How I Found the Answer to Injustice

A Nightmare Begins

After finishing my basic education, I attended ballet school, where I also learned the Ausdruckstanz (expressive dance), as taught by Mary Wigman. She was a pioneer of Expressionist dancing, which requires the artist to express his or her feelings in the form of a dance. I also began painting. Thus, my teen years were initially happy and filled with excitement and learning.  But then came 1939 and World War II. Another blow occurred in 1941, when Father died of tuberculosis. 

War is a nightmare. Although I was only 17 years of age when the war began, I thought that the world had gone mad. I saw throngs of hitherto normal citizens get caught up in Nazi hysteria.  Then came deprivation, death, and destruction. Our house was badly damaged in a bomb attack, and in the course of the war, several of my family members were killed.

When hostilities ceased in 1945, Mother, Kathe, and I were still in Halle. By this time, however, I had a husband and a baby daughter, but my marriage was strained. We separated, and since I had to support myself and my daughter, I  worked as  a dancer and a painter.  Post war Germany was divided into four sectors, and our town was in the sector governed by the Soviet Union. Hence, we all had to get accustomed to being under a Communist regime. In 1949, our part of Germany, often called East Germany, became the German Democratic Republic. (GDR) 

Next time: How I Found the Answer to Injustice - Life Under Communism

From the AWAKE! magazine, 2011