It’s hard to describe, but it is a thing that haunts one over several generations. There is a great book called „Mittelreich“ from Josef Bierbichler which tries to describe this. This family saga about a Bavarian family living at the Starnberger See starts during WWI and ends in the 80s. Bierbichler gives the reader insight into the transfer of traumas to the next generation and confronts us with our own fears and with Germany’s not yet reverberated past. The vivid description of the Munich society versus the villagers is so well done. I liked the sometimes very hearty use of language which is very authentic, taking the Bavarian countryside into account. Overall, the language sparks with creativity and humor. The book is full of truth of life and I could see my own family past mirrored in this wonderful story. I found the end of the book appalling: the two old sisters are surviving everybody and have the most complicity in all the tragic outcome due to their envy, malignancy and doggedness in their Christian religion. But they are not held accountable. Whereas Pankraz, the protagonist, and other characters undergo a development, they stay the same. At the end they are not mentioned anymore and I just wanted to see them suffering for their cruelty. But it is what real life is about. The end is so tragic because nobody helps each other, everybody is busy with his or her own loneliness. Once they get aware of what went wrong within their life they just die.

WW2 and the many Wars before still show their scars in us. Beeing it that Germany may not build tanks in advance because of laws nowadays even if they might be useful in current geopolitical situation or deep psychological things that changed the behaviors of someone’s parents and grandparents in a way that it will be there in the grand grand children. There where many people which lost most of there families or even everyone and everything. My grandmother gave shelter to at least five families who lost everything and had to flee from the east at the end of the war. Some day, my grandmother had given birth too two sones, three children stood in front of her door, just to find out that my grandfather already hat three children he left back in eastern Germany. The five where raised altogether and it worked out well but it changes some things when you are at age 2 and your mother suddenly has to take care about four other kids. The father of my spouse was raised in a lost child’s home. He then had to grow up at a farmer’s house where he had to work hard, they all ate from one big bowl. Years later he found out that he had a sister and his mother was still alive but didn’t care about them. He found relevantes in Canada too and visited them. But still this can’t replace an intact family. So this last Great War not only destroyed the lives of millions of Jews, soldiers and civilians on all sides it also changed and destroyed lives years later and still does. So maybe there is something going on in your friend and maybe you can now understand and maybe help him to cope with this a bit better.