of eliminating those who subjectively considered themselves inferior through insane medical programs. The novel delves into a juicy tale that Michael will treasure of Wagner's confession.
Antagonistic ideologies to propose the most convenient social order. Wagner's and Ploetz's decisions place them at opposite ends of a story that ultimately wrote some of its darkest pages on aberrant treatment of others.
You can now buy the novel Icaria, the new book by Uwe Timm, here: