Laughter Wasn't Rationed
Dorothea von Schwanenflügel Lawson
(Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
1999 Tricor Press
ISBN: 0967383048

A Personal Journey Through Germany's World Wars & Postwar Years.

This is about real people & their real lives & how the World Wars interfered along the way. It is an insider's view of the effect those wars had on ordinary Germans.

As a native German born in WWI, Dorothea v S. Lawson takes us from a relatively carefree youth through the rise to power of Hitler & his Nazi Party, WWII & the fall of the 1000 Year Reich, into the devastating postwar years under Communist rule, until the building of the Berlin Wall.

At a women's gathering several years ago, I made friends with a woman the same age. Both of us were immigrants to America, & in telling our stories, discovered we had shared similar childhoods--albeit, hers had been in Germany while mine had been in England. So reading while Laughter Wasn't Rationed my friend Astrid was ever-present in my mind, for this could have been her mother's story.

& what a story it is--of ordinary people caught up in extra-ordinary times, seen from the hard-working reality of the non-military, non-political middle class.

Laughter Wasn't Rationed is also another way of looking at the everyday history of the 20th century to which we've rarely given much thought--what the Empire of Germany had been like at the turn of the century, how WWI began & how it ended, what terms the Germans had to live under after the Treaty of Versailles, & what they thought about that war & the ensuing imposed conditions of peace.

Laughter Wasn't Rationed is a long memoir, full of childhood adventures--while Dorothea remembers her first banana, I had eaten dried ones for so long that when I first met fresh bananas I had about the same reaction; of teenage romps & adult capers not at all unlike those our grandparents enjoyed, or not--the Great Depression was felt on both sides of the Atlantic, all in an effort to keep a roof over their heads, food on their table & clothes on their bodies, in a country whose borders had been catastrophically diminished & re-drawn by foreigners. Afghanistan comes to mind.

This is not an apologetic memoir--Dorothea v S. Lawson writes in an unsentimental style, recounting details of a life during grim, grey times, seen from the other side of the looking glass. If you have ever wondered who the dreaded Hun had been, here you will see one portrait of all his relatives & you may be surprised at how recognizable everyone is.

Laughter Wasn't Rationed is also a story about how the template of dictatorships take hold, day by day by tiny increments, where ever-new taboos laid down a patina upon a culture crammed together unnaturally & become part of how a people must define themselves. Where the innocent & the ordinary are corrupted early by fear & deprivation. As I read, images of what's been happening in North Korea kept cropping up.

Some titles of the chapters tell of Dorothea v S. Lawson's wit: Poverty or Plenty; Integration--Sooner or Later; Love Thy Neighbor, But Not Too Much; “Finished” at Last(what memories this chapter brought back!); Fun and Games Before Armageddon; All Hell Breaks Loose; No Rest for the Weary; Babes in the Woods and on the Road; Shattered Dreams; Dancing With the Russian Bear; After the War, the Battle to Live. Filled with historical details from the early days of the 20th century through the arrival of both the Russians & Americans in Berlin, with unblinking opinions of a woman who saw the worst & the best of both her own people & others.

Offered also are some fascinating photographs--truly they speak a thousand words. I would have liked a map showing all the places this author moved to & from.

While Laughter Wasn't Rationed: A Personal Journey Through Germany's World Wars & Postwar Years is a remarkable effort, deeply absorbing & insightful, it could have done with some editing which would have cut out the many repetitions & shortened its 526 pages by about 100. This volume's editor & author's daughter confided in me that she had worked mightily to bring her mother's efforts down from over 1000 pages!

Nonetheless, Laughter Wasn't Rationed is well worth reading, a profound record of the will to survive & one family's take on world events--certainly a treasure deserving of a place in your library.
(03/16/03)

Rebecca