Anna Elisabeth Rosmus. Against the Stream: Growing Up Where Hitler Used to Live. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2002. xi + 158 pp. 24.95, cloth, ISBN 978-1-57003-490-9.

Reviewed by Charles Lansing

Published on H-German (October, 2004)

In her often-engrossing autobiography, Anna much of the same ground as Michael Verhoeven's Rosmus, whose story was the basis of the 1990 flm. The frst sixteen vignettes also establish the flm , recounts her grass-roots basic pattern of her activities: desiring to know struggle to publicize and, when possible, rectify more about an historical topic, she undertakes a historical injustices with the goal that "we, the research project that is, at frst, hindered by local young Germans, not only should, but must learn personalities, including city or Catholic Church of‐ from such past mistakes" (p. 111). The slim vol‐ fcials. She enlists the support of journalists and ume, consisting of thirty-one vignettes, chronicles other powerful individuals in order to apply pres‐ her eforts to "swim against the stream" of Ger‐ sure and thereby to gain access to the desired ma‐ man society: from researching and publishing an terial. The episode describing Rosmus's participa‐ account of in the early Third Reich, to tion in an essay contest sponsored by the Koerber pressuring municipal authorities to create state- Foundation in 1980 illustrates this approach par‐ supported memorials to victims of Nazism, to re‐ ticularly well. Researching the contest's pre‐ jecting German society and moving her family to scribed topic: "The Prewar Years in My Home‐ the . Although meandering and repe‐ town," the twenty-year-old recent high school titious, her story nevertheless illustrates vividly graduate initially assumed her fndings would the complex process of Vergangenheitsbewaelti‐ validate the conventional account that the city's gung, illuminating the difculties of and possibili‐ notables had resisted the creation of a National ties for success in teaching a German community Socialist state and society. Her eforts did uncover about its past. resistance, though of a very diferent kind than The frst half of the work is a gripping she had anticipated. Local state and Church ar‐ retelling of her early experiences with 's, chives, as well as private individuals, employed and more specifcally, Passau's incomplete process various obstructionist tactics to withhold informa‐ of coming to terms with its recent past, covering tion from her. Examining back issues of a local newspaper, she discovered that Passau's citizens H-Net Reviews had, in fact, embraced National Socialism, as ex‐ Despite the work's sometimes fascinating and emplifed by the case of the former editor-in-chief incendiary subject matter, its style and structure of the newspaper, who in the 1930s had written detract signifcantly from its overall impact. Nar‐ articles supporting Germany's right to Leben‐ rating her life story by means of vignettes, most of sraum. Winning third prize in the contest failed to them only a couple of pages long, results in a high put the issue to rest, however; Rosmus had se‐ degree of repetition. Issues, individuals, and even cured a publisher and intended to turn the essay words or phrases with their translations appear into a book. Facing the continued resistance of the in multiple chapters, cluttering up the narrative. local archivists and a lawsuit resulting from pub‐ This is exacerbated by Rosmus's extensive lic statements she had made about the former edi‐ reprinting of correspondence--much of it her tor-in-chief, she turned to Martin Hirsch, a retired own--and lengthy newspaper articles. In the chap‐ Federal Constitutional Court judge, for advice and ter detailing the bequest to the author of one of assistance. The result was the publication of her the three death masks of the politically-engaged frst book, Resistance and Persecution in Passau intellectual Kurt Tucholsky, Rosmus includes from 1933 to 1939, and, after having taken the three separate articles that not only reiterate ma‐ City of Passau to court, access to the municipal ar‐ terial about her earlier struggles covered else‐ chives. where in the work, but also all make the same The second half of the book is a loose collec‐ point: that Anna Rosmus is an intellectual heir of tion of episodes centered on her diverse eforts to Tucholsky and thus a natural choice for the mask. bring about reconciliation between contemporary This had been explicitly stated just pages before, residents of Passau and the city's former victims. however, when Rosmus quotes Tucholsky's com‐ One important way was working to facilitate a panion as saying that the mask "should belong to visit to the city by a handful of who had emi‐ somebody Kurt would have loved ... I want you to grated in the 1930s. Rosmus lobbied a reluctant have the mask. He had always looked for some‐ municipal government to support fnancially and one just like you, unfortunately in vain. He would to celebrate ofcially the Jews' return. She initial‐ have loved you" (pp. 99-100). The structure also ly encountered the same kind of bureaucratic re‐ results in some interesting points being raised but sistance that had plagued her research and pub‐ not adequately addressed. Rosmus writes in chap‐ lishing, an attitude she unjustly equates with that ter 6 that upon reading Resistance and Persecu‐ of the Schreibtischtaeter of the Holocaust as well tion for the frst time, she discovered that the edi‐ as of "those who had decided, by simply pointing tor or publisher had changed some of the text and a fnger, who would go to work in the concentra‐ removed the photographs. The story, regrettably, tion camps and who would go to the gas cham‐ ends here; she does not tell the reader what, if bers" (p. 88). Rosmus ultimately prevailed, and the anything, she did to fnd out how and why some‐ individuals were received in Passau as guests of one had revised her manuscript without her honor. Her eforts to convince the city to con‐ knowledge. struct a memorial to Nazism's victims were less Although evaluating the content of an autobi‐ successful, however. A small one was designated ography is particularly difcult, one expects that not in a square in the center of town, as people the individual episodes are not digressions but had originally planned after the war and as Ros‐ contribute to the overall narrative. In the case of mus had hoped, but, after years of delay, at the Against the Stream, more than a few passages fail gravesite of Passau's only so-called "Volljuedin" to to meet this standard. Does the reader need to survive the Third Reich. know, as Rosmus writes in chapter 27, that "some‐ thing that was never made public was the plan for

