Book description
On 29 September 1934, at the German Embassy office in London, Christabel Bielenberg officially became a German citizen. Having met her German husband Peter two years prior, Christabel decided to renounce her British citizenship, planning to start married life with Peter in Berlin. Though Adolf Hitler had risen to power…
Why read it?
2 authors picked The Past is Myself as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Christabel Bielenberg was Anglo-Irish, her husband was a German lawyer, and they were close friends of Adam von Trott and other German oppositionists. Christabel was in Germany throughout the war, and her book gives an absorbing account of daily life in the Third Reich.
It was a dangerous world. How do you stop your child from telling the Nazi gardener that his mother listens to the radio with her ear pressed against the set? What do you do when a friend says something imprudent? How do you react when a homeless Jewish couple asks for shelter? When your husband is…
From Patricia's list on Nazi art thefts during World War II.
Christabel Bielenberg’s autobiography I find madly inspiring for her courage and clear, perceptive writing. A well-connected Anglo-Irish Englishwoman, she marries a German lawyer in 1934 only to find herself living through the war and the horrors of Nazi rule in Germany. Staggeringly, near the war’s end, she manages to talk her husband Peter out of a concentration camp with the camp commandant after Peter was implicated in the plot to assassinate Hitler. It’s that rare book that I would have loved to last much longer, especially for showing how ordinary Germans changed and got corrupted by Nazism—but others managed to…
From Caroline's list on about and by madly inspiring women.
If you love The Past is Myself...
December on 5C4
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
Want books like The Past is Myself?
Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like The Past is Myself.
Share your top 3 reads of 2025!
And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.
1,298
readers submitted
so far, will you?
📚 If you like The Past is Myself, you might also like...
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman
Kate from Jules et Jim meets I Love Dick.
A young woman filmmaker’s journey of self-discovery, set against a backdrop of the sexual liberation movement of the 1970s and 1980s. In Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman, we follow Ana Fried as she faces the ultimate…
Dark Fae Outcast
Trapped in our world, the fae are dying from drugs, contaminants, and hopelessness. Kicked out of the dark fae court for tainting his body and magic, Riasg only wants one thing: to die a bit faster. It’s already the end of his world, after all.
But while scoring his last…
