In des Teufels Küche

Precise, rich in detail, typical of the time: records of the Hanoverian archivist Georg Schnath from his internment and imprisonment from Dachau to Paris 1945-47. The Hanoverian archivist Georg Schnath (1898-1989) got into "the devil's kitchen" after the end of the Second World War. The former head of the archival protection group at the German military administration in Paris was taken into custody by the British, interned by the Americans and finally held as a French prisoner of war in Paris until the turn of the year 1947/48. During this time Schnath's notes were written, which Thomas Vogtherr has now edited for the first time and placed in their historical context: About Germany, about life in camps - and about himself, an intellectual who lost the ground beneath his feet. Schnath describes his new environment, tries to justify himself and wants to give an account of his actions. He does not deny his own involvement in the wheels of the Nazi state. But he styles himself as a dutiful German civil servant, not as a contributor or perpetrator, but as a victim of a change in political circumstances after 1945 through no fault of his own. His detailed records, kept over two and a half years, are therefore both an informative and irritating document of their time.