Fashioning the Self and the Recipient in Letters: Kuckhoff’s Correspondence

Abstract

Written within four months of her release from prison, in August 1945, Kuckhoff’s letter to Hedwig Stoeckert conveys a compelling range of feelings. The grief for her husband and the anxiety for her son are as palpable as her determination to avoid self-pity and to focus on practical activities — activities which were to become so important to her in the following months and years. While I focus in the following on many of Kuckhoff’s exchanges involving those who worked in a professional capacity (as historians, politicians, academics and authors), it should not be forgotten that there are also hundreds of letters in the archive addressed to private individuals who had also been part of the resistance, in which she talked about the motivations for her antifascist work. As such, Kuckhoff’s ‘private’ letters still often convey their ‘purposeful intent’.² An example is the extensive correspondence which lasted over 30 years with Martha Dodd, whose father had been Ambassador at the American Embassy in Berlin during Nazism. Written in English, a letter from Kuckhoff in July 1946 conveys a sense of both personal and professional responsibility:

It is not very easy to live with the whole burden of having to stand for them all — too many have gone, too few were left and the work to be done is still tremendous. Since June 22nd I am a member of the Berlin Magistrate, the first woman member in fact: ‘Stellvertretender Leiter der Abteilung Ernährung für ganz Berlin’.

[…] Der grösste Schmerz war damals, dass ich meinen Mann allein gehen lassen musste, ich habe in der Zwischenzeit in diesen Zuchthausjahren, in denen mir kein Tag leer war, erkannt, dass ich kein Recht habe, zu klagen, dass ich blieb. […]

Meinen kleinen Sohn habe ich noch nicht gefunden. Wir suchen ihn durch Zeitung und Funk, er war im Gebiet östlich der Oder, bei Menschen, die ihn wie einen eigenen Sohn hielten, weltkundige, bewegliche Menschen — vielleicht ist er noch dort, vielleicht ist es nur unmöglich, mir ein Lebenszeichen zu schicken. Ich sehne mich nach ihm, denn es ist mir wenig geblieben. […] Ich selbst habe seit kurzem eine ernährungswirtschaftlich wichtige Arbeit beim Magistrat der Stadt Berlin. Ich wohne in meiner alten Wohnung, die zwar recht beschädigt ist und in der sich keine unserer lieben Möbel und Bücher mehr befinden, aber ich mag nirgendwo mehr sonst hin. Es ist ein letztes Stückchen meiner zerstörten Heimat. Am letzten Sonntag war eine Gedächtnisfeier für die toten Dichter, die in der oder jener Form Opfer dieser grausamsten aller Zeitabschnitte geworden sind. Man gedachte dort Adams als Letztem, dem einzigen, der zu der Erkenntnis gekommen war, dass Wort nicht mehr genügte, dass die Tat allein vielleicht noch retten könnte.¹

What caused me the greatest pain back then was that I had to let my husband go alone. In the intervening years in prison in which no day was empty, I realized that I had no right to complain that I remained […].

I have not yet found my young son. We are searching for him through the newspaper and radio. He was in the area to the east of the Oder, with people who looked after him as if he was their own son — world-wise, agile-minded people — perhaps he’s still there, perhaps it’s just impossible to send me a sign of life. I long for him, for I have so little left. […] I have myself recently got an important job dealing with nutritional economics at the Berlin City Council. I’m living in my old flat, which is actually quite damaged and in which there’s no longer any of our lovely furniture or books, but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. It is the last little piece of my destroyed homeland. Last Sunday there was a commemorative service for the dead poets, who in one way or another have been victims of this most cruel of times. We remembered Adam there as the last one, as the only one, who had come to realize that words were not sufficient, that deeds alone could perhaps save us.