About HEIMAT
Leaving Germany’s dismal post-World War One economy and humiliation of defeat, Matthias Schmidt left for the US in 1929 for a better future with his friend Josef Turner. Plans to return to their Heimat, Neisse, as examples of American success fell apart before they reached the TS Bremen in Bremerhaven when they and two other emigrants, Edo Rabinowitz, and Feliks Bartol, saved an American diplomat from the tracks in Berlin’s Bahnhof. Their heroic act created a friendship that sustained them through broken promises, misconceptions of the American dream, the Depression, Prohibition, assimilation into American culture, and World War Two.
Letters from his mother, sisters, and other relatives in his Heimat, Neisse, urged Matthias to return to Germany as Nazi policies improved Germany’s economy and elevated its national pride. But the war severed contact with his family for five years and sent him and his friends on separate paths. To a shipyard, building ships to carry the means of destruction to Germany and their Heimat. Into the US Army to fight in the Pacific and later to join resistance fighters in Poland. Into Germany’s Wehrmacht to invade France and Russia and fight Americans in the Battle of the Bulge. And the Nuremberg trials to bring Nazi war criminals to justice.
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Author Bio:
Paul Marzell was born and raised in Philadelphia and currently resides in western Pennsylvania with his wife, Janet and Golden Retriever, Nala. He is a United States Air Force veteran and served in West Germany in the early sixties. He earned BSBA and MBA degrees in operations management and financial analysis from Temple University in Philadelphia and Golden Gate University in San Francisco. Heimat is his first novel. He worked in the airline industry for thirty years with Trans World Airlines and USAirways in nonmanagement and management positions.