Helga Schneider (writer)

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Helga Schneider (born November 17, 1937 in Steinberg , Polish Jastrzębnik, Poland ) is an Italian writer of German descent. Although her mother tongue is German, she writes her works exclusively in Italian . Her novel Lasciami andare, madre (German Let me go ), in which she settles accounts in an autobiographical retrospect with her mother, a war criminal and Nazi nostalgic, caused a sensation, was translated into numerous languages ​​and published in 2017 by Polly Steele under the title Let me go made into a film. Her literary work revolves around coming to terms with the National Socialist past.

Life

Schneider was born in 1937 to Austrian parents in Steinberg, Silesia, where the grandparents on his father's side ran an estate. The Schneiders were based in Berlin-Niederschönhausen . After the outbreak of war , the father was sent to the front as a soldier. In 1941 the mother left her daughter Helga and son Peter (at that time 4 years and 19 months old) in Berlin and joined the SS as an assistant. She subsequently became a guard in the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp and then in Auschwitz-Birkenau . A sister of the father, Aunt Margarete, temporarily looked after the children until the grandmother from Poland reached Berlin. The latter looked after the two grandchildren for around a year. While on leave from the front, the father met a young woman from Berlin named Ursula, whom he married for a second time in 1942. As a result, grandmother left Berlin, which was a particularly painful separation for little Helga. The stepmother was only fond of Peter and neglected Helga, who was soon placed in a home for those who were difficult to educate and later in a boarding school for children from failed families.

In autumn 1944 she brought a step aunt named Hilde back to Berlin from the boarding school in Oranienburg-Eden . The German capital was largely destroyed and from late 1944 until the end of the war, Helga and her family had to live in a cellar due to the ongoing bombing by the Allied forces. Cold and hunger determined everyday life.

In December 1944, Helga and Peter were selected to visit the Führerbunker thanks to aunt Hilde, who worked as an employee of the Propaganda Ministry headed by Joseph Goebbels . Thanks to this propaganda initiative, they were able to meet Adolf Hitler personally. The writer, in retrospect, described him as an old-looking man with a magnetic look and shuffling gait, a wrinkled face and a limp and sweaty handshake.

In 1948 the family returned to Austria with the children and settled with their grandparents in Attersee am Attersee .

Helga Schneider has lived in Bologna since 1963 . In 1971 she found out that her mother, whom she had not seen again since 1941, was still alive and decided to visit her in Vienna, where she lived. During this visit, Helga gained insights into the mother's obscene biography. As an SS helper she was involved in war crimes such as medical experiments and was sentenced to six years imprisonment by a court martial, but she still does not regret her past in the SS in any way. On the contrary: She has had her previous one for over 30 years Uniform kept like a relic and now wants her to put Helga on. She also wanted to give her jewelry of suspicious origin, which the daughter did not accept because she thought it was Jewish gold. Helga was so horrified to see her mother again, whose ideological decline and apologetic attitude towards the Third Reich, that she broke off all contact again. Mother and daughter only met a second time in 1998, and in this context, too, Helga had to discover the mother's unshakable belief in Hitler and his mass murderous ideas.

Schneider's literary activity did not begin until the 1990s. The prose volume Lasciami andare, madre (German Let me go ), published in Italian in 2001 , forms a rabid account of the mother figure.

Press reviews on let me go

“Schneider's view of the victims is shaped by this argument [with his mother], and this leads, paradoxically, to the fact that he hardly differs from that of their mother: The prisoners from Ravensbrück and Birkenau are only perceived as a bunch, as“ emaciated , exhausted, completely desperate Jewish women with shaved heads and empty eyes, "not in their respective individuality. So you stay beyond the limit of being human. Helga Schneider, on the other hand, constantly observes herself, registers every emotional movement of her own like an accountant with a bad conscience and good intentions and thus forces the reader to grant her absolution. The focus is on her suffering, and the urge to make it go away is at the expense of those who have suffered from their mother [...]. "

