Psychological aftereffects of the Hamburg firestorm (1943) – a dramatic reading

“According to psychological studies, 30 percent of all Germans born during the Second World War were traumatized – by loss of homeland, separations, bombardment, famine, flight, and the death of close relatives.”

With this quotation from Anne-Ev Ustorf’s groundbreaking work Wir Kinder der Kriegskinder from 2008, the dramatic reading of the psychology course S4 began. But what exactly is a trauma, and how can one cope with it? How does it happen that traumatic experiences can also be passed on to subsequent generations?

These questions were exemplary addressed by the committed course at Hamburg’s Feuersturm, which celebrated its 80th anniversary in 2023. The devastating bombings in July 1943, by which the eastern part of Hamburg was largely wiped off the map, cannot be understood without the broader context of the aerial warfare in World War II. In his standard work on this topic, British historian Richard Overy has drawn a very nuanced picture of the offensive war waged by Nazi Germany and the reactions in attacked countries such as Great Britain, Poland, and the Netherlands. Jonas and Justin have engaged with this thematic complex. At the center of their presentation stood the documentary film “London Can Take It,” which shows the population’s reactions after the first five weeks of uninterrupted nightly bombing from September 1940. Emphasized are the sense of community, composure, and the pragmatic solutions found in dealing with the destructions.

However, the situation of the civilian population resembled across all affected countries: war and nightly alarms became part of everyday life. Chinasa explained what belonged in the protective shelter kit and what kinds of bunkers can still be found in Hamburg today. Great distress was caused by the board game “Luftschutz tut Not” exhibited in the St. Nikolai Memorial, which was intended to instill in children, through play, what to consider on the way to the air-raid shelter when the alarm sounds.

The moving report by Jewish contemporaries Marione Ingram from her autobiography “Kriegskind. Eine jüdische Kindheit in Hamburg” from 2016, was read by Betty and Tabea. Because they were Jewish, they and their mother were not allowed into the air-raid shelter. Thus they experienced the impact of a bomb directly in their apartment in Eilbek and wandered afterward unprotected through the streets. Irony of fate was that they were subsequently declared dead, and thereby the deportation order already in place was no longer enforced.

Another prominent witness of the Hamburg Firestorm is the contentious songwriter Wolf Biermann. In the song “Die Elbe bei Hamburg,” he processes the terrible images he had to witness as a child in Hammerbrook. Milena analyzed, in a powerful way, how Biermann through text and music put the trauma into words. The verse “Exactly at six-thirty, my life’s clock stood still” becomes here a symbol for the stagnation in the life of a child who would almost not have survived the firestorm.

How present the traces of destruction still are in the Hamburg cityscape upon closer look was shown by Susanne and Clara. Classical buildings from the turn of the century stand next to unassuming brick buildings, which after the war were rebuilt from rubble or newly erected on bomb craters. The same phenomenon can be observed in cities that were attacked by Nazi Germany at the time. As a symbol of the senseless destruction, but also of later reconciliation politics, stands the English city Coventry, which was wiped from the map in 1940.

A particular feature of Hamburg’s history is the relatively quick normalization of postwar daily life under British occupation and the immediate establishment of a democratic press and broadcasting system, as Noel Coward had anticipated in his satirical song “Don’t Let’s Be Beastly to the Germans” in 1943.

From a psychological perspective, Malena illuminated the city’s memory culture. Although Hamburg had ritualized memorial events and broadcasts on radio and television from the very beginning, the path from a later-day, somewhat clichéd remembrance that kept feelings at a distance to a deep-psychological processing of what happened was not yet free twenty years later. Based on a film excerpt from 1963 showing inconsistencies between the verbal statements of a contemporary witness and nonverbal defense mechanisms, Malena diagnosed an “inability to mourn” – a buzzword of the time coined by Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich in 1967.

Framed by moving accounts from contemporary witnesses of the Hamburg Firestorm, as well as their children and grandchildren, the reading was supplemented with excerpts from two therapy sessions staged for us. As part of the long-running Hamburg research project “Erinnerungswerk Hamburger Feuersturm,” contemporaries had been interviewed. For many it was the first time that they could speak about their traumatic experiences on a larger scale and under professional guidance. Memories were deeply buried and the danger of a flashback, a sudden reliving of repressed feelings, was great – hence all conversations were also psychotherapeutically supported. When asked what had given them support over the decades to cope with these painful memories, the witness Marie W., portrayed by Malena, answered: “No. Nothing at all. One goes through one’s memory alone.”

These findings show the extent to which unaddressed traumas shaped the lives of the witnesses. However, if a trauma is not processed, the probability is high that it is unconsciously passed on to children and grandchildren. Thus it can happen that even grandchildren of the war generation suffer from alarming inner images that resemble the traumas of their grandparents, for example dreaming of burning houses and destroyed cities or suffering from unexplained fears. In an outstanding lecture, To Uyen examined mechanisms of transgenerational transmission of trauma, based on studies by social psychologist Angela Moré.

Obviously moved, Mr. Frankenfeld praised the work of the psychology course created between September 2023 and April 2025, which has also recently received a grant prize in the competition “Demokratisch Handeln.”

Report: Eva Maschke

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