Vom Gast zum Gastwirt? Türkische Arbeitswelten in West-Berlin by Stefan Zeppenfeld (review)

Abstract

factor was travel. While women living in East Germany were constrained in their ability to travel, especially after 1961, those living in West Germany were able to indulge in international travel. To a large degree, Leask allows the women who contributed to the Rundbrief to drive the book’s content. Given that these women engaged in self-censorship, worried about the prying eyes of the Stasi, and were not all intimate friends, this reality means that, as readers, we can only discover what these women were comfortable sharing with the larger group. We are not privy to their most intimate thoughts and opinions. Moreover, it is not until the 1980s, when one member of the group reconnected with a Jewish classmate, that Leask introduces the topic of Schönbeck’s Jewish population during the Third Reich. He notes that, for the most part, “the Schönebeck women created a narrative where certain things could not be talked or written about,” including the Nazi past (297). These women’s silences about their Nazi past highlights one aspect of Leask’s methodology that could be clearer: the content of the interviews he conducted with some of these women and how and when they inform his analysis. He states that these interviews were “semi-structured, based on a set of questions I sought to ask all of them” (15). It would be helpful to know what these questions were, if he asked specifically about the Nazi era, and how these conversations influenced his reading of the Rundbrief. Friendship Without Borders is an engaging, highly readable, and deeply interesting book that will be of interest to historians of Modern Germany, women and gender history, and everyday life. Kara Ritzheimer, Oregon State University