Ask the Author: Ursula Werner
Answered Questions (8)
Ursula Werner
What is true about the story is that my own great-grandfather, Hans Ernst Posse, was (like Oskar Eberhardt) a member of Hitler's cabinet. Hans Posse was Minister of Economy during the Weimar Republic, and Hitler asked him to stay on when he assumed power. He had to join the Nazi party to do so. Here's a link to his story, and how I learned more about him, on my website:
https://www.ursulawerner.com/the-good...
As far as I know, no members of my family were actively involved in smuggling Jewish refugees across the Swiss border.
I've mostly made up the other characters, though some of them are based on real-life people. Erich Wolf is modeled after Claus von Stauffenberg, a German army officer who was executed for his part in the assassination attempt on Hitler in July 1944. Johann Wiessmeyer is based on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was also assassinated for his role in the resistance (I let Johann survive).
The house and town where the Eberhardts live is based on a real house and town in southern Germany, on Lake Constance. My mother still lives there, and the pink Catholic church Birnau is within walking distance of her home.
https://www.ursulawerner.com/the-good...
As far as I know, no members of my family were actively involved in smuggling Jewish refugees across the Swiss border.
I've mostly made up the other characters, though some of them are based on real-life people. Erich Wolf is modeled after Claus von Stauffenberg, a German army officer who was executed for his part in the assassination attempt on Hitler in July 1944. Johann Wiessmeyer is based on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was also assassinated for his role in the resistance (I let Johann survive).
The house and town where the Eberhardts live is based on a real house and town in southern Germany, on Lake Constance. My mother still lives there, and the pink Catholic church Birnau is within walking distance of her home.
Ursula Werner
I'm so sorry Alison, that I haven't been able to respond to your question before now. I would love to know what you thought of the book! If you are willing and able to post on Goodreads and Facebook, I say go right ahead. Thank you so much for reading it.
Ursula Werner
I go on a run through Rock Creek Park with my dogs and watch them chase squirrels.
Ursula Werner
The best thing about being a writer, for me, is that I'm doing something I really love. Also, I have great flexibility in my job -- I can do it whenever or wherever I want. And the second best thing about it is that I can say reading good books is part of my job also, because it is!
Ursula Werner
I'm one of those people who always wanted to write but didn't feel like I could make a living doing so, so I pursued an alternate career (law) instead. Fortunately for me, my creative writing instinct -- or bug, or muse, or whatever it is -- became restless with the constraints of legal writing, and I finally had to give it time and space. I suppose my advice is, if you have a similar creative instinct, to allow it to express itself. And that can happen whenever your life is in a place that makes it possible. It may be that you can start writing as early as your teens or twenties. It may be that you won't really have that time and space until later in life.
When I left my legal job at the Department of Justice, one of my colleagues, who knew I wanted to pursue my creative writing, asked me, "Well, you know the worst thing that can happen?" I thought he was going to answer that the worst thing that could happen, if I tried to write, was that I might not get published. That I would write and write and it would never be seen in print. Instead, he said, "The worst thing that can happen is that you're not happy with what you've written." I think that was one of the most profound pieces of advice I've been given, because it reminded me that the most important thing about writing is my own response to my craft. I have to write because I enjoy the process, because the job of writing gives me satisfaction and pleasure, not because I want to see my name on the spine of a book.
When I left my legal job at the Department of Justice, one of my colleagues, who knew I wanted to pursue my creative writing, asked me, "Well, you know the worst thing that can happen?" I thought he was going to answer that the worst thing that could happen, if I tried to write, was that I might not get published. That I would write and write and it would never be seen in print. Instead, he said, "The worst thing that can happen is that you're not happy with what you've written." I think that was one of the most profound pieces of advice I've been given, because it reminded me that the most important thing about writing is my own response to my craft. I have to write because I enjoy the process, because the job of writing gives me satisfaction and pleasure, not because I want to see my name on the spine of a book.
Ursula Werner
I'm currently working on a memoir about growing up in South Florida.
Ursula Werner
I love writing, even when it is hard, so I don't really need any "inspiration" to do so. For me, if I can come up with one good sentence after a day of writing, I feel fantastic. Writing is a powerful endorphin-producer.
Ursula Werner
Growing up, I knew two things about my great-grandfather: He was very tall, and he was a member of Hitler’s cabinet. Once I learned about World War II and the Holocaust at school, I was horrified at my great-grandfather’s position in the Nazi government. I couldn’t help wondering what he knew or didn’t know, what he did or didn’t do, to further Hitler’s barbaric ambitions.
