Synopsis: The Last Daughter of Prussia

  

    
   For those of you who keep asking to know more about my recently completed novel The Last Daughter of Prussia,  here is a short synopsis that will hopefully leave you wanting to know more...

    In January, 1945, in the final winter of World War II, Manya von Falken, a self-possessed young woman of the East Prussian aristocracy and her family, famous breeders of Trakehner stallions, are caught between the advancing Russian Army and orders from Adolf Hitler forbidding them to leave.

    Near the home of the family blacksmith, Manya is almost raped by Golitsin, a Russian Major determined to become a member of Joseph Stalin’s inner circle and under orders to kill all Germans in his path. A skilled huntress, Manya badly wounds Golitsin, slicing his arm from shoulder to fingertip before escaping with her horse, Aztec.

Fetzy Oz, the horse that inspired Aztec

   
 Fearing for their lives, she and her family defy Hitler’s orders and flee. Before they leave, Manya shares her escape route with her lover, Joshi Karas, a gifted and charismatic twenty-six year old Roma Gypsy who has broken with tradition to become a medical doctor. When his clan is murdered in a Nazi raid, Joshi is captured and taken to a concentration camp.

 While Joshi fights for his life, Manya travels north to the Frisches Haff, a frozen part of the Baltic Sea, which she and her family must cross to get to the west. However, the journey across the ice holds an even greater danger. Golitsin is just behind her. His goal: to track her down and kill her.

Will Manya and her family reach safety? Will she reunite with Joshi?  And what happens to the people of East Prussia and their beloved Trakehner horses?

 (c) All content and photos are the private property of the Gottlieb family, unless otherwise stated or linked,  and may not be used without permission.

(c) Privatbesitz Gottlieb Familie

A Poem From Out of WWII: Ich Möchte Nach Hause Wandern/I Want to Wander Home Again

    Edith von Sanden, my aristocratic East Prussian grandmother, lived to escape the invading Russian Army during that final, bitter winter of World War II. At her home in Guja, East Prussia, she was a sculptress and a poet. When paging through one of her old, published books, Bunte Blumen Überall (Bright Flowers Everywhere), I found a creased and yellowed paper folded in the pages. The poem below was written on that paper.

    I think she must have written the poem while she was making her dangerous passage across the frozen part of the Baltic Sea - that part which is called the Frisches Haff. I can only imagine the fear she must have felt- many people died on that ice when it cracked, giving way to the angry, frigid waters below.

    She never returned to Guja. She never again looked out of her window to the courtyard below where her beautiful Trakehner horses stood, but I know she always dreamed of home. Her words so moved me that I translated the verse into English, but I'm also posting it in German for those of you who can read the language. Somehow, it seems more powerful in its original form.

Ich Möchte Nach Hause Wandern

Ich möchte nach Hause wandern

In einem Bettlergewand

Auf stillen und einsamen Strassen

Von niemand erkannt.

Und ob auch die Füsse bluten

Die Kräfte langsam vergehen

Ich wollte wandern und wandern

Bis ich die Heimat gesehen!

Und wenn meinen Händen entglitte

Zuletzt auch der Bettlerstab

Nur Glück wärs für meine Seele

Ich fand in der Heimat mein Grab.

Edith von Sanden-Guja

I Want to Wander Home

I want to wander home

In torn beggar’s clothes

On peaceful, lonesome pathways

That no one else would know.

And should my feet be bloody

And all my strength be gone

Yet, shall I keep on walking

Until I see my home.

My beggar’s staff may slip

Slowly from my hand

But my soul shall be in heaven

In the grave upon my land.

(Translation by Marina Gottlieb Sarles)

(c) All content and photos are the private property of the Gottlieb family, unless otherwise stated or linked,  and may not be used without permission.

(c) Privatbesitz Gottlieb Familie

Away From War

    As I gaze out over the peaceful turquoise waters that lie directly in front of my balcony I realize how fortunate I am to be here in the Bahamas far away from the calamities of war. Here, the essence of nature permeates my every breath. As I stare at a stingray passing, as I dream of swimming with dolphins, I see the sacredness in each living creature. 

    I recognize that the same sacredness is in me, in all human beings. 


    I really think this knowledge was imparted to me by my grandparents, Edith and Walter von Sanden and my mother, Owanta. They had such an intimate connection to  the land in East Prussia, to the forests, the roaming elk, even the smallest dandelion in the meadow. They taught me about these things.They knew that nature could bring me to stillness, to another dimension of awareness. 


-Marina Gottlieb Sarles

(c) All content and photos are the private property of the Gottlieb family, unless otherwise stated or linked,  and may not be used without permission.

