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This book tells the story of Ernst Meyer. It is based on the extensive records he left behind at his death in 1993 at the age of ninety-seven. Ute Althaus, his daughter, born in 1943, researched this history mostly through his letters, the correspondence with his family being the basis of this book.
Meyer was handed over to the German authorities by the American occupation forces because they did not consider him a war criminal. Instead he was tried and convicted for the murder of a protester a few hours before the arrival of the American troops and was sentenced to ten years incarceration. In her introduction, Althaus stresses that this material had been kept secret by the family. Postwar Germany was equally guarded about what children should know—to the point that the curriculum leading to the Abitur, the diploma awarded upon completion of the equivalent of two years of college, included no German history after World War I.
The author chose to use her father's real name: throughout he is called Ernst. Other members of the family are given pseudonyms to shield their identity. The distance between the author and the players in this history is maintained by the omission of any reference to their being her mother and father. Thus, the major part of the book concerns Ernst and “Herta,” her biological parents, but they reveal themselves in their letters and in the author's comments in a manner that avoids any sense of intimacy between the grown-up child and her parents. This establishes an impersonal connection with the reader; it is as if author and reader are observing specimens under a microscope. Ernst, especially, is exposed as he was, as he wrote, and as he deceived himself into thinking he was an honorable victim of betrayal, even while serving a sentence for having