Author(s): Evi Kurz

General

'No interviews about my private life' has always been Henry Kissinger's response to curious journalists. But journalist Evi Kurz from Furth, from the Kissingers' home town in southern Germany, proposed a family portrait and eventually managed to win the trust of both brothers. This is the story of two Americans of German-Jewish descent: one of them a key figure in Cold War diplomacy and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, the other a top businessman - two lives which are exemplars of the American dream. When Louis and Paula Kissinger's sons were born - Henry in 1923 and Walter in 1924 - the Kissingers were part of a flourishing Jewish middle class in Furth, a large market town in northern Bavaria. But then Hitler came to power. Evi Kurz describes the gradual but remorseless destruction of Furth's Jewish community in the 1930s; the Kissinger family's emotional farewell to Germany in 1938 and their escape to New York; the family's war years in America; and the hugely successful careers in postwar America of both brothers, who nevertheless remembered and cherished their German home and roots.