Prelude to the Past is the remarkable story of a young Jewish girl
growing up in Germany during the years leading up to the First World
War. She experienced adulthood during the tumultuous years between the
two World Wars, becoming one of the most important journalistic figures
of the period.
Born to a prominent German-Jewish family, Rosie Gräefenberg enjoyed an
adventurous life as she pursued her career in journalism. Her travels
led her to spend several years in inter-war France, where she
experienced first-hand the attempts at Franco-German rapprochement in
the aftermath of the treaty of Versailles. She ventured to French
Morocco, Soviet Russia, and into the French colonies in Africa, leaving
vivid portrayals of her encounters with these diverse societies and with
many of the major political and social figures of the day.
Her life of romance and adventure ultimately led her to marry Franz
Ullstein, head of the most-powerful publishing dynasty and key
representative of the democratic press establishment in pre-World War II
Germany. But an unconventional marriage provoked family intrigues and
political struggles that soon thrust Rosie into the greatest scandal the
German Republic would endure during its death throes before the
establishment of the Third Reich - the Ullstein Affair. Rosie
Gräefenberg now found herself at the center of European media attention,
as accusations of her being a spy brought down the most powerful media
mogul in Europe and led to a drawn-out legal battle that exposed the
weaknesses of the democratic press in Germany for all to see, helping
lay the groundwork for the coming Nazi takeover.
In Prelude to the Past, Rosie Gräefenberg provides a masterful,
impassioned account of these events, in a fast-paced narrative,
revealing many of the surprising motives behind them. Now, for the first
time in more than 80 years this tumultuous era comes to life through the
eyes of a powerful, passionate, strong, yet vulnerable Jewish woman who
not only recorded the events of the era but also helped to shape them
Prelude to the Past is a uniquely feminine perspective on a highly
male-dominated era. With an introduction by Dr. Ernest H. Latham, Jr.,
the foremost scholar on the life and work of Rosie Gräefenberg, who
later took the name R.G. Waldeck, Prelude to the Past is a must-read
for anyone interested in European society in the years preceding
Hitler's domination of Europe.
