“I wanted to understand my mother better”

The journalist Dorothee Röhrig, born in 1952, grew up in an extraordinary family. Her uncles are the politician Klaus von Dohnanyi and the conductor Christoph von Dohnanyi - her grandfather was the lawyer Hans von Dohnanyi. His leading position in the central defense department of the Wehrmacht High Command, the military secret service, not only enabled him to help 14 Jewish citizens escape to Switzerland. Dohnanyi also played a leading role in the conspiratorial resistance against Hitler, which had formed in the "Abwehr" office. He worked closely with the evangelical theologian and resistance fighter Dietrich Bonhoeffer, to whose sister Christine he was married. Christine and Dietrich Bonhoeffer's brother, Klaus Bonhoeffer, was also involved in the resistance. He was shot dead on April 23, 1945 after being sentenced by the People's Court. Hans von Dohnanyi and Dietrich Bonhoeffer were hanged on April 9, 1945.

ICONIST: Ms. Röhrig, no other family was as significantly involved in the resistance against Hitler as yours. You have now written a book about a family member who has never been the focus of historical studies: your mother, Barbara von Dohnanyi-Bayer. How did you come up with that?

Dorothee Röhrig: I have a "living box" in which I collect everything from individual earrings to clumsy love letters that I can't part with. During lockdown I went exploring in this box and found a photo of my mum that I had never seen before. I clipped it to my desk lamp and kept looking at it. And it touched me very much: How hard is she holding me in the picture? Is she holding on to me? My gaze somehow turns away from her, also a bit critical. And her gaze is cautiously smiling, timid. All of this set me off on a merry-go-round.

ICONIST: Your mother was 16 when her parents were arrested.

Röhrig: It was a tough time. My grandmother Christine von Dohnanyi acted naïve and was soon released. My grandfather Hans von Dohnanyi remained in custody, where he was severely humiliated in order to extract statements and confessions. He later asked his wife to smuggle diphtheria bacilli into prison for him to be transferred to the hospital. She mixed them in yogurt. After my grandfather became infected himself and was partially paralyzed, he was taken to the Potsdam epidemic hospital.

ICONIST: Was your mother able to visit your father?

Röhrig: She kept bringing him flowers and pastries to prison and even smuggled out secret messages with encrypted messages. Thanks to the nurse Johanna Weber, who ignored the ban on visits, she was able to visit him in the hospital and talk to him through the window. My mother last visited her father with my grandmother on August 22, 1944. On that day he was taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. They were allowed to say goodbye to him. I ask myself: Which parting picture lived on in my mother?

ICONIST: Your book is a "declaration of love to a difficult mother".

Röhrig: It's an attempt to understand her better, to understand how she became the mother she was to me. And I suddenly got a different look at her and the family. It's just a female gaze.

ICONIST: What was the most important finding?

Röhrig: I understood her aloofness better, this downright defensiveness, along the lines of: You have no idea! This hiding behind a sometimes downright unfriendly manner that could turn into insecurity. Now I think it was an attempt to build a solid armor against things she just couldn't express. Talking to anyone in the form of therapy was out of the question for her, except family members. But they were all traumatized themselves.

ICONIST: Did your mother talk to you about the events?

Rohrig: Little. I didn't ask much either. Because this family history was so overwhelming for me. It is full of brave and heroic people who always loomed over you, and who could never be reached. The bar of decency was unbearably high. I didn't want to let my family history slow me down in my own development and joie de vivre.

ICONIST: And yet the burden has not left you untouched.

Röhrig: This mental overload, which you could only endure with a protective shield of self-control, naturally also had an effect on the next generation. My mother inherited much of my grandmother's suffering in addition to what was horrible for her. This collection of dark feelings was passed on to me.

ICONIST: You worked on yourself, dealt with psychological issues professionally and were part of the founding team of the magazine "Emotion". No coincidence?

Röhrig: I've dealt with feelings all my life because they were so rare in my family. Talking about feelings was frowned upon. Willingness to perform was important. Intellectuals were greatly encouraged. If my mother was asked about anything that could evoke emotion, she would quickly shut down.

ICONIST: There was Mother's Day when you and your cousin Johannes, son of Klaus von Dohnanyi, wanted to surprise your grandmother and mother when you were six years old...

Röhrig: It still lives right under my skin. I remember the two yellow garden chairs around which Johannes and I draped chains of daisies, because we had learned at school that this is what Mother's Day is all about. We were so proud! And then this rebuff: "You know, the Nazis had Mother's Day," we heard. "We don't celebrate it." We had a code that we had to obey. When I was a kid, I never really had anyone my own age to visit me. You kept to yourself.

ICONIST: And if you break the rules?

Rohrig: Oh! I had a little hickey on my neck when I was 17. My mother was appalled: "You don't do that!" Part of the code was not to wear a petticoat. I would have loved to have had one. All I got was a self-tailored petticoat with an elastic band. He didn't swing a rock. Of course, my mother didn't paint her nails like other mothers did. That was a general theme: being different from the others. But as a child you want to be like the others. You want to belong.

ICONIST: Understandable. Nevertheless, the resistance against Hitler naturally also had something extremely honorable about it, the “necessary course of action of a decent person”, as your family put it. Does that fill you with pride?

Röhrig: That wasn't my performance. I'm rather proud of the fact that I was able to live my life very intensively and very happily. From a certain point. As I began to free myself from the burdens of my family history.

ICONIST: Was there a specific situation?

Röhrig: The birth of my daughter was a crucial situation in which I made a very conscious decision for myself and my life. But before that I also kicked. I managed not to get stuck in the family thicket.

ICONIST: I can imagine that writing your book was also a mourning process.

Röhrig: It was shocking when, on April 5, 2022, I suddenly realized what a fateful day that was: On April 5, 1943, my grandparents were arrested. At the same time, my great-uncle Dietrich Bonhoeffer, my grandmother's brother, was picked up by the Gestapo at his parents' house. On April 5, 1945, my grandparents saw each other for the last time before my grandfather was carried on a stretcher to his execution and hanged in Sachsenhausen on April 9. Bonhoeffer was killed that day in the Flossenbürg concentration camp.

ICONIST: Your book gives the impression that there was quite a strong bond between you and your mother.

Röhrig: As I was writing, more and more situations came to mind in which I felt particularly close to her. These included, above all, situations in which it was shown how much humor she was able to take on unpleasant situations. Once she wanted to drive me to school in light blue plush slippers and a Persian coat over my nightgown and hit a car. When the police came, I almost died when they actually got off the elevator. But she only laughed at herself and the situation. I love that about her today. Also her assertiveness and her sense of responsibility. My daughter was in the US when she was 15, my mother, who was in New York at the time, wanted to pick up her granddaughter at Grand Central Station. But because access was blocked by a construction site, she punched her way to the railway employees' desk. My daughter couldn't believe her ears when she heard in German: "This is a message for Sophie! Here is grandma. I'll wait at the information desk in the main building!”

ICONIST: Elke Heidenreich writes that your book is one about missed closeness. I find it very forgiving.

Röhrig: After handing in the manuscript, I went to my mother's grave and suddenly had the feeling: I'm in good hands here. I'm sitting with my mother. I think it's good for everyone to really be forgiving with their mother from the heart. It makes the connection stronger and the freedom greater.

Born in 1952, the author has worked for various magazines in senior positions. In 2005 she was one of the founders of the magazine "Emotion" and became editor-in-chief. The mother of a daughter lives with her husband in Hamburg. "You will still think of me!" appeared on dtv.