A Woman in Berlin

[1] The memoir covers the period between 20 April and 22 June 1945 in Berlin during the capture and occupation of the city by the Red Army.

The first English edition appeared 1954 in the United States, where it was very successful, and was followed rapidly by translations into Dutch, Italian, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Spanish, and Japanese.

The book was adapted as a 2008 German feature film, directed by Max Färberböck and starring Nina Hoss.

Coincidentally, also in 2008, the English translation of the book by Philip Boehm (Virago, 2005) was dramatised as a one-woman monologue, by the playwright Iain McClure,[6] and staged at the New Works, New Worlds Festival at the Arches Theatre, Glasgow in 2009.

The memoir describes a journalist's personal experiences during the occupation of Berlin by the Soviets at the end of World War II.

She describes being gang raped by Russian soldiers and deciding to seek protection by forming a relationship with a Soviet officer; other women made similar decisions.

We are also given the feeling inside a bomb shelter, the breakdown of city life and civil society, the often surreal behavior of the enemy, soldiers' arms lined with looted wristwatches, the forced labor clearing out the rubble piles that marks the beginning of the road back.

Eventually the soldiers enter the buildings and basement air raid shelters asking for alcohol and choosing women to rape.

This rape experience creates some sort of turning point for the Narrator, who decides after vomiting and crying that she has to use her brains to help her situation.

Petka and his friends shock the Widow and the Narrator as they place their food straight on the table, throw bones to the floor, and spit casually.

Among the many Soviet visitors of the apartment, a pale blond lieutenant who has a lame leg and a clear dislike of the narrator rapes her one night, completely ignoring the "taboo" with Anatol.

The city begins to undergo reconstruction and the German women are rallied to work under orders to clear the rubble and to search for zinc.

She was a journalist before the war that traveled to numerous countries and speaks different languages, including a bit of Russian and French.

After the Soviets leave, she works with German women to clear the rubble, clean clothes, and eventually finds a job with a Hungarian starting a press.

He enjoys the goods that the Soviets bring but gets increasingly bothered by the Narrator's presence after her relationships with the Russians end and she eats the potatoes that belong to the Widow.

Herr Pauli expresses his strong optimistic or pessimistic views on the recovery of Germany, which the Widow generally endorses.

She agrees that to some extent she does it for the "bacon, butter, sugar, candles, canned meat" that the major supplies and she considers the idea that she is a whore.

[7] Harvard Law professor Janet Halley wrote, "Not surprisingly, it is typical to read A Woman in Berlin as a story about rape.

However, there is another way to read this text: as a book about the complete destruction of the Woman’s social world and its gradual, halting, and, by the end, only partial replacement by a new one.

"[3] Hillers showed her manuscript to friends, and author Kurt Marek (C. W. Ceram) arranged for the book's translation into English (by James Stern) and publication in the United States in 1954.

[1] After Hillers died in 2001, the book was republished in 2003, again anonymously, by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, a noted poet and essayist.

Since the late 20th century, German writers and historians have explored the people's suffering during World War II.

Sebald published On the Natural History of Destruction, reflecting on the estimated 600,000 civilian deaths due to Allied bombing of German cities.

"[16] In September 2003, Jens Bisky (a German literary editor) identified the anonymous author as journalist Marta Hillers, who had died in 2001.

Writing in the Berliner Zeitung, Christian Esch said that if the work were to be fully accepted as authentic, people had to be able to examine the diaries.

He noted that Hillers had added material to the typescript and the published book that were not found in the diary, but editors and critics agree this is a normal part of the revision and editing process.

[18] Antony Beevor, a British historian who wrote a 2002 work on the Battle of Berlin, affirmed his belief in the book's authenticity when it was published in English in 2005.

[5][16] A film adaptation of the book was made in 2008, directed by Max Färberböck and starring Nina Hoss as the anonymous Woman.

Unconnected to the film, a dramatisation of the English translation of the book by Philip Boehm, published by Virago in 2005, was written as a one-woman monologue, by Iain McClure, in 2008 and staged at the New Works, New Worlds Festival at the Arches Theatre, Glasgow, in 2009.

To obtain one-off permission for his production, McClure was required to submit successive re-drafts of his play script to the German publisher, Eichborn, right up to the day of first performance, to ensure that no content was included, even imaginary, which might compromise the author's anonymity.