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Grigar Factory. “I can’t sleep; sit by the child. It gets loud outside. A Russian horse troop fasten their horses outside the house. It is 11 at night.” “On the country road we have to keep passing the Russian tanks. I am not scared any more.” "We know, that we have nothing left to loose, and everything to gain. We walk in great heat amongst many people (Theresienstadt has been freed) who leave us more or less in peace, until we get to Leitmeritz.” “I don’t know how I got into the train. Anyway, I’m sitting, silently crying, with two children on my lap amongst the pushing, shoving and agitated people.” “The unrest begins in the streets of Teplitz. There is shooting. All Germans must leave, right now! From the window if the hospital I see how a mother with three children is taken out of her apartment.” “In Riesa there’s a Refugee camp, that takes us. Frau Neumann and I talk all night with many different people. All have little hope of getting through. Many have already returned. Then we talk to a K.Z. She gave birth to a baby in prison, a girl like Inge with a head of black Hair, and she was not allowed to keep it. Now she stays by my Inge incessantly. She is nanny by profession, and helps us with the children unasked, but in a way that we could never reject.” “Pine forests take us in, and we feel almost at home. We stretch out during a short rest. „I never imagined my Summer holiday 1945 to be like this, Inge! Well, we’re getting to know Sachsen, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg!“ Incredible amounts of Poles come through the Forest. We see to it that we move on quickly. They can’t really take anything from us, because we have nothing left. But we are still glad when the Forest comes to an end and we reach Liebenwerda.” Spandau. “We sit for hours and wait. Again hunger plagues us. Frau Neumann leaves the station to organise something. In the meantime the train comes. It is not empty as we hoped, but filled with refugees. Just as the train is leaving Frau Neumann appears with a tin bowl full of stew. We all have to eat out of one bowl, but we are happy.” At the border. “I do what I can, puffing like a steam engine. Finally, after 15 minutes, I see the final turnpike, and behind: Freedom. But there are Russian soldiers standing in front of it! Here there is also a mass of people. They tell me, that a few moments ago there were no sentries.” Home, Hamburg. “I arrive with the first S-Bahn at 5:40 in the morning at the Wandsbecker-Chaussee Trainstation.”

Ingeborg’s Reise 



2010

An illustrated book, inspired by the wartime letters written by my maternal German Grandmother to her husband in 1945.
Her letters have a powerful, almost theatrical narrative quality. They tell the story of her journey as a young German mother, fleeing the invading Russians in Czechoslovakia to return to her hometown, Hamburg, at the end of the Second World War. At the beginning of the journey she was heavily pregnant, and traveling alone with her infant daughter. Along the way she encountered many other refugees, some like herself, some from the liberated concentration camps and some from reclaimed land along the German borders. She traveled mainly on foot, relying on the kindness of strangers for food and shelter. Her journey took three months, during which time she gave birth and fell dangerously ill. 
Beginning this work was a means for me to question who she was, and to begin to answer the many questions I had about her own beliefs and complicity with the fallen Nazi regime. Many of my questions remain unanswered, but what emerged was a story about survival; a vivid and moving account of an ordinary German woman’s experience of war torn Germany and the strength of the human spirit in dark times.

German-English Illustrator and Artist based in Brighton, UK

My work explores how illustration can be used as an active tool for understanding, interpreting and re-evaluating dominant narratives and discourse about historical events. How can illustration add to our understanding of history, how can it challenge it?

I am interested in exploring and highlighting the ways in which history is recorded, suppressed, remembered and distorted. I have become particularly interested in how meaning and underlying power structures contained within archival records can be interpreted through the act of drawing. Often working with archival artefacts and personal testimony, I create narrative sequences and visual essays that explore my own relationship to history.