Friedo Lampe’s At the Edge of the Night was condemned in 1933 for its homoerotic story but has won growing renown for its magical realism
Wed 23 Jan 2019 07.00 GMT
Last modified on Wed 23 Jan 2019 17.40 GMT
A novel banned by the Nazis in the 1930s for its homoerotic content is to appear in English for the first time next month.
At the Edge of the Night, by Friedo Lampe, was first published in 1933. Set on a September evening on the waterfront of a German city, it is seen today as an early work of magical realism but was seized by the Nazis and pulled from sale. The regime objected to the novel’s inclusion of homoerotic content, and its depiction of an interracial liaison between a black man and a German woman. The book was placed on their list of “damaging and undesirable writings”.
“He’s a very interesting author: a disabled, gay writer during the Third Reich … who somehow survived only to be shot by a Red Army patrol days before the end of the war,” said Simon Beattie, whose English translation of the novel will be published by Hesperus Press on 1 February. “Although he gets an entry in The Oxford Companion to German Literature, nothing by him has ever appeared in English before.”
The author was left disabled after being diagnosed with bone tuberculosis in his left ankle at the age of five. He died just six days before the end of the war, when two Red Army soldiers shot him after refusing to believe that he was the man photographed on his identity card – he had lost so much weight during the conflict that he no longer resembled the picture. Beattie writes in his introduction that Lampe’s grave is marked with a wooden cross, carved with the words “Du bist nicht einsam”, or “you are not alone”.
Lampe himself said the novel, Am Rande der Nacht in German, was “born into a regime where it could not breathe”, and hoped it might find a second life at a later date. The book was republished in German, with some “offensive” passages removed, in 1949, 1955 and 1986, with the first unexpurgated edition not released until 1999 – the centenary of the author’s birth.
Lampe has enjoyed a growing reputation in Germany, where his collected letters were published last year and his biography is due this year. At the Edge of the Night drew praise from Hermann Hesse, who first read it in 1933 and said that “what struck us at the time … as so beautiful and powerful has not paled, it has withstood; it proves itself with the best, and captivates and delights just as then”.
Publisher Hesperus said the novel embodied its ambition to recover overlooked gems. “We have always been committed to our motto Et Remotissima Prope in bringing back to light crucial and important classics that have been sadly neglected or forgotten,” it said.
As for Beattie, he said he wanted to “bring the novel to wider attention. That’s happened in Germany, where republication has gone down very well … I hope he can find an audience here too.”
