How I got to the Altenheim: An American/ German Journey
elana levy translated and published a selection of Rose Ausländer’s poetry in 2018. She reads from Ausländer’s work in the original German, and then her English translations.
Oral History with Leticia Andreas-Wolf
Sunday, January 15, 2012
“My birthplace is Dresden, Germany, year 1965. Despite growing up for my first 10 years in the old East behind the Iron Curtain, my childhood was rather happy and carefree. A dramatic event in 1974 changed the life of my parents and me forever. In 1975, we were forced to leave East Germany for West Germany, and settled in Braunschweig, and later in Wunstorf, near Hannover.
Evening with Madhuri Anji
I am the daughter of a German mother and an Indian father, and was born in Dresden, in what was then East Germany. My birthday, October 7th, was also the Tag der Republik, and according to my mother I was born just as a marching band went by the hospital.
My mother had petitioned to emigrate out of East Germany soon after the wall was built since my father lived and worked in the West. It took about 11 years before we were allowed to do so which is when we immigrated to India. I was one year old. I was fortunate that my parents spoke German at home, which allowed me to grow up bi-lingual. Although I learned and heard the local language (Kannada) around me all the time, I cannot speak it.
An Evening with Bernhard Ruchti
July 24, 2010
“I was born in Berkeley in 1974. My parents are both Swiss and my father had a research assistant position at UC Berkeley. When I was about three years old, we returned to Switzerland, where I grew up.
At the age of 15 or 16, I joined a spiritual group that was engaged in anthroposophical ideas. A pretty complex story…. About the same time, I began to discover that I am gay. But, under the influence of spiritual ideologies, I was not able to accept that fact. I tried to live as a straight man, and, at the age of 28 I even married.”
An Evening with Frieda Gordon Dilloo
“I was born in 1939 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in southern Germany. For the first 7 years of my life my family lived in Namlos, a small, remote village high in the Tyrolean Alps. 13 houses, a dangerous road, not a single motorized vehicle in the village. By age six, I knew all about avalanches and haying, but little about life in the big city. Food was scarce anyway, but especially at the end of the War. But at least I didn’t have to run into bomb shelters every night like so many of my age-mates had to do if they lived in the cities.