Life. Sebald was born in Wertach, Bavaria, second of the three children of Rosa and Georg Sebald, and his parents' only son.From 1948 to 1963, he lived in Sonthofen. His father joined the Reichswehr in 1929 and remained in the Wehrmacht under the Nazis.His father remained a detached figure, a prisoner of war until 1947: his maternal grandfather, the small-town police …

The Judgement of Solomon is a story from the Hebrew Bible in which Solomon ruled between two women both claiming to be the mother of a child. Solomon revealed their true feelings and relationship to the child by suggesting the baby be cut in two, each woman to receive half. With this strategy, he was able to discern the non-mother as the woman who entirely approved of …