Thomas Hürlimann

About Grossvater und Halbbruder:
My grandfather told me the story many years ago: at the beginning of World War II, an emigrant appears at his swimming pool. Germany’s victory is near, and the village as well as grandfather’s family don’t want anything to do with a “Jew”. To make the stranger appear as strange as I remember him from my grandfather’s story, I let him say he isn’t a Jew, but Alois, Hitler’s half-brother. Maybe he’s lying to be able to survive in the Nazi-friendly atmosphere of the village, and maybe Alois is telling the truth – my grandfather decides to feed the stranger, to get him through the winter and the war. This way, both get caught in a private winter war they wage against each other and together against the village. For the villagers explicitly distance themselves from grandfather and “his Jew”, and by the time the rumour of Alois being Hitler’s half-brother finally gets around, the war has changed: now, they start pursuing my grandfather for being a “Hitler friend”.
Grandfather and Alois are as thick as thieves, but it doesn’t bring them any luck. Both, it seems, are losers.
The ones who didn’t warm up to the stranger get to feel like winners. One spring evening, the people of the village and grandfather’s family watch Friedrichshafen burn. They talk about the “glimpse into history”. They don’t realise that the distant war also happened in their own village and their own family. (Thomas Hürlimann)