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We All Giggled tells the stories of two families that came together when the author’s parents met and married in 1945. The Hüglins had lost most of their fortune in the course of two world wars, and the Wachendorff s had survived the Nazi years despite their Jewish ancestry. The families’ roots are traced back to a vineyard in southern Germany, a jail in Geneva, the Conservatory in St. Petersburg, and the hometown of a Jewish merchant in Silesia.
This engaging book centres on the author’s recollections of his grandparents, his parents, and his own growing up in postwar Germany in an environment of bourgeois stability and comfort. As the author chronicles his family’s ups and downs and abiding love for music, food, and art across several generations, a rich tapestry of anecdotes unfolds—about opera singers, restaurants, and travels, and about family relations, romance, and the kind of “impromptu reactions to people, places, and situations that often result in uncontrollable giggles.”
Table of Contents for
We All Giggled: A Bourgeois Family Memoir by Thomas O. Hueglin
Thanks
What This Is About
Part I: The Hüglins
1. Tango
2. A nearly missed wedding
3. Madonnas and Buddhas
4. Diaspora
5. Les artistes
6. Nationalökonomie
7. Rhenish humour
8. Genealogy of men
9. (Some) artists again
10. The villa(s)
11. Christmas
12. Mucki
13. The Planter
14. Nemesis
15. Zauberberg
16. Varasdin on the Isar
17. Nüssli mit Likör
18. The surroundings
19. Kids
20. School
21. Cars
22. The Jewish question (I)
23. Black Forest
24. From music to medicine
25. War
Part II: The Wachendorffs
26. A sombre beginning
27. A macabre anniversary
28. Black stairs
29. The photographer
30. The factory director
31. The gardener
32. Tyrant and charmer
33. Possible encounter
34. Another Chile connection
35. Hattenheim
36. The Rhine
37. Freie Heimat
38. Books and poems
39. The Jewish question (II)
40. Same subject continued
41. Postscript
42. In from the cold
43. Favourite aunt
44. Hans-Erich
45. Family reunions
46. Gamelan meets baroque
47. Reborn
48. Middle names
49. Middle ground
50. Skin of our teeth
51. War again
Part III: Renate and Hans
52. Presto agitato
53. Courtship
54. The crossing
55. Occupation
56. Wings
57. Degrees of separation
58. Presto agitato again
59. Interlude
Part IV: Tutzing (1950s)
60. Little house on the lake
61. On the town
62. Boys and girls
63. Catholics and Communists
64. The hotel
65. Erika
66. Piano lessons
67. Music, caviar, and space
68. Star-struck
69. Beaulieu-sur-Mer
70. Disaster
71. A few months later, back to the memoir
72. Geneva
73. On the radio
Part V: Munich
74. Esmeralda
75. The apartment
76. The doctor
77. The piano
78. Dallas
79. School again
80. The group
81. Girls
82. Ambach