My family told me that Hans Ernst Posse was the German Secretary of Economy from 1928 to 1945. Other than that, they said nothing. Although I tried to get more information, I met a wall of silence as impenetrable as the Berlin wall. It wasn’t that they were hiding information, but that they didn’t know exactly what role Hans Posse played in Hitler’s atrocities, and that they were way too terrified to find out the truth. And there was no public information about Hans Ernst Posse that could give me clues.
I began The Good at Heart because I felt compelled to understand who my great-grandfather was. Oskar and Edith Eberhardt allowed me explore some of the questions I had about my great-grandparents and the life they lived. Then, in 2012, I got some real life answers.
I was in Hamburg visiting my aunt, when I stumbled across an old file of newspaper clippings and letters, a file that my aunt later admitted she knew nothing about. The letters were dated 1947 and were addressed to the “Tribunal for De-Nazification.” This ad hoc Allied judicial committee was established after the war to determine whether lesser Nazi officials like my great-grandfather should be prosecuted for war crimes.
The letters in this file – correspondence handwritten or typed on thick, yellowing paper, with traces of mold and mildew accumulated over 65 years -- told me that Hans Ernst Posse was a decent, honest man. They told me that he tried, whenever possible, to help Jewish friends and colleagues persecuted by the Nazis. One letter writer, Leopold Trier, said that my great-grandfather urged him to leave the country “as quickly as possible,” because he feared that things would get “very dark” for Jews in Germany. Mr. Trier wrote that Hans Posse “apologised for having to face me as a tool of the Nazis,” and said that he was staying in the government to help people “in distress” and to make sure that “the regulations against Jews [be] applied in a very lenient way.”
Since discovering Mr. Trier’s letter three years ago, I have practically memorized its contents. Sometimes I take it out just to touch it, to feel the heavy paper, to run my fingers over the typewriter ribbon-smudged letters. A part of me is transported, each time I hold it, back to the time when it was written, and I wonder what my great-grandfather was thinking, stuck in a prison during a cold north German winter, held to answer for the crimes of an administration that he wanted absolutely no part of. I want to reach out and reassure him that I know now what he tried to do, that it was noble and sincere, if ultimately woefully insufficient to withstand the unfathomable machinery of hatred that was being set into motion. I want to tell him that what he did for Leopold Trier and others shone a tiny beacon of light in a vast cave of darkness.
My family told me that Hans Ernst Posse was the German Secretary of Economy from 1928 to 1945. Other than that, they said nothing. Although I tried to get more information, I met a wall of silence as impenetrable as the Berlin wall. It wasn’t that they were hiding information, but that they didn’t know exactly what role Hans Posse played in Hitler’s atrocities, and that they were way too terrified to find out the truth. And there was no public information about Hans Ernst Posse that could give me clues.
I began The Good at Heart because I felt compelled to understand who my great-grandfather was. Oskar and Edith Eberhardt allowed me explore some of the questions I had about my great-grandparents and the life they lived. Then, in 2012, I got some real life answers.
I was in Hamburg visiting my aunt, when I stumbled across an old file of newspaper clippings and letters, a file that my aunt later admitted she knew nothing about. The letters were dated 1947 and were addressed to the “Tribunal for De-Nazification.” This ad hoc Allied judicial committee was established after the war to determine whether lesser Nazi officials like my great-grandfather should be prosecuted for war crimes.
The letters in this file – correspondence handwritten or typed on thick, yellowing paper, with traces of mold and mildew accumulated over 65 years -- told me that Hans Ernst Posse was a decent, honest man. They told me that he tried, whenever possible, to help Jewish friends and colleagues persecuted by the Nazis. One letter writer, Leopold Trier, said that my great-grandfather urged him to leave the country “as quickly as possible,” because he feared that things would get “very dark” for Jews in Germany. Mr. Trier wrote that Hans Posse “apologised for having to face me as a tool of the Nazis,” and said that he was staying in the government to help people “in distress” and to make sure that “the regulations against Jews [be] applied in a very lenient way.”
Since discovering Mr. Trier’s letter three years ago, I have practically memorized its contents. Sometimes I take it out just to touch it, to feel the heavy paper, to run my fingers over the typewriter ribbon-smudged letters. A part of me is transported, each time I hold it, back to the time when it was written, and I wonder what my great-grandfather was thinking, stuck in a prison during a cold north German winter, held to answer for the crimes of an administration that he wanted absolutely no part of. I want to reach out and reassure him that I know now what he tried to do, that it was noble and sincere, if ultimately woefully insufficient to withstand the unfathomable machinery of hatred that was being set into motion. I want to tell him that what he did for Leopold Trier and others shone a tiny beacon of light in a vast cave of darkness.
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