On the Other Side: Letters to My Children from Germany 1940 -46 - Brossura

Wolff-Monckeberg, Mathilde

Brossura

ISBN 10: 1903155657 ISBN 13: 9781903155653

Casa editrice: Persephone Books Ltd, 2007

Riassunto

ON THE OTHER SIDE are letters written (but never posted) by a 60 year-old woman, to her children living abroad, about the experience of living in Hamburg during the war. Discovered in a drawer in the 1970s, they were translated by her daughter, the late Ruth Evans, and first published in England and Germany in 1979. They were serialised on `Woman's Hour' and in the Observer and a television documentary about the book, with Margaret Tyzack acting `Tilli' and many original newsreel shots of a devastated Hamburg, was shown in the autumn of 1979. The Preface, which fills in the background, is by Ruth Evans and the Afterword, which sets the letters in the context of recent controversies about the Allied bombing of German cities, is by Christopher Beauman. Tilli Wolff-Mönckeberg was the daughter of a lawyer who later became Lord Mayor. She was intelligent and well-educated but married very young and had five children. Unusually for the time, she and her husband separated during the First World War and Tilli returned to Hamburg, did some translating and took in lodgers. In 1925 she married a Professor of English who later became Rector of Hamburg University. By the time the letters begin, therefore, in October 1940, her personal life is slightly complicated, with her children living in far- flung places - her youngest daughter Ruth is living in Wales - and her Hamburg relations are slightly disapproving of her unconventional personal life. They would have been even more disapproving if they had known that Tilli was keeping what was in effect a diary: the discovery of the letters would certainly have resulted in her and her husband's arrest. In the first one she writes, about the events leading up to the war, that the German people were led to believe that they had been wantonly attacked but `in truth this whole campaign had been planned long ago, the Führer's blind lust for conquest, his megalomania being the driving force.

Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Persephone Books Ltd
• Data di pubblicazione: 2007
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1903155657
• ISBN 13: 9781903155653
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 232
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile