Magda

by Meike Ziervogel

Unloved sons turn their aggression on the outside world. Unloved daughters destroy the people they love and then themselves.

Berlin at the beginning of the 20th century: When the maidservant Martha gives birth to her illegitimate daughter Magda, she feels burdened with a child she didn't want. The girl grows up to become an ambitious woman, desperate for love and recognition. The Nazi propaganda minister, Josef Goebbels, appears to answer her need and together they have six children. By the end of the war, Magda Goebbels is a physically and emotionally sick woman. When she takes her six children into the Fuhrer bunker, her eldest daughter, 14-year-old Helga, senses foreboding.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Germany, World War II, Historical, Literary Fiction, War

144 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2013

About the author

Meike Ziervogel (b. 1967) is a novelist and founder of Peirene Press, an award-winning independent UK publishing house specialising in contemporary European fiction in English translation. In 2012 Meike was voted as one of Britain's 100 most innovative and influential people in the creative and media industries for the h.Club 100 list devised by Time Out London and the Hospital Club. From 2009 to 2018 she hosted the Peirene literary Salon.

Ziervogel came to London in the UK in 1986 to study Arabic language and literature. She received a BA and MA from The School of Oriental and African Studies. She speaks four languages: German, English, Arabic and French.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Books talk to each other and call forth each other from the shelves into our hands. Books you hadn't even heard of when you began. So All Hell Let Loose, Max Hastings' brilliant one-volume history of World War Two, led to Ian Kershaw’s harrowing The End - and then I had to see Oliver Hirschbiegel’s movie Downfall, just devastating – so that made me ask the question “what happened to Europe just after the war?” and hey presto, Savage Continent by Keith Lowe – what a revelation. Completely amazing stuff. After that, the worm’s-eye view, from two women writers - A Woman in Berlin, a real diary detailing exactly what does happen when you get invaded, and then this bitter sliver of a novel Magda, which is about the wife of Joseph Goebbels, who, very famously, killed her six children before committing suicide with her husband. When you hear of this notorious deed, you wonder about the person who did it. What horrific mental landscape was she negotiating when she slipped the cyanide pills into the six sleeping mouths? Well, actually, she was thinking of what was about to befall all of them – and she wasn’t wrong either. It was pretty much what Marta Hillers details in her diary. And she couldn’t stand the idea of her children having to live through years of that misery, years of rape and starvation, and their beautiful characters being progressively brutalized. And so the cyanide.

[JoBerlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Auf Fiktion und Tatsachen beruhend zeigt die Engländerin Meike Ziervogel schlaglichtartig Szenen aus Magda Goebbels Leben. Die Autorin möchte, so sagt sie im Nachwort, destruktive Mutter-Tochter-Beziehungen beschreiben. Für mich aber ist es eher ein Psychogramm einer fanatischen Frau, die alles, ihr ganzes Sein Ihm gewidmet hat, ihrem Heilsbringer, ihrem Gott, ihrem Hitler. Gespenstich, beängstigend, beeindruckend.

[Krystal Vittles · Rating 3 out of 5]

I may be judging this a bit harshly with just three stars as I really wanted to give it four, but I think if you're going to produce a novella you need to be more critical in what you include and what you don't.

This book is a fictionalised snapshot of the life of Magda Goebbels and focuses on how her difficult relationship with her mother shaped her life and subsequent relationship with her own daughters, particularly her eldest, Helga. While I really did enjoy the mixed-media approach Ziervogel employed in this piece I felt that there was just too much in way of Helga's diary excerpts. While a small amount of this would have added to the overall effect, the very fact that this part ran to tens of pages really did detract, and, quite honestly, bored me. The teenage flights of fancy employed as a means of contrast to the impending danger of the Goebbels children felt a little ham-fisted and reminiscent of a pantomime. I half expected a cry of "She's behind you (with a cyanide capsule)!"

Now, I know it's easy for me to be an armchair critic with no real experience of novel writing, but I think this book would have benefitted from some more critical editing. There were some really lovely pieces of writing within the book and it would have been nice to see more of those. The psychological insights in Magda's relationships, particularly with her husband and Hitler, could have been expanded and explored further. There were a few parts where Ziervogel sowed the seed of insight and left the reader to draw their own conclusions, but in complete contrast other parts were about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face.

Don't let the above put you off, however, as I think that it's still a worthwhile read. Considering it's a mere 256 pages you'll finish it rather rapidly anyhow.

[Kats · Rating 3 out of 5]

A brave little book revolving around the complex, complicated character, life and decisions of Magda Goebbels, Hitler's #1 fan according to this novella.

Some fascinating insights (presumably not all the details are fictionalised) into Magda's childhood, marriage and the last few days in the Führer's bunker, all told from the perspective of Magda, her mother and her eldest daughter, Helga.

Unfortunately, the structure of this novella is not all that well balanced, so the reader is exposed to many pages of Helga's diary entries which were a bit dull and also on several occasions made me think "this is what Anne Frank would have written to Kitty/Gretchen had her father been Joseph Goebbels instead of Otto Frank". So, a fine line between sick satire and historical fiction, and I'm not sure the author worked on the subtle side of that line.

