Restless Flags: a German Girl's Story

by Lilo Linke

An autobiography

354 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1935

Reviews

[Tony Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A jewel of a book. A great shame it is so utterly obscure.

Writing in 1935, the author describes how it was for her growing up in Berlin. Her childhood was upended by the outbreak of World War One. After wartime privations came revolution, the breakdown of the middle class during the hyperinflation of 1923, the decay of the Weimar Republic, and the first year of Nazi rule.

Her goal, as she humbly put it, was “to show happenings as they reflected themselves in my immature mind”. This is done with charm and depth. We are shown the sensitive subjective experiences of a growing girl and young woman as she confronts great events.

For example the great strike waves towards the end of the war, which heralded the onset of the revolution, are introduced this way:

One morning early in 1918 - it was still dark, and during the whole War only each second light was lit in the streets - I passed the first factory on my way to school. I stopped, bewildered - there was no sound, no light in the whole building. For years and years, as far back as I could remember, the machines had never stopped for a moment; in three breathless shifts the workers, mainly women, had turned out innumberable thousands of war munitions. I was so used to the stamping noise that I hardly heard it. Now all was silent, and it seemed like a nightmare. Something hostile was in it, something terrible.

She does not attempt to provide factual background to the events and places she describes. This hardly matters since she is covering one of the most well-studied periods of modern history.

The book is dedicated to Storm Jameson.

The book was also published under the alternative title Restless Days: A German Girl's Autobiography. See Kirkus Review description.