Ragnar Ulstein

A very important encounter for Trude was the one with Ragnar Ulstein, a Norwegian journalist and former resistance fighter, who had written several war books. His influence and his recommendation to write about the "Tyskerjentene" resulted in her using this topic in two of her following books. These "Tyskerjentene" are the Norwegian women who had lost their Norwegian citizenship in WW2 and were expelled from society because they had fallen in love with a German soldier.

But back to Ragnar, as one of her biggest sources of research was Ragnar's archive at the Akershus Fortress Museum in Oslo and the interviews he had stored in it. He had conducted these with many Norwegian “tyskerjentene” and their husbands in Germany. Luckily for Trude nobody had before been interested in these interviews from the 1970´s nor had they ever been evaluated or released.

With huge determination Trude researched the "Tyskerjentene" and was so taken by the history of these women that she should publish her first novel on the subject in 2012. A thriller called “Svik” - or “Betrayal” in English, which was also translated in German and Russian. 

None of Trudes books have however been published in English yet. (That we should change in the future though ;)

In Anna´s apartment in Nordfjordeid, the wedding picture of Anna and Fred hung on the wall, and Anna had many photo albums with pictures of their life together. She was a good storyteller, she spoke a broad Vadsø dialect, although she had lived in Hanover for almost seventy years.

After a while she got up and disappeared into the bedroom.

When she returned, she held a model ship in her hands.

"Do you see what that is?" She asked.

"Well," answered Trude, "a warship?”

"It's the Blücher," she said, placing her index finger in the center of the ship. "And here, that's Fred."

Alfred Deichmann, a German soldier, had come with the Blücher to Norway, the ship that was shot at in Drøbaksundet and sank there. He managed to swim ashore with the last bit of strength he had in his body.

Anna spoke warmly about her husband: "I could not find a better man, no matter where I would travel, he was the one I wanted to be with."

After Fred´s death in the 1970s Anna remained alone in Germany and decided to return to Norway. Norway was after all still her home.

She had always considered herself a Norwegian, although the Norwegian government had introduced a law in 1945 that resulted in all Norwegian women who, like Anna had married German soldiers, lost their Norwegian citizenship. When Anna married Alfred, her Norwegian passport was thus invalid and she had to apply for an entry visa from the Foreign Office for many years if she wanted to travel to Norway to visit her daughter.

This permission was not always given to her.

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Here is an excerpt from the conversation Trude and Anna had, and which influenced Trude strongly:

"The old lady and one of the few surviving “Tyskerjenter”, spoke meticulously about her past in Norway and Germany. She showed Trude photos of her German husband Alfred. She reported how she was forcibly evicted with Alfred from Norway and came to a completely destroyed and bombed Germany. N

ow Anna had returned to Norway after almost 70 years in Germany.

Anna was not ashamed because she had married a German soldier. He was the man she loved, and when she talked about him, Trude could see the 19-year-old Anna in her sparkling eyes. A

nna told Trude that Alfred had come to Norway with the "Blücher". 

“I am such a lucky person. I mean, he survived,” she said, looking at Trude with a smile.

But that smile vanished when she showed Trude the Norwegian passport that had only recently been reissued for her. Only then did Trude see the overwhelming sadness, powerlessness - and also a little bit of bitterness. 

"I'm good enough now," she said, before she asked Trude in the next moment, "What does the word " "tyskerjente” actually mean? Does that really mean whore?"

Trude nodded. 

"But I'm not a whore," she said firmly.

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These experiences and narrations Trude used later in a fictionally modified manner in her novel "Mormor danset i regnet” the novel about Demmin. Other stories in there come from Ragnar's interviews and the many books she had read on the subject.

When Trude learnt that Anna had died 3 months after her meeting, she was even more eager to use some of the episodes of Anna's life in her book.

So, Anna Deichmann became Trude's inspiration for the novel "Mormor danset i rain" and although the characters in the book are not identical, but only similar to Anna's life, the Demmin Roman would have probably never been written without her phone call and the meeting they had. 

Antony Beevor

 To expand her knowledge on the subject even further, Trude read a variety of books: particularly on the history before and after 1945 in Norway and Germany. Here she was especially interested in Berlin. She rummaged through archives and the internet for all sorts of articles. She tried to find video footage and images to create a lasting impression that went beyond her own imagination.

To expand her knowledge on the subject even further, Trude read a variety of books: particularly on the history before and after 1945 in Norway and Germany. Here she was especially interested in Berlin. She rummaged through archives and the internet for all sorts of articles. She tried to find video footage and images to create a lasting impression in her mind that went beyond her own imagination. 

Among the books she studied was also one by Anthony Beevor, a famous English military historian, whose research focus lay in the then widely spread rape of German women by Russian soldiers. 

The sheer scale of these rapes at the end of World War II made Trude stop, as she suddenly realised that Anna did not only come to a country that was outwardly destroyed. But, she also arrived at a place in which most of the surviving women were exposed to exactly these violent acts and had to fear these on a daily basis. Violence against women, rape and torture were commonplace in Germany at this time.

One story that made her research into another direction then and that touched her indelibly was about a Norwegian who came to the Russian zone in the last few weeks before the surrender ,when the Soviet Army was arriving in Germany. 

Trude’s interest was captured. She wanted to know more about it all and especially the eastern part of Germany, that should later become the GDR. A new research began.

In 2013, she became therefore more and more involved in the history of this part of Germany in and around the end of the war in 1945. While researching the mass rapes by Russian soldiers on German women, and through various detours and hundreds of clicks starting from an English websites she came across the so-called “Tragedy of Demmin". Never before had she heard of Demmin, let alone its "tragedy".

It surprised her even more then, how hard it was to find more information on this tragedy . There was hardly anything written in any of the books or on the German websites she was browsing. Through a Youtube video of a witness and a little more internet research she decided to get to the bottom of it all- This seemed after all a tragedy that was deliberately kept secret.

She called German friends, even friends from the Demmin region and asked them what they knew about that time, Demmin.

Nothing.

No one knew of Germany's biggest mass suicide, which took place within a few days in May 1945 here in Demmin.