2 H-Net Reviews a practical joke that was never realized. Originally Klein. This development, though only touched I was to fy to and make a surprise appear‐ upon in this work, is as interesting to and poten‐ ance, confronting the puzzled Oberbuergermeis‐ tially as signifcant for historians of postwar Ger‐ ter of Passau by asking him some of my questions man history as her earlier struggles against the on live TV. The idea was tempting, and I could state and her fellow citizens. have easily made a fool of him, but all in all it Despite its faws, Rosmus's work provides his‐ wouldn't have accomplished anything as far as torians with an enthralling look into the personal furthering my work went. 'You always have to and institutional hurdles one strong-willed young swim against the stream' ('Du und dein woman had to surmount in order to fnd out Querkopf'), I was told when I mentioned the idea about and to publicize the true history of her to people I knew. And I respected their opinion: hometown in the Third Reich. Selected vignettes But I no more wanted to be used by the City of from the frst half of the work could be a particu‐ Passau for their cheap purposes of self-promotion larly efective teaching aid as part of an under‐ than I wanted to serve as a spokesperson against graduate reading packet for a course in modern the city. So I stayed home" (pp. 132-133). More German history. worrisome, on more than one occasion, Rosmus seems to be settling old scores with individuals who she believes have wronged her. For example, she intimates past questionable intentions of one local editor who in the early 1980s had allegedly signed a false deposition against the author: "He himself had waited outside the Leopoldinum [the high school she attended] more than once ofering to drive me home. He lived in our neighborhood. I didn't trust him, though, and so I had never taken him up on it" (pp. 33-34). By the end of the work, this reader wished Rosmus had spent more time refecting on the larger, more permanent efects of her activities on the society and culture of Passau and Germany. Her more recent eforts seem to have engendered far less opposition. For example, in 1991 some city councilmen even aided her in fnancing the publi‐ cation of the artwork of the Jewish emigre Robert Klein. To what extent did this represent a larger transformation? Had many Passauers begun to come to terms with the city's less than sterling reputation? If so, what accounts for the change? The most striking manifestation of this shift in at‐ titudes is the acceptance of her eforts by the local press. By the early 1990s, Passau's main newspa‐ per was no longer vilifying Rosmus and her ef‐ forts but facilitating and even supporting them, advocating in print on behalf of Rosmus and Mr.

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Citation: Charles Lansing. Review of Rosmus, Anna Elisabeth. Against the Stream: Growing Up Where Hitler Used to Live. H-German, H-Net Reviews. October, 2004.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=9840

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