In a sense, the East German story is not my story. We did not have any loved ones behind the
Berlin Wall. But that story of lives and families interrupted is a universal
story, the fallout of war that continues long after peace treaties are signed. My mother was born in Stuttgart, Germany in
1933. Her sister married an American
serviceman after World War II and moved to the U.S. My mother followed years later, planning to
work for 2 years as an au pair in New York City, and ending up staying a
lifetime, falling in love first with the country and much later my father.
My family had survived the war pretty much intact. They were not casualties in the traditional
sense, but my grandparents lost both of their daughters not to the war, but
because of the war, because of the forces of change. The major players in
history, the presidents and potentates get the spotlight, and the people go
about quietly picking up the pieces. And
when a conflict ends, the consequences affect generations. I have always been fascinated by questions of
identity, what makes a person who they are, their language, the patch of earth
they’re born on, the foods they eat, the songs they sing? And since my very first trip to Germany as a
child I’ve known that homesickness that gets passed down, of always having one
foot on a different continent. And as
I’ve studied German over the years and taught it in college, it added another
dimension, the conflict of loving the heritage and being horrified by the history.
Home Sweet Stranger was a chance to delve into subjects like collective guilt,
personal responsibility, justice and the lack of it. To see how conflicts don’t end, they ripple
out into other conflicts, and how they affect lives ... and loves.
No comments:
Post a Comment