Author Bio:
A native Californian and graduate of Occidental College, Thomas Bauer has been an educator, actor, and director before devoting himself full time to writing. He has written novels, short stories, poetry, and plays. His editorials frequently appear in the Los Angeles Times and San Luis Obispo Tribune. Recent publications available on Amazon are Oracle of the Reeds, a historical novel of Ancient Egypt, which was highly praised for its authenticity and dramatic narrative; The Seventh Circle, a novel of the forgotten victims of the Holocaust, which has been called brilliant, cinematic, powerful, a must read; most recently Sunday's at Simone's, a satirical look at Los Angeles aristocracy as well as a story of a young musician finding his niche in the world. Bauer lives in Morro Bay on the Central Coast of California with his wife, Joyce, and his dachshund, Strudel.
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Editorial Review:
In his masterpiece 'The Inferno' the fourteenth Century poet Dante is taken on a guided tour of Hell. His guide is the classical poet Virgil who leads him through the successive circles, each with its own form and variation of agony and torment. At last, in Canto VII they come to the Seventh Circle. This is composed of three rings, the outer ring is filled with blood and fire and is reserved for murderers and thugs. The middle ring is set aside for suicides and the inner ring is for those beings guilty of crimes against nature, God and art. It is a great plain of burning sand scorched by great flakes of fire falling down slowly. A burning river crosses through it: ''Blasphemy, sodomy and usury are all unnatural and sterile actions: thus the unbearing desert is the eternity of these sinners; and thus the rain which in nature should be fertile and cool descends as fire.'' It is to this Seventh Circle of Hell that the protagonist of the book 'The Seventh Circle' by Thomas Bauer is sent.
Karl Weber is a student of Literature at Munich University in pre war Germany. He is the only child of a prosperous merchant and shop owner in the somewhat sleepy and provincial town of Fussen in Bavaria. The constant backdrop is the emerging and creeping control of the Nazi party and the strengthening of its hold on all aspects of German life and society, and Fussen is no exception. Young Karl meets an old associate from his schooldays when he returns home on vacation from University. This is Hermann Schrecht, the rich and privileged son of the owner of the town's largest Hotel and the Mayor and a prominent member of the local Nazi party, a man growing in power and influence. The two young men form a friendship which evolves and blooms into a tempestuous love affair that after a time begins to become obvious to others. Karl's mother, Else, is understandably very concerned as, more ominously and threateningly, is Otto Schrecht, the future head of the local Gestapo and father of Hermann.. Unexpectedly, Karl receives a letter ordering him to attend a summons to meet a Doctor Ernst of the Gestapo. Unsuspecting, Karl attends and is promptly arrested for violation of Paragraph 175; a crime punishable with imprisonment under the German Legal System for a minimum of six months. And so, Karl's descent into the Seventh Circle of Hell begins.
The infamous Paragraph 175, the declaration of the illegality of sexual acts between males, was formally enshrined in law in 1871 and was not in fact repealed until 1994. there had long been in Germany a tradition of laws forbidding homosexuality and in the Nazi period this, predictably enough, intensified.. By 1937, 8.000 individuals were being prosecuted and imprisoned annually; a tenfold increase on previous years. At the end of their sentence these men were not released, but were sent instead for further ''Umerziehung'' [re-education'] in Concentration Camps where the majority of them died. The percentage of deaths of these 'pink triangle' men [named and isolated by the emblem they were forced to wear] was over 60%.
