The German Girl

“She converted her bedroom into her refuge, keeping the window overlooking the interior courtyard always closed. In dreams, I would see her falling fast asleep from the pills she took before going to bed, engulfed by her gray sheets and pillows.” 

Both Anna and Hannah’s mothers use their bedrooms as refuges from the world. Rather than face their challenging situations, they are passive and spend much time dwelling on the past.

“Sometimes the Ogre used to see us and shout insultingly ‘the word beginning with J’ that Leo and I refused to pronounce. As Mama insisted, we were Germans first and foremost.” 

This passage points to a central crux of the novel. The ‘word beginning with J’ is presumably “Jewish.” Hannah refuses to use this word because she feels it is important to reclaim her identity as a German. Although she is not ashamed of being Jewish, she does not want to reduce herself to others’ categories of classification.

“The cleansing had begun in Berlin, the dirtiest city in Europe. Powerful jets of water were about to start drenching us until we were clean.” 

These lines refer to the fascist and Nazi regimes that aimed to eradicate Jews and other “impure” peoples from Germany before and during World War II. Here Hannah has just learned over the radio about new laws that will further disempower her family and those like them.

“It’s my favorite picture of Dad. It seems like he’s looking straight at me. It shows his dark hair brushed back, his big hooded eyes and thick black eyebrows hidden behind his rimless glasses, the hint of a smile on his thin lips. Dad is the most handsome man in the world.” 

This passage aptly captures Anna’s love for her father, although she has never met him. Throughout the novel, she has conversations with his photo in which she asks him questions about his life. Her love of her father mirrors Hannah’s love of her own father, whom she calls “the strongest man in the world” (199).

“On the cover of this magazine for pure young girls—the ones who don’t bear the stains of their four grandparents, the ones with small, snub noses, skin white as foam, blond hair, and eyes bluer than the sky itself, where there is no room for any imperfection—there I was, smiling, my eyes fixed on the future. I had become the ‘German girl’ of the month.” 

Hannah is featured on the cover of a magazine popular among girls with more Aryan features. That she is in fact Jewish points to the central irony lurking behind the seemingly simple label of “German girl.”

“We had to emigrate: it was our only choice.” 

As more Jewish businessowners and homeowners lose their properties and rights, it grows increasingly dangerous to remain in Berlin. Hannah’s father is arrested and ultimately given an ultimatum: He will be released only if he agrees to flee the country. He agrees. Many others share a similar fate.

“I wake up but still don’t know who I am: Hannah or Anna. I feel like we’re the same girl.” 

Anna is told several times throughout the novel that she and Hannah share many traits. They look alike, their names are similar, and they have similar stories of loss. In this quote, their similarities have grown so close that Anna herself mistakes herself for Hannah.

“Today was a holiday: the purest man in Germany was fifty.” 

As Hannah and Leo wander Berlin, they find the city in a state of celebration. It is implied that it is Hitler’s birthday, and soldiers and citizens alike have taken to the streets to pay their tributes. This illustrates the fervor with which Nazism overtook Germany.

“They met at a concert of baroque music at Columbia University, where she taught classes in Latin American literature.” 

Just as Hannah met her lover Julian on a university campus in Havana, Anna’s parents first meet on a university campus in New York. Literature and music are prominent plot points in both Hannah and Anna’s stories. Hannah fills her mother’s library with French literature translated into Spanish, and Hannah’s father brings his gramophone onboard the St. Louis.

“As soon as we got to Khuba, Leo and I would decree: ‘No more Tuesdays!’” 

For Hannah, Tuesday is the worst day of the week. It is on a Tuesday that many tragedies befall her onboard the St. Louis. Yet this passage also speaks to the sense of optimism and enthusiasm that Leo and Hannah bring to the enterprise of emigrating to Cuba. They’re not only nervous; they’re also excited for the opportunity to begin a life together there.

“The city was paralyzed. So was Mom.” 

This quote connects Anna’s mother’s denial and trauma following the 9/11 attacks to the trauma felt by the city itself. The tragedy didn’t just pause Anna’s mother’s life, it dramatically affected many other survivors’ lives as well.

“‘Nowadays cyanide is as precious as gold,’ he explained, as if he were a dealer himself.” 

Here Leo presents himself as an expert in the field of cyanide capsules. He knows that Hannah’s parents have purchased such capsules on the black market and that they plan on using those capsules to poison themselves and Hannah if they are denied entry into Cuba. That such capsules are “precious” reveals the sense of despair felt by many in the Rosenthals’ situation.

