Women, War and the Third Reich

When I arrived in Germany in 1973 I had no idea I would spend the next couple of years collecting oral histories but that is what happened. I suffered from culture shock in Germany and my response was to collect oral histories of the women I was living amongst. I asked them about their wartime and postwar experiences. 

It was hard work emotionally for both them and for me as they had often been traumatised by their experiences and had buried them as a way of coping.  My questions brought it all back.  Many women said they had not even told their families about what had happened to them and we wept together as they recounted their stories. 

It turned out to be the best medicine I could have wished for and over the course of those two years I learned to love my adopted home. Several of the women offered to help me publish the stories and I did find a publisher but unfortunately it folded before the book was out and by that time I had enrolled in a science course didn't have time to pursue it further.

The box of interviews (and the research I did in the Wiesbaden public library to help me understand the period the women were talking about) were put in a big box and have traveled with me ever since. I felt, and still feel, indebted to these women and wanted to make sure their voices were heard. I also wanted to publish them to help show how a country can descend into fascism, but we have seen other examples since then and the process probably no longer needs explaining.

So here they are, the voices from times past. Fascinating reading, even now, or perhaps particularly now as the women of this generation are mostly no longer living.  I didn't know whether to publish as eBook as well as paperback. Does anyone read such books on a screen? (Dear reader, if you would read it online, please let me know!) 

 

Available from Amazon and other outlets. Here are the Amazon links:

USA: https://www.amazon.com/dp/098731226X

UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/098731226X

AU:  https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/098731226X

 DE: https://www.amazon.de/dp/098731226X

 

Erudite women in music and science

Elisabeth Leonskaja (photo by Julia Wesely)

I saw Elisabeth Leonskaja play Mozart with the ACO last week and have been searching for words to describe the experience. Now I discover Murray Black has found the perfect words.  Black wrote in The Australian that although Leonskaja's reputation as a doyenne of the Russian old school makes her sound quite intimidating her 'playing ­actually radiated appealing ­geniality in equal measure with formidable dignity and gravitas.' I couldn't agree more. One felt taken by the hand, wrapped in a warm blanket while at the same time being aware that a metronome couldn't have kept better time than her remarkable hands.

Leonskaja is softly spoken but very musically erudite. Listen to her radio interview  (until 25 Sept) to hear her speak.

Alison Mercer

She reminds me of another very erudite but softly spoken person who was interviewed on Southern TV in NZ. My sister Alison Mercer works with bees and here she explains about the Verroa mite that is plaguing the bee populations of the world.

In a so-called post-fact world it is refreshing to hear from people who really know what they are talking about without being immersed in the showy blather of the PR industry.

Women and war

In the 1970/80s I lived in Germany and suffered culture shock. I learned the language quickly but a culture is much more than its language and learning to understand Germany was a challenge. It was the old world and I had grown up in the new world; it was Germany and I had grown up in an anti-German environment (my parents were both nineteen when WW2 broke out).

As an antidote and to gain understanding I decided to interview women about their war time experiences. My project grew and grew, and I grew with it. All in all I interviewed twenty two German and nine English women. I had to take a break in the middle as I was so overwhelmed by what I was hearing. I summarised the German transcripts in English and researched the period in the library in Wiesbaden. But then I started studying (not history) and put this project aside for some future date.

Now the future has caught up with me. It was a difficult project and perhaps that is why I put it off so long but I kept the box of tapes, transcripts and research and the box survived my many changes of abode.

When I looked at the transcripts again, I realised  that they are much more interesting than my original summaries. I am now re-translating the interviews from the original transcripts and digitising the tapes that survived the intervening years.

I am hoping to find a print outlet to take up this fascinating material, but in the meantime I have my head down and am busy in the world of 1940s Europe. It is non-visual,  thus the dearth of blog posts.

Women and War

Tapes, files, stories

I have been working hard on a book. The last book I wrote was a light-hearted look at love and infused with music.

This one is about war, structured around a series of interviews with German and English women that I recorded in the late 1970s. I wrote the work up at the time but then I got into university in Germany and this project landed in the bottom drawer.

I thought brushing it up would fairly quick, but I was wrong.

 First I reviewed the historical background (women's place in society at the time) that I wrote based on material I collected in the library in Wiesbaden just after I recorded the interviews. I was a bit doubtful about this part of the book because my German was just-learned and I was unsure about the credentials of the people who wrote the books I was quoting. I discover however that I kept excellent notes and collected enough material to enable me to back-check everything. The Internet now makes it easy to check credentials and my doubts about the material have been allayed.  The review is interesting and I have now included more of the material I collected at the time.

When I looked at the interviews themselves I discovered that instead of  translating the interviews verbatim I had summarised them. I have only re-translated one of the 30 interviews so far but it is so much more interesting than my earlier translation. I am not sure why I didn't translate verbatim before but perhaps because my own German was not so good at the time and I wanted to make a story out of the whole thing. Or perhaps I just needed to be older!

So three months into the project I am only part the way through. It is going to take much longer than I expected to revise, but it is proving fascinating and the stories themselves are really readable, or at least the one I have just translated is ... I can see the interviewee there before me in my mind's eye  and it is nearly 40 years since I saw her!

Mädels and music

I am not very good at throwing things away as I always think there must be another use for them. Same for drawings. Perhaps I should have discarded these pre-2006 life drawings but I kept them and  today made a new composition. It reminds me of the painting of the girl with violin by the Italian Orazio Gentileschi.

Mädels and music

Young Woman Playing a Violin by
Orazio Gentileschi (1563–1639)