A Woman in Berlin

I have lent my copy of this book – A Woman in Berlin, by an anonymous author (2011) to a friend so I have no drawing of it. I found the work after reading The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, I am interested in testimony, and how it survives. The book documents the author’s experiences in Berlin at the end of the Second World War, when Russian occupying forces took the city. It is brutal and essential, almost impossible to read in parts.



The author describes her experiences in an almost ‘ordinary’ way. Factual, pragmatic and removed, with distance. Originally published as anonymous in authorship, early responses were disbelieving or worse. People questioned the authenticity of the writing, which is also true of Anne Frank’s work. After the author’s death in 2001 people discovered her identity and this was confirmed by an editor in Germany in 2003.



The book tackles difficulties of survival in Berlin at the time over three months in 1945. It includes physical destruction, a city in ruins, rape on a mass scale, shortages of food and basic survival strategies. In particular from the perspective of German women. As a piece of testimony it is vital and urgent. I am attempting to share my experiences of this work as much as possible (hence lending it to a friend) so will be interested to hear from anybody who has read it.

Data Visualisations: Letters and personal data

Examples and references.

Samuel Beckett Digital Manuscript Project
https://www.beckettarchive.org/

The Shelley-Godwin Archive
shelleygodwinarchive.org/sc/oxford/frankenstein/volume/iii/#/p1

Mapping the Republic of Letters
Voltaire’s Correspondence Network
republicofletters.stanford.edu/publications/voltaire/letters/

Dwoskin Project
LUX and the University of Reading
https://lux.org.uk/dwoskin-project-blog-20-dwoskins-drives/

Jerry Berman’s Letters: ideas (August 2024)

Jerry Berman’s Letters: data

Electronic Enlightenment
Boleian Libraries, University of Oxford
https://www.e-enlightenment.com/browse/

Palladio
Stanford
https://hdlab.stanford.edu/palladio/

 

 

 
Archival Style
Agency of Unrealised Projects
e-flux
https://aup.e-flux.com/

 

 

 

Visualising Relationships
An Ocean of Books
Google Arts & Culture
https://artsexperiments.withgoogle.com/ocean-of-books

Data Schema
Mapping the Republic of Letters: Voltaire’s Correspondence Network
http://republicofletters.stanford.edu/publications/voltaire/schema/

Tools

 

Breve
Stanford
https://hdlab.stanford.edu/breve/

 

 

University of Cambridge
Faculty of English Research Map
https://www.english.cam.ac.uk/research/map/

The Diary of a Young Girl

This is the first of two war diaries I am reading. I was interested to re-read (or actually read, I remember encountering this book as a child, I remember reading it, although this cannot be true. This is certainly the first time I have read the book) The Diary of a Young Girl based on Langer’s ideas about autobiography. Langer defines ‘true art’ using an idea from Erich Kahler, experience, consciousness, the creation of new forms of reality. By its nature nonfiction, historical reality is normally excluded from this. Langer argues for Kahler’s terms, and their application because the Holocaust experience was so unique. Langer explains for care in this approach, to avoid complete disorientation, the reader “wandering in a wilderness of evil totally divorced from any time and place he has ever known” (p. 75) and points to work by Elie Wiesel – Night (1960).

Langer also makes particular reference to Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl first published in English in 1952. For Langer, Frank’s work shows how unprepared we are, as human beings to deal with the realities of the Holocaust. For the author, the success of Frank’s book shows an inability of audiences to confront the realities beyond the attic. A book which insulates the reader, as Frank herself was protected. One striking feature of the book (the copy I read is from 2001, the definitive edition including original diary entries and parts re-written by Anne herself, with editing from her father, Otto Frank and Mirjam Pressler) is the quality of the writing. And Anne’s literary knowledge in general.



The combination of the real and the imagination (and access to the real, through the imagination) is what Langer is concerned with. He writes about “fragments of atrocity”, work, and art a central core “for creating a magnetic field”, to collect memory, truth, nostalgia, horror, with the tension and polarity contained within (p. 77). It is true the ‘reading’ of Frank’s diary was impossible for me without the dual ‘reading’ of her history. For Langer, the Frank family’s “real story” began where the diary ends, as my reading of her history included materials available many years after her death, alongside her interior world.

Frank, A. (2001) The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition. Edited by Otto H. Frank and Mirjim Pressler. Translated by Susan Massotty. London: Penguin Books.

The Holocaust and the Literary Imagination

Lawrence L. Langer’s brilliant work from 1975. Langer categorises his writing as analysis of ‘the literature of atrocity’. The challenge as he describes it is how creative practice (literature) can make truth, realities of human experience from the Holocaust accessible to the human imagination. In this book he focuses on literature, the concepts he describes apply equally to visual art.



