Lehmann offers a historical novel based on the true story of young, Christian anti-Nazi activist Sophie Scholl.
As the German teenager grows into a young adult, her anti-Nazism swells, as does her romantic relationship with Fritz Hartnagel, a reluctant participant in the German army. She’s also an eyewitness to Nazi violence: “The police took fifty Jews out of their homes and ordered them into the empty fountain in front of the synagogue. They set it on fire. The police beat them.” After Nazi officials force her to go to a propaganda camp, she’s allowed to attend a university, where she and her brother help form the White Rose student resistance group and clandestinely distribute anti-Nazi flyers. During these years, Sophie and Fritz explore love, politics, spirituality, and morality through letters and brief visits while Fritz is on leave. His descriptions of the Russian front, camps, and ghettos strengthen Sophie’s anti-Nazi resolve and her understanding of moral complexities. Her Christianity is also a constant; even after she’s arrested and about to be executed on treason charges, “the pastor and Sophie read the psalm’s verses slowly and deliberately. When they finished, they looked at one another with a peace that surpassed all understanding.” Lehmann uses well-researched details and imagery and a variety of narrative voices to create vivid portraits in this novel. Readers witness the lives of both civilians and soldiers that opposed the Nazi regime: “[The soldiers] were confused and everything was uncertain….The cold incessant rain came in sheets now. Followed by black flies, gnawing on their skin.” The story of a young couple in love during wartime also unfolds gracefully: “[Sophie] wanted to take every detail of those hours and put them away in a box which she could always open. A place where the memories of the trees and flowers, the gardener, the birds, wouldn’t fade.”
A poignant story that’s full of historical insight.
Click below for a letter of endorsement from the Director of The White Rose Institute at the University of Munich. Located in the foyer where Sophie and her brother, Hans Scholl, were caught distributing anti-Hitler leaflets, this organization is dedicated to preserving the memory of the White Rose resistance efforts and promoting personal freedoms. Dr. Kronawitter confirms Alexandra Lehmann's extensive research efforts, including eyewitness interviews, and commends the narrative as being "as close to the truth as possible."
"Alexandra Lehmann is imaginative, eloquent, and has a strong, constructive sensibility. Her long-term project, about German-Christian resistance to Hitler, embodied in the figure of the political activist Sophie Scholl, is a model of how the literary and historical visions of experience can be properly blended. This book adds to our collective wisdom and understanding." - Vijay Seshadri, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, 2015
With You There is Light, a historical novel by Alexandra Lehmann of Ridgefield, is currently available as an e-book at amazon.com and will be available in paperback during her reading at the authors showcase at the Ridgefield Library on Oct. 1.
The was inspired by the lives of anti-Nazi political activist, Sophie Scholl, and her boyfriend, German army officer Fritz Hartnagel, and is based on translated letters from Hartnagel, who served on the Eastern and Western fronts during World War II.
“The motivation for researching and writing this story began with the conviction that one voice can make a difference,” Lehmann said.
“Sophie and Fritz’s story shows how complicated life is for those growing up under totalitarianism — also a form of terrorism. Their victorious battle to resist a regime — through civil disobedience — is a reminder that everything is possible with those who choose freedom,” she said.
Lehmann will also lecture on German resistance history at Fairfield University’s Judaic Studies department on Oct. 25.
Fluent in German, and with a Fulbright Scholarship out of Sarah Lawrence College’s M.F.A., Alexandra did her post graduate archival research in Munich for “With You There Is Light.” She later won a fellowship to the Wesleyan Writers’ Conference and has guest lectured on German Resistance history at St. Paul’s German Church in New York City, Mt. Holyoke College, MA and Western Connecticut State University. She works as a business writer and has lived in Ridgefield, Connecticut, for close to ten years. Her company produces an annual popular film and discussion series that combines moderators, politics and cinema at the Ridgefield Library.
