The Landauers flee to Switzerland

The Landauers’ flight to Switzerland is both an escape from an encroaching occupation and a wrenching break with home. On a Friday the seventeenth, Viktor and Liesel leave in a convoy with their children, Katalin, Marika, Oskar, and Hana; after soldiers block their way to the station, the family reaches the airfield and boards a Swissair flight to Zurich. They get out, but Hana and Oskar remain behind, and as the aircraft rises Liesel sees the Glass Room recede beneath her—the house that gives this departure its enduring cost.

Departure under occupation

The convoy sets off from the house down Blackfield Road, with Viktor and Liesel in the front car and Katalin, Marika, and the luggage in the second. Oskar and Hana follow behind. The new rule requiring traffic to keep to the right is one small sign that familiar life has already been displaced by new authority. The roads are eerily empty as the cars pass the children’s hospital and turn toward the Ringstrasse. At the Grand Hotel, military vehicles block access to the railway station, and soldiers stop the convoy.

At first, the obstruction is simply an order without an explanation. A German Feldgendarmerie soldier asks for the travellers’ papers while Viktor explains that they are heading for the airport and have a plane to catch. The soldier says the road is blocked for an important convoy and that they must wait. The family’s urgency is sharpened by the helplessness of the delay: the plane will not wait, while the soldiers, the roadblock, and the unknown convoy seem capable of holding them in place indefinitely. Viktor produces his briefcase and hands over the documents, also explaining that the governess and her daughter are travelling in the car behind. Their passage depends on papers being examined by armed officials.

The airfield and the cancelled flight

The airfield offers no simple release. Under a windy March sky, grey military vehicles bearing iron crosses stand around the perimeter, and armed soldiers patrol the entrance. The guards let the cars through only reluctantly, after Viktor shows the tickets, explains the problem, and they consult among themselves. Inside the concrete airport building, crowds press around airline desks as ordinary Czech policemen try to maintain order. German soldiers are present, and announcements are made in German and Czech, with German first.

The family’s Air France flight from Paris is cancelled. Through the windows, the travellers can see their aircraft on the apron, but its presence does not mean they can leave. Near it, the grey military planes bear the Hakenkreuz on their tails. The narrative sets the German emblem against the Swiss cross on the aircraft associated with their escape, making the two signs of power and refuge visible in the same field of view. Nobody can tell Liesel whether their plane will take off. She clings to Hana and, while asking whether they may have to stay, privately hopes that they will be turned back to the cars and return to the quiet comfort of the Glass Room.

Passage and separation

Viktor returns with a stern but satisfied expression. A trolley of suitcases is already being pushed toward an aircraft, and he tells Laník he can go. The announcement that the Swissair flight to Zurich will depart in fifteen minutes turns the uncertain delay into a narrow opportunity. Martin celebrates the prospect of flying as Liesel shepherds the children toward the gate; Viktor follows with Katalin and Marika, while Hana and Oskar trail behind with the drawn faces and silence of mourners.

The border guard checks the documents. Katalin and Marika’s Nansen passports are glanced at and returned, but Hana has no passport to show. She tells the guard that they are only friends and the people left behind. At the door, farewells become physical: kisses, embraces, and Hana clinging to Liesel before whispering, Miluji tě, I love you. The family proceeds toward the aircraft, leaving Hana and Oskar on the other side of the threshold. The escape is therefore not a departure made together, but a separation produced in the same moment that the family secures its own passage.

The house recedes

The flight itself is rendered as a passage from the designed stillness of the Glass Room into the aircraft’s hard, noisy functionality. As the engines roar and the cabin shakes, Liesel reaches across the aisle to hold Viktor’s hand. The plane gathers speed, races past the airport buildings, fuel trucks, and military aircraft, and finally lifts from the ground. Below, the Svitava winds through the city; the Landauer factory and clusters of houses slip away beneath the wings.

From above, Liesel recognizes the hospital, the slope of grass and trees, and the long, low house on the hill: the work of Rainer von Abt, with its blank wall of glass. The rising aircraft makes the home briefly visible as a complete composition, then turns that view into a farewell. Liesel weeps at the thought that she may never see it again, understanding that the past has already become something left behind while the future remains uncertain and frightening. Her hope of returning to the Glass Room, held back at the airport, gives way to the image of the house shrinking below.

Exile and dispossession

The family’s departure does not preserve its claim to the home. Later, Viktor receives a letter from Procházka and tells Liesel that they no longer own the house: the government has confiscated it. When he explains the loss to Ottilie, he identifies the house as property of the so-called Protectorate and says the decree was signed in the name of the Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia. Escape and expropriation thus become successive stages of the same rupture: the family leaves under pressure, and a new authority formalizes its removal from the property it has left behind.

The confiscation is subsequently enforced through the language of lawful administration. Hauptsturmführer Stahl presents a requisition order, issued in German and bearing the signature of Karl Hermann Frank, and insists that possession is legal and for the war effort as he tries to persuade Laník to let him into the house. The official paper gives the seizure an administrative form, but it does not make the transfer voluntary. Much later, Martin describes the house as first sequestrated by one illegal government and then by another, disputing the retrospective application of the Beneš decrees to people driven into exile by the Nazi invasion. Across these episodes, papers determine who can cross a border, who is left behind, and who can claim a home; the flight reaches Switzerland, but it does not restore what the family has lost.