All in all, I think this would have been a much better read with a different (any?!) editor, as the book did not fulfil its very powerful potential. Still... a great idea, brave multi-faceted story-telling, just not that well executed.

[werken · Rating 4 out of 5]

tw: samobójstwo, morderstwo, seks, prostytucja, zbrodnicze ideologie

Magda to pozycja, która w ciekawy i oryginalny sposób przedstawia życie Magdy Goebbels. Nie spodziewałam się, że ta książka wywoła we mnie tyle emocji!

Po pierwsze fascynująca jest w tej książce narracja pomimo jej małej objętości (liczy zaledwie 150 stron) czytelnik spotka się z wielorakami formami narracyjnymi w każdym z rozdziałów. Każdy z nich ma wyjątkową perspektywę i formę. Są rozdziały napisane z trzeciej osoby, z pierwszej, jeden, który przypomina monolog, fragmenty z dziennika - każdy rozdział też podejmuje narrację ze strony innej kobiety, mamy tu do czynienia z trzema pokoleniami, ponieważ monolog prowadzi matka Magdy - Augusta, formy trzecio osobowe należą do Magdy i jej córki Helgi, a fragmenty z dziennika są stricte od Helgi. Taka różnorodność sprawia, że czyta się książkę z wielkim zaangażowaniem! Taki był też cel autorki, bo sama w posłowiu pisze, że chciała w ten sposób przedstawić właśnie te trzy pokolenia.

Autorka dokonała świetnej roboty w tłumaczeniu charakteru Magdy poprzez pokazywanie różnych traum pokoleniowych, jakich doświadczyła matka kobiety, a potem ona, a na końcu Helga. Jest to dość przerażające, że dziewczynka, gdyby nie jej śmierć, poniekąd mogłaby podzielić losy swojej matki i również wstąpić do klasztoru, oddać się ojczyźnie, mężczyźnie etc (oczywiście, jeśli zakładamy, że Niemcy wygrałyby wojnę). Czytając dzienniczek Helgi i widząc, że uznała, że nie zasługuje na miłość Knuta i woli skupić się na swoim rodzeństwie oraz rodzinie poczułam się okropnie: znając biografię jej matki i też skrawki biografii babci świadomość, że może ona powtórzyć ich los był straszny. Szczególnie, że Helga była totalnie inna od nich, artystyczna, delikatna i chciała zostać pisarką. Traumy i wydarzenia przedstawione przez autorkę sugerują dlaczego Magda była jaka była i czemu dokonała tak makabrycznych decyzji. To wszystko ma niewiarygodny sens logiczny, a dzięki temu można dobrze połączyć fakty.

Myślę, że autorka też świetnie oddała wiarę w nazizm Magdy, bo w innych publikacjach, które czytałam było to nie do końca wytłumaczone w tak symboliczny i bardziej artystyczny sposób. Z faktów historycznych wiemy, że Magda mieszkając w Belgii chodziła do szkoły klasztornej. Autorka tłumaczy jej głęboką wiarę w Boga i czystość, faktem, że mała Magda widziała swoją matkę podczas seksu z mężczyzną (eww) i dlatego pragnie być jak Święta Maria... Spotykając Hitlera widzi w nim mesjasza, za którego on się też uznawał, to właśnie odżywa w niej wiara, może nie w Boga katolickiego, ale nowego zbawcę, zbawcę Niemców i Rzeszy. W tekście ani razu nie pada imię Hitlera, zawsze są to zaimki dzierżawcze typu jego, go itp. Nadaje to mistycyzmu i tajemniczości, pokazuje, że wiara Magdy w nazistów nie była taka płytka i materialna, tylko symboliczna i przepełniona swojego rodzaju spirytualizmem. Pokazuje też ile była w stanie zrobić dla swojego pana i wodza. Co ciekawe, postać Josepha Goebbelsa praktycznie w ogóle nie pojawia się w tej książce, głównie na koniec, gdy uniżony i załamany chce zobaczyć ciała swoich dzieci po tym jak Magda je zabiła, ale ona mu nie pozwala. Jest on przedstawiony jako łącznik między tym światem przyziemnym Magdy, a tym świętym bytem jakim jest Fuhrer. Zawsze, gdy Magda wspomina męża, robi to w kontekście tego jak łączy on ją z Hitlerem. Nawet uprawiając seks z Goebbelsem myśli o wodzu. That's some twisted polygamy shit tbh...

Rozdział wizja mocno mnie straumatyzował, był dramatyczny i makabryczny, ponieważ tłumaczył czemu Magda postanowiła zabić swoje dzieci przed wkroczeniem bolszewików do Fuhrerbunker. Wizja przedstawia obraz tego jak rodzina Magdy i jej dzieci mogłaby żyć po wojnie, a był to straszny obraz, bo Helga pracowała jako prostytutka pomimo młodego wieku, aby dostać pieniądze na chleb, reszta dzieci też nie żyła dobrze, Magdę nękały migreny i była po ponownym udarze(?). Cóż, było to dość disturbing, kontrowersyjne, ale miało takie być, miało wgnieść w fotel i pokazać kolejny z powodów czemu Magda zabiła dzieci podając im cyjanek.

