Christabel Bielenberg (1909–2003)
Author of The Past Is Myself
About the Author
Works by Christabel Bielenberg
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Bielenberg, Christabel
- Other names
- Burton, Christabel Mary (birth name)
- Birthdate
- 1909-06-18
- Date of death
- 2003-11-02
- Gender
- female
- Education
- St Margaret's School, Bushey, Hertfordshire, England, UK
- Occupations
- non-fiction writer
memoirist
journalist - Awards and honors
- Commander German Federal Order of Merit
European Parliament Gold Medal of Merit - Relationships
- Bielenberg, Andy (grandson)
Bielenberg, Charlotte (daughter-in-law)
Northcliffe, Viscount Alfred Harmsworth (uncle)
Harmsworth, Harold Sidney, Viscount Rothermere (uncle)
Trott zu Solz, Clarita von (friend) - Short biography
- Christabel Bielenberg, née Burton, was born to a privileged Anglo-Irish family and won a scholarship to study at Oxford. She decided instead to study opera in Hamburg, Germany, where she met and fell in love with Peter Bielenberg, a law student. They married in 1934 and Christabel became a German citizen. As anti-Nazis, the Bielenbergs were in danger, but they stayed in Germany while Peter pursued a career as a lawyer and civil servant and the couple had three sons. Peter was a close friend of Adam von Trott, who was hanged for his role in the plot to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944; after the plot was discovered, Peter was arrested and sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp. Christabel Bielenberg managed to convince the Gestapo of her husband's political naivety and he was sentenced to a punishment battalion but mistakenly released. Peter hid in the Black Forest until the fighting of World War II ended. After the war, Christabel Bielenberg reclaimed her British citizenship. Using her connections, she returned to Germany briefly as a correspondent for The Observer. In 1948, the couple settled in Ireland and bought a farm, where they lived quietly until asked to help with a book about Adam von Trott zu Solz. That prompted Mrs. Bielenberg to write her two-volume memoir, which became a bestseller and was adapted as a BBC miniseries called Christabel.
- Nationality
- UK
Germany
Ireland - Birthplace
- Totteridge, Hertfordshire, England, UK
- Places of residence
- Hamburg, Germany
Berlin, Germany
Rohrbach, Germany
Tullow, County Carlow, Ireland
Members
Reviews
This captivating memoir was written by Christabel Bielenberg, an Englishwoman who married a German lawyer and lived in Germany during World War II. The book offers a unique perspective on life in the Third Reich from the viewpoint of a civilian just trying to survive, not a Nazi or a victim of a concentration camp. It is often praised for its depiction of the "other Germany" and how ordinary citizens, such as Bielenberg and her family, coped with an increasingly difficult and paranoid show more world.
The memoir is noteworthy because it provides a close-up look at German society during the war, highlighting the struggles endured by both regular citizens and anti-Nazis who opposed the government. Bielenberg shows that not all Germans supported Hitler by describing the subtle and not-so-subtle ways people resisted.
The book is a first-person survival story that focuses on daily life under the Nazi government and during the Allied bombings. It portrays the brief moments of humanity and hope that allowed people to endure the horrors of war. This entails learning to laugh, building relationships with neighbors, and valuing the little pleasures that were "blown out of all proportion" during a time of scarcity. show less
The memoir is noteworthy because it provides a close-up look at German society during the war, highlighting the struggles endured by both regular citizens and anti-Nazis who opposed the government. Bielenberg shows that not all Germans supported Hitler by describing the subtle and not-so-subtle ways people resisted.
The book is a first-person survival story that focuses on daily life under the Nazi government and during the Allied bombings. It portrays the brief moments of humanity and hope that allowed people to endure the horrors of war. This entails learning to laugh, building relationships with neighbors, and valuing the little pleasures that were "blown out of all proportion" during a time of scarcity. show less
A few years back I went through a period of reading a fair bit of fictional and non-fictional accounts of WWII. These were told from many perspectives - the Jew who survived the Holocaust and concentration camps, the Brits living in Nazi-occupied Jersey, the post-war German adult struggling with her unrepentant ex-SS mother, the resistance operatives who risked everything to deal a significant blow to the Nazi leadership, stories of lovers caught on opposite sides of the political spectrum. show more
This autobiography is told from another unique, yet no less interesting, perspective. Chris Bielenberg was a privileged British woman who married a young dashing German lawyer in the early 1930s, becoming a German citizen a few years before the outbreak of WWII. Her husband Peter, an Oxford graduate, quickly leaves the law after witnessing first-hand the complete disregard which Hitler's regime had for fair justice. He and his friends are all heavily against the Nazi regime, and with high connections in both Germany and Britain they use their influence to avoid becoming soldiers, instead taking up senior civilian roles in industry whilst trying to spread the message to the Allies of support within Germany for an uprising against Hitler.
