Dörte von Westernhagen

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Dörte von Westernhagen (born 1943) is a German writer.

From old German nobility, Doctor of Law. Worked in the administration of Baden-Württemberg, until she decided to write her own story. Her book "Kinder der Täter" (The Perpetrators' Children) made quite a round in Germany when it was published in 1987. The book was immediately recognized as the first attempt to get the NS-children out of their parents' shadow.

Westernhagen starts her narrative with her own childhood. Then her father takes over.

Westernhagen's father was a colonel in the Leibstandarte. He was shot through his head in Hungary in her first year. The book is about his daughter's sorrow. In the small-typed appendix she returns to her own childhood memories and those of other German NS-children. The importance of Westernhagen's work lies in the fact that she was the first European NS-child to discuss her father both as a personally brave man and a war criminal.