Marta Hillers

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Marta Hillers (1935)

Marta Hillers (born May 26, 1911 in Krefeld , † June 16, 2001 in Basel ) was a German journalist. She became known posthumously through an autobiographical story entitled Eine Frau in Berlin , which was published anonymously during her lifetime . In this she reports on the everyday life of Berliners during the Soviet occupation at the end of the Second World War , in particular on the mass rapes of German women by marauding Red Army soldiers .

biography

Marta Hillers was born as the daughter of a manager who died in the war in 1916. She was then raised by her mother with two siblings. From 1925 to 1930 she attended a secondary school and then initially worked in Krefeld and Düsseldorf company offices without having trained. Between September 1931 and May 1933 she traveled to Poland, Georgia, Armenia, Russia, Turkey, Greece and Italy and worked as a photographer for European and American papers. As a party activist of the KPD, Hillers was responsible for the party's women's work in Benrath in the early 1930s . In 1932/33 she worked for the state photo agency Soyuzfoto in Moscow . Contrary to what she later said, she had a good command of the Russian language. During her stay in the Soviet Union , she was recommended by the Central Committee of the KPD for transfer as a candidate to the CPSU .

From May 1933 to July 1934 Hillers studied history and art history at the Sorbonne . She was fluent in French. In 1934 she moved to Berlin and worked as a freelance journalist for numerous newspapers and magazines in National Socialist Germany. According to the historian Yuliya von Saal, Hillers supported the Nazi regime as a “petty propagandist”, including for the school magazine Help! of the National Socialist Teachers' Association . At the end of the war between April and June 1945, about which she reports in her published diary entries, Hillers worked for the youth magazine Ins neue Leben , of which she was editor-in-chief from August 1948. In the 1950s she gave up her journalistic activity after she met a Swiss citizen and moved to live with him in Basel, where she lived until the end of her life.

Her well-known “diary” was published for the first time in 1954, anonymously and in English, at the instigation of CW Ceram , and in 1959 also in German. Surprised by the negative reactions, Hillers forbade another publication during her lifetime. After that, the book was almost completely forgotten by the public for decades. At the end of the 1980s it is said to have circulated in interested circles in West Berlin in the form of photocopies. Even today, the original edition is difficult to obtain.

A new edition was brought out in 2003, which initially received great praise, but later sparked discussion. Among other things, the authenticity of the depiction and Hiller's authorship were questioned. According to an expert opinion by Walter Kempowski , at least the original diary entries on which the book is based are authentic. According to a review by Spiegel editor and historian Martin Doerry, a comprehensive report by historian Yuliya von Saal from the Munich Institute for Contemporary History came to the conclusion that Hillers had literarized her original diary notes when the diary was published. The book would only partly consist of her diary notes, most of which was probably added by the author herself at the beginning of the 1950s. This also includes all statements that point to an urbane author who is distant from the Nazi regime. Corresponding notes can already be found in the original diary entries. In 2008 Max Färberböck filmed the text under the title Anonyma - A Woman in Berlin with Nina Hoss in the leading role.

In the meantime, Max Marek , the son of the bestselling author Kurt W. Marek, who became known under the pseudonym CW Ceram , has handed over Marta Hillers' estate to the Munich Institute for Contemporary History Munich (IfZ). The IfZ archive prepared the material and arranged it in 16 folders that are available for research.

Works

literature

  • Yuliya von Saal: Anonyma: A woman in Berlin. History of a bestseller , in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , 67 (2019), pp. 343–376.
  • Clarissa Schnabel: More than Anonyma - Marta Dietschy-Hillers and her circle , Norderstedt: Books on Demand 2015 (2nd edition), ISBN 978-3-7347-8825-3 .
  • Jens Bisky : When boys play world history, girls have silent roles / Who was Anonyma in Berlin? Women, Facts and Fiction / Notes on a Big Book Hit This Summer. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. September 24, 2003.
  • Christian Esch: An unimportant person? The Süddeutsche Zeitung reveals the identity of “Anonyma” from Berlin, Enzensberger replies. In: Berliner Zeitung. September 25, 2003.
  • Luke Harding : Row over naming of rape author . In: The Observer . October 5, 2003.
  • Götz Aly : A case for historians: Open questions about the book "A Woman in Berlin". In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. October 18, 2003.
  • Josef Kanon: My City of Ruins. In: The New York Times. August 14, 2005, book review section p. 12. See also Christoph Gottesmann, Vienna, Letter to the Editor, The New York Times , Sunday book review section, September 11, 2005, p. 6.

Web link

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Clarissa Schnabel: The life and times of Marta Dietschy Hillers.
  2. ↑ Yuliya von Saal: Anonyma: A woman in Berlin. History of a bestseller , in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 67 (2019), pp. 343–376, here p. 359
  3. ↑ Yuliya von Saal: Anonyma: A woman in Berlin. History of a bestseller , in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 67 (2019), p. 369
  4. ↑ https://www.perlentaucher.de/buch/anonyma/eine-frau-in-berlin.html
  5. ↑ Submission is the best defense tactic. NZZ of September 28, 2003.
  6. ↑ NZZ of January 19, 2004
  7. ↑ Martin Doerry: Hell on Earth. How authentic are “Anonyma's” diaries about the rapes in Berlin in 1945? A historian has viewed the original documents and found tampering . In: Der Spiegel , No. 26 of June 22, 2019, pp. 118f.
  8. ↑ Sven Felix Kellerhoff: “Anonyma”: A woman between rape and prostitution . June 26, 2019 ( welt.de [accessed June 26, 2019]).
  9. ↑ Sven Felix Kellerhoff : “Anonyma”: A woman between rape and prostitution .
personal data
SURNAME Hillers, Marta
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German author
DATE OF BIRTH May 26, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Krefeld
DATE OF DEATH June 16, 2001
Place of death Basel