All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days

The True Story of the Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler

Donner, Rebecca

BookHardcover

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The thrilling and previously unknown story of the woman who led one of the largest anti-Nazi resistance groups in Germany, now a New York Times bestseller

Details

ISBN/GTIN978-1-78689-219-5

Product TypeBook

BindingHardcover

PublisherCanongate Books

Publishing date05/08/2021

LanguageEnglish

SizeWidth 162 mm, Height 242 mm, Thickness 48 mm

Weight846 g

Article no.9697440

CatalogsUM

Data source no.2576743

Product groupBU556

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Mildred Harnack was a central figure in the resistance to the Nazi regime in Berlin. An American academic, it was her husband who brought her to Berlin at the end of the 1920s. Both she and he came from the political left and once the Nazis were in power, they almost immediately sought to build networks of resistance - Mildred's began with the students she taught. As the Third Reich went on, their networks merged with others in Berlin and they also began to pass on information to foreign intelligence services - the act which would eventually cost them their lives.
Rebecca Donner is an indirect descendant of Harnack's and she tells her story brilliantly in this book. Juxtaposing Harnack with the story of a young American boy who helped her pass on information to the Americans, she imbues the narrative with a sense of urgency as it heads towards its tragic ending. A personal and political biography of a figure and a fascinating window on a part of Berlin during the Third Reich.

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Ein richtig spannend zu lesendes Stück Zeitgeschichte, dass Simon Park hier ans Licht bringt! Da sitzen in der Irischen See gelegen, mit nicht einmal 600qm, auf einer trüben und nebligen Insel die talentiertesten, auch etabliertesten Köpfe der deutschen und österreichischen Kunstwelt. Interniert im Juli 1940, auf der Isle of Man, auf Churchills Befehl, aus Angst vor Kollaboration mit Hitler-Deutschland. Einem Land, aus dem sie nach Großbritannien ins Exil geflohen waren und vor dem sie glaubten in Sicherheit zu sein. Angesichts ihrer verzweifelten Lage und um nicht vor Tatenlosigkeit in Depression zu versinken, organisieren die Kriegsflüchtigen sich und nutzen ihre bis dahin ausgeübten beruflichen Tätigkeiten und Kenntnisse, als psychologische Stütze für sich und die anderen Mitinternierten. Simon Parks Recherche stützt sich auf umfassendes Archivmaterial, vorallem des schriftlichen Nachlasses vom deutsch-britischen Kunsthistoriker Klaus Hinrichsen, der fast ein Jahr im "Lager der Künstler", das zwar so genannt wird, obwohl die Zahl der Wissenschaftler überwog, interniert war. Eine unglaubliche Geschichte!

It is quite unusual for professional, academic historians to know their subjects personally. More unusual still for them if these subjects were members of regimes which the historians look at critically. And perhaps more unusual again if the historian in question suspects the subject to have been at the centre of an enormous crime. Such is however the reality of the relationship between Jonathan Petropoulos and Bruno Lohse, "Göring's Man in Paris".

Petropoulos takes great pain (sometimes protesting perhaps a touch too much) to distance himself from Lohse. Despite accounts of their frequent meetings in Munich (it seems JP visited Lohse virtually every time he came to Germany), he maintains that he was careful not to allow a friendship to develop in Paris. JP shows how other Americans, including curators at the Met, also "fell" for Lohse's charm in a book that can be frustrating but never ceases to be compelling as we seek to read lines, and anything that might be between them.

There are a lot of books out there about people tracing their family's history of loss through the Holocaust. So many sometimes that trying to pick the really interesting ones out can become quite bewildering. Indeed even the idea of working out which stories are "more interesting" or "worthy" seems almost inhumane. Menachem Kaiser's 'Plunder' is one where there needs to be no debate. It tells the story of his attempt to get back a building in a small-ish Polish town which had once belonged to his family. Along the way, he is introduced to a group of 'treasure hunters' - people who desperately seek Nazi treasure in remote parts of the Polish landscape in order to solve decades long (often likely non-existent) puzzles.
What made Kaiser's book so interesting to me was his self-questioning narrative. He constantly analyses what both he and the treasure hunters are doing and does not seek easy moral answers, which makes for a profound reflection on the notion of ownership and loss.

Simon May takes a highly unusual and orginal look at his Jewish-German identity in this fine book. A philosopher by trade, he delves deep into his family's history in order to uncover the story of his lost German and Jewish identities. The book largely focuses on the history of May's mother and her sisters, all of whom survived the Holocaust in a quite extraordinary variety of ways. This is therefore on one hand a gripping account of a family's survival but on another an exploration of identity, national, cultural and religious, by a philosopher who is prepared to ask himself difficult questions in order to develop a profound sense of what his relationship to his own Germaness and Jewishness means.

I was lucky enough to help May with his research and have been captivated by this project from the moment he began to tell me his story but I am glad to say I think the finished, writtten project is as good as the first explanations. An important book!

Author

Donner, Rebecca

Rebecca Donner

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