Customer Reviews

My Father's Country: Story of a German Family

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The author does a tremendous job of showing how her father, Major Hans Georg Klamroth, became involved in the July 1944 plot against Adolf Hitler and how he paid for this with his life. But what she does with even more skill is show how a relatively normal German family became such lovers of the Fuehrer in so short a time. When Hitler becomes Chancellor the mood inside the Klamroth household is one of scorn but within a few years they are standing around the piano singing Hitler songs and the father sits by and does nothing when a valued Jewish employee is sacked because the law requires it. The author is angry at times (especially when discussing her father's philandering), highly emotional at others, and yet never overreaches herself. The last few pages are painful to read -- she does nothing to spare the horror of her father's agonising death -- yet when she addresses him personally at the very end, the effect is incredibly uplifting.

This review is based on the German edition, "Meines Vaters Land".

One must admire the author for her courage in not only retracing faithfully her family's history, but also in uncovering in the family papers the personality of a father (HG) quite unknown to her; in the process she discovered more than one skeleton in her parents' household. In a way, her work can be compared to Bernhard Schlink's search for fathers of all kinds which he describes in his recent book "Homecoming".

Besides painting for us an uncompromising and not always positive portrait of her father, she places this painting next to her mother's, Else, the other protagonist in this German family saga set into the first half of the 20th century. Else was of Danish descent, thus, HG became very well acquainted with Denmark and was posted there at the end of the 1930s. Else is driven to the edge of a complete breakdown by the political circumstances, by the unfolding war and by the personal difficulties reflecting within the family what is going on outside.

She stays on course by the sheer will of protecting her flock and by the general inertia that somehow keeps us all moving; in this way, she reaches a safe haven once the war has come to an end, much in the spirit of Rudyard Kipling who urges us to "hold on when there is nothing in you except the will". Once her task had been accomplished, she could only go on living as the petrified image of her former self, in a way similar to the fate of the German people as a whole who needed the remainder of the 20th century to come to grips with the events of the first half.

Wibke Bruhns belongs to a generation that did not consciously experience the end of the period she describes; in doing so she has provided her readers with a far-reaching and never boring account of those tumultuous years. She manages to convey to her generation and to those following an understanding of the problems encountered by their elders and thus enable them to confront in a more detached way the events of the present. These events are certainly in themselves different from those she describes, but are at least as complicated and far-reaching as what happened in the world half a century ago.

From her post-war viewpoint, Wibke Bruhns rolls out before our eyes, with many details, the lives of her parents and grand-parents, starting with the First World War and the decade following it. What she neglects - possibly because her family was not directly touched - is the topic of Bolshevism and the threat it constituted for the West. We must realize that this threat was considerably greater than the present danger presented by islamic fundamentlism, because the ideas of the extreme left were shared by many people in the West and backed up by an immensely powerful country. Its leaders were moved by the will to bring about a world revolution and they had the means to realize their aims - how would we react today to a similar situation?

Even someone like your reviewer who is a few years older than the author, can gather from this book some new insights into historical events. Doesn't it state on p. 300 of the German edition that there had been a British embassy functioning in Copenhagen during the German occupation of the country? What? Hitler would have tolerated an outpost of an enemy state in a country that he had taken over, just like the countries of continental Europe he wanted to swallow and the rest of the world he had on his agenda?

Denmark's status during the German occupation that began in April of 1940 was special in the sense that the monarchy and the government as well as the army were maintained, but I was surprised to read that Danish liberties went as far as that. With respect to the curious conditions of the country during WW2, we must not forget that Iceland, an independent kingdom at the time whose monarch was the Danish king, was occupied without much ado by Britain in April 1940 and turned into a republic in 1944.

Elsewhere in the book, we can read that during the latter phase of the war Germans had the opportunity - and not just a selected few and behind closed doors - to view the American film "Ninotchka". Really? Greta Garbo was obviously an Aryan actress, but the people behind her - Ernst Lubitsch, Billy Wilder, Louis B. Mayer - obviously were not. One must come to the conclusion that the funny description of life in the Soviet Union and in the USA had impressed Goebbels so much, that he did not mind the rest...

The author also tells us that Papa HG, while on active service on the eastern front, had the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende sent to him from Germany, well, in a sealed envelope so nobody would know, but then what could the Danes read in this paper which would not have been available to the Germans as well?

