Elisabeth Haggblade's award-winning memoir, 'Trauterose,' presents a first-person account of growing up in postwar Munich, offering readers an unusually rare perspective on a period often overlooked in historical narratives. The book, which won the 2024 IndieReader Discovery Award in the Memoir category and First Place Non-Fiction in The Authors Show 2024 Book Cover Awards, details the day-to-day conditions and psychological consequences endured by ordinary individuals in the aftermath of World War II.
Haggblade, orphaned at birth during the war, spent the first eleven years of her life in the household of a former S.S. officer and his family. Her testimony provides an experiential record of survival, adaptation, and loss, grounded not in retrospective reconstruction alone but in lived experience. As she states, 'I wrote this book as a reaction to reports and pictures of that time that I saw: Glamorous portrayals in German magazines of the postwar years. More importantly, I wanted to respond to positive comments I kept hearing from Americans about their understanding of the postwar years. Both impressions were in contrast to my experience growing up and those I came in contact with. They told only one side of the story.'
By 1945, Germany faced political disintegration, severe economic ruin, and profound social dislocation. The memoir illustrates how daily life was shaped by instability and deprivation. Haggblade describes the constant negotiation required to navigate everyday existence: finding soap, toothbrushes, warm water, food, and ways to cook it; attending school without transportation; finding proper clothes and shoes; and dealing with sickness and death. 'All the while, people still had to suffer the usual annoying indignities of adolescence, middle age crises, old age problems,' she writes.
The narrative also emphasizes the enduring roles of faith and communal support. Haggblade recalls the influence of the late Pope Benedict XVI, then Joseph Ratzinger, who taught catechism in her fourth-grade class in the 1950s. In a hand-written letter, he admonished students to 'choose the right beginning,' comparing life to buttoning a coat the wrong way: 'If one buttons one's coat the wrong way, one would have to undo all of it and start over again to make it right.'
According to Haggblade, looking back at this period helps trace how Germany has reckoned with its past and evolved politically, sociologically, and economically. She cites philosopher Baruch Spinoza: 'To understand, not judge.' The memoir serves as a cautionary tale on the inherited guilt created by rampant nationalism and offers a painfully honest view of the world through the eyes of a young woman who found her way to freedom and purpose.
Readers and reviewers have praised 'Trauterose.' Craig Jones of IndieReader called it 'an uncompromising, moving, and elegiac memoir of a deprived childhood in postwar Munich.' Midwest Book Review noted that 'Libraries seeking powerful, personal memoirs that hold political and social lessons and insights will find Trauterose a study in adaptation, survival, and growth.' An Amazon reviewer wrote, 'It offers an unforgettable window into a time and place that few Americans know about.'
Haggblade holds a B.A. in German, a B.A. in Russian, a Master's in Linguistics from California State University, Fresno, and a PhD in English Philology from the Freie Universität Berlin. She retired from teaching part-time English and Linguistics at California State Universities and the Freie Universität Berlin. 'Trauterose' is available in print, ebook, and audiobook formats at Amazon. More information is available at her website at https://www.trauteroseauthor.com.
