Weekly Reader: Tapestry of My Mother's Life: Stories, Fragments, and Silences by Malve Von Hassell; Moving and Detailed Account of Von Hassell's Mother's Life During WWII and The Cold War
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: Every year, a trend seems to appear in the books that I review. Last year the most frequent themes were dystopian societies and lovers who travel through time or discover that they are reincarnations of lovers in the past. While one could say that COVID probably inspired both trends by forcing authors to face reality in the former and escape from it in the latter, that may have been true for the books published in 2020-2021. But some were published earlier and read about the same time. Sometimes inspiration strikes several people at once.
So far the main themes that I am reviewing this year are: young women traveling to fantasy worlds and family histories/memoirs. The former is probably more escapism. After all, if the author and Reader can't disappear from a world of COVID, inflation, racial and income inequality, climate change, war, and political unrest then their protagonist can. The latter theme might also be inspired by current events as well. The last two years may have caused people to rethink their lives and how they got to this point. They might have talked to older relatives or studied primary and secondary sources about their lives and wonder how they faced their struggles in different times.
In the family history/memoirs category, I reviewed We've Got To Stop Meeting Like This: A Memoir of Missed Connections by Donna Y. Farris, Emma's Tapestry by Isobel Blackthorn, and the latest Tapestry of My Mother's Life: Stories, Fragments, and Silences by Malve Von Hassell. Similar to Farris's memoir, Von Hassell uses past experiences and a gift for writing to deal with personal loss. Similar to Blackthorn's book, Von Hassell peers into the past of a relative to answer some long neglected questions about her family's story. Blackthorn wrote about her great grandmother. Von Hassell chose to write about her mother, Christa.
Von Hassell's mother died in 2009, two months after the death of her son and Von Hassell's brother, Adrian. Von Hassell and her older brother, Agostino were faced with the heartbreaking task of cleaning out their mother's belongings. While going through Christa's things, the siblings discovered some curious questions about the silent woman that they thought that they knew. Though their mother was a gifted storyteller on certain aspects of her life, there were things that she never talked about until after her death and the children had to learn about them.
The details that Agostino and Von Hassell read reveal a troubled childhood in pre-WWII Pomerania, adulthood during the Cold War, an unhappy first marriage marked by forced separation, and the existence of a previous lover, Heinrich, who neither Von Hassell nor Agostino knew about. Researching her mother's history taught Von Hassell a lot about her mother and saw her not as a quiet cypher but as a full blooded woman with interests, passions, longings, and loves that her daughter never knew about.
Von Hassell described her mother as a woman who quickly adjusted to life and the circumstances surrounding her. She believed that Christa's birth signified this. Christa was born during a snowstorm in December, 1923. The chauffeur and Christa's grandfather had trouble getting help, so her father assisted the midwife in the delivery. Her mother had fainted. During the panic to keep her alive, newborn Christa was accidentally put inside a drawer. After the crisis was averted, they found baby Christa in her drawer fast asleep.
Christa von Zitzweitz and her brother Hans-Melchior grew up in a large estate, Muttrin, that had been in her family's possession until 1945. Her childhood on the estate seemed idyllic as her vivid descriptions captivated her daughter's imagination. Von Hassell felt like she walked alongside her mother in the vast landscape, spacious rooms, and her favorite haunt, the cloakroom. Christa's childhood memories of practical jokes, loving extended family members, and friendship with the servants is purposely described as nostalgic and enchanting before the reality of Nazism crashes in. Christa, like everyone else around her, was unaware of the dark clouds of hatred, violence, and tyranny that were coming soon.
Christa attended boarding school in the 1930's partly to avoid her volatile mother and stern but loving father. To her daughter, Christa claimed ignorance and obliviousness of the Nazi's true intentions. She remained tight lipped about world events while her personality was developed during this troubled time. Many of Christa's older cousins joined the BDM (Bund Deutscher Madel, League of German Maidens). One spoke of role call and singing and was at first enthusiastic. Later Christa reported that "she lost interest in the organization" but did not elaborate on the reason. Another cousin was rejected by the organization because her grandmother was Jewish.
