Undressing Shadows - Postwar Germany. The story of two women

Revised Edition November 2020. Germany 1947. A war lost, a country divided while shadows of the past linger over cities in rubble. Hunger is paired with self-pity. When an additional twelve million expelled Germans from Pomerania and East Prussia arrive in the Rhineland and Bavaria, among them the Marlow family, the burden gets unbearable. German refugees are cursed and despised by their own nation in the west. Except on the Ten Eicken estate, where the Marlows are billeted by the Allied Forces during postwar years to work as farmhands. Haunted by the horrors of war, Lotte Marlow who lost everything in the east and Hilda Eicken, the mistress of the mansion, develop an unusual friendship while trying to rebuild their lives. The past is forgotten, until nine years later the last missing soldiers return from the Siberian prison camps. Among them is a man, Hilda believed dead. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, some forty five years later, Christina Eicken returns from North America to Germany to retrace her family history with the help of Lotte Marlow. Together they attempt to undress shadows of a past which still conceals a family secret. Undressing Shadows is based on a true story.