Women's Portraits

Lieselotte Schiffer

Lieselotte Schiffer is relaxed,  thinking of the future. For many years Brecht`s tale of the Unworthy, Venerable Woman has been her favourite literature.

Childhood, Escape to the West, Education

Mrs Schiffer was born in Belgrad in 1931 as the eldest daughter of Mrs and Mr Rumpf.

She published her first book in 2003  “...at home in Weprowatz”. With this publication the 70year old woman worked off  her happy but difficult childhood and her risky escape to the West in 1944.

Little Lieselotte was four, when her mother died. Her beloved father, a pharmacist in Weprowatz, (Voivodina) formerly Serbia, then Hungary brought up his two daughters on his own. The family had settled in Schlesien, then im Sudetenland and Bavaria till Miss Rumpf  came to Ulm in 1952, the town, from which her ancestors had started their emigration  in 1786, taking a boat towards East Europe.

Having received an excellent report from a business school in Austria the young woman immediately got work in renowned companies in Ulm. There she worked as a book-keeper till her marriage in 1959.

Family

Family life was very important for Lieselotte Schiffer. She felt safe with her father, later her four children backed her up.

After her divorce in 1979 life turned out to be  extremely difficult for the single mother, but it also was very interesting, as she attended various courses at the Community Centre in Ulm.

Having four children, hardly any financial help from their father and only temporarily poorly paid  jobs didn´t leave any room for leisure time or travelling. The family spent their holidays in the local sports center.

The 60year old  pensioner had to work till she was 70, in order to cope with her financial  situation.

A challenge

 Then Christmas 2002, there was THE call from one of her eight grandchildren: Granny, will you please give me three sentences about the war. - Three lines, this is impossible! A book would be more adequate. -  So go ahead and write it.

That evening the grandmother sat down at her electric typewriter and started to put down her personal story. Only three months were needed and in 2003 the book was published in Ulm.

Lieselotte Schiffer had always written a diary and had told her children a lot about the past.

The phone call from her granddaughter, however, decided the matter. The old age pensioner  wrote down her experiences during the war and the banishment. Also the environment of Ulm and the city itsself had encouraged her.

Seven years later the authoress  published another book, a small volume: Donaukiesel, Svabian stories along the  River Danube. Humorous scenes alternate with descriptive ones, episodes from the past and the present time. You feel the senior`s interest in people and their doing.

A Content Life! 

 Her love for the Ulm, in which the woman had felt at home from the very beginning and her ability to study people and her talent to perceive strange situations make Lieselotte Schiffer think of a third publication.

When I have asked the 80year old woman how she feels about her life after the many disappointmets and the constant financial problems and the hard daily life her answer sounds

strange and unreal, “I had a beautiful, rich life. Such a lot of things happened and I got to know  so very many people.” And her vivid brown eyes brighten.

Monika van Koolwijk