Christa. herself joined the organization but this part of her life remained a secret to her children. Christa never once spoke about her involvement in the group or her life in Hitler influenced Pomerania. Later the family moved to Warsaw and Christa remained secluded from such topics as Kristallnacht. This silence disturbed Von Hassell and as of the writing of this book, she still puzzled over not asking more about it. She saw it as indicative of that generation that some openly admitted their guilt in being a part of such heinous crimes, others like Von Hassell's mother refused to talk about it.
In fact, Von Hassell's family didn't question Hitler's policies until it began to directly involve them. When the leader did a character assassination against a disgraced former ally, Christa's father thought that he had gone too far. He then became involved in resistance efforts against Hitler. Christa's father and brother later fought in the war while Christa and her mother livedd off of ration cards.
In hindsight, it shows how myopic some people can be that they don't care about what goes on in the world unless it affects them personally. It reveals the feelings of many people when they live in such times, they can't always fully grasp the enormity and horror around them until it's too late.
Christa's young adulthood was a time of rationing and censorship. As Von Hassell observed, she adjusted to her surroundings. Christa learned how to save food by cooking recipes, like a special rum cake, that lasted for days. She also joined the RAD (Reichsarbeitsdienst, National Labor Service) and worked in a sewing machine factory.
There was also constant censorship, particularly in letters to and from soldiers. Christa lived quietly, playing the outward obedient woman even if she disagreed internally. Her interest in art and literature, which she shared with her father and brother, were the only ways that she could fully express herself.
Christa finally felt some liberation when she transferred from the University of Leipzig to the University of Tubingen in 1942. She was attracted to the Medieval style town, the architecture, churches, and art lectures. She also became close to the mysterious Heinrich, the man whom Von Hassell and Agostino later found his and Christa's letters.
Heinrich Hartman was a Navy medic-midshipman and studied for a medical degree at Tubingen. After Christa's death, Von Hassell found binders filled with their letters that were exchanged from 1942-44 and included sketches of artwork and architecture, flowers, copies of poems, and postcards. She also owned a booklet entitled "A Contract of Marriage Between Ferdinand and Louise." It was clear that Heinrich was more than just a friend or classmate of Christa's.
By the publication of the book, Von Hassell did very little research on Heinrich's personal life but she ascertained through his letters that he was a quiet mystical man with a very romantic passionate side.
Heinrich and Christa wrote for two years while Christa's personal life was going through upheavals. Her father and brother were killed in 1943.
That year, she also met Egloff von Tippelskirch, a lawyer with a steady, pragmatic, and clear headed personality. For a time, Christa wrote to both men, caught between the romantic Heinrich and steady Egloff. She was also in despair over the poverty, bleak censorship, and loss of half of her family. It's easy to see why she wrote to both men. Perhaps, she felt that she could be herself and all the years of adjusting and accepting finally wore thin. Through those letters, Von Hassell saw through the quiet shell that her mother lived to the passionate woman inside.
During the turbulent final days of the war, Christa kept writing to both men while Egloff pressed for an answer of whether she would marry him and Heinrich wondered why her letters were getting fewer. Fate made the decision for her when Heinrich was killed in action in November, 1944 and Christa and Egloff announced their engagement on December 19 that year. They were wed on December 28, 1944.
No sooner did WWII end, then the Soviets came marching in and Christa and others found themselves in just as bad a situation as before. Christa and Egloff were barely newlyweds, before he had to leave her. Christa was back on rations caring for her now depressed mother.
One moment that crystalized the hard times in Christa's mind was when Soviet soldiers arrested a neighbor, who was a fellow officer of Christa's father and family friend. As they took him away, his wife was hysterical, dragging him by the coat and begging him not to go. He told her to calm down and Christa's mother reached over, slapped the other woman across the face, and admonished her by asking if her husband wanted to see her like that. The woman calmed down but her husband was later reported dead.
Christa had to deal with loss as well. Egloff was interred in a detainment camp. While she and her mother were relocated,Christa worked as a Red Cross Nurse and tried to get word to her husband. Finally, in 1948, she received word that Egloff died of typhus two years prior. This loss propelled Christa to leave Eastern Europe and her mother behind to move to England in 1949.
Christa moved to Bonn in 1950, slowly helping her mother leave the Eastern side to move to the capital city of West Germany to be with her. The older woman had a rigid attitude towards life even to the point that though she was attractive, refused any subsequent offers of marriage.
In 1951, Christa met Wolf Ulrich von Hassell, the man who would become her second husband. Like Christa and no doubt many people of their generation, he understood the pain of loss and embittered questions of how they got to this point.
