Mildred Fish Harnack, born in Milwaukee in 1902, emerges from history as a literature professor who became a central figure in German resistance against the Nazi regime. Her story is often overlooked, yet it reveals how one determined individual can influence a broader struggle. The quest to chronicle her extraordinary years gained momentum as Rebecca Donner, a great-great-niece, explored the tangled past and the choice to erase certain memories in order to endure. Back in 2000, an early biography by Shareen Blair Brysac laid groundwork for later examinations, including The Frequent Darkness of Our Days. That initial work helped shape the conversation, but it did not exhaust the scope of events surrounding those turbulent years. The book under discussion adds a crucial perspective, highlighting the vivid reality of the era and the people who lived through it.
Donner traces Mildred’s and Arvid Harnack’s story through the first three decades of their lives. In 1926, Mildred married Arvid, a German lawyer and philosophy student. By 1930 the couple had moved to Berlin, where Arvid briefly taught English and American literature. When political tensions intensified and Mildred lost her teaching job, she found work at Berlin’s first night school for working-class adults, becoming the only woman on the faculty. That year, she hosted a clandestine meeting that would later be renamed El Círculo. The circle drew in colleagues and friends from varied backgrounds, including workers, writers, lawyers, professors, Jews, Catholics, Protestants, and atheists. Members spanned communists and social democrats, united by a shared concern for human dignity under a growing shadow of fascism.
The narrative unfolds primarily between 1932 and 1943, yet the cast of characters remains expansive. At the heart of the story stand Mildred and Arvid, portrayed as striking, blue-eyed figures in a world bent by oppression. Their interactions bring into contact Nazis, Americans, and a diverse network of resistance fighters across borders. The author’s direct style leans on short sentences that reveal facts with precision. The choice to write in the present tense keeps the reader anchored in the immediacy of events, avoiding a sense that history has already happened.
What follows is a narrative that feels as if it is happening in real time. The work aims to be non-fiction rather than fiction, a brisk account of how Nazism rose to power told through the eyes of Mildred’s great-great aunt. The story unfolds with an accompanying network of relatives and confidants who documented events in diaries, letters, and official papers. Dozens of chapters weave together photographs, diary extracts, fragments of documents, and personal correspondence. The dialogue, though not abundant, restores the texture of the era and the atmosphere surrounding Mildred’s life as an observer caught in a brutal reality. Donner’s approach includes a robust exploration of Nazism, examined through the lens of those who endured it. A notable source remains the aunt’s letters to her mother, which illuminate personal reactions to political terror. This work results from extensive personal research, inviting readers to turn pages with the hopeful, sometimes naive, impulse to witness a better outcome for Mildred and her companions, even as the odds remained stark. The narrative emphasizes resilience in the face of deadly circumstances, portraying acts of courage as essential acts of moral persistence.
Arvid and Mildred were seized while attempting to flee Germany on September 6, 1942. On February 16, 1943, Mildred, who translated into English the lines of a Goethe poem that lends the book its title, faced execution by beheading. Arvid had already been executed two months earlier. The work thus marks a decisive and tragic moment in a larger history of resistance, offering a human voice to questions about courage, complicity, and the costs of standing against tyranny.