letters from the heart
In recent weeks I had to read up on Astrid Lindgren (as in, the legendary author of novels for children) for work-related reasons, and so checked out Jens Andersen's biography (solid) as well as her war time diaries and her correspondence with Louise Hartung. The last one was an amazing discovery. I mean, the war time diaries are immensely interesting as chronicles of the time, and I'm impressed she has the compassion to stll feel sorry for the German soldiers at Stalingrad while loathing Hitler from the get go and being quite well informed (and horrified) about the atrocities going under Nazi occupation everywhere. But she only rarely writes about her own life, and when something happens like her husband intending to leave her (he changes his mind), this is only cryptically alluded to if you haven't read Andersen's biography first (which I did); that's why I feel this rates more as a chronicle than a diary.
Meanwhile, the letters. "Ich habe auch gelebt! Briefe einer Freundschaft". (I don't think it's translated into English yet, more's the pity.) I first heard an audio version, which was fabulous but also shortened, and then got the book itself, which was even more amazing, and then I googled for reviews, which told me that the German reviewers mostly praised it, with a sideline of "come for Astrid, stay for Louise" observations, which I can understand, both content wise and because while readers already know going in Astrid Lindgren was a great writer, 99% are bound to not have heard anything about Louise Hartung and therefore be bowled over by the intensity and the writing abilityand understand why this was published as a correspondence, not as an edition of Lindgren's letters. Louise Hartung's German wiki entry says the reaction in Sweden was different with questions whether such an intimate correspondence should have been published at all, but I don't speak Swedish and I don't trust wiki unconditionally, so who knows.
So, Louise Hartung: started out as a singer and part of Berlin's bohemian scene in the later 1920s, was friends with both Lotte Lenya and Kurt Weill and even was part of the original production of The Threepenny Opera. Was a Lesbian and a social democrat and thus come 1933 immediately got kicked out of the Reichstheaterkammer. (Why she didn't emigrate - which she could have, Lotte Lenya got her an engagement in London at the Savoy in 1933, from which she returend to Germany instead of staying in Britain: in her letters to Astrid Lindgren many years later, she says she knew so many Russian emigrants in Berlin in the 1920s that she knew she would never, ever, want to be an emigré. For a while, she supported herself as a photographer and come the later 1940s was drafted along with the other available singers (at this point, the fact she'd been forbidden to perform was conveniently overlooked) to entertain the troops on the Eastern Front. In between, she also hid various Jewish friends (I know that's a cliché many people post 1945 claimed, but she actually did it) together with her then partner whom she was living with, soprano Maria Schreker. In 1945, like unfortunately many women in Berlin she got raped by members of the Red Army.
Now Louise Hartung had already joined the SPD (= Social Democratic Party, the oldest one still in existence in Europe, in fact) in 1926, and post war became a SPD politician on the local (Berlin) level, with a specialisation on art and young people. She ended up as the No.2 of the Berlin Hauptjugendamt, and started a great many important initiatives - organisation of care for war orphans, therapy for traumatized children being but one, but also reading circles for children and families. These were about more than encouraging children to read. As Louise Hartung frankly wrote, all of these children had been raised to believe in Hitler and Nazi ideology by pretty much everyone who until then had been in charge (teachers, and most parents). It wasn't enough to simply say "all you believed was wrong" if you wanted to permanently change their mindset, and introducing them to engaging books that presented very different values than what they were used to was an important part. In this capacity, Louise Hartung was the one to invite Astrid Lindgren to Berlin in 1953. Asstrid Lindgren was staying in her flat during her time in (West) Berlin, and the two women made a secret trip to East Berlin. They became friends, and it's after Lindgren's return to Stockholm that the correspondence starts.
Louise Hartung had already been very impressed by Pippi Langstrumpf (hence the original invite), but at the latest after the return visit of hers to Stockholm, it was obvious she'd fallen in love with Astrid the woman as well as Lindgren the author. And this inevitably put a strain early on in the relationship because while Astrid Lindgren was fascinated by her and came to care very deeply for her in the course of their long friendship, she was not Lesbian or bi, and wrote (not in a bigotted, just in a matter of fact way) that she simply wasn't sexually attracted to women. While Louise Hartung at first said this was not a problem, she was okay with "just" friendship, it took years for this actually being the case. When she wrote "I love you and I'll always desire you", she meant it. This laying yourself open (in the 1950s!) emotionally like this must have taken great courage, but then, so did most of Louise Hartung's life.
