A Woman in Berlin

After a long day of walking and working, Marta returns home to have a bath. She has spent the day with the Hungarian, acquiring the right papers for the business and searching for office space. Ilse’s husband has been offered a job in Moscow, resulting in a heated debate over whether he should take it. News filters through of the Allies negotiating, and Marta knows that the Germans must accept that they are “finished” (167).

On her day off, Marta picks up her rations and forages for nettles. After eating, she calculates that her period is two weeks late. She visits a doctor who tells her that she is not pregnant; she is malnourished. The doctor instructs her to “get a little meat on your bones” (168), and her body will return to normal. Marta tries to ask the doctor whether many of the rape victims have become pregnant, but the doctor will not say. Marta spends the evening alone, pondering her future.

On Friday 8 June, Marta discovers that the trams have resumed service. At the publishers, she and Ilse work on a women’s magazine. She walks home, always on the lookout for more nettles. In the faces of the people she passes, she sees the pain caused by “bitter, bitter defeat” (169).

The publishers agree that Marta will work every other day when she has so little to eat. She collects her meagre rations, which she combines with “an entire mountain of nettle shoots, orache and dandelions” (170). That afternoon, she gets a haircut, and the hairdresser washes a pound of dirt from her hair.

Marta petitions her local police asking for permission to use the abandoned garden near her house to grow food, but no one seems able to grant her request. She picks nettles on the way home; her exhaustion causes her vision to become misty, and writing is difficult. The ration of potatoes which were meant to last until the end of July are already beginning to rot, and Marta is eating more than her ration schedule can provide her in the long term. 

On Tuesday 12 June, Marta walks to the publishers because the trams are out of commission again. On the way to work, she sees bodies being exhumed from temporary graves. The smell is overwhelming. Typhus has begun to spread through the city, affecting many people including the widow’s lodger. The widow shares the scurrilous rumors that she has heard. In a note in the margin of her diary, Marta mentions a woman who has been murdered by four men who remain at large.

On Wednesday 13 June, Marta and the widow search for nettles. Marta visits the townhall to inquire about her wages from her work as a washerwoman. She gives her name as being a person who must be paid, and she learns that she must wait “until there’s money in the coffers again” (174). She rides the tram home and hears stories about Germans being whipped at the Czech border. Later, she visits the cinema and watches a Russian film. Though she enjoys the film, Marta feels deeply saddened.

Marta walks again to the publishers, stretching out her pitiful rations as far as she can. That evening, she is able to procure a ration of fat: sunflower oil. Her apartment smells like a Russian cafeteria.

On Friday 15 June, Marta, the Hungarian, and Ilse’s husband break into Marta’s old publishing company to steal what they can. That evening, Marta tries to read and listens to more reports about extermination camps on the radio.

Marta admits that she has not been writing in her diary and that she will not be writing for the foreseeable future as “that time is over” (177). In a span of days covering 16-22 June, she recounts what has happened: Gerd, her boyfriend, has appeared at her door. He has just returned from the eastern front. She cooks the little food he has with him, and they try to rekindle their love, but Gerd is distant. Marta suspects that he sees her as ruined by her experiences. Over the coming days, more troops begin to return home. Many men drop by to visit Gerd, and he wants Marta to cook for them, but she wants to ration their food, leading to tension between them. Everything she does causes Gerd to shout at her angrily. She remembers the day six years earlier when he took her out into the countryside on a surprise trip; that day, he told her that he was to be drafted. Gerd reads Marta’s diaries, but he claims that he cannot read her handwriting. When Gerd leaves with a friend, Marta is unsure that he will return.

The plans for the publishing company have stalled. Political changes are predicted, but Marta finds it hard to care. She has too many of her own issues, such as her leaking roof and dwindling rations. She ends the diary by wondering whether Gerd still thinks of her and whether there might be a future for them together.