Elisabeth Haggblade's memoir, Trauterose, offers a rare and intimate first-person account of life in post-World War II Germany, a period often overshadowed by the war itself. While countless books, films, and documentaries focus on the war years, far fewer capture the daily realities and psychological toll of the aftermath. Haggblade's story fills this gap, illuminating a pivotal historical moment through the details of everyday life.
Orphaned at birth during World War II, Haggblade spent her first eleven years in the household of a former SS officer and his family. Her unique perspective provides a window into the challenges faced by ordinary Germans as they navigated political fragmentation, economic collapse, and profound social upheaval. The end of the war did not bring relief but rather marked the beginning of a struggle to survive amid uncertainty and loss.
Trauterose has earned the 2024 IndieReader Discovery Award in the Memoir category and First Place Non-Fiction in The Authors Show 2024 Book Cover Awards. More than a personal account, the book reveals how instability and deprivation shaped the choices people faced. Haggblade's testimony conveys the physical and psychological scars of war, both in her own life and in the lives of those she encountered. Against a backdrop of fragile institutions and scarce resources, even ordinary routines demanded resilience. Yet her narrative also shows how faith and community helped people endure.
Haggblade writes of the influence of the late Pope Benedict XVI, then known as Herr Joseph Ratzinger, her catechism teacher in the 1950s. After he left her school, he wrote to her: "If one buttons one's coat the wrong way, one would have to undo all of it and start over again to make it right. So it is with life," admonishing her "to choose the right beginning."
In a recent talk for the AAUW book club in Santa Barbara, California, Haggblade described the daily struggles of the postwar period: finding soap, comb, toothbrush, and warm water; securing food and cooking it; attending school without transportation in all seasons; finding proper clothes and shoes; and dealing with sickness and death in the family. "All the while, people still had to suffer the usual annoying indignities of adolescence, middle age crises, old age problems," she said.
Haggblade wrote the book as a reaction to what she saw as glamorous portrayals of the postwar years in German magazines and to positive comments from Americans about their understanding of that time. "Both impressions were in contrast to my experience growing up and those I came in contact with. They told only one side of the story," she stated. She aims to bring readers into the picture, letting "the rooms and the furniture be witnesses to our family's daily struggle."
The memoir has received praise from reviewers. Craig Jones of IndieReader called it "an uncompromising, moving, and elegiac memoir of a deprived childhood in postwar Germany." Midwest Book Review noted that libraries seeking powerful personal memoirs with political and social lessons will find Trauterose "a study in adaptation, survival, and growth." One Amazon reviewer wrote, "It offers an unforgettable window into a time and place that few Americans know about."
Elisabeth Haggblade holds a B.A. in German, a B.A. in Russian, a Master's in Linguistics from California State University, Fresno, and a PhD in English Philology from the Freie Universität Berlin. She retired from teaching part-time English and Linguistics at California State Universities and the Freie Universität Berlin. Trauterose is available in print, ebook, and audiobook formats at Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Elisabeth-Haggblade/author/B0CTRXLF9G. More information is available at her website at https://www.trauteroseauthor.com.