HG's activities in the East were those of a counter-espionage officer engaged in the fight against "partisans" behind the German front (these people would today be called terrorists or enemy combatants or something like that) and we learn about the means he had to save those that he was hoping to turn away from Bolshevism.

We also learn new things about conditions in Germany which show us the cracks in the allegedly monolithic stucture of Hitler's Reich: HG had been one of the plotters against Hitler in 1944, he was executed and his fortune was confiscated. However, Else was later informed by the SS that the confiscation of her part of the estate had been a mistake which would be corrected and she was even promised compensation and a pension.

For some strange reason, the author finds this "monstrous" - but why? This incident is characteristic of the complicated power structure of the third Reich and perhaps also of the difference between a revolution and a seizure of power, much like the court battles lost by the Gestapo over the seizure of Jewish property which are described in Susanne Willems' book "Der entsiedelte Jude".

Moral judgements of this kind from the safe haven of our age crop up a number of times in this book; I found them superfluous and slightly irritating. As a young person one would perhaps have the right to react in such a way. These remarks are, however, pardonable, in view of the author's past and understandable on account of the era in which she grew up.

Taken as a whole, though, this is an excellent depiction of the life of a German family in the early part of the last century and makes for a more diversified view of Germany and her people than many other books on the subject.

My Father's Country: The Story of A German Family centers in large
part on Wibke Bruhn's father, Hans Klamroth, one of the officers tried
and executed for participating in the 1944 plot to kill Hitler.
Fortunately for the cause of history, the author's family, from the
well-to-do merchant class, was obsessed with recording everyday
activities, political events, and personal reactions in diaries
and in a voluminous correspondence. The book draws upon these documents,
which survived the war, as well as on her own impressive command of
German and world history, to tell her family's story in the larger
context of Nazi Germany and of the forces, beginning in the 19th
century, that ultimately lead to Hitler's rise in power and his early
popularity with so many German people.

The author doesn't try to glorify her father or her sister's husband,
who also participated in the plot to kill Hitler. She freely admits not
knowing whether her father felt Hitler had to be stopped because he
was a monster or because he was losing the war. Also to her credit,
is that although she abhors many of her family's actions, she doesn't
deny the love that she had and still has for them. Her goal is
present the facts and she does so unflinchingly. It must have taken
great courage to reveal all she learned.

My Father's Country resonates in many levels. The author writes
poetically about the phenomenon of memory, how the dead can remain
unchanging in our minds, but how it is possible to give them new life
by uncovering what we didn't know about them in their lifetimes. She
paints a fascinating picture of her family's very chic and
international lifestyle before World War II. And especially in light
of the post-World Trade Center "patriotism" in the US and the US
assault on Iraq, she tells an important story. We should all
understand how citizens cooperate (and cheerlead) when governments run
amok.

Unfortunately, the book has no index, table of contents, footnotes, or
even list of references.

Wibke Bruhns' story is an absorbing one, and kept my attention throughout. However, I did get a little bogged down with some of the details of her family life; there just seemed to be too many. The facts about an episode of WWII that most of us know little about were very insightful. A must read for WWII buffs and any one interested in untold stories of history.

I have found longitudinal studies of German families to afford very valuable insights into how the Nazis rose to power and implemented their rule. This is a very good one. It is particularly interesting because the author's father, Hans George Klamroth (1898-1944), was one of those "tried" and executed in connection with the July 1944 plot to kill Hitler. His alleged crime was knowledge of the conspiracy and failing to report it. The author, who was born in 1938 and was five or so when her father was executed, traces her family's development from 1866 down until the end of World War II. Situated in Halberstadt, in Prussia, about 100 miles from Berlin, the family business of grains and fertilizers grew and profited, making the family very well-to-do if not quite in the Junker class. There was a strong history of military involvement in various wars, and the author particularly is adept at tracing the careers of her grandfather and father in the first war. This family was loyal to the Kaiser and to Germany to the core. She traces from the perspective of her family the traumas and hardships that afficted Germany after the first war, including food shortages, a destroyed economy, and political unrest. If this is how rich people suffered, you can imagine how the less fortunate were affected.