Wolf Ulrich had a very cosmopolitan upbringing, born in Italy in 1913, but moving around various cities like Rome, Barcelona, and Copenhagen. He then studied law at the University of Tubingen and Konigsberg, East Prussia.
In 1939, Wolf Ulrich left a naval career behind when he suffered a rare lung disease. He spent three years in a sanitarium in Switzerland. Even though he was released, he had asthma for the rest of his life.
Though safe from the physical toll of war, Wolf Ulrich was no stranger to the emotional and mental toll. He suffered tremendous survivor guilt when men his own age joined the military and got killed on the battlefield. His father who had resisted against Hitler was arrested and executed in 1944. It's no surprise that he was described as "sensitive, steadfast, honest decent but also cautious and at times withdrawn."
For Christa who had learned to adjust and accepting, she took initiative in their early courtship. When Wolf Ulrich worried that their ten year age gap might be a problem, she assured him that he wasn't too old to have a family and despite his ill health that he wouldn't die.
The previous times also caused dissension between Christa and her in laws. Her mother in law was a woman of strict principles and high standards and considered a second marriage to be sacrilegious. When Wolf Ulrich became a diplomat, his mother insisted that her late husband was the only "true diplomat in the family." These standards and gatekeeping practices passed over to one daughter and son who remained estranged from the Von Hassells for the rest of their lives. However, another sister maintained a warm relationship with the family.
The von Hassells though happy were troubled by ill health. Wolf Ulrich had continual bouts with asthma and bronchitis and Christa had a near death experience after the birth of her eldest child, Agostino in 1953. The childbirth complications also occurred during the subsequent births of Adrian in 1956 and Malve in 1957.
Christa also had frequent debilitating migraines that caused her to nap frequently and withdraw from her husband and children at times. These migraines intensified during a subsequent move to Bonn and often reoccurred on the anniversary of her father and brother's deaths.
Despite their parents' ill health, the children had a good upbringing. Von Hassell described her childhood in Brussels as "content and unaware of any wrinkles in the universe. After (the Von Hassells) moved to Bonn in 1965, life became more complicated."
While they loved their parents, the Von Hassell children began to notice more sternness from them. Their father was away from home a lot and had frequent bouts with bad health, but was relentless in observing their homework and making sure his children got all the right answers. This occurred during a time when Von Hassell described herself and her brothers as "struggling academically and emotionally." They were experiencing the growing pangs of being new kids in a new place and were the targets of bullying.
Wolf Ulrich's strictness was measured and calm. He often used logic to dictate his preferences and wore his children down with reason.
Christa was also a rigid parent. She was often questioning her children about their activities. Just saying "fine" wasn't enough for her. They had to elaborate on what they did, who they were with, and tell every detail of their day. She had high expectations and tried to discipline her children with the same ideals in which she was raised.
She also worked around the house, often working with what they had. Von Hassell said that her mother's favorite word was "uberwending," something that was done quickly if approximately so that the surface would be presentable, to create a good impression without maintaining perfection. This applied to Christa's accommodating adjustable nature which accepted that things could change quickly and can be lived through.
However, this adjustability did not necessarily apply to her children. Unlike her husband who ruled with logical reserve, Christa ruled her family with sheer will power. Saying no to her commands was not an option.
Von Hassell's characterization of her parents during this time period portrays them as stern people of the old world and old generation, that were rocked by their previous circumstances. Their sternness in their parenting tactics could be a way to compensate and shield their children from the dangers that they had to live through during the Holocaust and Cold War.
This is also a universal truth in the difference between how Von Hassell and her brothers looked at their parents in Brussels to Bonn. In Bonn, the children were growing into adolescence and they saw, as many children do, more of their parent's flaws and limitations rather than believing that they could do no wrong as they had in the past.
There were other ways that Christa and Wolf Ulrich's pasts continued to haunt them and they transferred those fears and anxieties to their children on a subconscious level. One was having a tight lipped correspondence within the family and keeping family news only amongst themselves. When Christa was hospitalized with a liver disorder, Wolf Ulrich and the children wrote to her. In her book, Von Hassell wrote "the older the child, the shorter the letter." Only Von Hassell's letters were filled with childlike rambling and extreme details. Her father and brothers' were much shorter. Wolf Ulrich's were terse and filled with legal jargon and reason. They had learned not to go overboard with emotion because they could lose the people that they love quickly and to not expose themselves to heartbreak.
