#fred uhlman

[thunderstruck9]

Fred Uhlman (German/British, 1901-1985), Welsh Hills. Oil on canvas, 60 x 89 cm.

[the-secret-place-inside-me]

“Qualche giorno…

…più tardi,

era il 12 marzo,

pochi minuti prima

di mezzogiorno [delle 16]

di una dolce giornata primaverile, cielo blu ghiaccio e pioppi in fiore, accadde qualcosa di miracoloso…”

Fred Uhlman

…nasce una meraviglia…

[0chakai]

TUMBLR I AM SO DISAPPOINTED IN YOU.

YOU'RE TELLING ME THAT MY CHILDHOOD DOOMED YAOI WAS ANIMATED AND I SAW NO ONE TAKING ABOUT IT??

4:23 minutes of stunning animation, following the friendship between Hans Schwarz and Konradin von Hohenfels in 1932 during the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany, adapted from the novella Reunion by Fred Uhlman. I remember reading this when I was 13, and I re-read it this morning, and oh boy, it was even gayer then what I remembered.

"HE CAME INTO my life in February 1932 and never left it again. More than a quarter of a century has passed since then, more than nine thousand days, desultory and tedious, hollow with the sense of effort or work without hope – days and years, many of them as dead as dry leaves on a dead tree."

"I can remember the day and the hour when I first set eyes on this boy who was to be the source of my greatest happiness and of my greatest despair."

"ALL I KNEW, then, was that he was going to be my friend. Everything attracted me to him. [...] How to attract his attention, how to impress him with the fact that I was different from this dull crowd, how to convince him that I alone ought to be his friend – this was a problem for which I had no clear answer. All I knew instinctively was that I had to stand out."

"THREE DAYS LATER, on March 15th – I shall always remember the date – I was going home from school. It was a soft, cool, spring evening. The almond trees were in full bloom, the crocuses were out and the sky was pastel blue and sea green, a northern sky with a touch of Italy. I saw Hohenfels in front of me and he seemed to hesitate and to be waiting for somebody."

"When I had almost reached him he turned and smiled at me. Then, with a strangely gauche and still hesitant movement, he shook my trembling hand. “Hello, Hans,” he said, and suddenly I realized to my joy and relief and amazement that he was as shy and as much in need of a friend as I. I can’t remember much of what Konradin said to me that day or what I said to him. All I know is that we walked up and down for an hour, like two young lovers, still nervous, still afraid of each other; but somehow I knew that this was only a beginning and that from now on my life would no longer be empty and dull but full of hope and richness for us both."

"like two young lovers"

"like two young lovers"

"like two young lovers"

"From this day on we were inseparable. We always left school together – our homes were in the same direction – and he waited for me in the mornings."

"The next few months were the happiest of my life. Spring came and the whole country was one mass of blossoms, cherry and apple, pear and peach, while the poplars took on their silver and the willows their lemon yellow. [...] All of this conveyed a feeling of peace, of trust in the present and hope for the future. On Saturdays Konradin and I used to take a slow train and go and spend the night in one of many old heavily-timbered inns, where one could get a cheap, clean room, excellent food and local wine."

"You know you’re my only friend. And you know that I like you more than anyone else. You know that I have been lonely too and that if I lose you I shall lose the only friend I can trust. How could I have been ashamed of you?"

and then the angst happened.

please read the book y'all. in the meantime, i'll write a very detailed and long post about how queer this story is because how boy, i barely scratched the surface.

[mainomene]

"I still remember a violent discussion between my father and a Zionist who had come to collect money for Israel. My father abhorred Zionism. The whole idea seemed to him stark mad. To claim Palestine after two thousand years made no more sense to him than the Italians claiming Germany because it was once occupied by the Romans. It could only lead to endless bloodshed and the Jews would have to fight the whole Arab world. And anyway what had he, a Stuttgarter, to do with Jerusalem?"

Reunion by Fred Uhlman (1901-1985).

[whispywonderland]

Just read Fred Uhlman’s “Reunion.”

It’s about the ✨pAsIoNaTe✨ (just say gay oml) friendship between two young men in Germany 1932 during Hitler’s rise to power. One is from a family of Hitler supporters and one is Jewish or at least of Jewish descent.

It’s 100% recommended by me! You would esp like this one if you’re a fan of the whole “I would wed you and care for you and love you as my wife and we would be the envy of every couple with how deep and desperate we are for each other… but you aren’t a woman so sike!” Or you could just like literature! Anyway, if this seems at all interesting it’s a short book so give it a read!

[absenceisaformofwinter]

Then his proud bearing, his manners, his elegance, his good looks — and who could be altogether insensitive to them? — powerfully suggested to me that here at last I had found someone who came up to my ideal of a friend.

Fred Uhlman, Reunion

[loyalyalostuff]

[smokefalls]

It happened that just then I was for the first time reading about light years, nebulae, galaxies; about suns thousands of times bigger than our sun, millions or billions of stars, planets thousands of times the size of Mars and Venus, Jupiter and Saturn. And for the first time I realized vividly that I was a particle of dust, and that our earth was no more than a pebble on a beach with millions of such pebbles. This was grist to my mill. It served to reinforce my belief that there was no God—how could he possibly take an interest in what was going on in so many celestial bodies? … Now the crucial question no longer seemed to be what life was, but what one was to do with this valueless, yet somehow uniquely valuable life. How should one spend it? To what end? For our own good alone? For the good of mankind? How was one to make the best of this bad job?

Fred Uhlman, Reunion