Reviewed by Anna Wenzel
In the early 1930s, Germany was in a state of mass upheaval. The Weimar Republic was crumbling, and made way for new political forces to dominate the economically ruined states. From large cities to port towns to clustered farming communities, every person felt the weight of the Great Depression, and no neighbor could be trusted; it turned comrades into strangers. In this atmosphere, the National Socialist Party, or as we know them, Nazis, began generating substantial support across the nation. Their weaker, but nonetheless persistent opponents were the Communist Party, which had spread from Russia into central Europe. Anna Seghers’ Blood Money (1933), translated by Lucy Jones, dissects the division of the German state through the lens of the tired, starving rural farming community of Oberweilerbach.
Blood Money follows the various families of Oberweilerbach through their imminent political unrest, starting with the arrival of a stranger, Johann Schulz, to the home of the poor, honest farmer Andreas Bastian and his family. Johann’s arrival in town releases the floodgates of distrust between the communities in the village as they wonder who the boy is and why his mysterious arrival in town tastes like misfortune. Johann is a “Red,” or an unofficial member of the Communist Party, eager to convert those around him to the cause. Opposite him in the town is Koesslin, a seasonal worker who goes between villages encouraging young men to join the Nazi party, a quiet bystander while violence follows in his wake. Koesslin stays in the village with Christian Kunkel, an opportunist who is using the Nazi party to gain influence and affluence over the next generation of town leaders, the eldest sons of the weary, aging farmers. Many of the boys’ fathers discourage and disparage their sons from joining the Party, wary of the overzealous promises offered to them.
One of the strongest resisters of the pull towards facism is Michael Merz, the wealthiest farmer in the area. His son is surly and violent and eager to expel his negative feelings in the violent, thuggish environment the Nazis bring to every village they visit. As the novel progresses, the local Nazi party leader, Zillich, and the local Communist leader, Rendel, become increasingly combative and violent as their influence grows, resulting in the deaths of multiple supporters.
Alongside the political violence that permeates the novel rests the persistent violence within the farmers’ homes against their wives. Jakob Schuechlin is the worst perpetrator of this domestic abuse. When thinking of his sickly, pregnant wife whom he forces to work on the fields even at nine months pregnant, he notes that “he wanted her to die. Not at some point, by chance, but tomorrow during the rye harvest…Once she was out of the way, he’d pay off his debts, dress his sons in clean clothes, educate them, and find himself a proper wife” (38). His constant verbal and physical abuse leads his wife, Susann, to drown herself after giving birth. Her final moments feel like a breath released within the center of the story:
She came to a clearing. The earth among the tree stumps was covered in heather that had stored the sun’s warmth…A deep green stillness filled the valley all the way up to her feet…Bright but not dazzling midday sun dappled and shimmered on everything around. Over the river, the light condensed into intense beams, giving a charming appearance to the houses on the riverbank and the two boats bobbing on the water. (89)
Even in moments of deep heartbreak, it is evident that Seghers, a Jewish woman who fled Germany first in 1933, held love for the land she was forced to leave.
Jones’ translation makes for beautiful, highly detailed prose as she flexes linguistic mastery over the morose image Seghers paints of the countryside. Her most interesting choices come in the words she leaves untranslated within the text; all of them are words used by the Nazi party members: “The chants Verrecke! and Heil! and Rot Front! and Nieder! reached his ears” (17); “‘All of you, people of Oberweilerbach! Volksgenossen, national comrades!’” (81) “‘Enders might be a Gruppenführer now, big deal! And Zillich, you might now be a Sturmführer…’” (101). Their most common shouts are Heil (hail) and Verrecke (perish), Volksgenossen was a way to refer to the German people during the Nazi era, and Gruppen (group) and Sturm (storm, or assault) Führer (leader) were regional Nazi leaders. Jones’ choice within the novel to leave these words in German creates an atmospheric realism to the curses and chants being volleyed across the region. These people were not hearing “perish” shouted out of passing trucks, but “Verrecke,” a word of violence that exists within this particular context.
Blood Money explains, through its realistic depiction of farm life, how communities began to turn on their neighbors, reject their traditions, and accept a violent slide into fascism without blinking an eye. Though the members of the community know that they are voting for “something quite pointless that, in the end, wouldn’t reduce their debts by one decimal point” (139), they can’t help the urge to feed into an idealistic promise, the wish to blame someone for their misfortunes, and the hope that their luck will turn if they give in at last to the violence that seeks to swallow them whole.
Seghers, Anna. Blood Money. Translated by Lucy Jones. New York Review Books, 2026.
Anna Wenzel is a writer from Boulder, Colorado. She recently graduated from Oberlin College with high honors in Comparative Literature where she also studied literary translation. She is interested in German literature with feminist and socialist themes.