My Father's Keeper: Children of Nazi Leaders--An Intimate History of Damage and Denial [Bargain Price] [Hardcover]

Norbert Lebert (Author), Stephan Lebert (Author), Julian Evans (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 17, 2001

My Father's Keeper is a uniquely illuminating addition to the dark literature of the Nazi era. In 1959 the German journalist Norbert Lebert conducted extensive interviews with the young sons and daughters of prominent Nazis: Rudolf Hess, Martin Bormann, Hermann Goring, Heinrich Himmler, et al. Forty years later, Lebert's son Stephan tracked down these same men and women to find out how they had lived their lives in the shadow of a horrifying heritage. Drawing on both sets of firsthand interviews, this revelatory work of history offers a fascinating, surprising, often disturbing view of modern Germany and Nazism's legacy. .

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1959, German journalist Norbert Lebert set out to interview the offspring of former Nazi leaders young adults with surnames like Himmler and Hess, Bormann and Gering. Six years after Norbert's death in 1993, his son Stephan, a journalist, discovered the interviews among his father's papers and set out to re-interview the children, now senior citizens. Gudrun Himmler and Edda Gering refused. But Wolf-Rediger Hess, Martin Bormann Jr., Niklas and Norman Frank, and Klaus von Schirach were all willing. This is a powerful book, masterfully conceived, brilliant and devastating. The original interviews are interspersed between Stephan's conversations with (or in the case of Himmler and Gering, about) the former young adults who sat with his father. Other chapters explore the parent-child relationship and the nature of evil as they emerge from those conversations. The depth and complexity of the parent-child bond is evident throughout the book, whether the child in question has embraced (Burwitz, Hess) or rejected (Niklas Frank, Bormann) the values and beliefs of the father. Because he's viewing events from a greater distance, Stephan is able to raise a number of wide-ranging questions exploring the reasons behind the national outrage when Niklas Frank published a brutal piece detailing the depth of his hatred toward his father, former governor-general of Poland, and musing on the country's collective denial of individual responsibility during the war. There is much more to be written about the psychology and emotional life of the generation of Germans that fought WWII. But the Leberts have done a remarkable job of breaking a trail through the morass of repression and denial obscuring issues that will continue to disquiet future generations. 20 b&w photos.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

In 1959 the German writer Norbert Lebert interviewed the children of infamous Nazis. After his death in 1993, his son, Stephan, inherited the manuscripts and talked with the now-aging sons and daughters for a second time. They included Gudrun Himmler, the daughter of Heinrich Himmler, and Hermann Goring's daughter Edda. Stephan Lebert added interviews with Klaus von Schirach, the son of Baldur von Schirach, the Hitler Youth leader. The interviewees were asked "What does it mean to have a father who participated in mass murder?" The children, in general, defended their fathers' unspeakable crimes. Only one spoke out against his father, saying that he was "cowardly, corrupt, brutish, and sexually stimulated by power" and holding him responsible for the deaths of two million people. This book, first published in Germany in 2000, is an important work, indicating that anti-Semitism is far from dead. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• ISBN-10: 0316519294
• ASIN: B0000C7C32
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 6 x 1 inches
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,530,783 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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31 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Public Nazi, Private Father: The Child's View Now and Then, September 15, 2001

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 109,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: My Father's Keeper: Children of Nazi Leaders--An Intimate History of Damage and Denial (Hardcover)

If you are like me, you know relatively little about the lives of the children of the Nazi leaders. Although their fathers' names live in infamy, the children and their names often survived in obscurity and semi-privacy. This powerful set of interviews from 1959 and 1999-2000 provides a psychological lens to see the children, being a child in general, German society, and the actions of the Allies.

In 1959 German journalist, Norbert Lebert, interviewed in a number of children of the Nazi leaders. After his death, Mr. Lebert's son, Stephan, chose to attempt to bring those interviews up to date in 1999-2000. Where he could not (as with Gudrun Himmler and Edda Goring), the younger Mr. Lebert provides a thumbnail history of what is known about the intervening years.

To me, the most interesting parts of the book were 1959 interviews. Mr. Norbert Lebert did a sensitive job of considering the children of the leaders as people rather than as celebrities or subjects of a study. The information he developed was quite extensive, broad, and very interesting.

In each case, the father cast a long shadow onto his children. While very young, these children were usually aware that their fathers were powerful and admired. Some, like Edda Goring, even had celebrity status in their own right. The Allied attempts to prosecute the fathers disrupted the lives of the mothers and their children. Some fathers died by their own hand (like Himmler and Goring), some were hung, while others languished in prison where there could be little contact (like von Schirach and Hess). So to a large extent, these children were fatherless after 1945. After World War II, their fathers' pasts continued to influence their lives, by causing some to be curious, some to scorn them, and others to approve.

