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Rüdiger Barth, Hauke Friederichs
“Germany 1946: The Miracle Begins”
A Country in Limbo
Germany 1946: The Miracle Begins
The pioneering spirit of the immediate postwar period leads Germany out of postwar misery and into an age of miracles. Germany 1946 is a moving panorama of a new beginning, told from the perspectives of many important personalities of the time.
“Millions of individual new beginnings — and one
great common new beginning. What will emerge from it? What will the new
Germany look like, as a state, as a society, as an idea? What will the
new life be like?”
Hauke Friederichs, Rüdiger Barth
Rüdiger Barth, Hauke Friederichs, Deutschland 1946: Das Wunder beginnt.
Rüdiger Barth, Hauke Friederichs, Deutschland 1946: Das Wunder beginnt.
Product information
Publisher: Heyne Verlag
Publication date: 27 August 2025
Edition: Original edition
Language: German
Print length: 336 pages
ISBN-10: 3453218973
ISBN-13: 978-3453218970
Dimensions: 14.6 × 3.5 × 22.1 cm
Digital edition
ASIN: B0F2TLVLNQ
Publisher: Heyne Verlag
Publication date: 27 August 2025
Language: German
File size: 13.3 MB
Screen reader: Supported
Enhanced typesetting: Enabled
X-Ray: Not enabled
Word Wise: Not enabled
Print length: 421 pages
ISBN-13: 978-3641337483
Page Flip: Enabled
Audiobook
Running time: 11 hours 34 minutes
Authors: Hauke Friederichs, Rüdiger Barth
Narrator: Herbert Schäfer
Audible.de publication date: 25 August 2025
Publisher: Random House Audio
Format: Audiobook
Version: Unabridged
Language: German
ASIN: B0F4QZG1PD
A Country in Limbo
Germany and the occupation zones after the war.
1946 is the year after Adolf Hitler. The cities lie in ruins
and many Germans live in poverty. In Nuremberg, leading Nazis are
sentenced to death while the black market flourishes. The first free
elections since 1933 are held. People stream into theaters, Hildegard
Knef appears on the cinema screen, and new possibilities open up
everywhere. The Allies begin to place trust in the defeated. Where can
all this lead?
Germany 1946 tells what happens. Drawing on letters, diaries,
speeches, articles and documents, the authors create a vivid panorama
of a genuine pioneering era. Thirty-two-year-old Willy Brandt dreams of
a career in the SPD. Beate Uhse, 26, wants to help desperate women.
Erich Honecker, 33, is building a new society. Grete Schickedanz, 34,
saves “Quelle”; Vicco von Bülow, 22, chops wood; and
Fritz Walter of Kaiserslautern, 25, trains French soldiers. Erich
Kästner, 46, searches for missing children. The East Prussian
countess Marion Gräfin Dönhoff, 36, looks for work connected
with writing. And Konrad Adenauer, 69, finally wants to reconcile
Germany with Europe.
In 1946 it begins in both West and East: the miracle that still shapes us Germans today.
Rüdiger Barth and Hauke Friederichs.
Rüdiger Barth, born in 1972, studied modern
history and rhetoric and attended the Henri Nannen School. He spent 15
years as a reporter and author and, most recently, as a member of the
editorial board of Stern, before joining the editorial staffs of P.M.
and P.M. History. Today he is managing director of Open Minds Media,
which produces podcasts and television documentaries, among other
things. In addition to two other SPIEGEL bestsellers, he co-wrote Die
Totengräber (S. Fischer, 2018), about the last 100 days of the
Weimar Republic, with Hauke Friederichs.
Hauke Friederichs, born in Hamburg in 1980, studied
social and economic history, journalism, political science and
criminology and earned a doctorate in history. He is ZEIT’s
security correspondent and previously worked as a freelance journalist
for outlets including Geo Epoche, SPIEGEL Geschichte, ZEIT, ZEIT
Geschichte and G/Geschichte. In addition to Die Totengräber, he
has published the SPIEGEL bestseller Funkenflug and other books on
contemporary history.
About our method
When we began researching this book, our aim was to
reconstruct the events of 1946 in such a way that the inner truth of
those days would be described as accurately as possible. We had already
worked in a similar way on Die Totengräber. Der letzte Winter der
Weimarer Republik (S. Fischer, Frankfurt, 2018). For Germany 1946: The
Miracle Begins, too, we therefore preferred original documents from the
postwar period: letters, minutes, newspaper articles, records of
conversations, diaries and official correspondence, and only in
exceptional cases recollections and memoirs.
Our working method resembles assembling a mosaic, while the
historical context determines its overall plan. Yet the finished
picture may look somewhat different depending on the angle from which
it is viewed. In preparing the text, we deliberately dispensed with
footnotes so as not to impair readability. Nevertheless, we checked the
sources according to the customary standards of historical accuracy
and, wherever possible, consulted a second source.
If we have succeeded in bringing the protagonists of this book
a little closer to our readers, that would give us great pleasure.
Wherever possible, we tell events from the limited perspective of the
individual moment as it was experienced. We are convinced that this is
the only way truly to encounter people who, long before our own time,
fought their own struggles and dreamed their own dreams. The people of
1946, like us today, lived for their future. Understanding their hopes
may also help us understand our own time better.
We are grateful to all the historians whose research we were
able to use. In particular, specialized studies revealed details that
initially seemed secondary but allow the past to become tangible once
they find their place in the larger mosaic.
Hamburg, May 2025
Rüdiger Barth and Hauke Friederichs
Wladimir Gelfand (around 1946).
While Wolfhilde von König tries to enjoy the Easter
holidays, Red Army soldier Vladimir Gelfand, near Berlin, finally finds
time for his diary. The lieutenant organizes and supervises the
dismantling of German industrial plants, which the Soviet Union is
systematically carrying out in Germany to strengthen its own economy
and punish the Germans. But most of the time his thoughts are occupied
by the nature and behavior of young German women — and by the
impression he makes on them.
A few months earlier, on 28 December, he described himself
this way: “I am young and, as it increasingly seems to me, an
interesting person, with an unbalanced character, nerves as sensitive
as taut strings and, at times, a plaintive voice, a long nose and a
large mouth; sometimes quick-tempered, sometimes withdrawn, a person
who hides troubles and anger deep in his heart; with black velvet eyes
and a living heart — these I consider the chief virtues of my
personality.”
He keeps a detailed diary and occasionally sends photographs
home to Ukraine. Gelfand is an enthusiast. He is enthusiastic about
Stalin and the Soviet idea, about romantic love and literature,
especially Russian literature. He discovers photography, loves the
cinema and suffers because he cannot dance. Berlin, he notes,
fascinates him. He can also afford many things. “In Berlin
everything attracts my attention: the signs and shop windows entice me,
but in essence you spend money on all kinds of trinkets, pictures and
unnecessary things that one could perfectly well do without …
but not with my character.”
Around Easter he reflects on why the Germans now behave as
they do. “Impressions follow one another so quickly that it is
impossible to put them down on paper, however much one might wish
to.”
“The Germans are becoming insolent. They no longer show
us respect, are not afraid to commit petty acts of meanness and annoy
us in every possible way. They are disgustingly importunate and beg
constantly, and in general they have suddenly discovered in us good
‘comrades’ with whom they can behave entirely without
restraint.”
Surprise and bitterness can be heard in Gelfand’s words. The Germans had killed many members of his father’s family.
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