Karl Weber [the character is based on a true story] is sentenced to an initial six month term of imprisonment. He is forbidden all visitors and is convinced he has been deserted by his own family. At the end of his six month sentence he is sent for ''re-education'' to the Sachanhausen Concentration Camp and segregated into a group of convicted homosexuals. He is sent first to work in a Brick works, the first of many difficult and dangerous periods of heavy and intense labour. He is constantly singled out and abused by the brutal men guarding him and witnesses death and unspeakable cruelty on a daily basis:
''The only thing he saw was the ugliness of the barbed wire, the unremarkable buildings, the dark smoke which constantly poured from the chimneys of the crematorium, the devils who pranced around in their dark uniforms as though they were the Knights of the Round Table, superior beings, Saviours of the Aryan race, valiant men........The SS were the Roman Centurions, Caesar's guests, at a great Arena, being treated to a Comedy. The guards were gladiators assigned to beat and maim and kill a collection of pitiful buffoons. The more intense the clown's protestations the louder the wails and shrieks, the more hilarious the laughter from the audience. It was comedy at its most perverse....''
The depressing litany of death, privation and suffering continues in this vein throughout all the war years and until Karl's eventual liberation by the American forces in the Spring of 1945. Karl is 'protected' by a succession of 'Capos' or overseers, themselves prisoners enjoying special privileges. In return for their protection,and occasional gifts and favours, from dangerous work assignments and the attention of especially brutal guards, he must trade sexual favours. Karl does what he can to alleviate the suffering of his fellow prisoners. He does what he can, but he has become irremediably weary and cynical in the extreme. He has also lost his faith and the strong Catholic principles of his lost youth; as he confides to an enfeebled and dying Priest, Father Peter from Bonn.
''Cheating, fornication, betrayal, theft, amorality and ruthlessness are the tools of our survival. The God of my youth has abandoned me and now I choose to abandon him. You would be wise, Father, to grasp your reality...... the beasts have beaten all the goodness out of us. We are no longer human. How can we believe in anything but that this Hell will only grow worse?''
This is the cry of a man utterly hollowed out, a man without hope and weakened by both emotional and physical suffering. Karl Weber, student of Literature from the University of Munich, once a fun loving young man with a loving family and a bright future, is a corrupted physical and emotional wreck. He is a spectre and a shadow of his former self. He may survive and taste freedom once more, but he will never recover. The realisation of this is, perhaps, the true strength of this book. The war continues, Germany's fortunes are reversed and the nation is on the back foot and staring defeat in the face. Air raids become continuous and there are regular massacres of Russian prisoners and vile medical experiments carried out on the victims. Karl, now from a relatively privileged position as a desk clerk and himself now a 'Capo' witnesses all and consigns it to his memory. In Church, his heartbroken mother lights a candle for him daily. The town of his childhood, is much changed when Karl, liberated by the Americans, finally returns to it. Otto Schenk, the Gestapo boss, has been lynched by a mob and his son Hermann, Karl's former lover, has been forced to mask his sexuality by taking a wife. He is now respectable and has a son. Naturally enough, Karl finds it impossible to settle down or even begin to explain to his loving and despairing parents all that he has seen and experienced or how this has changed him forever. In vain, he tries to explain to them:
''You would [he tells his father] have cringed at the bestiality of our oppressors. We were no better than beasts wallowing in our own excrement. We had an instinct for survival, but with each abuse our instincts waned and we became like a band of gazelles, and the lions picked off our weak one by one. At night, we crawled into our bunks and prayed for death or deliverance. Since deliverance was a fantasy, we mostly prayed that death would come swiftly....... We walked around a circle of hate, [he futilely attempts to explain to his father] and the more those in control watched us, the dizzier with bloodlust they became. With each circuit, there were more corpses for us to step over.''
In his desperation, Franz Weber thinks that perhaps a reunion with his old friend Hermann might raise the spirits of his sorrowing and grieving son. It is, unfortunately, this well meant gesture that will finally tip Karl Weber into madness and a return to that pit, that seventh circle of Hell, from which he has only recently escaped. ''The Seventh Circle'' by Thomas Bauer is a powerful novel and testimony to the suffering of all the thousands of victims of 'Paragraph 175'.
*****
“The Seventh Circle” by Thomas Bauer receives 4.5 stars from The Historical Fiction Company
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