I can also understand Astrid Lindgren, though, not least because someone you want as a friend but not as a lover being completely in love with you is an excruciating situation. And she did want Louise Hartung as a friend. In addition to the more than 600 letters between them until Louise Hartung's far too soon death of cancer in January 1965, they went on several journeys together. If Hartung's letters are incredibly intense, Lindgren's are very tender, and both are absolutely and endearingly geeky when introducing each other to favourite books. (These could be famous ones; during one of Lindgren's visits to Germany, Hartung read Goethe's Werther to her in the garden and also sang for her, which she otherwise avoided doing post war. But they could also be obscure books, like the correspondence between an 18th century real life couple published in the early 1960s and titled "Ich war wohl klug, dass ich dich fand", which Astrid Lindgren loved so much that she wrote a review of it in the Swedish papers, which must have been puzzling to a great many Swedes since the book wasn't available in Swedish.) If in an early letter (where they still say "Sie" to each other, the formal mode of address), Astrid LIndgren's "my life so far" summary is incredibly guarded, in later letters she talks about her very mixed feelings for her mother, her youth in non-idyllic terms (as in, what it had been like to be an illegitimate mother), and allows herself disgruntled sharp utterings (as about the reverend when her daughter gets married - she says the way he carried on confirmed her impression that all preachers ought to get shot) that would never have fit with her public persona. Also political observations like thise, when returning from America (this includes a period-owed use of the n-word):
I thought America was pretty itneresting, but I'd never want to live there. Did I tell you I heard Martin Luther King preach in a New England college? He was an extraordinary speaker, and I believe his words left a deep imipression with the young students, not his religious message, of course, but what he had to say about civil rights. In the north, they believe themselves to be so superior and think that they don't discriminate anyone at all like people in the South do, but as soon as the neegroes atually demand something, all white Americans, no matter in which state they live, believe that this is impudent, though of course there are individual exceptions. Alas for all the hypocrisy in the world!
In conclusion, it's a great book to read, if heartbreaking at the end when Louise Hartung dies, and I hope it will be translated in as many languages as possible.
Meanwhile, the letters. "Ich habe auch gelebt! Briefe einer Freundschaft". (I don't think it's translated into English yet, more's the pity.) I first heard an audio version, which was fabulous but also shortened, and then got the book itself, which was even more amazing, and then I googled for reviews, which told me that the German reviewers mostly praised it, with a sideline of "come for Astrid, stay for Louise" observations, which I can understand, both content wise and because while readers already know going in Astrid Lindgren was a great writer, 99% are bound to not have heard anything about Louise Hartung and therefore be bowled over by the intensity and the writing abilityand understand why this was published as a correspondence, not as an edition of Lindgren's letters. Louise Hartung's German wiki entry says the reaction in Sweden was different with questions whether such an intimate correspondence should have been published at all, but I don't speak Swedish and I don't trust wiki unconditionally, so who knows.
So, Louise Hartung: started out as a singer and part of Berlin's bohemian scene in the later 1920s, was friends with both Lotte Lenya and Kurt Weill and even was part of the original production of The Threepenny Opera. Was a Lesbian and a social democrat and thus come 1933 immediately got kicked out of the Reichstheaterkammer. (Why she didn't emigrate - which she could have, Lotte Lenya got her an engagement in London at the Savoy in 1933, from which she returend to Germany instead of staying in Britain: in her letters to Astrid Lindgren many years later, she says she knew so many Russian emigrants in Berlin in the 1920s that she knew she would never, ever, want to be an emigré. For a while, she supported herself as a photographer and come the later 1940s was drafted along with the other available singers (at this point, the fact she'd been forbidden to perform was conveniently overlooked) to entertain the troops on the Eastern Front. In between, she also hid various Jewish friends (I know that's a cliché many people post 1945 claimed, but she actually did it) together with her then partner whom she was living with, soprano Maria Schreker. In 1945, like unfortunately many women in Berlin she got raped by members of the Red Army.