The book really becomes interesting when the author discusses the interwar period of the Weimar government and the terrible conditions imposed upon a defeated Germany during the 1920's and 1930's. It is easy to see how these adverse conditions advanced Hitler's chances to grab power. With issues like the Versailles treaty, the French occupation of the Ruhr, inflation, "stab in the back," and "republican appeasers" constantly being discussed in the media, Germany was seeking radical change which unfortunately it got. The one-family perspective allows us to see how upper class Germans saw Hitler and how they reacted to the Nazi takeover of the government. While not wild supporters of Hitler, the family did nonetheless take pride in some of the Nazi accomplishments, such as the Munich agreement, the Anschluss with Austria, and the absorptions of the Czechslovakia. The author is very effective in explaining that Anti-Semitism was nothing new, had been acceptable from the time of Luther, and how German Jews had lived both as part of Germany yet strangely isolated during the 19th and 20th centuries. She also recounts the hardships of living in a wartime Germany, particularly the impact of constant bombing attacks, food shortages, lost relatives and friends, and the physical destruction her hometown. The author does not extensively discuss the Hitler plot that claimed her father and brother-in-law, but puts the dilemma of the plotters' families into clear relief. She does talk a bit about Roland Friesler and his notorious "People's Court" which issued the death sentences.

The book benefits from a wonderful translation and a nice picture gallery; it lacks however an index which is a problem. The author works in the German media and writes with humor and warmth about a man she really never knew. She has done considerable historical research which allows her to put her family's developments into historical context. The book reminds us that history is really nothing other than the story of families moving through time. This reminder is one of the book's great achievements.

Intelligently written memoir about the affluent Klamroth family living through the ever-changing late-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century decades of Germany. Centered in and around Halberstadt within former East Germany, while this book specifically focuses on Hans Georg Klamroth because the author sought to understand the father she never knew who ended up being executed along with others for the plot to assassinate Hitler just before the end of World War II, Wibke Bruhns offers much more that aficianados of history will appreciate. The author shares at the family level, and the successes and failures, blessings and tribulations that she masterfully knits together, based on the extensive number of letters and diaries fortunately available to her due in part to the diligence of the family archivist, help bring this period of German history alive for those of us who did not live in the country at that time. Somewhat reminiscent of "Five Germanys I Have Known" by Fritz Stern (see my review), albeit the account provided in this memoir is much more relatable as the author walks the reader through Hans Georg Klamroth's early years, career choices, and family life, and provides insight into how the protagonist handled successes and failures in these aspects alongside the horrors of the Interwar period and World War II.

I never understood how Germany could produce two wars in the 20th century along with the human devastation of the Holocaust. Getting close to a German family before WWI and into WWII through the memories of one the family members gave me an insight I never got from any other source. The author had valuable correspondence, diaries and first-hand recollections of her father, an army officer in both wars. He comes dangerously close to the officers who attempted to kill Hitler. A great read!!

A marvelous, tragic, heroic, beautifully written account of WWII from a family's perspective--mostly from the women's view. The family was German, after all, and thus taken by Hitler, but also uncertain of the demigod's thuggish background. These were good people who worked mightily to lead correct lives, who were not always able to clearly read the terrain ahead, who wanted to believe in the exceptional qualities of the German people. They did their best. In the end, the father, a card carrying Nazi, and his son-in-law, a distinguished commander of Panzers--both officers and veterans of the Russian campaign--were executed for their roles in the 20th July attempt on Hitler's life.

Wibke Bruhns writes of growing up in an upwardly striving privileged middle-class family during the years leading up to WWII. She examines the way internal aspirations and snobbery played out in marriages within her family, within the professional community where she lived, and in the domestic sphere. The dogmatic adherence to adhering to social custom which was in many ways her family's legacy, served the family well until it didn't. As her parents estrangement, her father's secrets, the financial pressures of running a family-owned business during the Weimar period all succumb to the Nazi regime, though, unlike Gypsies, Jews, homosexuals and the ill, the Bruhns were Nazis. It is a very well-written tale (author was a journalist and television personality) and there is no cloying hagiography of her parents or the terrible 12-years of the Nazi regime. Very good to excellent! Thank you Ms. Bruhns!

This is quite an interesting tale from letters, mostly, of the family of one of the many who tried , and failed, to kill Hitler. Well worth the time for anyone interested in that period and that horrible war.