About the Book

Author’s Note

The origin of The School for German Brides was unique for me in that it’s the first of my books that was inspired while researching for another novel. While writing Across the Winding River, I came across articles concerning the Reichsbräuteschule, the Reich’s bride schools, and was appropriately horrified. The idea of a six-week program whose focus was teaching women how to instill Nazi propaganda into the minds of their young children immediately gave me images of an even more sinister version of The Stepford Wives, and I couldn’t quite wrap my head around what the experience would have been like. I mention the bride schools briefly in Across the Winding River, but not in the detail I wanted because, while she was a central figure in the book, sweet Metta was not a main character. In many ways, Hanna’s story is a variation of what might have been Metta’s story if things had gone differently for her.

Another piece of research that I kept ruminating over was an article about teenagers in Berlin in the early 1940s and their attitudes toward the war. Like Hanna and Klara, they find the political machinations of the adults around them boring and not fully applicable to their daily lives. As Hanna and Klara grow from late adolescence into young womanhood, they learn the hard truth that no matter how much you might wish to abstain yourself from them, politic affects every member of the society they have influence over. So many teens in Berlin, especially early in the war, just longed for normalcy in their teen years and an end to the tedium of war talk and the annoyance of rationing.

But of course as time went on, these Berlin teens noticed their Jewish neighbors were disappearing. They noticed their communist neighbors were missing. Homosexual, disabled, immigrant neighbors, taken in a trickle, then a torrent. It was easy for these teens to say, “Well, at least it wasn’t me or my family,” and move on. But that attitude, especially as the teens transition to adulthood, becomes complicity. Because the Nazis weren’t coming for them, it wasn’t their problem. In reading the shockingly blasé narratives of those German high school students from the 1940s, I thought back to my days as a high school French teacher and wondered if my students would have responded much differently. My conclusion was that while many might be concerned about the disappearance of their neighbors and others might be indifferent, the vast majority would feel helpless to affect any real change.

But is that an excuse?

It was in the midst of these musings that Hanna emerged. In many ways, she is the victim of tragic circumstances and bullied into bad situations by her callous family, but she comes to recognize her own complicity in the regime she was being swept into. The same goes for Klara, who is just desperately trying to find some measure of acceptance from a family who cares only for brokering for a higher status. My goal was to create two young women who were swept up in the all-encompassing transition from childhood to adulthood under these extraordinary circumstances. Would they do the right thing, or would they be concerned only for themselves?

Of course, not all teens and young adults in the late 1930s in Berlin had the privilege of balking at the tedium of the war and longing for a return to happier times.

Other people their same age were fighting to survive.

Enter Tilde. Given her status as a first-degree Mischling, or half-Jew, she was in a precarious state for years before the story begins. She has significantly fewer options than Klara and Hanna but rallies to maintain and use what agency she can. Tilde doesn’t have the luxury of a prolonged adolescence or the protection of a powerful family. She is left in a situation that couldn’t be much more dire, and little by little, her layers of protection are taken away. If she is to survive, she may have to seek some help from others, but ultimately, she will have to be the one to liberate herself.

Tilde is a strong woman, forced to be stronger than she ever should have been asked to be. We see her face her own demons time and again, but she refuses to let them win for the sake of her mother, her husband, her daughter—and herself. What I find remarkable is that even in her darkest moment, she never wavers in her devotion to doing the right thing for the people she loves. I’ve written few characters I admire more.

Hanna and Klara are certainly complicit, despite their efforts to help Tilde and, later, to funnel information to the allies. They aren’t intended to be “Good German Saviors,” but rather, they’re real girls in the first throes of womanhood who have the chance to do some good and manage to make a handful of right decisions even though the selfish ones would have been more expedient. They aren’t necessarily great people, but they show the capacity to do some good. And sometimes that can make all the difference in the world.

The bride school on Schwanenwerder Island was a real place. While bride schools were numerous up until 1945, this was the most elite of them, and reserved for brides of the highest rank. The villa where Hanna and Klara attend a dance is the real villa where the Final Solution was agreed upon just over two years later. I chose specifically to set the story a little earlier in the war to give Tilde a more realistic shot of escaping with her life, but I did want to allude to the future evil that would be decided upon in those rooms.

The Jewish owner of the French-language bookshop where Klara gets her illicit fashion magazines is based on a real woman, Françoise Frenkel, who barely escaped Germany with her life.

The rest of the characters are of my own invention, but I like to think their experiences mimic what many would have faced during the war.

Thank you so much for devoting the time to read Hanna and Tilde’s story. It was an honor to write it for you.

—Aimie K. Runyan