Frauen

Auteur

Alison Owings is a freelance journalist who has contributed regularly major television network news broadcasts. She is author of Indian Voices: Listening to Native Americans (Rutgers University Press, 2011) and Hey, Waitress!: The USA from the Other Side of the Tray.. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her husband.

Texte du rabat

What were the women of Germany doing during the Third Reich? What were they thinking? And what do they have to say a half century later?

In Frauen we hear their voices––most for the first time. Alison Owings interviewed and here records the words of twenty-nine German women who were there: Working for the Resistance. Joining the Nazi Party. Outsmarting the Gestapo. Disliking a Jewish neighbor. Hiding a Jewish friend. Witnessing "Kristallnacht." Witnessing the firebombing of Dresden. Shooting at Allied planes. Welcoming Allied troops. Being a prisoner. And being a guard. The women recall their own and others' enthusiasm, doubt, fear, fury, cowardice, guilt, and anguish.

Alison Owings, in her pursuit of such memories, was invited into the homes of these women. Because she is neither Jewish nor German, and because she speaks fluent colloquial German, many of the women she interviewed felt comfortable enough with her to unlock the past. What they have to say will surprise Americans, just as they surprised the women themselves.

Not since Marcel Ophuls's controversial film The Sorrow and the Pity have we been on such intimate terms with "the enemy." In this case, the story is that of the women, those who did not make policy but were forced to participate in its effects and to witness its results. What they did and did not do is not just a reflection on them and their country––it also leads us to question what actions we might have taken in their place. The interviews do not allow for easy, smug answers.

Contenu

Idealism and Chasm: Frau Margarete Fischer
Motherhood Times Ten, and Food to Spare: Frau Wilhelmne Haferkamp
A Matter of Fate: Frau Marianne Karlsruhen
National Socialism and Christianity: Frau Ursula Meyer-Semiles
Retrospective Guilt: Frau Liselotte Otting
The History Lesson: Frau Mathilde Mundt
An “Exotic” Past: Frau Verona Groth
A Cosmopolitan View of the World: Frau Maria von Lingen
Learning How Communism Works: Frau Irene Burchert
Solidarity and Survival: Frau Charlotte Müller
“We Did Love our Führer, Really!”: Frau Ellen Frey
Before, During, and After the Firebombing: Frau Ursula Kretzschmar
The Ambivalence of Avoidance: Frau Martha Brixus
From the Emperor to a Mud Hole: Frau Margarete Sasowski
Rural Perspectives: Frau Barbara Amschel, Frau Anna Lieb, Frau Anna Maier
A Modest Woman of the Resistance: Mrs. Freya von Moltke
The Schisms of a “Flakwaffenhelferin”: Frau Erna Tietz
On Megalomaniacs and Little People: Frau Anna Rigl
Dissident Clergy and Dissident Actions: Frau Emmi Heinrich
A Job in Its Own Category: Frau Anna Fest
A Child Not of the Times: Frau Karma Rauhut
“A Very Unpolitical Woman”: Frau Anne Hepp
“I Was Alone. And I Had the Whole City Against Me.”: Frau Doktor Margret Blersch
“I Am Never Dishonest.”: Frau Regina Frankenfeld
Life as a Cabaret: Frau Christine Weihs
A Natural Matter of Friendship: Frau Erna Dubnack
Talking about Silence: Ms. Rita Kuhn
Conclusion
Glossary
Acknowledgements
Index