Are traumas inheritable? Recent research has shown that not only certain genetic traits are passed on to descendants, but also the experiences that one has endured. Ralph Walta experienced this with his father Gustav as well. His father died of a heart attack when Ralph was just thirteen years old.
It took him many years to understand why his father had become such a pessimistic, withdrawn, and introverted person, despite growing up in a well-to-do family during the time of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
His father was a labor inspector, and his mother came from a wealthy Jewish family from Reichenberg in Northern Bohemia. In 1946, Gustav Walta held a certificate in his hands, issued by the Magistrate of the city of Berlin: It stated that, by his descent, he was classified as a “first-degree Jewish mixed race” individual.
The discrimination, persecution, and professional disadvantages he experienced under National Socialism due to the “racial laws,” along with the loss of nine family members in German concentration camps, deeply shaped and fundamentally changed him.
Ralph Walta has pursued the question of how his father’s life and that of his family were destroyed – and how these effects still resonate today.
Language: German
104 pages
17 illustrations
ISBN: 978-3-95565-594-5
Published: 2023
€15.00
104 pages
17 illustrations
ISBN: 978-3-95565-594-5
Published: 2023
€15.00