In My Grandfather’s Shadow: A Story of War, Trauma and the Legacy of Silence
An Anglo-German writer, Angela Findlay traces her family history and examines the consequences of having, as her grandfather, a senior Wehrmacht military officer (General Karl von Graffen), who died soon after her birth in 1964. Findlay had all kinds of psychological issues to cope with in her adolescence and into her 20s and 30s. She deploys various psychotherapy terms and solutions to understand why she suffered from these mental disturbances. After much examination, she comes to appreciate that her problems emanate from traumatic memory (suppressed or not acknowledged) from the harrowing experiences of her mother, who was a young child during the collapse of Germany as the Allies encircled the defeated country, together with the associated guilt passed onto her for her grandfather’s role in the Second World War.
There’s a fair amount of New Age flummery and psycho-blather to get through. But when Findlay decides in 2009 to follow her grandfather’s footsteps, by train, in the German invasion of the Soviet Union, and learns some unpalatable truths about the nature of the German military’s role in the atrocities in Poland and the USSR, then the narrative becomes a fascinating and valuable account. She has a deeply ambivalent attitude to von Graffen, who wrote frequently to his wife, Findlay’s grandmother, during the war and following his captivity.
Findlay isn’t a historian and makes some fairly sweeping comments about historical events and trends that could be challenged, and without footnotes in the text (though there is a bibliography), elements of her argument are unreferenced supposition and the product of some sketchy, limited knowledge of the subject. Nevertheless, this is an interesting read and a fascinating account of how the egregious crimes of the Nazi German state filter down even to this day to subsequent generations.
