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An Evening with David Wessel: Choosing Sides
March 13 @ 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Duck’s Cottage, Coffee , & Books and the Town of Duck are pleased to present a very special evening featuring author David K. Wessel. At this event, Wessel will provide an overview of his research into dilemma of ordinary people in Hitler’s Germany and how everyday citizens dealt with the rise of tyranny in their homeland. He’ll share insights into how historians, novelists and movie makers have, over the years, portrayed them as perpetrators, collaborators, complacent bystanders, victims or resistors. He’ll also offer thoughts on the difference between writing history vs. writing fiction and comment on how he struck a blend of the two in writing his own family’s story.
Choosing Sides tells the story of Wessel’s family and their emigration from Europe to the United States in the interwar period. It is the tale of an ordinary family torn apart by Hitler’s Germany – and the difficult choice each family member must make:
- to endorse the Party and work toward building a glorious Third Reich;
- to stay quiet in the hope that Herr Hitler would soon be gone;
- to join the resistance (at great personal risk); or,
- to leave their beloved Fatherland and family behind.
The story revolves around a young man (Wessel’s father) who grows up on both sides of the Atlantic just before World War II. Having been born in Germany, but moved to America at age four, Karl-Heinz returns seven years later to a changed Deutschland. He meets der Führer personally and becomes active in the Hitler Youth. He idolizes Uncle Ernst, a rising Nazi official. His cousin Peter and his childhood sweetheart Annelies are both Party devotees. But Karl-Heinz also loves the peaceful life he experienced in America. As the world enters its second global conflict, which land will Karl-Heinz choose as his own? Which side will he choose?
David K. Wessel is a retired U.S. diplomat and former Vice President at College of the Albemarle with deep ties to the Town of Duck, where he served on the Town Council (2007-2012) and one-term as Mayor (2020 – 2011). He is also a lifelong student of history and as of 2024, an award-winning author of historical fiction. a published novelist.
Driven by a need to understand his family’s personal history, Wessel has spent over fifty years studying how the Weimar Republic shaped the lives of ‘ordinary Germans’. At university, he majored in history with a focus on Germany between the wars and has continued his interest in the subject ever since. After leaving Foreign Service, he returned to those studies and dove into the specific research so well reflected in his debut novel – Choosing Sides.
