07.2 Hist 20 podcast: Hedda 1960-69

Hedda in the 7th decade of the 20th C

Transcript

University of California UCOP | Hist20 podcast 7.2

Hi everyone. Let's catch up with Hedda in the 1960s. And really, now the story is about Ruth as well and about

Ruth's children. And in the 1960s, the story also becomes about me. So it's going to be really difficult for me to say

that 1962 was anything but a really horrible year for Hedda. Her husband, Ernst, died in September of a heart

attack. And her mother Jeanette died a couple of months later. So both her husband and her mother died early in

the 1960s decade. And when you think about the fact that Ruth and his daughter had largely been protected from

the horrors of the war.

With Ernst and with Jeanette, Hedda loses her, in a sense, allies in the memory of those two wars that they had all

had to essentially live through and survive. And I don't know that Hedda necessarily needed to have them by her

side to be able to continue because she did. She lived for quite a few more years. But the memories and perhaps

also the sort of dealing with the memories of those two wars were quite connected to those two.

Those two wars also probably have something sort of to-- like our reason why in Hedda's family, nobody talks

about these deaths. I had to ask my aunt. I mean I tried to speak to 2 aunts and my father to find out how my

great grandfather died because none of them remembered. And they didn't remember largely because it was

never talked about. And the same thing goes for Jeanette. Jeanette died, and that was it. I don't know. They don't

know. Nobody knows where they're buried. And they probably weren't buried. And I suspect they went completely

against Jewish tradition and had both bodies incinerated. And that was it.

And my eldest aunt who I spoke to says that she's pretty sure that this is one of the sort of lasting consequences

of the horror of both wars, but perhaps mostly the last one, which is that life is precious, but death is just a

moment. And it is not something that in the family of Hedda, and then it sort of continued through Ruth's family.

This is just death was not something that anybody was going to dwell on. I'm happy to say that in this generation,

my parents and my generation, we're much more capable of dealing with this and talking about it. So that's 1962.

Ernst and Jeanette are no longer.

And and Hedda is sort of on her own again. She doesn't have to take care of her mother, and she's not a wife

anymore. And I think a large part of-- I was born at the end of the '60s. My parents met during the '60s, so you

know, do I think it's the greatest decade because of that? No, but it matters. But Hedda becomes essentially again

an independent woman in early 1962. And it might sort of help you to know that in the years since they moved, it's

been already almost 20 years that they were in Belgium, that they fled to Belgium in 1942. And in 1962 they had

made a lot of friends. Not surprisingly, Hedda had friends in Berlin. And her ability to make friends didn't stop with

the war. And in the '60s, I don't think her parties were quite as wild as the one she used to have in Berlin, but she

was back to having people over. Her deviled eggs recipe apparently was legion. My father still talks about it as ifthose were the best deviled eggs ever. And I suspect that she was back to having parties and telling people

whether you show up or not, that's OK. We're going to have a great time.

The 1960s in Europe and in the US were also a time-- if you've ever heard of second wave Feminism, that's when

it happens. First with feminism is the early 20th century effort, granting women the right to vote. Second Wave

feminism was a shift in the discourse. Most women in almost the entire world had the right to vote at that point.

And Second Wave feminism essentially realized that granting women the right to vote or the right to be elected

wasn't enough, essentially. Equality didn't come from simply from having the vote or being up for office, that there

were social norms, that there were economic norms, that there were a series of constraints built into society that

held women back. That these stereotypes, the roles that assumed women were to take were almost harder to

overcome than the inability to vote. And so part of the second wave of feminism that really takes root in the '60s

was a moment for women to explore what part of their social existence they wanted to perhaps change.

Now Hedda was 62. Well, she turned 60 in August of 1960. So she wasn't she wasn't young, but she wasn't

exactly old either. But she certainly-- she probably knew who she was. I suspect she'd gone through enough to

not wonder about that. But she observed her daughter Ruth really kind of break out of the role. Ruth has had met

her husband Leo during World War II while they were in hiding in Brussels. And she promptly had multiple

children. By 1962, Ruth had had 10 children by 1962. And while that had been the plan all along, she was 45

years old and had 10 children. And all of a sudden, there is this Second Wave feminism that she's reading in

magazines, and hearing on the radio, and watching on television that says you know, you don't have to stay at

home all the time. There is another path for you. Who are you? What do you really want? And Ruth, who had

learned to play the violin when she was a young girl and had stopped because of the war, picked up the violin

again. Actually she picked up the viola. And for as long as I knew my grandmother, she rode a bicycle through

Brussels pretty much all the way until two years before she died. She was a public menace with a violin strapped

to her back.

And so just think about the 1960s in this family. Hedda was back to having parties and exploring her existence as

an independent woman in Brussels, think about her deviled eggs. And Ruth, her daughter, had given birth to 10

children, the eldest of which could help her take care of the youngest ones, and carving out time for herself to play

the violin, riding a bicycle in Brussels with that violin strapped to her back. Ruth was such a young mother. I mean

she had her first child when she was 17 that in the sort of sexual revolution of the 1960s and the musical

revolution of the 1960s, she often went to concerts with her eldest children. And Hedda, if I understand what my

oldest aunt told me yesterday, was not entirely sure that that was a good parenting decision. But it makes for

great stories to think about your grandmother at a concert with your uncle whose pictures you've seen with hair

literally down to his shoulders with a poncho and a peace and love sign. So that's the 1960s from Hedda's sideand from Ruth's side, and from my parents' side who met in 1963 while my father was on an exchange program to

Germany of all places. And the decade ends with my birth. So now you can count back and figure out how old I

am. I'm ancient. Thanks guys.