Nora Waln

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Nora Waln (born June 4, 1895 in Grampian Hill , † September 27, 1964 in Málaga ) was an American journalist and writer . Born Nora Wall , she took the former family name Waln again as an adult . She belonged to the strictly pacifist religious community of the Quakers .

She became known in Germany mainly through two longsellers who describe their experiences before and during the Chinese civil war . Both came out during the Nazi era in 1935 and 1936 in the German Reich , when Waln was there, researching another publication and making diary-like entries.

Her book Reaching for the Stars (1939), German “The Reach for the Stars”, a detailed description of her stay in pre-war Nazi Germany, became known in the USA and Great Britain , but hardly noticed when it was published in post-war Germany around 1947 the two reports from China were reprinted.

Life

Nora Waln grew up with her six siblings in a well-to-do family. She was the daughter of Thomas Lincoln and Lillian (Quest) Wall, a Quaker and a descendant of Nicholas Waln, who relocated to America from Yorkshire , England in 1682 . As early as 1917 she took over the editing of the women's page of a newspaper in Washington. In 1918, Nora Waln was a member of the American Committee for Armenian and Assyrian Relief (now the Near East Foundation , NEF). In this capacity, she wrote the script for the film Ravished Armenia , based on the book of the same name by the Armenian author Aurora Mardiganian , Survivor of the Armenian Genocide . (The book itself contains a foreword by Walns.) In 1919 she attended Swarthmore College , which she left without a degree.

She came to China in 1920 through a private invitation . Here she met her husband George Edward Osland Hill, who was an officer for England in the diplomatic service. She stayed in China with interruptions until 1933. Since her husband, a committed amateur musician, wanted to take lessons in Germany, she lived in Germany and Austria from 1934 to 1938 .

Then Waln first went to England. There she used her influence to support victims of the Nazi regime. In 1940 she founded The Nora Waln Fund for Refugee Children , an aid organization for children in need from Germany and other war-involved countries, and in 1946 she became director of the European Kappa Kappa Gamma Fund of Refugee Children .

Nora Waln was one of the official observers of the Nuremberg Trials and in the following decades was a correspondent in Asia and Europe for various newspapers and magazines.

After the death of her husband, she moved to Málaga in 1961, where she died in 1964.

In China

Her first two books, "Sommer in der Mongolei" and "Süsse Frucht, bitter Frucht China" were published in Germany in 1935 and 1936 respectively and achieved numerous new editions even after the war. The attention that Waln's books enjoyed can also be attributed to the fact that she was one of the first foreigners to get an intimate picture of Chinese family life. The books received mostly positive reviews in Germany and abroad.

"With all the abundance of her unusual acting art, Nora Waln now tells the story of her friend and her own impressions ..."

In Nazi Germany

Nora Waln spent the years in Nazi-ruled Germany (1934–1938) in the circles of the upper educated middle class. The journalist cast glances at the social classes of all political convictions. She also made visits to institutions of the new Nazi government. Her book about this period, published in German around 1947, hardly met with any response in Germany. At that time, the willingness of German readers to grapple with their life during fascism was low. Today it is used as historical source material in historical publications.

The book received a lot of attention abroad at the time and was discussed in detail by Klaus Mann in two letters. It was reissued in England and the United States in 1988 and 1993, respectively; a new German edition with annotations, partly newly translated and supplemented by missing passages in the German first edition appeared online in 2014. The Quaker (1939) explains her motivation for writing, in which she anonymously describes the unknown protagonists: “The purpose of the book is to promote understanding for the Germans among people living outside the Third Reich . We who inhabit the earth must stick together in brotherly love more than we have before. ... I hope that it will inspire clever people to help the Germans return to the front row of civilized peoples ... "

Nora Waln was considered a supporter of the two Germany theory .

Works

  • The Street of Precious Pearls (New York 1921, 2nd edition 1925)
  • House of Exile (Boston 1933, expanded 1993)
    • Sweet fruit bitter fruit China (Berlin 1935)
  • Summer in Mongolia (Berlin 1936; translated from the English manuscript; no English edition published)
  • Reaching for the Stars (as a series in The Atlantic Monthly from January 1939; non-identical book editions: Boston and London 1939)
    • (New edition under the title :) The Approaching Storm: One Woman's Story of Germany, 1934–1938 (London 1988, New York 1993)
    • Reaching for the stars. Hans E. Günther Verlag, Stuttgart undated [1948]
    • Changed new edition under the title: Reach for the stars. Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia 1934–1938 . Edited and epilogue Mondrian Graf von Lüttichau. Verlag Autonomie und Chaos, Berlin 2014, only online as a PDF file . ISBN 978-3-9232113-2-6

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ravished Armenia
  2. ↑ Kappa Kappa Gamma
  3. ↑ Velhagen & Klasingsmonthshefte, volume 50, p. 216, 1935
  4. ^ Saeculum, Volume 5, Page 348, Georg Stadtmüller - 1954
  5. ^ Deutsche Rundschau , Volume 250 - page 89, 1937
  6. ^ Die Reise ins Third Reich, Angela Schwarz, Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993, ISBN 3-525-36316-8
  7. ↑ time.com: Books: Murmurous Germany , March 13, 1939
  8. ^ Literature archive Monacensia, Munich, call number KM M 240
  9. ^ The approaching storm: one woman's story of Germany 1934–1938 / Nora Waln, Boston, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1993, ISBN 0-939149-81-8 , ISBN 0-939149-80-X
  10. ↑ Main source Wikipedia and comparison of the two versions 1939
  11. ↑ cit. after: Reach for the stars. Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia 1934–1938 . Berlin 2014 PDF file . P. 249
personal data
SURNAME Waln, Nora
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wall, Nora
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American journalist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH June 4, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Grampian Hill
DATE OF DEATH September 27, 1964
Place of death Málaga