My father's keeper : children of Nazi leaders : an intimate history of damage and denial / by Stephan and Norbert Lebert ; translated by Julian Evans.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lebert, Stephan, 1961-

Contributor:

Lebert, Norbert, 1929-1993.

Evans, Julian.

Standardized Title:

Denn Du trägst meinen Namen. English

Language:

English

German

Subjects (All):

Children of Nazis--Germany.

Children of Nazis.

National socialism--Moral and ethical aspects.

National socialism.

Conflict of generations--Germany.

Conflict of generations.

Guilt.

Germany.

Physical Description:

243 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 24 cm

Edition:

First U.S. edition.

Place of Publication:

Boston : Little, Brown, 2001.

Summary:

In 1959 the German Journalist Norbert Lebert conducted extensive interviews with the sons and daughters of prominent Nazis: Hess, Bormann, Goring, and Himmler; Baldur von Schirach, creator of the Hitler Youth; and Hans Frank, governor of Poland. Then at the beginning of their adult lives, Lebert's subjects were the bearers of notorious names that made them outcasts to some, symbols of a lost glory to others.

Forty years later, Lebert's son Stephan--also a journalist--tracked down these same men and women to find out what had become of them, how they remembered their fathers, and what effect the names they carried had on the paths they had taken. Lebert's account of his conversations, juxtaposed with his father's postwar interviews, gives us an extraordinary and unflinching look at how these individuals have coped with a horrifying heritage.

The stories that emerge are fascinating, surprising, and often disturbing: The young man who refuses military service and is granted conscientious objector status on the grounds that his father is imprisoned by the state -- as a Nazi war criminal. The boy who begins his education learning the principles of fascism, finishes it at a Catholic boarding school, and later becomes a priest and a missionary to Africa. The woman who was systematically refused work because she wouldn't use an alias, but who now lives in the suburbs under her husband's name and keeps secret contacts with other nostalgic Nazis. The journalist who writes a scathing magazine article reviling the father responsible for two million deaths, and is greeted with a barrage of letters from outraged Germans -- whatever your father may have done, the letters argue, fathers must always be honored.

My Father's Keeper is a remarkable and illuminating addition to our knowledge of the Nazi past and of how this past continues to haunt the present. And it offers a chilling perspective on the way children live with the legacy of their parents' deeds.

Contents:

For You Bear My Name 7

The 1959 Manuscript: Wolf-Rudiger Hess 21

Who Were the Fathers? 38

The 1959 Manuscript: Wolf-Rudiger Hess and the Nazi Women 54

On a Home Page the Story Continues 74

The 1959 Manuscript: Martin Bormann Junior 88

A Priest Offers a Warning about the Future 107

The 1959 Manuscript: Niklas and Norman Frank 122

A Man Wants to Destroy His Father 140

The 1959 Manuscript: Gudrun Himmler 154

An Embittered Daughter and the Not-Wanting-to-See Principle 180

The 1959 Manuscript: Edda Goring 197

A Sightseeing Tour of Munich in the Year 2000 210

The 1959 Manuscript: The von Schirach Brothers 226

A Final Meeting with the Lawyer 238.

Notes:

Translation of: Denn Du trägst meinen Namen, first published in Germany by Karl Blessing Verlag in 2000.

ISBN:

0316519294

OCLC:

47962168