Kończąc mój yapping to generalnie książka bardzo mi się podobała, była niekonwencjonalna i straszna, ale gdzieś mnie urzekła, bo był to świetny rys psychologiczny Magdy Goebbels. Jedyna wada jest taka, że fikcja mieszała się z prawdą przez co nie do końca wiadomo, które rozmowy i wydarzenia miały miejsce, a które były wymyślone, aby lepiej pokazać charakter Goebbelsowej. Na pewno książka jest dobra dla osoby, która jest już gdzieś zaznajomiona z rodziną Goebbelsów i nastrojami w niej panującymi.

[Kirsty · Rating 2 out of 5]

Magda, the debut novel by the founder of Peirene Press, tells the ‘brutal story’ of Magda, the wife of notorious Nazi Joseph Goebbels. Ziervogel has examined Magda’s story ‘as a vehicle to examine the psychology behind familial murder, and to explore deep-rooted and destructive relationships between mothers and their daughters’. ‘Seeking to understand the actions of a ruthless woman,’ the press release tells us, ‘Ziervogel adds context to Magda’s shocking story, encouraging the reader to view it with fresh eyes’.

The book opens with the troubled aspects of the Goebbels’ lives present from the outset: ‘Magda enters Joseph’s study without knocking. Joseph is pacing back and forth… He doesn’t stop when his wife comes in’. Something unsettling makes itself known in the very bones of the story, and remains throughout. After this short scene, Magda gathers her and Joseph’s six children around her in order to tell them about the long journey they are about to embark on: ‘”We might pass Uncle Adolf’s house,” replies Magda. “But we are going further this time.”‘

In the next chapter, Ziervogel then goes on to examine Magda’s own upbringing, as a child of illegitimate status, in a strict Belgian convent. She paints a short picture of Magda’s troubled childhood, indoctrinated by the nuns, something of a bully ‘behind these thick convent walls’, and the way in which she continually self-harms. Magda is a very dark book, as one might expect given the subject matter, and Ziervogel highlights the way in which almost every character is troubled in some way. In fact, the entire book is filled with cruelty. Some of the scenes throughout are harrowing and rather horrendous, and the novella does not make for easy reading. These vignettes come like sharp shocks, and the sheer amount of cruelty which has been crammed into just a few pages is quite overwhelming at times.

In some ways, Ziervogel has been rather clever with her mixture of fact and fiction, but it becomes a little annoying as far as the reader is concerned, in that no allusion to, or explanation of, which elements are made up merely of poetic licence has been included. We learn very little about Joseph Goebbels throughout, an aspect which would certainly have made the story stronger. The scenes which include him gloss over his character somewhat, and whilst the novella focuses mainly upon Magda herself, the inclusion of her husband may have made her motives in the murder of her children a little clearer.

Magda is a short book, more a novella than a novel, and is split into eight different sections, which range from ‘The Preparation’ and ‘The Girl Behind the Convent Walls’ to ‘The Pillbox’ and ‘The Final Task’. Herein are where the problems lie. Ziervogel has attempted to use several different narrative techniques throughout – the third person omniscient, diary entries supposedly written by the fourteen-year-old Helga Goebbels, and a first person monologue from the perspective of Magda’s mother. These differing techniques are interesting to a point, but they do not effortlessly tie together. Some of the literary devices used are traditional, and others, as in the monologue, are not. Here, any movements made by Magda’s mother are shown in brackets – for example, ‘(The old woman adjusts her bag on her lap.)’ and ‘(She sniffles.)’. Again, the juxtaposition between two very conflicting ways of writing does not quite gel.

Whilst Magda is written well, some of the details throughout do not feel realistic. During the monologue of Magda’s mother, some sentences feel as though they would be more at home during an episode of Eastenders than in the conversation of an ageing woman after the Second World War: ‘At that moment I didn’t give a fig. About the neighbours or nothing’. Helga’s diary entries, too, do not feel realistic, and it is difficult to believe that a young teenage girl could write in the same vein as these letters to ‘Dear Gretchen’. The relationships which Ziervogel seems so keen to portray are often underdeveloped, and sadly feel rather cliched in consequence.

Magda is not a bad book by any means – in fact, its concept is incredibly interesting – but there is too much going on, both in terms of style and storyline, to enable it to come to fruition and reach its full potential. The scope of the novella feels a little too overambitious, and one cannot help but think that the book would have been more engaging in its current style had it been double, or even triple, its length. The execution of the story is not tight enough and therefore feels a little lacking at times, and it is as though the story is trying to do too much in too restricted a space.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

See my full review here: http://booksaremyfavouriteandbest.wor... It includes pictures, links and even a Tiffany film clip (bet you didn't expect that).

