Anti-Semitism, revanchism, defense against guilt: In her novel “The First Train to Berlin”, Gabriele Tergit portrays post-war Germany in an inimitable way.
No author so deserving of rediscovery has been rediscovered as often as Gabriele Tergit. The first of three tergit waves so far began in the seventies, when the author Frank Grützbach found “Käsebier conquers Kurfürstendamm” in a Cologne antiquarian bookshop and fell in love. He turned the colorful Berlin novel from 1931 into a radio play feature, which was followed by the invitation of the then 83-year-old writer from London to the Berlin Festival in 1977, as a living representative of the Prussian-Jewish bourgeoisie, to which she with the “Effingers” erected an unadorned monument.