When one day the art curator Daniel Birnbaum looked into an inherited box of papers from his grandfather, he came across police protocols, court documents and articles from the beginning of the Second World War.
They showed why Immanuel Birnbaum was arrested in February 1940 after only a few months in exile in Stockholm and sentenced as a spy.
Fridtjof Küchemann
Editor in the features section.
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His grandson turned the material into a novel, a story about exile and uncertainty, but also about surveillance, intrigue and sabotage.
We talked to him about “Dr.
B. ”, about coming close to one's grandparents fictionally in moments of desperation, about a secret portrait of Stockholm and a mind game about Stefan Zweig's“ Schachnovelle ”.
The poem "She came with cheeks red from the cold" by Alexander Block from the "Frankfurter Anthologie" rounds off this episode of the books podcast.
"Dr. B. “by Daniel Birnbaum was translated from Swedish by Ursel Allenstein and Hedwig M. Binder, has just been published by Piper, has 320 pages and costs 24 euros.
Every Sunday morning, the FAZ books podcast alternates between conversations about books and topics, interviews with authors, readings, literary puzzles and recitations from the Frankfurt anthology.
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