Weigh­ing in at over eight hun­dred pages, Effin­gers was first pub­lished in the 1950s in Ger­many. The nov­el slipped into obscu­ri­ty but has now been repub­lished in a new trans­la­tion by Sophie Duver­noy. Gabriele Ter­git, the pen name of Elise Hirschmann (1894 – 1982), traces the rise and fall of sev­er­al Jew­ish fam­i­lies from the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry to the destruc­tion of Ger­man Jew­ry in the Holo­caust. Episod­ic in struc­ture, pop­u­lat­ed by at least two dozen major char­ac­ters of the extend­ed Effin­ger-Oppen-Gold­schmidt fam­i­ly, and accom­pa­nied by scores of sub­sidiary fig­ures, the nov­el is not an easy read, but it builds a pow­er­ful and mov­ing pic­ture of a group of indi­vid­u­als mak­ing their way in a tur­bu­lent world. 

Ini­tial­ly, all is opti­mism and growth as Impe­r­i­al Ger­many, fresh from its uni­fi­ca­tion and vic­to­ry over France in the Fran­co-Pruss­ian War (1870), expe­ri­ences a peri­od of indus­tri­al expan­sion and inter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion. Broth­ers Paul and Karl Effin­ger, from a large, pious fam­i­ly of mod­est pur­suits from rur­al South­ern Ger­many, move to Berlin to attempt to catch the wave of indus­tri­al devel­op­ment. (Anoth­er broth­er, Ben, ear­li­er moved to Eng­land and even­tu­al­ly becomes a mem­ber of the peer­age.) Paul has dreams of becom­ing a great man­u­fac­tur­er; Karl, more of a play­boy, joins him in man­u­fac­tur­ing screws. Even­tu­al­ly, the broth­ers become pio­neers in the nascent auto­mo­bile industry. 

First Karl and then Paul mar­ry into the high­ly assim­i­lat­ed fam­i­ly of the promi­nent banker Emmanuel Opp­n­er. Their wives reflect their per­son­al­i­ties and tem­pera­ments: Annette, Karl’s wife, is a lady of leisure and fash­ion; Klara, Paul’s wife, is a home­body of sim­ple tastes who eschews the high soci­ety ways of her sis­ter. Annette and Karl’s chil­dren — James, Mar­i­anne, Hubert, and Erwin — run the range of tal­ents and abil­i­ties: James is an aes­thete; Mar­i­anne, a blue-stock­ing social work­er and lat­er an offi­cer in the Weimar gov­ern­ment; Erwin joins the fam­i­ly busi­ness but yearns for some high­er call­ing; Hubert is the black sheep, sent off to Amer­i­ca in the wake of an embez­zle­ment scan­dal at the Opp­n­er bank. James and Erwin go off to war and are pro­found­ly affect­ed by their expe­ri­ences (James as an offi­cer on the East­ern Front and Erwin as a pris­on­er of war in France).

Paul and Klara’s daugh­ter Lotte becomes the focus of the nov­el as the fam­i­ly expe­ri­ences the pri­va­tions brought on by the Great War and the upheavals of the Weimar Repub­lic. Drawn by her cousin Mar­i­anne to the nascent fem­i­nist move­ment, Lotte pur­sues a uni­ver­si­ty edu­ca­tion and mix­es with var­i­ous groups of artists, philoso­phers, and social rad­i­cals. Her meti­er, how­ev­er, turns out to be the­atri­cal and she becomes a not­ed stage and film actress. In a sur­pris­ing turn of events, she mar­ries her cousin Erwin but they soon sep­a­rate after hav­ing a child togeth­er. Then Lotte becomes preg­nant with the child of her lover, but Erwin steps in to resume their relationship. 

If this isn’t enough to chew over, there is also the doings of oth­er mem­bers of the extend­ed fam­i­ly and those who orbit them. As Sophie Duver­noy explains in her after­word, Ter­git drew upon much of her own family’s expe­ri­ences to build her nov­el. The book is filled with lov­ing mem­o­ries of din­ner par­ties, mar­riages, and births as well as the sad­ness of loss as the old­er gen­er­a­tion pass­es away. It is also some­times satir­ic in its depic­tions of the excess­es of upper-mid­dle class Jew­ish Berlin (Uncle Theodore’s opu­lent man­sion is a prime sym­bol). Shad­ow­ing all, of course, is the polit­i­cal and social upheaval that leads to the rise of Hitler and the Nazis as the char­ac­ters debate the issues of the day and strug­gle to keep their bear­ings in a rapid­ly chang­ing world. Duvernoy’s after­word and notes are help­ful guides to the his­tor­i­cal back­ground, but the book could be enhanced by a more detailed chronol­o­gy and a list of characters. 

Tergit’s com­mand of her mate­r­i­al some­times fal­ters. She wrote the book over a long peri­od of time and there are minor incon­sis­ten­cies of detail (does Lotte have an abor­tion?), and the char­ac­ters often con­verse like a his­to­ry les­son. The final impact, how­ev­er, is stun­ning and mov­ing even with its rough edges. The Jew­ish fam­i­ly saga is a well-worn genre, but Effin­gers is a major addi­tion to the canon.