Dörte von Westernhagen

Who is Dörte von Westernhagen?

Dörte von Westernhagen is a German writer.

Von Westernhagen was born in Perleberg, now in Prignitz, in 1943. She is descended from a Prussian Junker family. She studied in Berlin, and earned a doctorate of law. She worked in the administration of Baden-Württemberg, until she decided to write her own story. Her book "Kinder der Täter" made quite a round in Germany when it was published in 1987. The book was immediately recognized as one of the first attempts to get the NS-children out of their parents' shadow.

Westernhagen starts her narrative with her own childhood. Then her father takes over. Her father was a colonel in the Leibstandarte. He was shot through his head in Hungary in her first year. The book is about his daughter's sorrow. In the small-typed appendix she returns to her own childhood memories and those of other German NS-children. The importance of Westernhagen's work lies in the fact that she was the first European NS-child to discuss her father both as a personally brave man and a war criminal.