Gerda Szepansky

Gerda Szepansky (born Gerda Lange: 6 September 1925 - 3 August 2004) was a teacher in West Berlin who lost her job for political reasons. She had dreamed of working as a journalist since childhood, and following her dismissal was able to focus on building a successful career producing "cheerful stories about dogs and babies" for magazines. She also appeared on stage in post-war Berlin in cabaret and independent theatre groups. She married a concentration camp survivor (who was also a committed communist) and, after their children had grown up, published a number of popular history books focusing on contemporary history and on the Hitler years through which she had lived as a teenager, and during which her husband had been a resistance activist. Literary success and the passing of the years brought her a measure of official respectability: in 1996 she was a recipient of the Order of Merit ("Bundesverdienstkreuz am Bande").

Life Gerda Lange was born and grew up in central Berlin. The children whom they taught formed a neat line as the young couple made their way to the registry office. Despite the widespread austerity of the times, there was some disappointment among their young witnesses that there was no bridal carriage and that they had arrived for the ceremony on foot.

Following the West German currency reform (from which the Soviet occupation zone, including the eastern part of Berlin, was excluded) and the ensuing eleven month Soviet blockade of Berlin, there was an intensification of political and administrative divisions between the eastern part of Berlin and the parts under US, British or French administration, which would come to be known soon after 1949 as "West Berlin". The Tempelhof quarter of Berlin in which the Szepanskys had ended up living was in the U.S. (western) sector of the city. They were nevertheless both members of the recently launched Socialist Unity Party, a successor party to the Communist Party which was already securely rooted in the Soviet zone, but had completely failed to gain traction with more than a handful of voters in Berlin's western sectors. After 1949, the Szepanskys found themselves viewed with intensifying suspicion at work. That year or shortly afterwards they were both dismissed from the West Berlin schools service. At around the same time, following a lengthy period of unemployment, her husband became club house manager at the West Berlin terminus-offices of the (East German) "Reichsbahn" (national railway service). Both the Szepanskys' salaries came from "over there" - East Germany.

By the middle of the 1960s, she was the mother of four small if growing children. According to a fellow journalist she and her husband were the perfect "political dreamer". Although Wolfgang Szepansky had been a teacher when he and Gerda met up, before 1933 he had been and artist. As their family grew he was the philosopher-artis and, on occasion, the dreamer, while Gerda ran the family, attending to everything from the family finances to the morning cocoa. She nevertheless remained politically committed. During the 1970s, she was involved in the political campaigns of the time, demonstrating with comrades against the locating of nuclear weapons and U.S. military bases in West Germany, Section 218 of the West German penal code (concerning abortion), and what she and her husband (and others) saw as the collective amnesia of the political establishment concerning the Hitler years and their legacy. As far as Gerda and Wolfgang Szepansky were concerned during this period, they and the German Democratic Republic were on the right side of history. Further books followed, dealing with women's lives and the Hitler years.

Szepansky was also a member of the Berlin-based New Literature Society ("Neue Gesellschaft für Literatur" / NGL), an elected member of the organisation's controlling committee between 1980 and 1982. The NGL was a pioneering authors' association which had been founded un 1973 by Ingeborg Drewitz. In 1996, with 700 members, it could be described as Berlin's strongest literary association, but was dissolved in 2004 by which time some members felt that reunification had made many of its objectives superfluous or redundant.

In 1996, Wolfgang and Gerda Szepansky, who had both lost their jobs in the teaching service at the behest of German government agencies in (West) Berlin forty-five years earlier, were both recipients of the Order of Merit ("Verdienstkreuz am Bande"). Supporters would clearly say that it was Germany that had caught up with the tide of history.

Gerda Szepansky's final months were blighted by illness, from which she died on 3 August 2004. Despite having selected a husband fiftenn years her senior, she predeceased him by four years. Following an exceptionally well attended funeral celebration then urn containing what remained of her body was buried in the presence of her immediate family at the Marienhof II protestant cemetery, close to her home.

Selected works Der erste Schritt. Erzählungen. Edition Neue Wege, Berlin 1978, ISBN 3-88348-019-3. "Blitzmädel", "Heldenmutter", "Kriegerwitwe". Frauenleben im Zweiten Weltkrieg.(weitere Auflagen 1985, 1986, 1987, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1995). Frauen leisten Widerstand. 1933 bis 1945. Lebensgeschichten nach Interviews und Dokumenten. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verl., Frankfurt am Main 1983, ISBN 3-596-23741-6 (weitere Auflagen 1988, 1989, 1994). Die stille Emanzipation. Frauen in der DDR. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verl., Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-596-12075-6. (Co-Hrsg. und Vorwort von Helga Schwarz) ... und dennoch blühten Blumen. Frauen-KZ Ravensbrück. Dokumente, Berichte, Gedichte und Zeichnungen vom Lageralltag 1939–1945. (PDF; 1,7 MB) Landeszentrale für Politische Bildung, Potsdam 2000, ISBN 3-932502-25-6. Lauf schneller, mein Herz, die Zeit bleibt nicht stehen. Erzählungen – Eigendruck im Selbstverlag 2004