One day, while walking in the Schoenbuch Forest, I came upon a grave, a monument to a man killed just a few days before the end of WW2. The man’s name was Victor Wagner and he was 19 years old when he died. I found myself often returning to this spot in the forest and over time I came to know something about the man buried there. My novel is, to a large extent, based on events surrounding the death of Victor Wagner in the forest in April 1945 and how his death impacts on the present. But there is much more to the story than that. During my 3-year stay in Herrenberg, Germany, I met many people who had lost relatives during the war and who still know nothing about their fate or where they fell. For over 70 years these memories of people have been hidden away like the soldier’s grave – a monument to the losers, the defeated and the guilty. Victor Wagner’s grave has come to symbolise, for many local people, the resting place of their loved ones. The photograph below shows the author beside the grave in 2001.
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