Elisabeth Haggblade's memoir Trauterose brings to light a chapter of history that is often overshadowed by the vast body of work on World War II: the human story of Germany's postwar crisis. While countless accounts explore the wartime experience, far fewer capture the daily realities and psychological toll of the years that followed. Haggblade's first-person testimony fills that gap, offering a rare and intimate view of a nation struggling to rebuild amid political fragmentation, economic collapse, and profound social upheaval.
Orphaned at birth during World War II, Haggblade spent her first eleven years in the household of a former SS officer and his family. Her memoir, which has earned the 2024 IndieReader Discovery Award in the Memoir category and First Place Non-Fiction in The Authors Show 2024 Book Cover Awards, illuminates a pivotal historical moment through the details of everyday life. It reveals how instability and deprivation shaped the choices people faced, and how even ordinary routines demanded extraordinary resilience.
Haggblade's motivation for writing the book stemmed from a desire to counter glamorous portrayals of postwar Germany in German magazines and to respond to what she saw as incomplete American understanding of that era. "I wrote this book as a reaction to reports and pictures of that time that I saw," Haggblade stated. "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."
In a recent talk for AAUW book club members in Santa Barbara, California, she described the daily challenges of that time: finding soap, a comb, a toothbrush, warm water; securing food and ways to cook it; attending school without public or private transportation in all seasons; finding proper clothes, shoes, and gear for rain and winter; and dealing with sickness and death in the family. "All the while, people still had to suffer the usual annoying indignities of adolescence, middle age crises, old age problems," she noted.
The book also highlights the role of faith and community in helping people endure. Haggblade recounts the influence of the late Pope Benedict XVI, then known as Herr Joseph Ratzinger, who taught her catechism in the 1950s. After he left her school, he wrote her a handwritten letter: "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. So it is with life."
Reviewers have praised Trauterose for its uncompromising and moving portrayal. Craig Jones of IndieReader called it "an uncompromising, moving, and elegiac memoir of a deprived childhood in postwar Germany." Midwest Book Review noted that it "deserves attention from young adult and adult book clubs seeking memoirs that reflect not just individual experience, but a sense of the culture and times." Amazon reviewers have similarly commended the book, with one writing that it "offers an unforgettable window into a time and place that few Americans know about."
The memoir is available in print, ebook, and audiobook formats at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Elisabeth-Haggblade/author/B0CTRXLF9G, and more information can be found at https://www.trauteroseauthor.com. By looking back, Haggblade believes we can learn how Germany has reckoned with its past and trace the changes the country has undergone. As she puts it, quoting Baruch Spinoza, "To understand, not judge."
