New Books Network Erika Quinn, "This Horrible Uncertainty: A German Woman Writes War, 1939-1948" (Berghahn Books, 2024)
Jan 25, 2026
Erika Quinn, historian and author of This Horrible Uncertainty, draws on Vera Conrad’s wartime diaries to explore grief, ambiguous loss, and emotional life in wartime Germany. She discusses how diary-keeping created multiple selves, the pressures of Nazi emotional norms, rural visibility, and issues of complicity and memory. The conversation weaves archival discovery with history of emotions and psychological frameworks.
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Diary Converts Life Into Ongoing Self-Work
- Vera Conrad's diary turned a personal baby book into a wartime chronicle that tracked shifting selves under stress.
- Writing created continuity amid rupture and let her rehearse identities she could reuse during trauma.
Discovery: From Photocopy To Original Baby Book
- Quinn found Vera's diary as a photocopied excerpt in the Kempowski archive and later viewed the original at the owner's house.
- The baby book's early optimistic entries made its wartime turn especially disquieting to her.
Ambiguous Loss Creates Traumatic Narrative Gaps
- Ambiguous loss lacks facts, leaving endless narrative possibilities that block healthy grieving.
- Pauline Boss's framework explains why missing-in-action produces prolonged limbo requiring imaginative meaning-making.