The private father was usually remembered with affection and nostalgia. The public father was often obscure, except for the older children (like Gudrun Himmler). The public activities were often caught up in having Hitler as a godfather, or other kinds of positive attention.

The heritage of the Nazi past was accepted by some of the children as positive. Two sons broke strongly with what their fathers had done. The most interesting case is that of Mr. Niklas Frank who wrote a series of strong articles describing in explicit language his father (Hans Frank, governor of Poland) and his feelings about his father in very negative terms. Many Germans condemned Mr. Frank for being unfaithful to his father.

Anyone who expects the children of a war criminal to be an ideal witness about that person's culpability is obviously mistaken. Some of the incidental stories though will shake you, such as the experience of being shown Himmler's collection of household items made from parts of human bodies. Hess's son and Himmler's daughter had great hopes of correcting what they believed to be major errors in the historical record about their fathers. Edda Goring claimed that her name was never a drawback to her, although several of the other children recount many times when their names caused problems such as not being accepted for schools or jobs.

The book in many other ways is disappointing. Unless you are very familiar with the Nazis, you will receive less than the minimum information you should know about the fathers. Perhaps in Germany everyone knows these facts. In the United States, I suspect that is not true.

Long sections are circular and others are rambling with speculations by other authors.

Other sources that could have shed light on these lives are missing. How did the lives of these people compare to that of their German contemporaries whose fathers were or were not prominent Nazis? What did public opinion polls in Germany say about their fathers at the various times when the interviews were undertaken? What did the school books say about their fathers that they read? How do the children of convicted and executed murderers usually react to the memory of their guilty parent? How was the reaction in Germany different from the reaction in Italy to the children of the Fascist leaders there? All of these questions could probably have been answered, but were not raised.

After you finish reading this book, think about how we can help the children of both those who cause and are victimized by violence. Unless we break that vicious cycle of adding the burden to the next generation in unsustainable ways, we run the risk of perpetuating hatred and violence long into the future.

Honor the goodness that should guide our lives!

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Engaging and rewarding, February 3, 2003

By 

E. A. Montgomery (Florida, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: My Father's Keeper: Children of Nazi Leaders-An Intimate History of Damage and Denial (Paperback)

Unlike many books on this subject, the Leberts do not fall into the ponderous trap of attempting to be definitive or all things to all people. I stumbled across this remarkable book by accident. Posner's book 'Hitler's Children' was interesting, and is a more exhaustive look at the topic, but Lebert's book is somehow more emotional and accessible. Perhaps it is the lighter touch or the fact that it was written by Germans but it stayed in my mind much longer.

Based on a series of articles his father wrote in 1959, the son meets with those who will speak with him and explores his own feelings about his father's role in the war, his identity as a German, and the reaction modern day Germany has to it's war past. While there are tidbits of information (I had no idea there was a charity set up to support former Nazi leaders and staff or that so many of them entered the postwar government so cleanly) the real value of this book is the human one.

How rare it is to find a father and son so willing to face the possiblities of their post-war life having been stunningly different and how refreshing to find them willing to allow that experience had an effect on their interviews. The portraits of the Nazikinder then and now are done with great appeal. This is a subject too emotional to ever truly be objective about, but the willingness of the Lebert's to try and their look at where they fail does thenm credit.

This is a popular history in the best sense of the phrase that will leave you with a great deal to think about regarding modern Germany and the way the world views these heirs. If many of them have seemed to fall into their father's paths, was it inevitable? Is our own denial to the unique challenge they faced culpable? (If understandable). Is the current rise in their views tied to these things? A great read for the casual and a thought provoker for the more involved. This book deserves a wider audience.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very unique dipiction of life as the children of Nazi Leaders, June 19, 2008

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Kel "acountkel" (Charlotte, NC USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Father's Keeper: Children of Nazi Leaders-An Intimate History of Damage and Denial (Paperback)

What an interesting book this was! I liked the way Stephan took his father's work and expanded it. It is almost as though Stephan was learning about his father and his work right along with us, the reader. The subject is the children of the Nazi leaders. Norbert interviewed them in the 1950's. Stephan made the attempt to interview the same ones in the 1990's. Some of them who interviewed with Norbert, refused to meet with Stephan. Some of the children agree that their fathers were behind something evil and could not be forgiven. Others still loved their fathers, didn't believe they did anything wrong and spent their lives trying to prove it. This is a subject that I feel compelled to learn about. It was such a unique time in history, I am fascinated by it. I like reading various aspects of Nazi Germany, especially like this one. I highly recommend this to WWII history buffs.