My Father's Country - Hardcover

Wibke Bruhns

4

483 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0434013323 ISBN 13: 9780434013326

Publisher: Random House, 2008

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The story of a German family from the late nineteenth century through WWI to WWII and after. A huge bestseller in Germany, it offers extraordinarily moving and riveting insight into the experience of being German in the last century, fit to stand alongside Gitta Sereny's biography of Albert Speer or Bernhard Schlink's The Reader.

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From the Inside Flap:

THIS BOOK POSES DIFFICULT QUESTIONS ABOUT WHAT IT WAS TO BE GERMAN UNDER THE NAZIS.

How would you have behaved as a typical German living in the Third Reich?

What would your ‘moral choices’ have been, and would you have acted upon them?

In August 1944, Hans Georg Klamroth was tried and executed for his part in the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler. Wibke Bruhns, his youngest daughter, was six years old at the time. Decades later, watching a documentary about the events of 20 July, images of her father in the Third Reich People’s Court appeared on the screen. ‘I stare at this man with the lifeless expression. I don’t know him... But I can see myself in him – his eyes are my eyes, I know that I look like him... I wouldn’t be me, without him.’

In My Father’s Country, Bruhns tells of her search for her father. Returning to Halberstadt in Northern Germany, where her ancestors the Klamroth family lived and worked for generations, she retraces the story from Kaiser Wilhelm to the end of World War Two, discovering old photographs, letters and diaries, which she uses to piece together a unique and unforgettable family epic.

Engaging with her family on both an emotional and political level, My Father’s Country is a memoir that is also a remarkable work of history, powerfully told and deeply moving.

From the Back Cover:

‘I enjoyed My Father's Country intensely. What an extraordinary story. I was spellbound by the history of Wibke Bruhns' grandparents’ and parents’ lives. What astonishing people her parents, in particular, were, in their different ways – and how richly and accurately they documented their lives and feelings. They left a great fortune for you to find.

'In the final stages, as the terrible finale approaches, I was almost too moved and appalled to go on reading – but also too moved and appalled to stop. I bought the book because I’d so much admired Bruhn's journalism; I couldn’t have guessed, though, what a treasure I was opening.’ Michael Frayn

‘A fascinating blend of private chronicle, contemporary history and a personal search for identity.’ Der Spiegel

‘A sensational book, which almost effortlessly answers the crucial question [about the Third Reich]: How did it come to this?’ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

‘A heart-rending, brave, utterly convincing book. You cannot read it without being moved to the core.’ Die Zeit

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