Now Louise Hartung had already joined the SPD (= Social Democratic Party, the oldest one still in existence in Europe, in fact) in 1926, and post war became a SPD politician on the local (Berlin) level, with a specialisation on art and young people. She ended up as the No.2 of the Berlin Hauptjugendamt, and started a great many important initiatives - organisation of care for war orphans, therapy for traumatized children being but one, but also reading circles for children and families. These were about more than encouraging children to read. As Louise Hartung frankly wrote, all of these children had been raised to believe in Hitler and Nazi ideology by pretty much everyone who until then had been in charge (teachers, and most parents). It wasn't enough to simply say "all you believed was wrong" if you wanted to permanently change their mindset, and introducing them to engaging books that presented very different values than what they were used to was an important part. In this capacity, Louise Hartung was the one to invite Astrid Lindgren to Berlin in 1953. Asstrid Lindgren was staying in her flat during her time in (West) Berlin, and the two women made a secret trip to East Berlin. They became friends, and it's after Lindgren's return to Stockholm that the correspondence starts.
Louise Hartung had already been very impressed by Pippi Langstrumpf (hence the original invite), but at the latest after the return visit of hers to Stockholm, it was obvious she'd fallen in love with Astrid the woman as well as Lindgren the author. And this inevitably put a strain early on in the relationship because while Astrid Lindgren was fascinated by her and came to care very deeply for her in the course of their long friendship, she was not Lesbian or bi, and wrote (not in a bigotted, just in a matter of fact way) that she simply wasn't sexually attracted to women. While Louise Hartung at first said this was not a problem, she was okay with "just" friendship, it took years for this actually being the case. When she wrote "I love you and I'll always desire you", she meant it. This laying yourself open (in the 1950s!) emotionally like this must have taken great courage, but then, so did most of Louise Hartung's life.
I can also understand Astrid Lindgren, though, not least because someone you want as a friend but not as a lover being completely in love with you is an excruciating situation. And she did want Louise Hartung as a friend. In addition to the more than 600 letters between them until Louise Hartung's far too soon death of cancer in January 1965, they went on several journeys together. If Hartung's letters are incredibly intense, Lindgren's are very tender, and both are absolutely and endearingly geeky when introducing each other to favourite books. (These could be famous ones; during one of Lindgren's visits to Germany, Hartung read Goethe's Werther to her in the garden and also sang for her, which she otherwise avoided doing post war. But they could also be obscure books, like the correspondence between an 18th century real life couple published in the early 1960s and titled "Ich war wohl klug, dass ich dich fand", which Astrid Lindgren loved so much that she wrote a review of it in the Swedish papers, which must have been puzzling to a great many Swedes since the book wasn't available in Swedish.) If in an early letter (where they still say "Sie" to each other, the formal mode of address), Astrid LIndgren's "my life so far" summary is incredibly guarded, in later letters she talks about her very mixed feelings for her mother, her youth in non-idyllic terms (as in, what it had been like to be an illegitimate mother), and allows herself disgruntled sharp utterings (as about the reverend when her daughter gets married - she says the way he carried on confirmed her impression that all preachers ought to get shot) that would never have fit with her public persona. Also political observations like thise, when returning from America (this includes a period-owed use of the n-word):
I thought America was pretty itneresting, but I'd never want to live there. Did I tell you I heard Martin Luther King preach in a New England college? He was an extraordinary speaker, and I believe his words left a deep imipression with the young students, not his religious message, of course, but what he had to say about civil rights. In the north, they believe themselves to be so superior and think that they don't discriminate anyone at all like people in the South do, but as soon as the neegroes atually demand something, all white Americans, no matter in which state they live, believe that this is impudent, though of course there are individual exceptions. Alas for all the hypocrisy in the world!
In conclusion, it's a great book to read, if heartbreaking at the end when Louise Hartung dies, and I hope it will be translated in as many languages as possible.