I’m not sure how I can across Magda by Meike Ziervogel but after watching the BRILLIANT book trailer, I grabbed my Kindle and downloaded the book. And began reading immediately. And finished it in one afternoon (it’s a novella but that said, my kids could have been juggling knives for all I knew, I was engrossed).

This story could’ve been brilliant. The concept (three points of view, three generations of mothers and daughters) is compelling. The true stories of these women are fascinating. And yet, Magda fell short for me.

Primarily, the different narratives weren’t terribly well executed. Ziervogel attempts to differentiate each character – Helga’s chapters are diary entries, Magda’s in the third person, Martha’s an interview with a Russian commissar – but all lack consistency. There are some dream sequences thrown in and switches between first and third person, making the overall result choppy.

In addition, the voices didn’t strike me as particularly realistic - Helga’s diary entries (addressed to ‘dear Gretchen’) were cliched -

“I am glad now that from an early age Father told me stories about old battles. Thus I know war belongs to mankind like the roots to a tree. On the other hand, I have a deep yearning for peace and harmony within me.”

and Martha seemed too ‘modern’ for an elderly woman living in the 1940s. For example, Martha says of Madga as a baby -

“She screamed from the very first day. I was dead embarrassed. You see, all of the neighbours thought there was no husband.”

‘Peace and harmony’ and ‘dead embarrassed”? Dead-set* didn’t work for me. When reading ‘fictionalised’ history, if the dialogue and thoughts of the individual characters don’t ring true, I lose confidence. The section outlining Magda’s fears for her children beyond the war is another example – it was bizarre and out-of-step with the ‘cool and remote’ direction Ziervogel had taken us with Magda.

I think the story could have been stronger if Ziervogel had given herself more room – a novel rather than a novella. There’s enough material for a fictionalised story and I wanted more of Magda. There were also brief but tantalizing glimpses of other characters – Josef Goebbels, Hitler and Eva Braun.

“There He stands before Magda, a little man on a podium who has assumed the stature of a giant using nothing but simple words and a strident voice.”

And yet despite these issues, Ziervogel did what author Melanie Benjamin claims is the most gratifying thing for an historical novelist to achieve -

“…that the reader was inspired, after reading my work of fiction, to research these remarkable people’s lives further.”

Because that is exactly what I did after finishing Magda. I thought my knowledge of WWII and the Holocaust was reasonably thorough – Magda made me realise otherwise.

3/5 – On the basis of the writing alone, this book would have been a two but I can’t discount it because I was engrossed and completely unsettled (and when you know the conclusion from the outset and are still engrossed, that’s an achievement).

*Modern literature reference there – Puberty Blues.

[Tripfiction · Rating 4 out of 5]

GERMANY: I initially came to the story of Magda Goebbles via the film Untergang, and her story is certainly the stuff of terrifying legend. The author in this novella has combined fact and fiction to make a compelling story, evocatively set in Germany. Much of it takes place in the last few days of World War II, when the family was confined to Hitler's Bunker in Berlin.

We meet Magda's children: Helga, Helmut, Holde, Hedda, Heide, Hilde and already one may wonder at the sagacity and mental stability of a Mother who gives all her children names starting with the same letter, coincidentally the same letter as Hitler, and perhaps that was some kind of odd tribute to him.

A brief look at Magda's early life reveals abuse, a Mother struggling herself with her adult relationships - overall it is not a pretty picture. Magda then meets Mr Quandt, 20 years her senior and has a child with him, Harald. But that relationship doesn't work out, and she soon finds her calling, not only to the Nazi party but to Joseph Goebbels, the Propaganda Minister to the Third Reich. He is a fully fledged philanderer, and it is Hitler who encourages Magda to stay with him because, he affirms, the German people need her as their role model. She is after all the über-Mother of the Reich.

This novella is a short synopsis of one woman's deranged life. Events happen in and around her life - events that may or may not have predisposed her to mental instability and nihilistic tendencies - but the psychological impact of what Magda goes through in her early years is not really explored. Potential factors are described, and the outcomes are there for all to see, but what was missing for me was the emotional and psychological process, from event to conclusion. How did her psyche internalise and process all that she experienced, and how did the predisposing, maintaining and external factors that permeated her inner world produce such corrupted thought processes in this particular individual?

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish this was a longer book. Split into sections and narrated by different characters (including Magda's mother and daughter) It feels as though the writer is just beginning to find the character's voice or the narrative momentum when the section comes to an end. Having said that the author still manages to squeeze in lots of interesting angles on a familiar story, adding new details which feel vivid and fresh, such as the description of Helga picking flowers in the courtyard of Hitler's bunker with Eva Braun.

[Helen Stanton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I struggled to rate this one ......somewhere between 3.5 and 4 stars. An original idea but somehow I couldn't really believe in the character......even tho it a (fictionalised )biography of Magda Goebbels. A brave attempt to get under the skin of a complex and evil woman

[Patti · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a brief glimpse into the psychology of one of Adolf Hitler's biggest fans and wife to his Propaganda Minister, Magda Goebbels. This novella is mercifully short, and came highly recommended as a glimpse into how an abused, delusional person becomes complicit in incredible atrocities. I wanted to balance my World War II reading not just with accounts of victims, but accounts of persecutors and those that (at best) stand idly by.

