Copyright (c) 1998 - Ingrid
A. Rimland
February 28, 1998
Good Morning from the Zundelsite:
For several reasons, it has not been possible to do the second part
of the "Garaudy Sentence" ZGram - and, therefore, you are treated
to an unabashed promo on "Lebensraum!" today. The Garaudy analysis
will follow tomorrow.
Let me just preface the press release below, which went to several ethnic
markets, by telling you that my long-announced trilogy finally went to the
printers a few days ago. The covers look gorgeous; the copy edits have
been done; and great things will be in the making.
Much more about that later. Here is the press release I shipped two days
ago:
February 26, 1998
This is to alert you to a major trilogy titled "Lebensraum" -
currently in the last stages of professional production. Three quality
paperbacks will be available April 20, 1998 in a first, limited edition.
Text is in English, although the story deals with the destinies of members
of a family of German-Americans and German-Russians spanning seven generations
and 200 years on two continents.
"Lebensraum" is written by award-winning ethnic novelist Ingrid
A. Rimland, previously published by Bantam Books, Concordia Publishing House,
Westminster Press and Arena Press.
" Lebensraum! " - Synopsis
It is estimated that one in four Americans can trace his ancestry to Germany,
and one in three to either Germany or Russia. These immigrants helped bring
Western/Christian Civilization to the North-American Continent.
Where did they come from? What were their values? What did they pack as
they came swaying in their prairie schooners into the barren heart of the
Midwest?
Will the descendants of these agrarian, pioneering people disappear - as
the chivalrous South disappeared, so poignantly depicted in "Gone with
the Wind"?
Why, after centuries of building the most splendid country on this earth
through diligence, thrift, discipline, hard work, tenacity, and stubborn
self-assertion do these good folks now find themselves losing their farms,
their livelihood, their self-respect, their hopes and aspirations? And,
worse yet, will they lose their children to a materialistic, corrupt world
that is not of their making?
"Lebensraum!", the Rimland trilogy, is definitely not "politically
correct"!
"Lebensraum! A Passion for Land and Peace" - Book I
This multi-generational novel starts in a magnificent estate called "Apanlee"
on the black soil of the Ukraine. Pioneering is difficult but highly rewarding.
Time passes. Generations come and go. The Russian Czars, originally favorably
inclined toward the ethnically cohesive settlements, begin to change their
policies. Eventually, the German farmers realize they need to find their
"Wanderstab", their "walking cane", again and seek new
soil across the ocean for coming generations.
A widow, Lizzy, comes to a place near Wichita. She and her son, Jan, bring
the durable hard winter wheat, once traded by their forebears from the Tartars
who roamed the steppes of Russia, to Kansas. They found a town called Mennotown.
Jan, looking for a bride, spurns Little Melly, plain and traditional, and
chooses the exuberant and flighty Josephine, called "Josie."
Through Josie's eyes we see a conservative community that starts flirting
with liberal thought, and we learn how old-fashioned values are being slowly
and almost imperceptibly eroded by forces little-understood, although at
first the creed instinctively senses the harmful influences that come with
"alien" thought.
"Back home" at Apanlee, tradition is writ large. Russia, still
ruled by the imperial Romanovs, becomes a hotbed for revolutionary Marxist
thought, then action.
The German settlers, moored in religious tradition and believing themselves
favored by both God and Czars, refuse to see the writing on the wall. An
illegitimate offspring of the family, called Dominik, becomes a Marxist
revolutionary as anarchy sweeps Russia. At that point, Apanlee seems doomed.
"Lebensraum! The Theft of Land and Peace" - Book II
This volume deals with WWI and its aftermath, as it plays on two continents.
While the Kansas-based Germans settlers are under permanent susipicion
for their "Germanness" and, thus, live under painful ethnic siege,
in Russia the Bolshevik Revolution brings genocidal decimation to their
German brethren.
At Apanlee, a few members survive the bolshevik/anarchist slaughter, only
to find themselves in the depth of a killer famine that slowly converts
into the Stalinist purges to force these independent, diligent farmers off
their soil and into the collectives.
Through the vivid experiences of the Kansas branch of the family, the reader
experiences the devastating Depression of the 1930s and the systematic destruction
of the middle class in the wake of Roosevelt's New Deal.
Next come the dust storms of the thirties. No rain. No grain. No harvesting.
Things go from bad to worse in Mennotown after Lizzy's death from dust
pneumonia. Jan tries to save his farm. Labor unrest and union-instigated
arson destroys his property and drive a good man slowly to despair, murder
and suicide.
