Interview with Clara Falkenberg of The German Heiress by Anika Scott
About THE GERMAN HEIRESS
Essen, 1946. Clara Falkenberg, once an iconic heiress, is on the run. With the city in ruins and her dear friend Elisa missing, Clara enlists the help of Jakob, a charming young racketeer with his own reasons for wanting to find Elisa. As the two join forces, it’s not long before Clara’s family secrets catch up with her. But she soon comes to realise the only way to survive is to face the truth of what she’s done.
Author Anika Scott interviews her character Clara Falkenberg
Fräulein Falkenberg, what was it like growing up in one of Germany’s elite families?
Not as fun as you might think. There were four of us children, and we had to obey our parents in all things or else. Think of the Prussian military but with nicer clothes and better food. On the good side, we always had a lot of technology around, cars, airplanes, even a film projector in our own private cinema. My mother was one of the most beautiful women in the country, according to her anyway, and our cinema gave her a lot of ideas about image, what a woman was supposed to look like, how we move, speak, dress and so on. As the only girl in the family, I got the brunt of all that.
I hear you dyed your hair platinum blonde.
God. Don’t remind me. Do you know what that stuff does to your hair over time?
But that was the image Germany had of you under the Nazis: the Iron Fräulein. Did Himmler really call you a princess of iron and fire?
My mother made that up and spread it around. I did meet Himmler once and he was such a dribbling idiot about how perfectly Aryan I was, I really wanted to inform him that I was born with black hair and brains, which meant I was definitely not his ideal woman. The Nazis liked them dumb, blonde and fertile, you know.
Your mother was a British fascist, wasn’t she? What was it like to grow up with her?
Tiresome. Whenever we were in England, she’d drag me to some rally or dinner hoping I’d fall for some fascist nobleman. I was supposed to embrace my future as the mother of little monsters trained to believe it was their racial destiny to rule the world. Needless to say, fascists aren’t my type.
Wasn’t your. . .friend in the SS?
You’re talking about Max, and he wasn’t a true-believer like my mother. He was an opportunist, in the SS to get ahead, like half of them were. It’s no excuse. In fact, the opportunists were worse because they knew what they did was wrong and did it anyway.
Not to be rude, Fräulein, but a lot of people could say the same thing about you, couldn’t they?
Definitely. I was never in the Nazi party but I loaded enough guilt upon myself without it. I’m not here to make excuses for how I acted in the war – there are none – but I did have reasons. I was a bit like a tightrope walker balancing between family duty and conscience. Of course I fell off that rope, and it was a long fall.
Did your father have anything to do with that?
It’s true; I was a daddy’s girl. I grew up believing he was a great man. He wasn’t a Nazi, but he was a nationalist. He believed Germany was the greatest country in the world and deserved to rule, and families like ours would lead the way. I inherited enough of that arrogance and self-delusion to get me into a lot of trouble.
You were a powerful woman for your times, Fräulein. Anything you want to say to modern women?
Don’t lose sight of who you are and what you believe in. If you’re ambitious and want to do something like – say – run an industrial empire, keep your eyes open and your feet on the ground. That old saying about power and corruption is very true. If you don’t watch out, you might get what you want, but the price may be too high.
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The German Heiress by Anika Scott is out now (Windmill Books, £8.99)
Anika Scott grew up outside Detroit, Michigan and worked for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Chicago Tribune before moving to Germany in 2001. Since then she has freelanced for US and European media. She now lives in Essen with her husband and two daughters. Finding Clara / The German Heiress is her first novel.
Follow her on Twitter https://twitter.com/AnikaScott1
Find out more about her on her website https://anikascott.com/
For readers of The Alice Network and The Lost Girls of Paris, an immersive, heart-pounding debut about a German heiress on the run in post-World War II Germany.
Clara Falkenberg, once Germany’s most eligible and lauded heiress, earned the nickname “the Iron Fräulein” during World War II for her role operating her family’s ironworks empire. It’s been nearly two years since the war ended and she’s left with nothing but a false identification card and a series of burning questions about her family’s past. With nowhere else to run to, she decides to return home and take refuge with her dear friend, Elisa.
Narrowly escaping a near-disastrous interrogation by a British officer who’s hell-bent on arresting her for war crimes, she arrives home to discover the city in ruins, and Elisa missing. As Clara begins tracking down Elisa, she encounters Jakob, a charismatic young man working on the black market, who, for his own reasons, is also searching for Elisa. Clara and Jakob soon discover how they might help each other—if only they can stay ahead of the officer determined to make Clara answer for her actions during the war.
Propulsive, meticulously researched, and action-fueled, The German Heiress is a mesmerizing page-turner that questions the meaning of justice and morality, deftly shining the spotlight on the often-overlooked perspective of Germans who were caught in the crossfire of the Nazi regime and had nowhere to turn.
Category: Contemporary Women Writers, Interviews, On Writing
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