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oapen-20.500.12657-473322024-03-12T13:55:31Z At Home in Exile Griffin, Helga M Internment World War II Persia Germany Exile bic Book Industry Communication::B Biography & True Stories bic Book Industry Communication::B Biography & True Stories::BM Memoirs bic Book Industry Communication::H Humanities::HB History::HBJ Regional & national history::HBJM Australasian & Pacific history This is a story of a girl's construction of her identity, and of her family’s search for a place in the world, for the Heimat that is so resonant for those of German background. We follow Helga through an adventurous childhood in Iran, whose vast open spaces her mother called 'my spiritual home’. Her engineer father worked on a grand scale, designing and laying roads and railways, and tunnelling through mountain ranges. Then came the invasions of World War II, and the family, half-German, half-Austrian, found themselves on a long voyage to Australia, designated enemy aliens. They were interned for nearly five years in the dusty Victorian countryside. On their release at the end of the War, stranded in Melbourne, they sought another home. The children were dispatched to convents, and at the Academy of Mary Immaculate, Helga found a temporary homeland, in faith. Everyday life in the Australia of the late 1940s and early 1950s is freshly seen by this feisty, loving migrant family. Through their eyes, we encounter a strange place, Australia, as if for the first time. Helga’s development from a thoughtful, sensitive child to a self-possessed young woman, wrestling with her faith and with how to live a decent life, is vividly recounted. 2021-03-15T13:35:48Z 2021-03-15T13:35:48Z 2021 book ONIX_20210315_9781760464271_47 9781760464271 https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/47332 eng application/pdf Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International book.pdf ANU Press ANU Press 10.22459/AHE.2021 10.22459/AHE.2021 ddc8cc3f-dd57-40ef-b8d5-06f839686b71 9781760464271 ANU Press 280 Canberra open access
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This is a story of a girl's construction of her identity, and of her family’s search for a place in the world, for the Heimat that is so resonant for those of German background. We follow Helga through an adventurous childhood in Iran, whose vast open spaces her mother called 'my spiritual home’. Her engineer father worked on a grand scale, designing and laying roads and railways, and tunnelling through mountain ranges. Then came the invasions of World War II, and the family, half-German, half-Austrian, found themselves on a long voyage to Australia, designated enemy aliens. They were interned for nearly five years in the dusty Victorian countryside. On their release at the end of the War, stranded in Melbourne, they sought another home. The children were dispatched to convents, and at the Academy of Mary Immaculate, Helga found a temporary homeland, in faith. Everyday life in the Australia of the late 1940s and early 1950s is freshly seen by this feisty, loving migrant family. Through their eyes, we encounter a strange place, Australia, as if for the first time. Helga’s development from a thoughtful, sensitive child to a self-possessed young woman, wrestling with her faith and with how to live a decent life, is vividly recounted.
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