Abuse certainly breeds abuse, and a personality that strives to be accepted at whatever moral cost results in the creation of this type of person. I had zero sympathy, as there are occasional folks who have a terrible upbringing but manage to rise above (or at least above this abhorrent behavior). Unfortunately, the story more often than not perpetuates itself into future generations. The structure of Magda's daughter's journal entries, her mom's account to a Commissar, and Magda's own visions felt slightly disjointed, but no matter. I gleaned more than enough about this woman. I don't feel the need to unearth future facts. Overall, I would recommend if you are curious...you'll be more informed about history, albeit burning through it feeling slightly nauseous.

[WndyJW · Rating 4 out of 5]

This factionalized portrait of Magda Goebbels did not dig deep, it’s not a biography. It shows us instead how Magda might have become an ambitious leader of a women’s Nazi group, devoted to Hitler, and who eventually does the unthinkable, touching on the instability in her childhood, and then the humiliations she endured as Joseph Goebbels brought his mistresses home.

We know the Goebbels had six children, all murdered by their parents with cyanide, making the children six of the unfathomable number of innocent deaths in the Nazi genocide. Meike Ziervogel, the genius behind Peirene Press, reminds of us the humanity of the children, especially in the poignant diary entries of the oldest daughter, Helga, as she experiences love for the first time and dreams of a future with the handsome young soldier who guards the infamous Berlin bunker. Helga, in her naivety, chides herself for her imperfections, never imagining the horrors committed by her father and Uncle Adolf.

The title is Magda, but the novel is about more than the titular character and I recommend it.

[Hester · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part fantasy , part cold bleak fact this novella imagines the last days of Magda Goebbels in the Berlin bunker in May 1945 .

We hear from Magda's mother after a harrowing chapter where Magda is fatally shaped by the brutality of a Catholic boarding school and a rather overwrought passion from Helga , her eldest daughter .

It's a mixed bag and maybe the prose style would have worked better in a longer novel, as it a little too far tipped towards melodrama, but it did successfully capture the blind and imperious hero worship , the self deceit and the terrible claustrophobia of those last days .

[micusiowo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesujące - acz czasem irytujące - spojrzenie na żonę drugiego po Hitlerze nazisty. Dla zainteresowanych biografią jest co najmniej kilka wartościowych biografii.

[Apolon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pomimo trudnego tematu czytało się ją szybko i ciekawym doświadczeniem była próba zgłębienia się w umysł zagorzałej zwolenniczki Hitlera. Książka jednak pozostawia uczucie niedosytu — że jednak była za mało dociekliwa, zdecydowanie za mało krytyczna. Największy problem mam do tego, jak przemieszana jest fikcja literacka z prawdą historyczną. W którym momencie kończą się informacje oparte na źródłach, a w którym momencie zaczynają się domysły autorki? Na ile rzeczywiście była adekwatną osobą do napisania takiej historii? Nie jest to ani biografia, ani literatura faktu, historia jest skąpa w daty i szczegółowe informacje. Autorka zdecydowanie dostrzega w Goebbelsowej człowieka o odcieniach szarości, ale brakuje mi w tym dociekania, co rzeczywiście ukształtowało tę kobietę do stania się tym, kim się stała? Czy zabrakło źródeł do odpowiedzenia sobie na to pytanie, czy autorka z jakiegoś powodu nie uznała je za warte wspominania? Za długo ciągnął mi się wątek jej córki, Helgi, w którym wcale nie wgłębiała się w jej w relację z matką, co niby miało być celem tej książki. W gruncie rzeczy całkiem ciekawa pozycja, która pokazuje, jak toczyło się życie ludzi, którzy uważali okrucieństwo nazizmu za słuszność, ale, jak wspomniane wyżej, jednak brakuje mi w tym dociekania i krytyczności.

[Mandy Setterfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brutal, and mercifully short. I can't say it was enjoyable, but I'm glad I read it.

[Anna Morgenstern · Rating 2 out of 5]

This reads like part fiction, part non fiction.
I found it pretty meh, a quick read but didn't feel like I learnt a lot from it.

[Thom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reporting on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the chief bureaucrat of the Holocaust, in 1961, Hannah Arendt coined the phrase ‘the banality of evil’ to explain the way in which apparently ordinary men and women came to be involved in the horrors perpetuated by the Nazi party. Perhaps this is the most disturbing aspect of Holocaust scholarship; it would be comforting to think that the architects of these acts were anomalies, rather than unremarkable specimens of humanity. Acceptance of this essential ordinariness forces us to confront the way individuals can abandon norms of morality in return for gain, or through fear of resisting. Gitta Sereny’s remarkable interviews with Albert Speer and, in particular, with Franz Stangl, the commandant of the Treblinka extermination camp, chart the small steps which transform everyday people into monstrous figures; Leonard Cohen’s poem All There is to Know About Adolf Eichmann likewise stresses the ordinariness of his subject, listing his unremarkable physical attributes before confronting our expectations: ‘What did you expect? Talons?’

