Rebecca Boehling - Böcker

A family's recently discovered correspondence provides the inspiration for this fascinating and deeply moving account of Jewish family life before, during and after the Holocaust. Rebecca Boehling and Uta Larkey reveal how the Kaufmann-Steinberg family was pulled apart under the Nazi regime and dispersed over three continents. The family's unique eight-way correspondence across two generations brings into sharp focus the dilemma of Jews in Nazi Germany facing the painful decisions of when, if and to where they should emigrate. The authors capture the family members' fluctuating emotions of hope, optimism, resignation and despair as well as the day-to-day concerns, experiences and dynamics of family life despite increasing persecution and impending deportation. Headed by two sisters who were among the first female business owners in Essen, the family was far from conventional and their story contributes new dimensions to our understanding of Jewish life in Germany and in exile during these dark years.

Over the last few years, there has been a noticeable increase in studies on the postwar period of Germany, reflecting the crucial importance of these years for an understanding of the developments in the two Germanys. With her study of U.S. occupation policy and its effects on German social and political developments in Frankfurt, Munich, and Stuttgart, Rebecca Boehling offers a most valuable contribution to this debate. She examines the decisions made by the U.S. Military Government regarding German municipal personnel from the first year of the occupation, when all city officials were appointed directly by Military Government of with its explicit approval, through the first postwar municipal elections in 1946 and 1948, when democratic self-government was gradually restored. Boehling explores the far-reaching effects of personnel decisions on German political life within the framework of U.S. policies intended to denazify and democratize Germany. The conclusion she draws is that the early local-level German developments under U.S. occupation facilitated economic recovery in a manner that restricted the implementation of political and social goals of democratization.