Christabel spends most of her wartime in Berlin and the Black Forest. Her own first-hand account of living in wartime Germany is fascinating, particularly the delicate dances that must be played in every day social interactions when trying to evaluate where the political sympathies of new faces lie. She provides interesting insight into why many everyday Germans became Nazi sympathisers; for many, the high inflation after WW1 caused previously comfortably off Germans to become poor overnight, whilst many of their Jewish neighbours saw their wealth grow in the same period. While many of her neighbours didn't fully agree with all the Nazi ideals, they saw the new regime as the first real opportunity to improve their situation, and there was little sympathy for the Jews who they felt had profited from their own misfortune.
The wide variance of political feeling amongst Bielenberg's friends and neighbours was incredibly interesting. It would be easy for us to look back so many decades later and tar all Germans of that era with the same brush of being at best Nazi sympathisers and at worst Nazi activists. Bielenberg paints another picture - that of a wide group of everyday Germans who despised what Hitler and the Nazis were doing to Germany, to the Allies, to their own people. Their every day normality was of tapped home telephone lines, of unplugging the telephones to have anti-Nazi political conversations at home and with friends, of avoiding Nazi sympathising colleagues and neighbours who would be quick to whistleblow, of taking months to ascertain the political sympathies of the new neighbours next door, of following the party line when speaking with strangers in train carriages.
Those who sympathised with the Nazi regime could also not be straightforwardly pigeon-holed. Whilst many carried out despicable acts, many others were kind to Bielenberg and her family during the war, particularly when she was placed under house arrest in the Black Forest.
As a British woman living in Germany, hers was a precarious situation. She was at risk not only of becoming a victim of yet another Allied raid, but of being turned over to the Gestapo as an enemy within. Highly intelligent, it's clear she used both her guile, charm and social position on many an occasion to survive the war. Similarly, it's clear her husband had been able to use his social influence to avoid the German military, but near the end of the war his life was put at great risk when a number of his close friends fail in an attempt to assassinate Hitler and he is arrested and sent to Ravensbrück.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, if "enjoyed" is the right word. Perhaps a better word is that I now feel a little more educated on the complexities of German feelings and sympathies during WWII having read it. There is often not much that is black and white in this world, and this book goes some way to explain the shades of grey that existed in Germany during this period. Like all autobiographies, we only have the perspective of the author and the light that he or she wants to portray on actions they have taken. I sense that the Bielenbergs were incredibly privileged and fortunate compared to others, yet theirs was also a hard and long war.
4 stars - a fascinating social and political WWII commentary from an unusual perspective. show less
This autobiography is told from another unique, yet no less interesting, perspective. Chris Bielenberg was a privileged British woman who married a young dashing German lawyer in the early 1930s, becoming a German citizen a few years before the outbreak of WWII. Her husband Peter, an Oxford graduate, quickly leaves the law after witnessing first-hand the complete disregard which Hitler's regime had for fair justice. He and his friends are all heavily against the Nazi regime, and with high connections in both Germany and Britain they use their influence to avoid becoming soldiers, instead taking up senior civilian roles in industry whilst trying to spread the message to the Allies of support within Germany for an uprising against Hitler.
Christabel spends most of her wartime in Berlin and the Black Forest. Her own first-hand account of living in wartime Germany is fascinating, particularly the delicate dances that must be played in every day social interactions when trying to evaluate where the political sympathies of new faces lie. She provides interesting insight into why many everyday Germans became Nazi sympathisers; for many, the high inflation after WW1 caused previously comfortably off Germans to become poor overnight, whilst many of their Jewish neighbours saw their wealth grow in the same period. While many of her neighbours didn't fully agree with all the Nazi ideals, they saw the new regime as the first real opportunity to improve their situation, and there was little sympathy for the Jews who they felt had profited from their own misfortune.
