Bella Fromm

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Bella Fromm (born December 20, 1890 in Nuremberg , † February 9, 1972 in New York ) was a German journalist who had to flee into US exile in 1938 because she was Jewish. There she published the bestseller Blood and Banquets in 1942 . A Berlin Social Diary .

Life

Bella Fromm grew up in Kitzingen in Lower Franconia / Bavaria in a wealthy wine merchant family. In 1911 she married a Berlin businessman, Max Israel, later Iklé, and had their daughter Grete-Ellen in 1913. The marriage ended in divorce in 1919. Inflation and the collapse of her second husband's business, Karl Julius Steuermann, forced her to earn a living. She gained a foothold in journalism through friends and contacts with Ullstein Verlag , and from 1928 this became her main source of income. She worked as a local journalist for the Grunewald-Echo , as a sports reporter for the 12 Uhr Blatt and the Hamburger Zeitung as well as for the tennis club magazine Rot-Weiß , as a society reporter for the 12-Uhr-Blatt , the Berliner Börsen-Courier , the BZ am Noon and the Vossische Zeitung . The regular column Berlin Diplomats in the Vossische Zeitung marked her with her name; Author lines were rather an exception in this newspaper.

In 1934, like all Jewish journalists, Fromm was banned from working by the National Socialist government. In 1935, after visiting her daughter in exile in the USA, she returned to Germany, although she was aware of the dangers then present. She knew about the concentration camps because her uncle, the Kitzinger Kommerzienrat Max Fromm , had already been locked in a concentration camp for a week in 1933 and was only released again following the intervention of Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht . And she was in close contact with Leo Baeck , the President of the Reich Representation of German Jews , whom she supported in his work by obtaining visas for Jews through her good contacts with foreign consulates and politicians. Bella Fromm was one of those Jews who found it difficult to part with their German homeland. In 1938, two months before the Reichspogromnacht , she left the German Reich.

In New York she initially took on various jobs as a seamstress, waitress and secretary and thus took care of her future (third) husband, Peter Wolffheim (through adoption Welles). A journalist friend suggested that she publish her experiences in Berlin - especially from 1933 - as a "diary". The book Blood and Banquets was published in 1942 and became a bestseller in the United States. In the extensive notes, Fromm describes the rise of the National Socialists with a mixture of ridicule and increasing concern. The work was heavily edited before publication. The records were probably only compiled in the USA. On the one hand, they are based on Bella Fromm's eyewitness accounts; this is supported by extensive records in the journalist's estate. On the other hand, since she also used reports in newspapers and magazines available in the USA in 1941/42 to create "diary entries", which led to factual errors, the classification of "Blood and Banquets" as an authentic diary is not possible and its source value is limited.

From 1946 on, Fromm traveled regularly to Germany to collect material for further lectures. Your German novel ... and yet it was free (or: The angels cry ), published in 1961, received little attention. In the book, Fromm worked fictitiously on her exile experiences.

The Rowohlt publishing house brought Bella Fromm's American best 1993 in slightly abbreviated form in German under the title When Hitler's hand kissed me out.

Honors

Works

  • Blood and Banquets. A Berlin Social Diary. London / New York 1942, several editions
  • ... and yet it was in vain: Roman. Würzburg: Olympia-Verlag [circa 1955]
New edition: Würzburg: Zettner [1967]
Reinbek near Hamburg: Rowohlt 1994 (Rororo 9766: rororo-Sachbuch) ISBN 3-499-19766-9

swell

  • Bella Fromm Collection at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Center / Boston University
  • State Archives Würzburg
  • Kitzingen City Archives

literature

  • John VH Dippel: The Great Illusion. Why German Jews didn't want to leave their homeland. Beltz Verlag, Weinheim and Quadriga, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-88679-285-4 .
  • Nea Matzen: Bella Fromm - Many lives in one: Societylady, journalist, bestselling author in exile. in: Medien & Zeit , September 2009, pp. 28–56.
  • Henry Ashby Turner, Jr .: Two Dubious Third Reich Diaries. In: Central European History 33 (2000), No. 3, pp. 415-422.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fromm's year of birth varies in the sources, but 1890 as the one given in the official documents is considered the most likely.
  2. ↑ See Dippel (Lit.)
  3. ^ Matzen (Lit.), 2011
  4. ↑ Turner (Lit.), especially p. 417f with detailed references
personal data
SURNAME Pious, Bella
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Welles, Bella; Helmsman, Bella; Pious Helmsman, Bella; Pious Welles, Bella
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American journalist
DATE OF BIRTH December 20, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Nuremberg
DATE OF DEATH February 9, 1972
Place of death New York City