- Erich Hackl : Mummy as a murderer. Helga Schneider: Let me go

“The author reproduces her mother's tales, some of which seem quite cruel, and explains why she could not hate this woman, despite the fact that she did not even have the slightest remorse for her inhuman deeds. All in all, a very thought-provoking book that takes the reader into the vortex of the author's contradicting feelings towards her mother. "

- A. Ney : Merciless mother. The daughter of a concentration camp guard tries to understand

Works

German translations

  • The stake in Berlin. The story of a childhood . From the Ital. by Sylvia Antz. Munich: Heyne 1997. New edition udT No sky over Berlin. A childhood . Munich, Zurich: Piper 2006. Original title: Il rogo di Berlino (1995).
  • Let me go . From the Ital. by Claudia Schmitt. Munich, Zurich: Piper 2003. Original title: Lasciami andare, madre (2001).
  • When we were kids . From the Ital. by Claudia Schmitt. Munich, Zurich: Piper 2006. Original title: L'usignolo dei Linke (2004).


Original editions

  • La bambola decapitata . Bologna: Pendragon 1993.
  • Il rogo di Berlino . Milano: Adelphi 1995.
  • Porta di Brandeburgo . Milano: Rizzoli 1997.
  • Il piccolo Adolf non aveva le ciglia . Milano: Rizzoli 1998.
  • Lasciami andare, madre . Milano: Adelphi 2001.
  • Place di cannella . Milano: Salani, 2002.
  • L'usignolo dei left . Milano: Adelphi 2004.
  • L'albero di Goethe . Milano: Salani 2004.
  • Io, piccola ospite del guide . Torino: Einaudi 2006.
  • Il piccolo Adolf non aveva le ciglia . Torino: Einaudi 2007.
  • Heike riprende a respirare . Milano: Salani 2008.
  • La baracca dei tristi piaceri . Milano: Salani 2009.
  • Rosel e la strana famiglia del signor Kreutzberg . Milano: Salani 2010.
  • I miei vent'anni . Milano: Salani 2013.
  • L'inutile zavorra dei sentimenti . Milano: Salani 2015.
  • Un amore adolescente . Milano: Salani 2017.
  • Per un pugno di cioccolata e altri specchi rotti . Mantova: Oligo 2019.

literature

  • Chiara Stella: Helga Schneider. La storia mancata di una madre e di una figlia. In: DEP. Deportates, esuli, profughe. Rivista telematica di studi sulla memoria femminile 21 (2013), pp. 1-27. [5]
  • Simonetta Sanna: Nazi perpetrators in German literature. The challenge of evil. Frankfurt am Main u. a .: Peter Lang 2017, pp. 143–170.

Web links

  • Interview with Helga Schneider at the Kerner Show February 27, 2003. Part 1 ; Part 2 .
  • Contribution to Helga Schneider's Let me go from the ZDF broadcast Aspects (2005). [6] .

Remarks

  1. ↑ Cf. Concita de Gregorio: Il mondo di Helga. La straniera dal guide alla Montagnola. In: La Repubblica 04/04/2004. [1]
  2. ↑ The homepage for the film Let me go based on Schneider's novel Let me go [2]
  3. ↑ In the novel Il rogo di Berlino (Italian version, 1995, pp. 9-10) there is talk of the Nuremberg court martial. It seems, however, to be clarified in which of the processes this woman was convicted.
  4. ↑ Erich Hackl: Mutti as a murderer. Helga Schneider: Let me go . In: Neues Deutschland, April 25, 2003. [3]
  5. ↑ A. Ney: Merciless Mother. The daughter of a concentration camp guard tries to understand. In: Preussische Allgemeine Zeitung 23.8.2003 [4]
personal data
SURNAME Schneider, Helga
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian writer
DATE OF BIRTH November 17, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Jastrzębnik