Stille Post

Von Braun seeks to unravel the cryptic messages that are passed through families, mainly by women, in the form of?Chinese whispers?. At the same time she skilfully incorporates stories from her own family, silent conversations with her forbears and fascinating material from the family archive including letters, diaries and previously unpublished memoirs. At the centre of the book is her grandmother Hildegard Margis, who was arrested in 1944 by the Gestapo for her involvement with the Communist resistance and later died in prison. She also tells of her parents, Hilde and Sigismund von Braun, who left Germany during the war, moved to Africa and settled in the Vatican, where Sigismund worked for the German Embassy. By contrast, her uncle, Wernher von Braun, stayed in Germany and was responsible for the rocket development programme in Peenemünde, only emigrating to America at the end of the war. Her paternal grandparents were forced to leave their estate in Lower Silesia and her uncle was dispatched to England in the 1930s to escape the National Socialist regime. Each of these turbulent lives forms part of the puzzle that comes together in this book.

Year

2007

Language

German

Publisher

Propyläen

Editions

1

Pages

415

ISBN

9783549073148

Data source: Wikidata