Family Life (French Edition)

After a day and a night of travel along the Rhine, from Switzerland to Germany, I awoke one August morning in 1914 at my maternal uncle's home in Frankfurt-on-Main. I was seventeen years old then; my childhood had been spent in Paris. I had great difficulty understanding German, and even more difficulty speaking it... My mother was German. She usually lived in Paris [...] but was she still in France? [...] No news...

What will become of this young, dowryless girl who feels neither Jewish, nor German, nor French, and who has but one desire: to learn to draw and paint?

Returning to Frankfurt, the city of my mother's origins, I found myself in unfamiliar surroundings. The language, the customs, the very atmosphere were alien to me. As a French-raised youth, I struggled to adapt to this new environment, my German heritage offering little comfort or familiarity.

My mother, though German by birth, had made her life in Paris, and I had known only that Parisian upbringing. Now, uprooted and adrift, I felt a deep sense of displacement, unsure of my cultural identity or where I truly belonged.

Caught between worlds, I was neither fully German nor fully French. The war had disrupted the stability of my youth, leaving me in a precarious position as a young woman without a dowry or clear path forward. My sole ambition, to hone my artistic talents, felt like a fragile dream in the face of the upheaval surrounding me.

The uncertainty of my situation weighed heavily. Would I be able to pursue my passion for drawing and painting, or would the demands of the war and my uncertain status consume my aspirations? As I contemplated the future, I found myself longing for the comfort and familiarity of my Parisian childhood, even as I grappled with the German roots that now seemed to hold me in their grasp.

In this moment of transition, I was adrift, a young woman without a clear sense of home or identity. The world had shifted around me, and I was left to navigate the complexities of my divided heritage, uncertain of where I might find my place. Yet, within this turbulence, the ember of my artistic dreams still flickered, a glimmer of hope in the face of an uncertain future.

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