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Postwar Germany

~ 1945-1949

Postwar Germany

Category Archives: Books

1946 and how it changed the world

15 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by Anika in Books

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1946, anikascott, germany, postwar, sebestyen

1946I don’t know how I missed this one. Last year the journalist and historian Victor Sebestyen gave us his take on the watershed year 1946 in his nonfiction book 1946: The Making of the Modern World. I just saw the hardcover at my local German bookstore, but I haven’t read it yet. There’s a lot of postwar stuff out there right now, and this one appears to zero in on that first postwar year as the moment the political landscape shifted all over the world, for better (fall of colonial empires) or worse (the Cold War).

If anyone has checked it out already, let me know what you thought!

The German Myth Nobody Wants Debunked

23 Monday Feb 2015

Posted by Anika in Books, postwar, Women

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germany, myth, postwar, Treber, trummerfrau, women

There’s a fascinating argument going on in Germany right now. It digs at one of modern Germany’s founding myths.

In one corner is the historian Leonie Treber of the University of Duisburg-Essen, so my neck of the woods. Her dissertation just appeared as a book called The Myth of the Rubble Women (Mythos Trümmerfrauen).

In the other corner is, well, most people who actually lived in the immediate postwar years and care to comment in the media about Treber’s book.

As I wrote in a post last year on postwar Germany’s iconic women, the Trümmerfrau Trümmerfrauen bei der Arbeitis the heroine of the country’s rise from the ruins. Treber argues this is a legend that evolved in the Sixties and Seventies in West Germany (earlier in East Germany).

She analyzed government documents related to reconstruction in 11 German cities and concluded the women generally didn’t stack bricks or push rubble on carts. Most of the work was done by removal and construction companies. In the immediate postwar years, she says, there was no term “Trümmerfrau,” and only in Berlin and cities in the Soviet Zone did women do significant amounts of work in the ruins.

When I first heard about this, I thought, “Uh-oh.” Treber is tarnishing one of the beloved images of post-Nazi Germany.

Modern West Germany needed to reinvent its history, create its own founding myths. Every country does it. The “rise from the ashes” story needed its heroes at a time when there were very few to go around. Postwar Germany in the late Forties and into the Fifties was in many areas still clearly in the hands of ex-Nazis. The men wouldn’t be the image of the new Germany. The women who got on with it while the men were imprisoned, broken or dead — they kept society together.

And that’s where myth and memory clash with data. My local paper the NRZ published excerpts of some of the mostly infuriated letters-to-the-editor that arrived after the paper reported on Treber’s book.”The suffering of these women isn’t even appreciated,” one said. Another didn’t hold back: “What is this silly goose thinking when she defames the proven achievements of the Trümmerfrauen?”

Some letters insisted they used the term Trümmerfrau as early as the Fifties here in western Germany. They pointed out that not only did their mothers carry bricks, so did the children (and some men, of course). It wasn’t a matter of rebuilding whole city blocks, it was about the family home, the shop, the school. People rebuilt their own neighborhoods brick by brick. The private stories have poured in, and if you know German, you can read some on the WAZ (NRZ) newspaper group site here.

Treber’s book has gotten some attention for its controversy, and it’s fun to watch. My opinion? A good story is sometimes “truer” than the facts. It isn’t important to measure the achievements of these women in cubic meters of rubble. Postwar German women were the first to pick up the pieces — because they had to. For that, they deserve a place in Germany’s founding story.

Photo:Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-Z1218-316 / Kolbe / CC-BY-SA [CC BY-SA 3.0 de (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-Z1218-316%2C_Tr%C3%BCmmerfrauen_bei_der_Arbeit.jpg

Grand Central: postwar shorts

21 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by Anika in Books, postwar

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grand central, postwar, short, stories

I’m back from a summer in the USA. It was great. One of the things I did was scour the bookstores at airports and malls for promising new stuff. I found a book that might interest some of you. grandcentral

Grand Central is a short story collection set in 1945. Grand Central Station in NY is the heart or starting point of each tale, as I understand it. I haven’t read it yet, mainly because I’m not so interested in “stories of postwar love and reunion.” Makes it all sound a bit romance-y, which is not my genre.

But it might be yours, and there might be a lot more to these stories if you care to give them a try.

Good news

01 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by Anika in Books, postwar

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book, germany, literary, london, novel, postwar

I’m happy to announce a prominent literary agency in London is representing me and my debut novel, a thriller set in postwar Germany. That novel is the reason this blog exists. So much research that can’t possibly fit in the story has landed here.

It’s tough to get noticed by a literary agent these days, and I’m thrilled to have found one who believes so strongly in the story I want to tell. The road to a traditional publisher is slow and bumpy, and there are no guarantees. But I hope my story of postwar Germany — with all its twists, turns, hopes, anguish and moral questions — finds a good publisher. And lots and lots of readers!

For now, I’m still putting the finishing touches on the manuscript. And my follow-up novel, whatever it may be (haven’t decided yet!), will probably be set partly or wholly in postwar Berlin.

I’ll keep you posted, and thanks for reading.

New books page

31 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by Anika in Books

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books, reading, research, sources

image_cover_mediumAs promised, I finally started a Books page dedicated to deeper reading into the postwar era. The list has nonfiction and fiction books in English and German. It doesn’t scratch the surface of the hundreds of books written in and about postwar Germany, but maybe readers will find a gem or two they didn’t know about.

And if you know a gem or two I haven’t included, please let me know and I’ll add it.

Enjoy!

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