45 pages • 1-hour read
Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home
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Chapter 12-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 12 Summary: “Following the Flock”
Opening the file containing all the info from Willi’s life and his involvement with the Nazi party, Krug read his postwar testimonial in which he claimed to have joined out of necessity, as he was otherwise not allowed to take over the business he wanted. Apparently, Robert Wagner’s car was parked in that very garage, and only Nazis were allowed to work there. Willi admits that he was a member of the Nazi Party from 1933 to 1940. Krug did not know what to feel upon discovering this and the further revelation that Willi referred to himself as a follower (the lowest “rank” of involvement in the Nazi party) in the hopes of reinstating his status as an ordinary citizen.
Krug considered Willi’s choice cowardly but found some solace in testimonials from friends who all swore that he was never active in the party. She wondered why Willi dressed in his uniform for some pictures and why he claimed that his wife’s milk business was taken from her in 1939 despite its being listed into the mid-1940s. Willi’s application initially met a harsh judgment, and he was labeled an offender, but an appeal allowed him to be deemed a follower. She concluded her investigation feeling sorry for Willi for the first time but also angry and still unsure about the full extent of his involvement with the Nazis. Both her aunt and mother continued to tell themselves that Willi could not have been that bad of a person.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Peeling Wallpaper”
When Krug finally went to meet her cousin Michael and his wife, she felt comforted by the many animals they housed (Michael ran a veterinary clinic). Michael didn’t know much about her father but admitted that his mother (Annemarie) was still not willing to see her. Upon leaving, she wondered what it would take to heal the rifts in her family. The following day, she met Michael’s sister Iris, who lived in the same farmhouse where Krug’s father and uncle grew up. She felt oddly at ease walking around the farmhouse and took a piece of the wallpaper from the attic where her father slept. In addition, she took photos of the Bambi wood carving hanging there, which her father later revealed he made himself. Standing in the attic, she felt like the wallpaper, as though each layer of her history was slowly being peeled back. When she returned to Brooklyn after this long journey, she spent time clearing the weeds from her yard and wondering how to piece together the many fragments she discovered while away.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Blinding Whiteness”
After Krug sent her mother a copy of Willi’s military file, they shared a tear-filled conversation in which they both agreed that Willi did his best with the circumstances he was in and that, without his sacrifices, neither of them might exist. She kept thinking about one of the testimonials, by a man named Albert (whose wife was Jewish), who swore that Willi was on the right side of history. While Albert died years earlier, she was able to reach his son, Walter. They shared a long talk over the phone, in which Walter told her about his childhood. Albert got out of serving by eating enough sugar to trigger a diabetic reaction, and his wife was eventually sent to a concentration camp. She survived through the war and eventually reunited with her family.
In addition, Krug asked Walter about his experiences returning to Karlsruhe, and Walter explained that he felt those who stayed in Germany long enough to see the German people suffer had more empathy than those who left. She concluded that she would never fully know Willi or his intentions and that knowing either way would not have made her feel better anyway. Walter urged her not to feel guilty, and it helped her feel absolved, just as Albert’s letter did for Willi so many years ago.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Shaking Hands”
With the help of her cousin Michael, Krug finally met her aunt Annemarie. Meeting her was tense at first, but Annemarie was much warmer and friendlier than Krug expected. She showed Krug all her photographs, including many of Franz-Karl (the first), and answered her questions about her grandfather, Alois. Annemarie also showed her the letters that Franz-Karl sent during the war, and the memoir includes a photograph of him days before he died that shows how war had ravaged his body and mind. Krug wondered if her father and aunt would have had a better relationship if not for Franz-Karl’s death. She came to understand and accept the inevitability of her connection to these people and events.
Epilogue Summary
Krug’s father finally returned to Külsheim, and she discovered a photo in Willi’s belongings of Ludwig Marum (a Jewish lawyer) at a concentration camp. She wondered why he had the photo and what it might mean. In the present, she is pregnant, awaiting the birth of her child, and slowly reclaims her culture, speaking with a German accent.
Chapter 12-Epilogue Analysis
The setting of these chapters brings everything full circle. Krug revisits the places she saw only from a distance as a child, like Annemarie’s house, and now enters them as an adult. Symbols play a central role in illuminating Krug’s final realizations. Persil laundry detergent, a postwar staple, brings the recurring motif of “cleansing” to life, symbolizing Germany’s effort to metaphorically wash away its sins, coming clean as both a literal and figurative act after the fall of the Nazi regime. She compares her family’s past to layers of wallpaper, each revealing more of what lies beneath: “Standing here, I feel like a half-empty room with infinite layers of wallpaper, each one exposing what was there before” (222). This metaphor demonstrates the process of peeling back generations of silence and half-truths to reach something closer to authenticity. Finally, Krug concludes the memoir by recalling a German invention: UHU glue, which she notes “cannot cover up the crack” (274), a reminder that no matter how much repair is attempted, the “cracks” of history remain visible.
Krug’s investigation into her grandfather Willi’s past adds significant thematic weight to The Personal and Moral Implications of Inherited History. She learned that Willi was a member of the Nazi party for seven years and later admitted this on a postwar forum. He referred to himself as a Mitläufer, someone “lacking courage and moral stance” (189). This term is a microcosm of the moral ambiguity that Krug wrestled with, and learning that her grandfather did not stand up against injustice was not comforting. In addition, Krug discovered contradictions that left her in a painful state of confusion. However, even though she was left feeling conflicted, both sorry for Willi and upset that he made such a decision, she eventually found warmth and love for him, free from anguish and uncertainty. Walter, one of the people she interviewed, told her she shouldn’t feel guilty, signing a “testimonial” for her just as his father once did for Willi. She now wonders, “Who would we be as a family if the war had never happened?” (269).
The theme of The Connections Between Collective and Personal Memory continues to hold relevance as Krug describes how she gathered personal histories. Revisiting the places where her father, uncle, and aunt grew up allowed her to share in the memories and pain of those before her. “Even inherited memory hurts” (221), she reflects, acknowledging that trauma can be passed down. She has “excavated the shards of my relatives’ existence, but I don’t know yet how to piece them back together” (227). In one powerful moment, on the phone with her mother, they both reckoned with the knowledge that Willi “had to fight to make ends meet” (230) and, in doing so, enabled Krug and her mother to survive.
These final chapters convey Krug’s longing for Heimat, or Finding One’s Homeland and a Place to Belong. Her yearning for clarity took her to the farmhouse where her father and uncle grew up. There, meeting her cousin Iris and finally reconnecting with Annemarie, she felt a rare moment of unity, like a family again. She accepted “the unescapability of who we are” (270) and came to believe that “HEIMAT can only be found again in memory, that it is something that only begins to exist once you’ve lost it” (273).
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