Another trauma that the Von Hassell parents endured was the rejection of customs, traditions, and even words that brought up bad memories of the Nazi Party. One of those was the celebration of Mother's Day. When she was three, Von Hassell, based on a nanny's suggestion, gave her mother a bouquet of wildflowers to celebrate the event. To this day, the author doesn't remember what was said but she remembered how she felt afterwards and never celebrated Mother's Day with her mother again.
She later learned that the Nazis had valued that day, even making it a national holiday because it fit in with their hard lined notions of "Kinder, Kurche, Kirche" (Children, Church, Kitchen) as being the preferred goal for their idea of the "perfect Aryan woman." Even something as seemingly innocuous as a child's gift took Christa Von Hassell to that frightened young woman growing up in a sea of vast hatred and tyranny that her family at one time blindly supported.
The final link connecting Christa to her home during WWII was severed in 1970 when Chancellor Willy Brandt signed the Treaty of Moscow, officially recognizing the People's Republic of Poland as part of East Europe and therefore under Soviet control. Christa wept when her beloved Pomerania became swallowed by the new Polish borders.
When Wolf Ulrich said that the clock could not be turned back, Christa kept repeating, "You don't understand! You weren't born there!" and swayed back and forth. For Von Hassell, this was the only time that as a child, she ever saw her mother lose control, grieving for her childhood home like the death of a friend or family member. For her, it was.
In 1972, Christa and her mother joined Wolf Ulrich who accepted a position as second in command to the German Mission in the United Nations in New York City. Agostino remained in Germany to attend university and Adrian was housed in a nearby boarding school while he continued his final two years of high school.
Then 14 years old, Von Hassell was looking forward to the new adventure while her mother stayed silent and accommodating. She only admitted years later how much it hurt to leave her sons behind. She however grew to love New York City, walking around, and enjoying the sights of the big American city.
In his diplomatic position, Wolf Ulrich was often involved in helping to shape Cold War policies. His comment about "important exchanges happening in hallways rather than formal meetings" reveal the cloak and dagger nature of the time in which people on both sides tried to subvert one another with intelligence, doubletalk, and shaking each other's hands while grimacing with distrust.
Christa was a part of that. As a diplomat's wife, she hosted parties and gatherings where conversations, concessions, agreements, and disagreements were made amid the small talk and idle chatter. Christa was such a together person that when a blackout occurred during a party, she continued to entertain guests like nothing happened.
In the mid 70's, the family reunited with Adrian attending law school, Agostino working towards a journalism degree, and Malve finishing school in the United States.
Christa finally finished her aborted academic career by attending graduate courses at NYU's Institute of Fine Arts, preparing for her husband's retirement in 1978. She wrote for German language publications as well as about the art market, exhibits, and galleries in New York. The Von Hassell parents bought a vacation home in Southampton. For a family that was forced to live in the moment and adjust to their immediate surroundings and haunted by their past, they were finally able to relax, plan, and look forward to a brighter future.
However, the old ghosts never really left. After his retirement, Wolf Ulrich was gripped with depression and confusion about what to do with his life. He edited his wife's writings to the point that she felt his suggestions bordered on nagging. Meanwhile, Von Hassell attended a PhD program at the New School for Social Research. The younger woman decided to move out and needed her parent's co-sign on an apartment lease. At first Christa refused and they got into a huge fight. Christa felt the anxiety of her youngest child leaving and fought to keep her with her parents. Von Hassell argued towards her own independence. Von Hassell was able to move out but her mother responded with icy silence. With the firmness and silence that Christa honed during her years in Europe, she retreated but she didn't like it.
On her own, Von Hassell hovered between exhilaration and depression. She was excited about the new studies and challenges. She liked her apartment even though it was battered, patched up, and had been broken into three times. She loved the colorful neighbors, the small shops that she could walk to, and her cast iron kitchen bathtub.
However, Von Hassell also had depressive moods. She spent some time lying in bed and listening to and trying to analyze Leonard Cohen's lyrics.
Those times, Von Hassell behaved like a bird who left the nest and knows how to fly but is uncertain about where to fly towards.