The wide variance of political feeling amongst Bielenberg's friends and neighbours was incredibly interesting. It would be easy for us to look back so many decades later and tar all Germans of that era with the same brush of being at best Nazi sympathisers and at worst Nazi activists. Bielenberg paints another picture - that of a wide group of everyday Germans who despised what Hitler and the Nazis were doing to Germany, to the Allies, to their own people. Their every day normality was of tapped home telephone lines, of unplugging the telephones to have anti-Nazi political conversations at home and with friends, of avoiding Nazi sympathising colleagues and neighbours who would be quick to whistleblow, of taking months to ascertain the political sympathies of the new neighbours next door, of following the party line when speaking with strangers in train carriages.
Those who sympathised with the Nazi regime could also not be straightforwardly pigeon-holed. Whilst many carried out despicable acts, many others were kind to Bielenberg and her family during the war, particularly when she was placed under house arrest in the Black Forest.
As a British woman living in Germany, hers was a precarious situation. She was at risk not only of becoming a victim of yet another Allied raid, but of being turned over to the Gestapo as an enemy within. Highly intelligent, it's clear she used both her guile, charm and social position on many an occasion to survive the war. Similarly, it's clear her husband had been able to use his social influence to avoid the German military, but near the end of the war his life was put at great risk when a number of his close friends fail in an attempt to assassinate Hitler and he is arrested and sent to Ravensbrück.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, if "enjoyed" is the right word. Perhaps a better word is that I now feel a little more educated on the complexities of German feelings and sympathies during WWII having read it. There is often not much that is black and white in this world, and this book goes some way to explain the shades of grey that existed in Germany during this period. Like all autobiographies, we only have the perspective of the author and the light that he or she wants to portray on actions they have taken. I sense that the Bielenbergs were incredibly privileged and fortunate compared to others, yet theirs was also a hard and long war.
4 stars - a fascinating social and political WWII commentary from an unusual perspective. show less
4984. When I Was A German, 1934-1945 An Englishwoman in Nazi Germany, by Christabel Bielenberg (read 17 Dec 2012) This is a stunningly well-told account of the author's time in Germany from 1934 to 1945. Her husband is a German lawyer who opposed the Nazis, but escapes being executed after the attempt on Hitler's life on July 20, 1944. The author lived in the Berlin area and there are vivid accounts of the bombing which Berlin underwent. When the Gestapo arrests her husband in 1944 she show more visits him in the concentration camp and subjects herself to interrogation by the SS. I found the book consistently interesting and exciting right up to the glorious day, May 2,1945, when the Black Forest town in which they were living is finally liberated. I also found the account of life in Germany in a rural community made me realize how much my mother, born in the USA to German-born rural parents, still owed to the way life was lived in rural Germany in the 1940's--an unexpected bonus derived from reading this excellent book show less
Christabel, an English woman, married a German lawyer in 1934. She lived in Germany during the rise of the Nazis and during the war. In this memoir, she chronicles the experiences of herself, her neighbours and friends. Her husband was implicated in the July 20, 1944 bombing of Hitler but survived with the help of friends and Christabel.
From past readings of life in Germany during the war, I knew the there were shortages of food and consumer goods even before the war but to read her show more experiences of trying to feed and cloth her family brought the difficulties faced by German citizens clearly to the forefront. She also experienced the dissatisfaction of German citizens with Hitler's regime and only the fear of his security forces kept people from protesting although many people fought the system in minor ways.
When she left Berlin to escape the bombing, she settled in the Black Forest among rural peasants where life was improved in that they were able to eat better and live a healthier life but still had to watch out for the snitch. show less
From past readings of life in Germany during the war, I knew the there were shortages of food and consumer goods even before the war but to read her show more experiences of trying to feed and cloth her family brought the difficulties faced by German citizens clearly to the forefront. She also experienced the dissatisfaction of German citizens with Hitler's regime and only the fear of his security forces kept people from protesting although many people fought the system in minor ways.
When she left Berlin to escape the bombing, she settled in the Black Forest among rural peasants where life was improved in that they were able to eat better and live a healthier life but still had to watch out for the snitch. show less
Lists
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 5
- Also by
- 1
- Members
- 604
- Popularity
- #41,610
- Rating
- 3.9
- Reviews
- 11
- ISBNs
- 38
- Languages
- 4