... to the blog this week. Hi, Elisabeth. Thanks for taking some time out to be here today. Tell me all about your latest release.
ED No
Way Home is a memoir
based on my German mum and aunt’s diaries from 1945.
AW Interesting, and what first
got you into writing and why?
ED I wrote
diaries as a teenager and young woman. Over the years, I have written quite a
number of poems. I first remember writing poems in 1982/3 when I was living and
working as a nurse in South Africa. Poems about love, nature’s splendour or my
observations of people/situations. I wrote for me, a literary snapshot of times
in my life, which, when read years later, took me right back into the moment of
writing and the circumstances that provided the inspiration. I didn’t write
regularly, and certainly, when my children were young, it took a back seat—although
I do remember writing a poem about how frazzled I felt at the end of the day,
surrounded by dirty dishes and toys strewn across the floor!
I knew I had to tell Mum’s story even though she didn’t think it
worth telling. She would not have agreed to it in her lifetime. When she died,
six months after her sister, in 2020, I found their diaries and other family
archive items, which I kept with me on ChristaBella and continued my family
history research.
In November 2022, I began translating my aunt’s diary and signed
up for an online writing course. Although it was more about self-publishing and
SM marketing, I learnt a lot and had support and encouragement from a group of
fellow aspiring authors, which did keep me going and eventually saw No
Way Home published in
September 2023.
Although there are sections of the book written by me, I feel a
bit of a fraud because the main part of the book is the translation of the
diaries—their words, not mine.
AW Your book is a family memoir, and apart from the work on the translation, there must have
been a lot of research, too. How easy or difficult was that?
ED Once my
interest in my German history had been sparked in my mid-50s, I had plenty of
opportunities to talk to Mum about the people in her life as a youngster in
Gleiwitz. She happily recounted stories about their life before the war, most
of which is the first chapter of No Way Home.
Because of this, I was familiar with the names I came across
when translating the diaries. My aunt had written a family tree back to my
great-great-grandparents, and I found several formal portraits in a plastic
wallet when clearing my aunt’s flat in Frankfurt in 2020. Some portraits were
easy to identify; however, I sent some pictures to the V&A museum, asking
them to date the portraits based on the clothes being worn. This was really
interesting and allowed me to make an educated guess as to the identity of the
remaining portraits. The translation was difficult and time-consuming.
The German cursive handwriting was difficult to decipher—I used a magnifying glass to look at the strokes of the ink pen on the page to work out the letters- particularly ‘u’ ‘m’ ‘n’ ‘r’. Eventually, words and sentences emerged, and although I do speak German, I used internet translation tools if I didn’t understand. Of course, chatting with my siblings about the nuances of the language was invaluable. As the structure of the story emerged, I wanted to understand the ‘situation on the ground’ in more detail, never having studied WW2 at school. I felt context was lacking, so began using the internet and books to find out more. Aftermath by Harald Jahner was particularly helpful as it corroborated what I was reading in the diaries. I have referenced all the resources I used at the back of the book.
As well as diaries, there were letters written in old Sütterlin script—a totally different alphabet and even more difficult to decipher. I had to establish if copyright law would prevent me using a map found in my aunt’s diary, travelling to German National Library in Frankfurt to find out. The internet can only go so far! I travelled to Frankfurt with my four siblings to pay our respects to our aunt Ursula, who had died alone during the Covid pandemic. We had been unable to go altogether until April 2023.
Mapping the route of their separate journeys was also a challenge, not least because some of the places named in the diaries were now known by other names because borders had changed. German towns or areas now had Polish or Czech names. Using Google Maps allowed me to see the terrain in some places, which helped me picture how physically difficult the journey was under the circumstances—trying to get from A-B with little or no working transport infrastructure.
Sometimes, my research brought me to a dead end. That was difficult to accept, especially if I knew my mum would have had the answer since she was no longer here to ask.
I found my consolation in a quote from Mark Twain: ‘A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.’
AW And what about other types of writing? I know you write poetry, but are you intending to dabble with fiction at some point, perhaps?
ED Yes! Out of respect for my mum, my aunt and my family, I wanted No Way Home to be a factual account of that period in their lives. However, so many other unanswered, personal aspects were unearthed in the writing of No Way Home—there’s a thrilling novel right there! I’m excited, just thinking about it! Watch this space!
AW Famous authors such as Roald Dahl and Dylan Thomas had a special space for writing. Do you have a writing shed of your own?
ED No, I don't have a shed! I have a narrowboat! We live as continuous cruisers on our 57ft narrowboat ChristaBella, which means we travel on English canals and rivers. The longest we can stay is two weeks unless we’re in a marina. We decided not to travel as far in 2023, which meant I could be still and write instead of going along the towpath, opening and closing the locks every day. I translated/wrote at our dining table, sitting on raised, padded bench seats, similar to a caravan, with lovely countryside views out of the window or hatch. In order to prevent my neck hurting and my back aching, I set my iPad on top of the kitchen compost caddy, bringing it to my eye level. It was a game-changer! Earbuds were also invaluable, meaning Jim could listen to the radio without disturbing me. I like to work in silence. My other refuge, not often, was our bedroom, where the inspiration for a poem would sometimes come. Writing No Way Home was a completely consuming experience, in which I often worked with uninterrupted focus for hours on end. Jim kept me fed and watered throughout and supported my endeavour to get my book published and launched by November 2023.
AW And finally, if you had a whole afternoon to yourself and could choose to spend it with any one individual, living or dead, or a character from a book, who would it be and what would you discuss?
ED This is a bit of an obvious one. I’d love to spend an afternoon with my mum and ask her why she couldn’t speak of her experiences in 1945, why she really came to England and was a man called Günter, possibly her cousin, her real first love. All my life, Mum only ever referred to having one cousin, Jochen. Then, a few months before she died, she told me she did, in fact, have another cousin called Günter. After she died, we found photos of a man called Günter in her bedside drawer, and later, letters between them and more pictures of them together, clearly in love with each other. The man in the photos has a strong family resemblance to my maternal great-grandmother, Martha Halamuda, whom you will have come across in the book.
The family dynamic was complicated by divorce and Günter’s father dying when he was 11 years old, after which Mum said she didn’t see him again. Or did she?
I have discovered so many similarities between my mum’s life and my own—I would love to talk to her, woman to woman, about all of that.
about the book…
A personal account of separation in 1945 Germany; the physical and emotional
journeys, made separately, by two sisters and their serendipitous reunion as a
family. With themes of faith, philosophy and continuance, forced from their
destroyed childhood home as girls, they become young women in a new world, their
relationship forever changed.
You can read my review of the book Here and you can take a peek inside Here
You can follow Elisabeth on her Website and on Instagram
You can get the book on Amazon at Waterstones or Barnes and Noble
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