This is also the approach taken in Meike Ziervogel’s debut novel, Magda. In writing this novel, Ziervogel states that she has attempted to perform dual tasks; to confront what she sees as a bias in accounts of Nazism which focus on the roles of men whilst assuming that women were passive bystanders, whilst also exploring the psychology of her subject, the events which led to her becoming the First Lady of the Third Reich, and eventually to poison herself and her six children. Although it is seven decades since the events described in the novel, this approach is still fresh; Wendy Lowell’s Hitler’s Furies, released this month, is one of the first academic accounts of women who actively participated in the Holocaust.

As Ziervogel's afterword makes clear, Magda is a work of fiction, which aims for psychological truth over historical accuracy. There is no way of knowing exactly what happened in the final days of Magda Goebbels's life in the bunker, though the discovery of the corpses of six children with ribbons tied in their hair is undisputed. The author's role is to find a convincing explanation of how this came to pass. Magda is examined from various perspectives, switching from an omnipotent authorial voice to the testimony of Magda’s mother, interrogated by a bored Soviet commissar after the downfall, and the diary entries of Magda's eldest daughter, Helga. What we see in these accounts is a breakdown of the mother-daughter relationship across three generations. Magda is illegitimate, packed off to a harsh convent school, where she develops a steely exterior. When an unpopular girl attempts to befriend her, Magda forcibly rebuffs her, showing that 'she was no weak, needy parasite, clinging to others, sucking their blood only to get crushed at the end'.

After the poverty she experienced in her youth, it is no wonder that Magda sought out power, and was so determined to cling on to it. Fabrice d’Almeida’s High Society in the Third Reich (2009) demonstrates that the inner circle of the Nazi party enjoyed aristocratic levels of wealth and privilege. During the 1936 Olympics, for example, Goebbels himself staged ‘a lavish evening on Peacock Island on the River Havel, to which guests were ferried in motorboats manned by crews in immaculate livery’. Magda, who by her mother’s account was ‘always behaving like she was an angel, she was, a woman of the world, aloof', is able to shine in this world. Unlike the other women she meets at rallies ('simple women with flat shoes & brown woollen cardigans'), Magda appears as ‘a priestess in flowing robes', with 'that mink stole soon becomes her trademark'.

Compared to the weak and inconsistent men who surround her, Hitler appears messianic in Magda’s eyes. She first sees him giving a speech, and is immediately overawed: ‘there He stands before Magda, a little man on a podium who has assumed the stature of a giant using nothing but simple words & a strident voice'. Later, they become intimate, and he performs the dual roles for her of powerful God-figure and benevolent father. He sees her almost as a sister, closer in character to himself than many of the men around him, calling her a saint and 'a woman with real spirit’.

Magda’s mother constantly meddles in her affairs, using her as a pawn in her relationships with men, and pulling her out of school so she can find work to support them. She fails utterly to understand Magda’s mentality, telling her bored interrogator 'I gave her the advice. She should get married again, have children, they'd fill her empty life'. Magda's relationship with her own children is similarly tarnished. By the end of the war, suffering from constant migraines, she is a remote figure: ‘if at all, she appears only at dinner’. Her husband, who conducts numerous public affairs, is so disappointed by the birth of their daughter that Hitler becomes the first man to hold Helga. Where Magda was abandoned to the Nuns, Helga is raised by Nazi surrogates, led by 'Uncle Adolf, that grumpy old man in his big house'. The one person to offer her hope is Eva Braun, who attempts to arrange for Helga to escape with a young soldier named Knut, but there hopes come to nothing as Helga is irrevocably tied to her family’s destiny.

Only once do we hear Magda’s own voice, in a prophetic ‘Vision’. During this passage, in which Magda justifies the killing of her children, she also confronts her own guilt. Death, she argues, is preferable to the fate of Berlin under the Red Army. She imagines Helga being forced into prostitution for food, the degradation of her family matching that of the city: 'the enemy soldiers amuse themselves with her eldest, so that Magda and her children have enough money to buy stale bread... It won't be long before they have learned to steal'. In this vision, she has to confront the fate she has created for her daughter: 'This is what the German soldiers have done to their women - and much worse. And I now have to pay for it… Do you actually know what was going on all those years? What the Fuhrer, Father, all of them were doing? Do you really believe that German soldiers raping Russian women was the worst of it?'

A more troubling interpretation can be found in Ernest Becker’s Escape From Evil, which discusses a Nazi ‘philosophy of blood and soil which contained the belief that death nourishes life… is thought to mystically replenish life’. In this account, Magda has been ideologically prepared for the sacrifice of her children. Whilst there is a practical aspect to her actions, there is also a mystical level in which Magda sees the blood of her offspring as somehow redeeming her in posterity, making her sacrifice and commitment even greater.