Each chapter of the book contains analysis of a work, or works of literature created from otherwise unspeakable experience. Langer sees the realities of the Holocaust as incomprehensible to the mind and emotions of human beings. His intention is to explore “the relationship between the empirical reality of the Holocaust and its artistic representation” (p. 3). In the employment of the imagination, through creative work, the human mind is more able to comprehend the unimaginable reality, working beyond the “language of fact” (p. 3).

Working with historical fact and imaginative truth makes such experiences ‘possible’ for the human imagination (p. 8). “Mere factual truth” as Langer describes it, does little to explain  human behaviours, and contradictions of real human individuals during the Holocaust. In this I include perception and belief, referencing Langer’s value on silence as a descriptive poetic voice, as well as speech (p. 9).

 

Langer, L. L. (1975) The Holocaust and the Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press.

A Random Walk Down Wall Street

A Random Walk Down Wall Street: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, 2024.

Burton G. Malkiel’s classic investment guide, first published in 1973. In the introduction to this fiftieth anniversary edition, Malkiel states his position in his opening paragraph. That any investor will benefit from a long-term buy and hold strategy in an index fund over actively managed mutual funds (or individual securities). Malkiel now has 50 years of evidence which he outlines as follows: A person with $10,000 to invest in an index fund in 1977 would today (2022) have a portfolio worth $2,143,500, $666,467 more than in the average actively managed fund (p.20).

The title reflects the author’s views on the unpredictability of the stock market. Random Walk Theory makes useless the history of prices (on the basis there is no relationship to the future) and therefore nullifies the role of expertise. He introduces the work of Eugene Fama which I will write about in a separate post. Fama’s famous paper from 1970 analyses stock market behaviour using a model of efficient capital markets, the relationship of resource allocation and market efficiency, the accuracy, or ability of prices to “fully reflect” the information available to investors (Fama, 1970, p. 383).

The second part of the book is a practical guide to investing and asset allocation. Malkiel assesses risk and return, time, dollar-cost averaging, rebalancing and capacity for risk. A life-cycle guide to investing using principles to apply to portfolio management.

Conference Acceptances

I am delighted to be attending and presenting work at three fantastic conferences this year. The first, in May, is the ASN Annual World Convention co-hosted by the Harriman Institute at Columbia University in New York. I visited the institute in 2023 as a result of a travel stipend I was awarded by HREC to atttend the conference “The Assault on Culture in Ukraine: The Holodomor Years”.

The Thinker by Rodin at Columbia University. Photo: Author, 2023.

In July I travel to London to take part in the ICCEES XI World Congress. The congress is hosted by the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), the UK’s largest institution for research and teaching on the region. I will combine my visit with archival work at LSE, to read the diaries of Beatrice Webb.

In October I am very excited to be attending and presenting at the Dmytro Shtohryn International Ukrainian Studies Conference at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The thematic focus is on ‘continuities and ruptures’ across disciplines on topics related to Ukraine. For all three conferences I am presenting my new work, documented on this blog – visualisations of testimony from the Holodomor from the letters of Jerry Berman.

Berlin

I have been in Berlin this week for the superb 18th British Shorts film festival. The festival was the festival premiere for 90 Years from Holodomor, which appeared at City Kino Wedding to a sell out audience of 200 people. Because of demand, the same screening ran as an identical programme at Sputnik Kino on the same night, so my work also appeared in front of audiences across Berlin.

British Shorts filmmakers dragon

90 Years from Holodomor at British Shorts Berlin


The event was Short Film Screenings (Animation Special) & Audience Award. The programme was excellent, it was a huge compliment to make selection. The stand out film for me was And Granny Would Dance by Maryam Mohajer. A brilliant, character portrayal about memory, childhood and culture, beautifully constructed and produced by Animate Projects and the BFI. The film came third in the audience award which followed the animation screening. The winner was Previs by Ruaidhri Ryan, which I also loved.


And Granny Would Dance by Maryam Mohajer


I had a new life experience on my way to Berlin in the form of an emergency (unscheduled) landing at Heathrow due to an engine problem on the plane I was on, due to fly from Manchester – Munich. I downloaded the flight data – at first the huge drop in speed at 2.00am (all time in EST rather than local time) – almost half was alarming. Thanks to the brilliant flightradar24 site I was able to watch the full flight playback including the point at which the emergency was declared, the drop in speed was simply the aircraft turning over the channel. I also got the full details of the error messages and emergency codes (PAN PAN) online which is fascinating. The landing was a precaution, as was explained by the pilot at the time. I rebooked a flight from Heathrow to Berlin as soon as the plane landed and actually arrived in Berlin earlier than I would have done via Munich and the train. Below is my breakfast courtesy of Michelberger on my return journey.



FlightAware Flight Track Log


FlightAware Flight path.

A photograph of the plane landing at London Heathrow from the AIRLIVE website

Michelberger breakfast on the train from Berlin – Munich