However, Von Hassell found ways to cut her mother's past from her own. Her advisor suggested that she do her dissertation on the University in Exile of academics and scholars who fled 1930's and continued their research at the New School for Social Research. Hitting too close to home, Von Hassell refused and instead decided to study the experiences of first generation Japanese immigrant women in America and their relationship with her daughters. Von Hassell wanted to study a culture different from her own, but she also saw some universal meaning in the relationship between parents and children. Perhaps she also felt a link with the relationship between immigrant mothers and their first generation American daughters as an echo of her own relationship, as a first generation American daughter with an immigrant mother.
Von Hassell also found joy during her time away from her family. One experience gave her a love of river rafting. Another time, she saw or thought she saw the image of a miniature lion on a subway platform. Seeing the lion gave her a sense of exhilaration and pleasure at living for the moment. She also began to understand how her mother, despite her struggles, found comfort and contentment in the simplest things. Von Hassell maintained a closer relationship with Christa becoming a friend and confidant as well as a daughter.
While in her thirties, Von Hassell accepted a good position as a translator and spent many weekends with her parents, particularly because her father's health was failing. She and her family felt caught between two worlds never feeling like they belonged in Europe, but not 100 percent that they belonged in America. They felt senses of doubt, insecurity, inadequacy, and arrogance, and an aversion towards commitment.
Von Hassell cites these personality traits as among the reasons why neither she nor Adrian ever married. Agostino was the only one of the siblings who did. He married an American woman and had sons. However, he carried many of the same traits that his siblings possessed.
As an unmarried woman approaching middle age myself, I find this aspect of Von Hassell's character comforting and refreshing. It's understandable why many of us choose not to marry. Sometimes, it's a reserved nature or something in our pasts that prevent us from making that step or avoiding it all together. It does not mean that we avoid loving others or being loved. That is especially true of Von Hassell. She adopted a son from Ukraine in 2001 and Christa was a loving grandmother to him as she was to Agostino's children.
However, as Von Hassell, pointed out her family is surrounded by metaphorical ghosts and bad memories. Sometimes those ghosts manifest itself between the generations as it did with Von Hassell and Adrian.
Von Hassell remained close to her parents and helped care for her father when he was diagnosed with cancer. They talked about books and laughed while Christa and he exchanged poetry. In 1999, Wolf Ulrich died in his home. True to her nature, Christa made the phone calls, straightened up his room, and prepared for widowhood.
In 2003, Christa was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. At first Christa tried denying it and lived life as normal. But by 2005, her cancer worsened. Adrian and Von Hassell divided caring duties. Adrian looked after her in New York City while Von Hassell and her son took over in Southampton. Her contrary nature and unwillingness to accept help got on both her children's nerves but they had happy times as well such as the time when Christa, Adrian, Von Hassell, and her son saw Don Giovanni at the Metropolitan Opera. She also helped choose a dog and delighted in having someone to talk to while her children and grandchild went about their lives.
In 2009 Adrian himself was diagnosed with cancer. Despite the twin ill healths of both her son and herself, Christa remained quiet and steady. She only broke down when she saw his body treated with chemotherapy in the hospital. She wept that she barely recognized him.
After her son died of a heart attack, Christa was complacent doing exactly what her daughter asked her to do. Von Hassell made the funeral arrangements and helped move Adrian's things out of his apartment. Christa was mostly silent until the last of her younger son's things had been removed and she sobbed.
Christa suffered a relapse, no doubt from the stress of losing her son. She refused to give up and argued with doctors, nurses, home care aides, and her daughter. Von Hassell's son was the only one who could convince her to take her medicine without argument. When she was alone, Christa locked herself in the bathroom. Von Hassell made her see reason by asking if she wanted to die in the bathroom or in the hospital. Christa stopped and opened the door. She died one week after her son's memorial service.
In the final chapters, Von Hassell ponders about her family's ghosts. The ghosts of family members with whom they lost contact during the Holocaust and only in the past few years was Von Hassell able to reunite and make contact with. The ghosts in her parent's childhood stories in attempts to turn the real horror of invading soldiers and dictators into a fictional monster that can just be wished away by the turning on lights and saying the words "The End." The ghosts of her parent's traumas that shaped her and her siblings into the adults that they had become.
In writing Tapestry of My Mother's Life, Von Hassell has finally understood her mother as a complete whole woman. Maybe she is finally ready to lay her ghost to rest.