Magda is an incredibly uncomfortable read. The most horrifyingly claustrophobic sections are those recounted by Helga, as the family retreat to the bunker at the end of the war. Not old enough to fully understand what is happening to her, but not young enough to carry on regardless like her siblings, the reader longs to sympathise with her, but at the same time is forced to recognise that her upbringing within the inner circle of the Nazi party has poisoned her future, as surely as her mother was affected by her own childhood.

Ziervogel’s writing is studiously matter-of-fact for the most part, but the complex narrative structure is skilfully handled, with the ‘Vision’ section particularly impressive. The tone avoids the temptation towards preachiness or kitsch, delivering a weighty psychological assessment of its subject in 113 pages. Without her motivations ever becoming overt, we see the steps which Magda took to ensure her position, and the mechanisms she used to justify the mayhem unleashed by Nazism, the appeal of Hitler’s myths which she was happy to accept. As Magda fusses over her sleeping children, putting ribbons in their hair before she poisons them, we see her at once as an ordinary woman and as an embodiment of evil; willing, like the bureaucrat Eichmann, to perform her allotted role in the Nazi system without thought to her own personal morality, obsessed with obedience and outward appearance to the exclusion of all else.

[Sabrina · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the beginning of the 20th century, a maid has an affair with her employer and out of that union, a girl is born, whom the mother names Magda.
Subject to her mother’s resentment over the unwanted pregnancy and later, shades of jealousy, Magda grows up largely unloved, frequently bullied, bounced around from convent to boarding school, somehow growing into a sophisticated beauty who catches the eye of Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
Anyone who’s studied history knows how this story ends.
Ziergovel is less interested in historical accuracy than the psychology of the women in this story so we get impressions of complicated mother-daughter dynamics, some florid inner monologues and confessions structured as testimonies and diary entries.
I’d say the author succeeded in providing a novel experience, although the conceit is bigger than the execution of it. A good read if one is looking for effective portrayals of unlikeable female characters.

[Johan D'Haenen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Je zou deze novelle kunnen beschouwen als een biografie van Magda Goebbels, en voor een stuk is het dat ook, gezien de draad van historische feiten waarrond het boek opgebouwd is.
Anderzijds is het ook een nadenken over de relatie tussen een moeder die zelf een totaal verwrongen jeugd gekend heeft, en haar eigen kinderen. En dan is er ook het element van idolatrie, de verafgoding van de grote leider, zoals we dat ook zien bij sektes waarvan de leden tot collectieve zelfmoord gebracht worden.
Meike Ziervogel is in dit eerste werk misschien nog niet op haar sterkste, maar je voelt als lezer nu toch al die diepgang en de suggestieve kracht van weinig woorden die haar novelles zo boeiend maken.

[Andrea Rudge · Rating 3 out of 5]

If possible, I would have given this 3.5. For me, it was a strange book. I found the story intriguing but some of the writing a little clumsy. Towards the end I found it a little confusing too - I wasn't sure what was real and what wasn't and had to do some research to find out what actually happened. I'm not averse to fictionalised accounts of history but do like to know what is fiction and what isn't. It's a short book, but perhaps could have done with being a bit longer with more detail as sometimes the narrative jumps a long way forward in time.

I would still recommend reading it to those who like historical fiction and maybe the writing would appeal more to some. Overall, I'm pleased to have read it.

[Geraldine · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting novel about Magda Goebbels although dealing (inevitably) with terrible things. I think what was fact and what was fiction should somehow have been made clearer. Certainly the book was a good attempt to explore the psychology behind Magda's actions but ultimately it is only guesswork and perhaps the children were more deserving of the author's imaginative focus than the mother. Although Ziervogel does make a good attempt to bring them to life (especially Helga).

[Rae · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mother. Daughter. Granddaughter. Three generations of women are fleshed out in this brief look at Magda Goebbels. How was it possible that she was capable of murdering her children in the last days of the war in Berlin?

Four stars for how the book made me think and feel (weirdly understanding), rather than for the writing itself.

This one will linger with me.

[Katie Nairne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this in one sitting which was a bit intense. Disturbing but compelling consideration of what lies behind evil actions.

[Magda · Rating 2 out of 5]

There was something missing, I don't know what but it didn't give me this feeling of well told story.
Topic was very interesting though

[Anza · Rating 3 out of 5]

2,75
Gdyby była bardziej oparta na faktach, dostałaby wyższą ocenę

[Val · Rating 5 out of 5]

What would cause a mother to kill her children?
The author examines several of the factors which might have influenced Magda Goebbels in her decision: her own upbringing, her devotion to the Nazi cause and its leader, her failing health and her vision of what life would be like after the war. This is a novel, not a psychology thesis, and the author makes a compelling story out of those elements, which i enjoyed reading very much.

[Cerisaye · Rating 4 out of 5]

Usually with short novels I get to the end wishing for more but with this one I was relieved to finish. Not because it's a bad book, quite the contrary, because it unsettled me and, two days later, I can't get it out of my head.

