A comical school story by the author of Emil and the Detectives. In the Christmas at the Johann Sigismund School there's plenty of fun and excitement for Martin, Matthias, Johnny, Sebastian and Uli, including a flying classroom, the kidnap of a friend, a parachute descent, and a family reunion.
MY THOUGHTS:
Here is an absorbing, whimsical Christmas tale set in a German boys' school in the 1930s. It's written by the late great Erich Kastner, of Emil and the Detectives fame
The story focuses on five boys in the fourth form of the Johann Sigismund School, who are preparing a Christmas play. The novel's title makes the boys' effort a story within a story, since their unique stage production is also dubbed, 'The Flying Classroom.'
The school play is written by Jonathan Trotz, whose father deserted him by sending him overseas to live with grandparents who no longer exist. Martin Thaler, the clever and artistic head boy, has financially straitened parents, who can't scrape together funds to bring him home for Christmas. Sebastian Frank is a fringe dweller with philosophical tendencies, and Matthias Selbmann, a perpetually hungry kid who aspires to be a prize fighter. Finally, little Uli von Simmern, reminds me of Piglet from the Pooh Bear stories. He has a small stature and wishes more than anything that he could be braver.
From the start, the intensity of inter-school wars and politics mirrors how affairs tend to play out on a world stage. Grown men all around them become role models, whether they realize it or not. Their friend nicknamed 'the non-smoker' lives in a discarded railway carriage with that plaque on the door. He gardens and reads a lot in his spare time, and the boys sense that he never intended from the beginning to earn a crust by strumming dance tunes at a sleazy beerhall. 'Don't come to me with the yarn that a man can't live without ambition,' he tells his schoolteacher friend. 'There are few too few who live as I do.'
Dr Johann Bokh, their favourite teacher, earns the boys' allegiance by being genuinely switched on to their feelings and fixes, but I tend to like Herr Kreuzkamm, the sober German master, who seemingly could not laugh, though it is equally possible that he did not want to. Yet this dude drops the type of one-liner which keeps making students wonder whether he's pulling their legs or not.
Overall, it's the sort of festive treat we should just plunge into to experience its charm, since any review is just scratching the surface of what makes it special. Sometimes quirkiness defies review.
It would have been five stars from me, except that the school politics at the start dragged on a bit.
🌟🌟🌟🌟 ½
I read this again just recently. I'm very fond of Kästner, and this story is as good in its way as Emil and the Detectives. What I like is that in a story ostensibly for children, he doesn't shy away from some tough topics: a boy abandoned by his parents; another boy learning about poverty all too early in life, and the various trials and tribulations which can make the growth from boyhood to manhood so very difficult. The boys are lucky in their housemaster Johann "Justus" Bökh, who seems a paragon of all the virtues. The only reason I'd give this fine story less than 5 stars is that Dr Bökh is almost too good to be true. But that's niggling. I'm very fond of this book, and have been all my life. (But then, I am half German.)
ReplyDeleteHi Alasdair,
DeleteThat's a great summary of this book, which I agree with, including the too good to be true bit. Those boys have excellent role models to help pave their futures.
I've enjoyed everything I've read so far by Kastner, and I think my favourite has actually been Emil and the Three Twins, the lesser known sequel. It was surprisingly good.
Half German, hey? Ancestry dot com tells me I'm quarter German, which didn't surprise me as many of my maternal ancestors were among those fleeing persecution from Germany and Prussia to South Australia.
All very fascinating.