This volume ends with a dramatic farm auction, during which Jan's neighbors,
prairie farmers all, send the city slicker "banksters" packing
and rescue property and pride for Rarey, Jan's last son.
"Lebensraum! The Dream of Land and Peace" - Book III
In the depths of the Stalinist purges that empty out the German villages
in the Ukraine for the gulags of Siberia, Dominik has taken over Apanlee
as commissar in charge of Apanlee, converting it into a Soviet kolkhoz.
He soon finds out he has no farming knowledge; he needs the vilified and
hated Germans and their farming skills so as to unlock the deep secrets
of nature.
Meanwhile, whole German villages are being sent into the ice and snow of
Siberia to perish in the gulags. Two villages manage to flee in a daring
escape; the rest are trapped in Stalinist Russia.
Hitler comes to power in Germany, and he is seen by the desperate remants
of Apanlee as their liberator and protector from Communist terror. Soon,
Hitler's operation "Barbarossa" is in full swing, and in the fall
of 1941, the German Wehrmacht reaches Apanlee and liberates the last, remaining
Germans. Great jubilation! When Germany, soon afterwards, begins to lose
the war, the remnants of the Apanlee clan decide to retreat with the Wehrmacht
so as not to fall victims to Bolshevik revenge.
The folks in Mennotown have no idea about the real dimensions of political
control and of their brethren's annihilation, since they depend on a manipulated
media. They naively believe what the papers and radio broadcasts tell them.
They send their sons to war to fight on Stalin's side.
The novel ends with the defeat of Hitler Germany and with a girl, barely
a teenager, Erika, experiencing the Red Army take-over as Stalin's hordes
rape, rob and murder their way into Berlin. Much of Book III is seen through
Erika's idealistic and innocent young eyes.
This trilogy ends with a love letter that Jan's American grandson, Rarey,
a US fighter pilot bombing Europe, writes to his young wife, Betty Lou,
where he explains to her America's "good war" - never having realized
it was, in fact, a fratricidal war where brother killed brother for alien
interests.
The reader is left with the questions: Did that war benefit America? What
was it really all about? Who gained? Who lost? Where lies the truth?
How many lies have we been told? Why? And by whom?
"Lebensraum!" suggests that World War III that many now expect
to come may have its roots in World War II, as World War II grew out of
World War I.
On whose side will European-Americans stand if and when such a conflict
breaks out? How much ethnic strength and will to survive is still left
in America, the world's very last Bastion of Freedom?
=====
About the Author
Ingrid Rimland was a child during World War II, born to German-descent Mennonite
wheat farmers in the Ukraine who had been persecuted in the Soviet Union
for their pacifist beliefs. The end of World War II saw her and her family,
along with hundreds of thousands of others, undertake a 1000 mile trek back
to the homeland of their forefathers, now a bombed, war-devastated wasteland.
From there, still a youngster, she was taken with her family and friends
to the rain forests of Paraguay to pioneer the jungle and live, as her grandmother
put it, ". . . far from the wicked world."
It was a simple, barefoot life. Ingrid married there and started a family,
only to discover shortly thereafter that life had handed her a struggle
that would make all her childhood hardships pale by comparison. For while
Ingrid was endowed with all the riches of a strong and questing mind, her
first son's mind, due to an unfortunate accident in a primitive jungle hospital,
was "absent"-- or so all the "specialists" said.
She was young, poor and in pain but determined to make her child well.
She came to Canada in 1960 and to the United States in 1967. With no more
than three years' worth of grammar school, she talked her way into a university
because she knew: "That is where I belong." At the age of 31,
she learned the rudiments of English.
Four years later she graduated from Wichita State University--magna cum
laude and tenth place in a class of 400. Two additional years gave her a
master's degree, followed by a doctorate en Education in 1979.
Eight years after she wrote her first coherent sentence in English, she
had an award-winning novel, ("The Wanderers", Concordia Publishing
House, 1977, and Bantam Books, 1978) winning the prestigious California
Literature Medal Award as the best fiction writer in that state for 1977.
Send for your "Lebensraum" prepublication order blanks by writing
to:
Ingrid Rimland
6965 El Camino Real, # 105-588
La Costa, CA 92009
USA
Fax: 760-929-2268
Comments? E-Mail: irimland@cts.com
Back to Table of Contents of the Feb. 1998 ZGrams