Mother's Century: A Survivor, Her People and Her Times

by Richard L Hermann

Overview

Mother’s Century: A Survivor, Her People and Her Times is the “bio-history” of Margarete Sobel Hermann, the author’s mother and role model, who lived 101 tumultuous and productive years. Her life spanned 95 percent of the twentieth century, during which she and her family experienced much of the good, the bad and the exceptionally ugly that marked that most violent of eras. Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Imperial Vienna, she survived the First World War, famine and starvation, runaway inflation, political turmoil that makes what we are undergoing today pale in comparison, discrimination, street violence, the Great Depression, the Nazi takeover of Austria, the Holocaust during which scores of her relatives perished in the death camps, and the daunting task of getting herself and her family out of Europe to America. Once in the United States, she faced and overcame the formidable task of creating a new life for herself. The first two-thirds of this chronicle is about the initial one-third of her life—the European phase. The last third of this book is an account of the last two-thirds of her life—the American story. The theme that carries through this remarkable life is one of perseverance, grit in the face of often overwhelming odds and obstacles.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780999136614
Publisher:	Persimmon Alley Press LLC
Publication date:	12/21/2018
Pages:	458
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.93(d)

About the Author

Richard L. Hermann is the author of 11 books, including the award-winning Managing Your Legal Career and most recently, Encounters: Ten Appointments with History. He is an attorney, a former law professor, and the founder and president of Federal Reports Inc. (sold to Thomson Reuters in 2007). He writes a weekly op-ed column and a legal blog (legalcareerview.com). Hermann is a graduate of Yale University, the New School University, Cornell Law School and the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General's School. He also served with the U.S. Army Atomic Demolition Munitions Team in Germany. He lives with his wife, Anne, in Arlington, Virginia and Canandaigua, New York.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part One: Vienna, 1905-1934

Chapter 1. The Calendar Turns

Chapter 2. The World’s Magnet

Chapter 3. Antecedents

Chapter 4. Shrinks

Chapter 5. Vindobona and Its Jews

Chapter 6. Angst

Chapter 7. Sclerosis

Chapter 8. Leopoldstadt

Chapter 9. The Wienerwald

Chapter 10. Sarajevo

Chapter 11. The War to End All Wars

Chapter 12. Privation

Chapter 13. The Spoilage of War

Chapter 14. Aftermath

Chapter 15. Rump State

Chapter 16. Intermezzo: Post-War Austrian Politics

Chapter 17. Prosperity Returns (Briefly)

Chapter 18. Education

Chapter 19. Graduation

Chapter 20. Musical Interlude

Chapter 21. Rejection

Chapter 22. Numerus Clausus

Chapter 23. Religion

Chapter 24. Medical School

Chapter 25. Smitten

Chapter 26. Hospitant, Aspirant, Rezident

Chapter 27. Crash

Chapter 28. Sanatorium

Chapter 29. The Practice

Part Two: Vienna, 1934-1939

Chapter 30. Setting the Stage

Chapter 31. Portents from the North

Chapter 32. The Downward Slide

Chapter 33. Anschluss

Chapter 34. The Taming of the Jews

Chapter 35. Ernst Escapes

Chapter 36. Closing the Vice

Chapter 37. The Noose Tightens

Chapter 38. The Summer of ‘38

Chapter 39. Kristallnacht—The Night of Broken Glass

Chapter 40. Blood, Not Religion

Chapter 41. Implementing Mass Murder

Chapter 42. Getting Out

Chapter 43. Getting In

Chapter 44. War

Chapter 45. The Final Solution Hits Home

Chapter 46. Mountbatten and Marriage

Chapter 47. Endgame

Chapter 48. Reckoning

Chapter 49. Selective Punishment

Part Three: Bi-Coastal, 1939–1948

Chapter 50. In Transit

Chapter 51. The New World

Chapter 52. Following Her Heart

Chapter 53. It Was San Andreas’ Fault

Chapter 54. Choosing Poorly

Chapter 55. Searching for Shangri-La

Part Four: Small-Town America, 1948–1978

Chapter 56. Into the Provinces

Chapter 57. The Chosen People in the Chosen Place

Chapter 58. Friends

Chapter 59. Refugee Quest

Chapter 60. American Provincial

Chapter 61. Making It in America

Chapter 62. Going Back

Chapter 63. Madly for Adlai

Chapter 64. Books

Chapter 65. Caring

Chapter 66. Suddenly It’s 1960!

Chapter 67. November 21, 1963

Chapter 68. College Unbound

Chapter 69. The Sixties

Chapter 70. Animal Magnetism

Chapter 71. Enemy Territory

Part Five: Miami Beach, 1978-1994

Chapter 72. Following the Sun

Chapter 73. The Impact of the Florida Phenomenon

Chapter 74. Gloom Over Miami

Part Six: Arlington, 1994–2007

Chapter 75. Final Relocation

Chapter 76. Dad Departs

Chapter 77. Decline

Chapter 78. Maternal Vignettes

Chapter 79. Eulogy

Epilogue