I came to Magda after reading Peter Longerich's biography of Joseph Goebbels, which led me to search out video clips of Goebbels' speeches. I also found family footage put out by the propaganda minister that showed his wife Magda and their six children, the perfect Nazi mother and ideal Aryan family. I have seen Downfall, the dramatised version of the final days of the Third Reich in the Führer bunker, that shows how Magda and Joseph Goebbels first killed their children and then committed suicide, following Hitler and Eva Braun's deaths. How could any parent bring themselves to do such a thing? Longerich blames Joseph Goebbels' all-absorbing narcissism, he couldn't imagine a future for his children that did not include their father, that they were better dead than to live on without him. This version doesn't satisfy, not least because it took their mother's strength and resolve to carry through, with the assistance of a doctor. Wanting to understand Goebbels' actions was what drew me to Longerich's book, but it's a biography of Joseph Goebbels and I needed more. Which was how I found out about the novel Magda.

This fictional treatment might not explain what actually drove a mother and father to murder their children, after all no one can truly know what goes on inside anyone else's mind, yet it offers psychological insights that make you think hard about mother-daughter relationships and cycles of abuse, how these play out and might possibly bring understanding of the apparently inexplicable.

The role of women in the Third Reich has only in recent times begun to receive separate examination and academic study. Magda Goebbels and other high ranking Nazi wives, mothers, and daughters, played their part in supporting and sustaining the regime. How much they knew about what was going on, whether they were unaware or chose not to know. Whatever, by the end they certainly knew what was coming with the advancing Red Army, since Goebbels' propaganda made quite sure they were aware of the consequences of defeat.

I have also read A Woman in Berlin, an anonymous diarist's account of the regime's final weeks and immediate aftermath of Russian Occupation. So Magda would certainly have been in a position to know only too well what was to come, when the Red Army would repay in kind the horrors inflicted upon those in the path of the Wehrmacht and SS, rape, casual brutality, slaughter, mass deprivation. As a mother I know how hard it would be to contemplate such a fate for my children. Yet the Goebbelses were in a position to send the children to safety, as most top Nazis did. So why instead choose murder, infanticide?

We are perennially fascinated by the Nazis, important ones and the general population's willingness to support them to the end. I think it helps to understand what happened in the Führer bunker if you know something about the mood and atmosphere in Berlin at the time, the war lost and fear of terrible retribution to come. This is undoubtedly a brave book in attempting to take us inside the psyche of a woman many see as an out and out monster. It doesn't offer excuses and in no way condones Magda Goebbels. I was as chilled and shocked by the ending as when watching the reenactment scene from Downfall, the impact deepened by seeing Magda's actions through the eyes of her eldest daughter, a girl on the cusp of womanhood who had days before picked flowers with Eva Braun, and fallen in love for the first time with a young guard. Her POV is largely in the form of diary entries, addressed to ' Gretchen', surely a deliberate evocation of another adolescent diarist, Anne Frank, two innocent lives in completely different circumstances destroyed by Hitler's Germany.

This review is too long already but I can't let this book go. Disturbing, unbearably sad, shocking, sickening... emotionally invasive and draining to read. Difficult to sum up for a review, to do justice to such a bold attempt to lance a boil, to address difficult issues of mother love and the malign influences that warp human relationships, enabling the ' monsters' of history who were sons, daughters,mothers, fathers, brothers, too.

[Ruth · Rating 2 out of 5]

In this interesting novel Meike Ziervogel sets out to articulate what motivated Magda Goebbels to kill her six children in Hitler's bunker in the final days of the war. Ziervogel seeks to understand the psychological forces and the personal history that may have led to her heinous crime. Told through three voices - Magda's mother; Magda herself when young; and the diary entries of her strong-willed, adolescent daughter, Helga, 'Magda' is in many ways a portrait of damaged mother/daughter relationships down the generations. Magda's beauty opens the door to a life of luxury with powerful men and she marries Josef Goebbels, with whom she had six children in eight years.winning herself a motherhood award and yet taking their lives at the end of the war. Was it fear of what would happen to them when caught or more chillingly is it as the author convincingly suggests, Magda's complete self-surrender to Hitler, the 'Messiah', that enables her to crush cyanide capsules between their lips.
Magda seems to be suffering from being deranged at times,however was she the only one?
The psychological impact of what Magda goes through in her early life is not fully explored .
It would be interesting to read more about her.

[Linda Boa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating book about Magda Goebbels, wife of Joseph and most notorious for poisoning her six children in Hitler's bunker as the Red Army were about to invade Berlin. We learn of her early life from a statement her mother is giving an Allied intelligence officer, then there's some input from Magda herself, followed by, most heart-wrenchingly, part of her eldest daughter's diary when they are in the bunker. The final part is Magda's vision of what would happen if she and the children didn't die - obviously Joseph would be arrested, had he not committed suicide (and I suspect Magda would be too, at least initially, for intelligence interviews at least.) It's a short book - a novella, really - but is all the more powerful for that. I don't know if "enjoyed" is the right word, but it's a book I felt had quite an impact on me. Further review to come at https://crimeworm.wordpress.com/ as part of the 20 Books Of Summer challenge.