On the Other Side Letters to My Children from Germany 1940-46 Persephone 73

ON THE OTHER SIDE: LETTERS TO MY CHILDREN FROM GERMANY 1940-46 

by Mathilde Wolff-Monckeberg

translated with a preface and afterword by Ruth Evans and with a publishers' afterword by Christopher Beuaman

This paperback edition (card covers with dustjacket) published 2007 by Persephone Books Ltd, London, UK.

First edition thus.

205 pages.

 "On The Other Side" are letters written (but never posted) by a 60 year-old woman, to her children living abroad, about the experience of living in Hamburg during the war. Discovered in a drawer in the 1970s, they were translated by her daughter, the late Ruth Evans, and first published in England and Germany in 1979.

The Preface, which fills in the background, is by Ruth Evans and the Afterword, which sets the letters in the context of recent controversies about the Allied bombing of German cities, is by Christopher Beauman.

Tilli Wolff-Monckeberg was the daughter of a lawyer. She was intelligent and well-educated but married very young and had five children. Unusually for the time, she and her husband separated during the First World War and Tilli returned to Hamburg, did some translating and took in lodgers. In 1925 she married a Professor of English who later became Rector of Hamburg University.

By the time the letters begin, therefore, in October 1940, her personal life was slightly complicated, with her children living in farflung places, including her youngest daughter Ruth living in Wales.

Tilli was keeping what was in effect a diary: the discovery of the letters would certainly have resulted in her and her husband's arrest. They are extremely candid about all aspects of WW2 in Germany, and great reading. 

Book and dustjacket condition: Very good+. The book has beautiful endpapers taken from Bauhaus fabric design.