Isn’t this a great title?  Doris Schmitz Drucker grew up between World Wars in Germany, the daughter of an emotionally absent father and a distinctly odd mother (although in memoir land this may go without saying).  Despite her parents’ unhappy marriage and her mother’s frightening mood swings, Doris had a relatively uneventful but uniquely German childhood full of fresh air, the worship of Goethe, and strict ideas about social class and proper behavior.  This lack of trauma may not make for the most dramatic of memoirs (although her father’s bizarre obsession with the White Slave Trade caught my attention), but Doris makes interesting observations about Germany, and I found the details of every day life fascinating.  Doris went on to have many varied and intellectually stimulating experiences in Frankfurt, London, and Paris before meeting and marrying management author Peter Drucker, but I think the real charm of this memoir lies in Doris’s memories of her German childhood.

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