45 pages • 1-hour read
Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home
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Chapters 4-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Keeping Time”
Krug explores the story of her grandfather Willi’s life, using the few snippets she learned from family and the few heirlooms she collected. This is her attempt at getting her family history “in order,” a value she ascribes to German culture and explains through the invention of the binder in 1896.
She has few memories of her grandpa but remembers every detail of her grandparents’ apartment. She illustrates the story of her grandpa’s young life, using a cartoon style with a green wash. Her mother says she does not believe that her father was a Nazi. Willi worked for a time as a chauffeur for a Jewish man and supposedly hid him from the Nazis in his shed during the Holocaust (though Krug was unable to verify this information).
From the time he was 18, Willi took care of his younger brother and worked as a car mechanic. When the war began, Willi was fortunate enough to remain in Germany and work training soldiers to drive for most of the war. Willi’s younger brother, Edwin, moved to Switzerland and started a family but was soon called back to serve on the front lines for Germany in Russia. Willi and Edwin’s neighborhood was destroyed by bombs, including the shed where the Jewish man was hiding. Krug found many relics of the bomb attacks in Germany, including a child’s drawing and a photograph of bombs falling through the air.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Unhealed Wounds”
Krug’s father grew up in Külsheim, a town with a long and tortured history. She depicts the key events of this history in an illustrated timeline that shows major conflicts, diseases, and other challenges that the townspeople faced, beginning in 1298. Many of these conflicts targeted Jews, even hundreds of years ago. During World War II, the town was the site of much discrimination and abuse toward Jews once again, and many of the town’s men died fighting a war that some did not support.
Her grandfather was a wealthy farmer but died when her father was still an infant. Her father grew up with a cold and abusive mother who rarely looked after him, sent him to Catholic boarding school at a young age (where he was further abused) and was indifferent when he was abused by his own uncle. He never really liked talking about his childhood, and especially did not like to discuss his sister, Annemarie. Occasionally, he recalls some of the more mischievous and innocent moments from that time, and in those conversations she senses an internal reconciliation.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Looking Inside”
Krug took some photographs of her mother’s childhood apartment and parents when she went back to Karlsruhe as an adult. Her mother rarely wanted to talk about her childhood but obliged her when she asked. She posted a photo of Willi’s uniform on an Axis Powers discussion forum (where people discussed, bought, and sold items related to the Axis powers of World War II) to find out more about his time in the army. Learning that he was of a low rank, she was relieved. She was equally relieved to learn that he may have been a prisoner of war and thus “punished” for being a German soldier. In addition, Willi experienced several bomb attacks. She includes an excerpt on another German invention, the hot water bottle, and a few items from her scrapbook, like a tobacco case made of scrap metal from a plane.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Closing In”
Krug was always curious about Külsheim, the town where her father grew up, and his older sister, Annemarie, to whom he no longer spoke. He said that Annemarie was mean to him, and the one time that the family drove past Külsheim, Franz-Karl would not drive into the town. Instead, he waited on the outskirts while Krug and her brother explored the street and had a brief but silent encounter with Annemarie. Krug wrote to Annemarie’s son, Michael, and he agreed to meet and talk. She told her father about this, and to her surprise, he offered to drive her to Külsheim.
On the drive, she asked her father why he never asked his mother about the war. Franz-Karl became more nervous the closer they got to Külsheim and the longer the topic of his family history lingered in the air. She pushed for information and couldn’t believe how little her father knew about the town’s history of persecuting Jews or about his brother’s life. He pointed to a piece of land that he technically owned but admitted that he no longer saw Külsheim as home and had no desire to return there.
Chapters 4-7 Analysis
Krug continues to explore her family’s history, weaving together powerful symbols and motifs that highlight Germany’s complex legacy. One such symbol is the binder, which represents more than just a functional object; it symbolizes structure and organization, strengths associated with German culture. This symbol of order contrasts with the chaotic and traumatic history Krug seeks to uncover. Similarly, the hot water bottle, with its ingenious design and reliability, is a symbol of comfort and care, which relates to the feelings she has toward her immediate family. At the same time, she faces her father’s trauma-filled past, which he rarely discusses. Though he does not openly acknowledge his experiences of abuse and hardship, they shape how he relates to his own family and history. The commodification of Nazi memorabilia adds another layer to Krug’s exploration of collective memory. People buy and sell replicas from Nazi Germany as a form of entertainment, a phenomenon that Krug critiques for trivializing a painful history.
These chapters introduce The Personal and Moral Implications of Inherited History as a central theme. Krug experiences relief upon learning that Willi, a family member, held a low rank in the army and spent most of the war teaching driving school. This suggests that he was not deeply devoted to the Nazi cause and served out of necessity rather than ideological belief. This nuanced understanding of Willi’s role reflects Krug’s ongoing struggle to separate individual actions from collective guilt, a struggle that forms a core part of her exploration of family and history.
The theme of Finding One’s Homeland and a Place to Belong is particularly significant in these chapters. Krug reflects on her vague but fond memories of her grandparents, which help her connect to a past that feels both distant and integral to her identity. Learning about her father and grandparents’ lives further solidifies this connection, but it also reveals the pain of uncertainty about her family history. Krug’s father no longer feels at home in Külsheim, his ancestral town. The moment he arrives, his nervousness is clear, his foot shaking on the pedal as he drives. His disconnection from his Heimat underscores the emotional weight of the past and the difficulty of returning to a place fraught with personal and collective trauma. One memorable sentence from Krug’s memoir describes the effect of trauma on memory: “When Maria died, he returned to the old farmhouse, took some of his brother’s photographs and exercise books, and left—only returning in his dreams” (95).
Krug’s personality is defined by her curiosity and determination to piece together her family’s fractured history despite the pervasive silence around her. She portrays herself as approaching her investigation methodically, step by step. Her inquiry into her father’s past and the history of Külsheim is both intellectual and emotional. She is drawn to the town’s history, which she begins to understand through research and visits. The historical timeline provided in the text conveys the long arc of the town’s involvement in persecuting Jews, which reflects Germany’s broader experience during the Nazi regime.
The setting in these chapters shifts between past and present, as Krug visits Külsheim with her father, confronting the physical remnants of the town’s painful history. Her inability to talk to Annemarie and the lack of knowledge about the first Franz-Karl add to her sense of disconnection and confusion. The town of Külsheim, with its tangible history of persecution, starkly contrasts the memories Krug is piecing together.
Illustrations and photographs play a crucial role in these chapters, enhancing Krug’s narrative by giving visual form to the historical and emotional layers of her family’s past. She uses cartoon-style illustrations, for example, to tell stories of her family, placing words around the photos in a collage format that cradles the images, creating a sense of both support and entrapment. Some pages are image-dominant, while others are text-dominant, which allows Krug to balance visual storytelling with reflection. The use of strong colors and a wide variety of hues enhances the memoir’s emotional resonance, allowing readers to engage with the material on a visceral level. The illustrations provide visual metaphors and historical records, helping Krug process and thematically represent The Connections Between Collective and Personal Memory. Photographs, collages, drawings, and hand-written text are interwoven throughout the pages. These artistic choices embody her incomplete understanding of the past and help Krug fill in emotional gaps where language falls short.
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