A Woman in Berlin

Politically things are slowly beginning to happen. The émigrés who came back from Moscow are making themselves felt; they have all the key positions. You can’t tell much from the newspapers, assuming you can even find one. I usually read the Rundschau on the board next to the cinema, where it’s stuck up with drawing pins for the general public. Our local district administration has a curious programme – apparently they’re trying to distance themselves from the Soviet economic system, they call themselves democratic and are endeavouring to get all ‘anti-fascists’ to come together.

For a week now it’s been rumoured that the southern parts of Berlin will be occupied by the Americans, and the western parts by the English. The widow, duly illuminated by Herr Pauli, thinks that an economic upswing is near at hand. I don’t know; I’m afraid it won’t matter much which of the Allies will be in charge, now that the victors have embraced so warmly at the Elbe. We’ll wait and see. I’m not so easily shaken any more.

Sometimes I wonder why I’m not suffering more because of the rift with Gerd, who used to mean everything to me. Maybe hunger always dulls emotions. I have so much to do. I have to find a flint lighter for the stove; the matches are all gone. I have to mop up the rain puddles in the apartment. The roof is leaking again; they merely patched it up with a few old boards. I have to run around and look for some greens along the street kerbs, and queue for groats. I don’t have feeding time for my soul.

Yesterday I experienced something comic: a cart stopped outside our house, with an old horse in front, nothing but skin and bones. Four-year-old Lutz Lehmann came walking up holding his mother’s hand, stopped beside the cart and asked, in a dreamy voice, ‘Mutti, can we eat the horse?’

God knows what we’ll all end up eating. I think I’m far from any life-threatening extreme, but I don’t really know how far. I only know that I want to survive – against all sense and reason, just like an animal.

Does Gerd still think of me?

Maybe we’ll find our way back to each other yet.

AFTERWORD BY THE GERMAN EDITOR

It is perhaps no accident that an extraordinary work like A Woman in Berlin had a history that is no less amazing; first published in 1953, the book disappeared from view, lingering in obscurity for decades before it slowly re-emerged, was reissued, and then became an international phenomenon – a full half-century after it was written. While we cannot know whether the author kept the diary with eventual publication in mind, it’s clear that the ‘private scribblings’ she jotted down in three notebooks (and on a few hastily added slips of paper) served primarily to help her maintain a remnant of sanity in a world of havoc and moral breakdown. The earliest entries were literally notes from the underground, recorded in a basement where the author sought shelter from air raids, artillery fire, looters – and ultimately rape by the victorious Russians. With nothing but a pencil stub, writing by candlelight since Berlin had no electricity, she recorded her observations. Months later, when a more permanent order was restored, she was able to copy and edit her notes, on 121 pages of grey war-issue paper.

The author chose to remain anonymous, and I feel bound to respect her wish, responsible as I am for the reissue of her text. What may be said, however, is that the woman who wrote this book was not an amateur but an experienced journalist. This is made dear in the diary itself when the author alludes to several trips abroad as a roving reporter. On one occasion, she actually travelled to the Soviet Union, where she picked up a basic knowledge of Russian. We may surmise that she continued working for a publishing firm or for various periodicals after Hitler came to power: up until 1943-44 a number of magazines managed to avoid direct involvement in the relentless propaganda demanded by Joseph Goebbels.

It is likely that through her professional contacts the author met Kurt W. Marek, a journalist and critic who facilitated publication of the diary. An editor at one of the first newspapers to appear in the new German state, he went on to work for Rowohlt, a major Hamburg publishing house. It was to Marek that the author entrusted her manuscript, taking care to change the names of people in the book and eliminate certain revealing details. In 1954 Marek succeeded in placing the book with a publisher in the United States, where he had settled. Thus A Woman in Berlin first appeared in English, and then in Norwegian, Italian, Danish, Japanese, Spanish, French and Finnish.