(c) Privatbesitz Gottlieb Familie

I AM a Daughter of Prussia

Guja, East Prussia. The land where my soul wanders

  

    All my life I have been aware of a hidden facet of my being, a sadness in my bones. It walked with me wherever I went. Even as a young child I was serious and introverted, more concerned with the world of spirit. Quite frankly, I hated being like that. I wanted to be more like other kids - laughing, uninhibited, funny. Now, after writing The Last Daughter of Prussia, I have discovered that the roots of my sadness were buried in the soil of my lost heritage. 

My mother, Owanta Von Sanden,
in East Prussia as a little girl

    See, I AM a Daughter of Prussia. 

    I carry the stories of my ancestors in my bones, but the beautiful thing is that writing has freed me from that heaviness of spirit. Perhaps, (at the risk of sounding new-agey) I came into this world with the task of giving a voice to the East Prussian people who fought their way westward through the snows of that last bitter winter in World War II. Maybe the Trakehner horses who carried those families across the ice wanted their whinnies turned into words. And maybe too, the Roma Gypsies of that province needed the world to know that, before they were slaughtered like the Jews, they danced there too. 

My grandmother, Edith Von Sanden,

an author from East Prussia

    I may be crazy, but I believe that people do have life tasks. Writers are not exempt. Spirits from other realms do talk to us if we are open to listening. Personally, I don't feel I had much choice - especially when they came around my bed at night, pulling on my pillows and my limbs. I fought them. I would shout at them to go away. Cry that I couldn't write a novel that encompassed their story. Still, I ended up following orders and what a gift it was, because when I wrote those final words  - The End - I felt at peace and I was able to laugh. 

My mother, and my two brothers, Cay and Frederik

   

 Even now, I laugh to myself because I think I grew up backwards. How can it be that by finishing a book I can laugh more than I did as a child?  

-Marina Gottlieb Sarles

 (c) All content and photos are the private property of the Gottlieb family, unless otherwise stated or linked,  and may not be used without permission.

(c) Privatbesitz Gottlieb Familie

Marina on her book, Sand In My Shoes

An inspirational story for authors who choose to self publish:

 (c) All content and photos are the private property of the Gottlieb family, unless otherwise stated or linked,  and may not be used without permission.

(c) Privatbesitz Gottlieb Familie

Why I Tell the Story of the East Prussians...

 This is photograph of me standing beside
 a giant, age-old tree in Guja, Poland, formerly East Prussia.

     As I stood by that tree, I remember feeling the old world in its trunk, hearing the roots and the hidden sap whispering stories about my forefathers who had lived on the land for generations. All I could do was be still and listen.


    The other day a friend asked me why I chose to write The Last Daughter of Prussia. 


    Actually, I think the book chose me. Or more likely it was those spirits, now long dead, who wanted their story told and who, while they were living, never dared to speak about their own plight because they were German. 


    How could they? In light of all the atrocities committed by Germans, they had no right to tell their grief-filled story. For years, the word "German" elicited images of black-booted Nazis, swastikas and concentration camps. But the times are changing. Consciousness is breathing us and with the breath of consciousness comes compassion. The world is calling out for healing, and although we must NEVER forget what happened in the holocaust I don't think there can ever be peace until all the suffering is named, until all the broken souls are held and able to tell their side of the story.

Another tree in Guja, before the fighting began.

    
    You may ask why I have a right to speak about these things. Perhaps, I don't. Still, as the grand-daughter of two broken souls who were forced to flee their land in East Prussia, on a trek that claimed the lives of some two million people and left an even a greater number of women and children raped and bleeding in the snow, I need to say that I felt compelled to write their story. Not as a documentary, but as a novel so that readers would come to know the real -life characters who fought so hard to survive in the omnipresent face of death.


-Marina Gottlieb Sarles

(c) All content and photos are the private property of the Gottlieb family, unless otherwise stated or linked,  and may not be used without permission.

(c) Privatbesitz Gottlieb Familie

Out of Prussia: My family

My grandfather, Walter von Sanden,
well known author and environmentalist

My grandmother, Edith von Sanden, well-known sculptress.
Those are some of her pieces behind her.

    When writing my historical novel, a work of fiction based on my family's real experiences in East Prussia during World War II, my grandparents served as studies for the story's characters. 

    Their story begins in the dead of one wintry night when they must make a terrifying and raw flight from their home in East Prussia. Theirs is a history many families share. I write to tell of how a proud man and his wife, an artistic woman suffering from severe depression, must make their way, with thousands of others, through the ice forest of East Prussia to safety.

- Marina Gottlieb Sarles

(c) All content and photos are the private property of the Gottlieb family, unless otherwise stated or linked,  and may not be used without permission.

(c) Privatbesitz Gottlieb Familie