Overview

Not Hitler's Child traces the long, eventful arc of Christa-Maria Beardsley's life - from her childhood in Nazi Germany, where the war forced her family into a life of almost continual displacement, to her immigration to the United States and her two-decade tenure as a professor of German at Indiana University, a career marked by the author's pioneering efforts in the development of study-abroad programs, and finally to her artistically active retirement, during which she played a prominent and passionate role in the classical-music community of Bloomington, Indiana. Ms. Beardsley's guiding concerns - a commitment to education and the arts, an abiding curiosity about the vagaries of human relationships, and an ever-deepening sensitivity to music and the natural world - form the bass line of her life story. By turns celebratory and sorrowful, reflective and humorous, Not Hitler's Child is the record of both a life of the mind and a life fully lived.

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9781941799963

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This autobiography includes part of historical interest about the taking over of power in Germany by Hitler, about the hardships endured during WWII, and about the life and government in East and West Germany prior to their unification. It includes great insights into the cultures . . . of Germany, France, and Italy, where the author lived, studied, and traveled extensively. The work includes analysis of American universities, both as to strengths and weaknesses, from one who had a basic education in Germany, started her life on a cattle farm in Michigan as an 'au pair, ' and after being widowed at the age of 25, obtained a Ph.D. in the U.S. when 40. She then became a generally admired professor who exerted much effort to enrich university studies through innovative summer programs in formerly East and West Germany. . . . I too was in Germany prior to Hitler's taking power, heard a major speech by Hitler, and stayed at a home where the son finally, not much unlike the author's father, appeared in a 'brown shirt' Nazi uniform. --William Whipple, Jr., Brigadier General, United States Army (1909-2007)

Author Information

Born in 1932 in Hannover, Germany, Christa-Maria Beardsley immigrated to a Michigan farming community in 1954. In 1968, after spending her junior year abroad in Aix-en-Provence, she graduated from Indiana University-Bloomington with a BA in Germanic languages and literature, and she earned a PhD in the same discipline, again at IU-Bloomington, in 1972. She taught at IU-South Bend for the next twenty years, developing several summer programs for overseas study in Germany and publishing two books of literary criticism: E. T. A. Hoffmann: Die Gestalt des Meisters in seinen M�rchen (1975) and E. T. A. Hoffmanns Tierfiguren im Kontext der Romantik (1985). Passionate about classical music, Ms. Beardsley moved back to Bloomington in 1995, when she began hosting house concerts that spotlighted performances by students from IU's Jacobs School of Music. Since her retirement, she has traveled extensively around the world, visiting places as far-flung as Antarctica, Mongolia, and the North Pole.

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