“Mama was staring at the swaying ramp that was soon to separate her from the country where she was born. She knew that in a few minutes she would no longer be German. She would no longer be a Strauss or a Rosenthal. At least she would go on being Alma. She wouldn’t lose her own name.” 

Many themes converge in this passage; it represents an intersection between Alma’s identity, her nationality, her home, and her name. As she boards the ship that will take her away from her home and her country, she feels that she is about to lose her national identity and her last name. All that she will retain will be her first name: Alma.

“‘We lived on illusions and woke up far too late,’ said Mama, without expecting any comment from Mrs. Adler, who by now listened only to herself. ‘We should have seen what was going to hit us and left a long time ago.’” 

Various illusions ensnare characters throughout The German Girl. Here Hannah’s mother reflects that she too was caught up in illusions of hope in Berlin. She wishes that she had attempted to see the reality of her situation instead.

“‘Hannah,’ she said, looking at me and ignoring Papa, ‘you won’t be an only child anymore!’” 

After Hannah hears her mother being sick in the restroom onboard the St. Louis, she fears the worst. However, what appears to be bad news turns out to be a sign of positivity: Hannah’s isn’t sick, she’s pregnant.

“There’s no argument. If all three of us cannot land, then none of us will. Neither Hannah, nor the child I’m bearing, nor I, are going back to Germany, Max. You can be sure of that.” 

After Leo tells Hannah that her parents plan on poisoning all of them if they cannot enter Cuba, Hannah hears it with her own ears. This sets up an essential plot point: Hannah must find her parents’ cyanide capsules to ensure her own survival.

“Papa’s passport had been stamped with a big R: for return or rejected or repudiated. They had done the same with the passports of Leo and Mr. Martin; Walter, Kurt, and their family; and Ines. Nobody would be saved. We were nothing more than a pack of undesirables, ready to be thrown into the sea or sent back to the Ogres’ hell.” 

Earlier in the novel the letter J carried so much weight and meaning; here it is the letter R that signals the fate of Hannah’s family and friends. Such letters, stamped into passports and added to first names, become a recurring source of meaning and importance for Hannah. The R in this passage signals not only a rejection to enter Cuba but a larger rejection from the world at large.

“He was going to kiss me, but we wouldn’t be able to embrace—the crowd was keeping us apart.” 

This is a moment that Hannah will return to at the end of the novel. Whereas Diego and Anna are able to kiss at the end of their friendship, Hannah and Leo are denied this act by their forceful separation onboard the St. Louis. Hannah regrets this, and at the end of the novel she reenacts the moment so that she kisses Leo instead of losing him.

“Hannah, forget your name!” 

Hannah’s father shouts this down to Hannah several times as they are separated from one another onboard the St. Louis. It suggests that Hannah’s father hopes Hannah will find a way to let go of her history and any cultural baggage that will prevent her from flourishing in her new home in Cuba.

“I learned that, to survive, it was best to live in the present. On this island, there was no past or future. Your destiny was today.” 

In The German Girl, Hannah’s mother and Anna’s mother both are said to exist in “islands” of their own making in which they keep the past alive. Here Hannah learns an important lesson: It is only in the present that one can thrive. This knowledge allows her to adapt to Cuba while her mother fails to.

“We lived on an island with only two seasons, dry and wet: where the vegetation grew ferociously; where everybody complained and talked of nothing but the past. As if they knew what the past really was! The past didn’t exist; it was an illusion. There was never any going back.” 

Robinson Crusoe is said to live on an island with only two seasons, dry and wet, and Cuba is described the same way. Similarly, there are only two options on such islands: leave or stay. While Alma and Hannah stay, other people leave, such as Gustavo and Julian and Louis.

“To him, Spanish was the language of affection, games, tastes, and smells. English meant order and discipline. Mother and I obviously were part of the latter.” 

This quote points to the importance of language in the creation of a home. In Hannah’s family, language separates Gustavo and Hortensia from Hannah and her mother.

“‘On the night of July 16, 1942, my father was one of the victims of the infamous Vélodrome d’Hiver roundup when all the impure were arrested by the French police. He was transported to Auschwitz, the death camp…’ She sighs. ‘He didn’t survive.’” 

The German Girl incorporates many true historical events into its fictional narrative. Just as the St. Louis was a real ship that carried refugees from Germany to Cuba only to be denied entry there, the “Vélodrome d’Hiver roundup” was a real Nazi-directed raid of Jews that took place in Paris in 1942. Hannah’s father is said to be one of the many who were sent to Auschwitz after being captured.