Peter Sichel: Die Geheimnisse meiner drei Leben

Born in 1922 into a Jewish family of wine merchants in Mainz, Peter F.M. Sichel fled to America in 1938, escaping the terror of the National Socialists through France and Holland. This story of his carefree childhood and youth in Mainz, followed by the upheaval of his escape, forms the first of the three major parts of the book. In 1943, Peter Sichel returned as a GI, participated in the liberation of his hometown Mainz, and subsequently became a member of the American intelligence service, serving as the head of the CIA office in West Berlin until 1959, where he experienced the most intense times of the Cold War. This constitutes the central part of his autobiography. Finally, Peter Sichel returned to New York, where he, along with his family, built a transatlantic and then global wine trade, became a co-owner of Bordeaux vineyards, and popularized German wine in America.