DIVINE WOMEN AWARDS 2011: Who is Your Divine Woman?

My mother in law, Rosemarie Williams, is one of the most inspiring people I know. Born Rosemarie Gertrud Brandt, in Gardelegen, a small town in Germany in 1924, she grew up in Hitler’s Germany. When I was growing up, we were drip fed an image of Germans in uniforms, black boots giving Nazi salutes, which I never quite believed, and was never true. While not disputing the evil that occurred in Germany in the 1930s and 40s, the majority of the German people were not Nazis (as books like Alone in Berlin and The Book Thief illustrate beautifully). My mother in law’s family certainly weren’t. The day when England declared war on Germany, my grandfather in law (Walter Brandt) cried, because he knew eventually that there would be a war on two fronts and Germany would lose. He was not a supporter of Hitler, but when my mother in law’s sister once defied a law banning her from riding a horse as they were needed in the war effort, Walter beat her, because she was potentially getting them all into trouble.
At the end of the war, the Americans swept through Rosemarie’s part of Germany. Walter, who ran an estate for a German prince, cooperated with them. After they left, the English took over, until the news came that Gardelegen was going to be handed over to the Russians. The Commander in Chief took Walter aside and told him to get his daughters out.
So it was that, one sunny morning, Rosemarie and Gisi set off a long journey to family and safety. The first town they arrived at was packed full of refugees and their family couldn’t help them. So they ended up in Wolfenbuttel, where Rosemarie became a translator for the British Army, and fortuitously (for me!) met my father in law, Roger Williams. In the meantime, her parents had left Gardelegen, but later went back, as Walter felt a responsibility to the people of Isenschnibbe. This selfless action resulted in Walter being rounded up by the Russians and imprisoned in Buchenwald (a little known fact of post war Germany is the deaths of 20 000 Germans at the hands of the Russians in Buchenwald. Not all of them were Nazis. Walter certainly wasn’t.) Of the five people from Gardelegen who went to Buchenwald, only Walter and one other survived the three years they were incarcerated. Walter told Rosemarie that he wouldn’t have survived another winter.
While her father was in prison, Rosemarie made the momentous decision to come to England and marry Roger. Her knowledge of England was based on information gleaned from her Uncle Fritz, who’d worked at the Savoy as a young man. “England is very green,” he told her, “much like here.”
Rosemarie’s marriage was a long, happy and fruitful one. But though she was able to meet up with her parents again (Walter even got over to England on a false passport once), when Walter died, she couldn’t go to the funeral, for fear of being detained by the authorities. Her mother was able to stay on in the bungalow she’d had built on family land till the 1960s, when her health failing her, the East German authorities no longer wanted to know.
Rosemarie then embarked on a dangerous and stressful three month journey to get her mother back to West Germany. (Little did she know it she was pregnant with my husband at the time, Roger afterwards joking that he was the son of an East German soldier). Every time Rosemarie headed into East Germany, she took cigarettes for the soldiers for bribes, as she never knew how they would be. It sounds difficult, dangerous and down right scary, but she handled it with aplomb.
All of that, I would think would be enough for one lifetime. But further tragedy was to strike when, aged 17 her middle son, Douglas died in a car crash. I know she still thinks of him all the time, and it is a loss that could have defined the rest of her life. Yet courageously, she has not let it dint her optimistic and open nature, neither has it prevented her from forgetting she has two living sons, to whom she remains devoted. Her joy at the arrival of each of her five granddaughters, I hope has diminished some of that pain.
Now 86, Rosemarie’s daily life is one of great difficulty. She suffers from a condition known as benign essential tremor (benign because it isn’t parkinson’s,ms or any other related disease) which causes her to shake uncontrollably, and affects her balance. Last year she spent a prolonged period of time in hospital, and has in effect been housebound since then, with carers coming in four times a day. She has every right to be bitter about her lot (particularly as her old age has been spent principally caring for others, first her own elderly mother in law, then after my father in law’s stroke, she looked after him at considerable cost to her own health), and yet she isn’t. She is in fact, one of the least bitter, most hopeful people I know. She rarely complains about her lot in life, is immensely grateful to the people who care for her (unsurprisingly they all adore her), and remains enthusiastic about the chlidren and what they are up to. Over the last few years, as she has grown more infirm, she has taught me more about courage and dignity in the face of life’s hardships then anyone I know. She is simply the most inspirational person I know. And her grandchildren think so too.

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