Andreas Wagner is a polymath
Take your pick:
Historian/University lecturer/Vintner/Author of academic works/Author of crime and mystery novels/ Family historian
It was in the latter role that he fronted up at the Scientific Public Library** in Mainz to read to a full house from his new book “Zwischen Reben und Rüben”(Between vines and sugar beets) – A story of grapes, wine and five generations. (The family traces it roots back 450 years in Essenheim, the next village but one over from us)
Not only read, but to enliven the work with anecdotes and analyses – without notes – of the development of wine growing and making, the class system in the village and the accumulation and concentration of wealth in “The Families” of the village to avoid migrating to a lower strata, (including the critical role of livestock dealer Hermann Stern* in identifying “suitable” partners – as in: those with heaps of hectares), murder and mayhem in the village, the historical background to animosities still held over generations to the present day, and the recent dramatic structural changes in farming.
I sat next to HeiJo, my 88 year old retired vintner friend (whose head was nodding in agreement so vigorously through all this that I feared it would detach from his neck and roll around on the floor…) and in the first interval (wine was served, good-oh..) he said “Being a New Zealander, you won’t know about all this”
“Mate, you’ve been telling me about this stuff since we first met..”
So I knew a bit, but not at the level of granularity that Andreas Wagner presented with such ease.
He’s eloquent, witty, self-deprecating , profoundly knowledgable and has such a powerful and melodic speaking voice that I could have listened to him for hours…
Then again, there’s this..
* Hermann Stern was Jewish (as were many livestock dealers as a result of constraints of their choice of profession, dating back centuries) – deported and murdered. There’s a Stolperstein in front of their last residence, Hauptstrasse 28. They were neighbours.
**Scientific Public Library. Not my first time there. During my research into Sherry Lansing‘s Mainz family history for Stephen Galloway’s biography “Leading Lady“, he asked me to find out which movies would have been playing in Mainz in 1938 before her mother’s escape to America shortly before Kristalnacht (“Pigskin Parade” and “Born to Dance”, thanks to the microfiche archive and the active help of the librarian staff)
Mainz Daily Photo 