Bubi
This project was created as an entry to the ISTD competition (International Society of Typographic Designers). The book consists of an interview transcription between my late father and his late Austrian mother's cousin, Walter (Bubi), the star of this piece. It also contains historical texts to aid the reader and a middle booklet, which are the first drafts of chapters 1, 2 and 3 of the incomplete novel. This is an untold true story of a man who lead an extraordinary life.
"An Austrian old enough to still remember the feeling of euphoria in the crowds welcoming Hitler back to his home country.
Walter, then just 13 years old, wondered what the excitement was all about as he watched the little man with the funny
moustache on the balcony of a hotel in 1938. He discovered a little about the nature of the Fuehrer not long after just after
his fourteenth birthday. His family told him that Walter was actually Jewish and from that day an enemy of the state.
Later the Nazis sent him to work in France where he fell in love and got involved with the French Resistance. He was captured
by the Gestapo and sent to Buchenwald concentration camp where he suffered the most appalling hardship. But he survived –
and is still alive today to tell his extraordinary story. Strangely, after all he went through, a photograph of a Nazi officer takes pride
of place on his desk. It’s him, Walter Sommer, in a movie role from when he became an actor after the war. These are mere
fragments of a story I plan to turn into a book about my mother’s cousin. Last summer I spent two weeks with him and his wife
Klara in Austria, mesmerized by their story which he tells with unbelievable clarity for a man of 88 years. For me, it was a journey
to find the truth behind a family legend."
This project was created as an entry to the ISTD competition (International Society of Typographic Designers). The book consists of an interview transcription between my late father and his late Austrian mother's cousin, Walter (Bubi), the star of this piece. It also contains historical texts to aid the reader and a middle booklet, which are the first drafts of chapters 1, 2 and 3 of the incomplete novel. This is an untold true story of a man who lead an extraordinary life.
"An Austrian old enough to still remember the feeling of euphoria in the crowds welcoming Hitler back to his home country.
Walter, then just 13 years old, wondered what the excitement was all about as he watched the little man with the funny
moustache on the balcony of a hotel in 1938. He discovered a little about the nature of the Fuehrer not long after just after
his fourteenth birthday. His family told him that Walter was actually Jewish and from that day an enemy of the state.
Later the Nazis sent him to work in France where he fell in love and got involved with the French Resistance. He was captured
by the Gestapo and sent to Buchenwald concentration camp where he suffered the most appalling hardship. But he survived –
and is still alive today to tell his extraordinary story. Strangely, after all he went through, a photograph of a Nazi officer takes pride
of place on his desk. It’s him, Walter Sommer, in a movie role from when he became an actor after the war. These are mere
fragments of a story I plan to turn into a book about my mother’s cousin. Last summer I spent two weeks with him and his wife
Klara in Austria, mesmerized by their story which he tells with unbelievable clarity for a man of 88 years. For me, it was a journey
to find the truth behind a family legend."
