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Bella Fromm (20 December 1890 – 9 February 1972) was a German journalist and author of Jewish origin, who lived in exile in the United States from 1938. She is best known as the author of ''Blood and Banquets'' (1943), an account of her time as diplomatic correspondent for Berlin newspapers during the Weimar Republic, and of her experiences during the first five years of the Third Reich. Although this book was published as an authentic contemporary diary, and is frequently cited as such, recent research suggests that Fromm wrote it in the U.S. after leaving Germany. Fromm was born in Nuremberg and grew up in Kitzingen in Lower Franconia, part of a family of prosperous assimilated Jewish wine merchants. By her own account, her family was on friendly terms with the Bavarian royal family and other leaders of Bavarian high society.〔''Blood and Banquets: a Berlin Social Diary'', Garden City Publishing Company, New York, 1943, 4〕 Her father died when she was a child, and her mother, to whom she was devoted, died in 1918. In 1911 she married a Jewish businessman, Max Israel, with whom she had a daughter, Grete-Ellen (known as “Gonny” in Fromm’s writing). After her divorce from Israel she married Karl Julius Steuermann, from whom she was also later divorced. During World War I Fromm worked for the German Red Cross and was decorated by the King of Bavaria. After her mother’s death she inherited the family fortune and was able to devote her time to social work. The inflation of 1923, however, destroyed her wealth and she was forced to look for work. Using family contacts, she was employed by the Ullstein press, a major Jewish-owned publishing house, and worked for the Ullstein newspapers, notably the ''Berliner Zeitung'' (“BZ”) and the ''Vossische Zeitung'', a leading Berlin liberal newspaper. Initially confined to traditional roles for female journalists such as fashion and social gossip, Fromm proved talented and ambitious and soon graduated to writing about politics and diplomacy. ==Journalist== As diplomatic correspondent for the Ullstein papers, Fromm became a well-known figure in Berlin high society. Among those with whom she claimed acquaintance were Frederick Birchall (''New York Times'' correspondent and editor), Aristide Briand (French Prime Minister), Vittorio Cerruti (Italian Ambassador), William E. Dodd (U.S. Ambassador), Andre Francois-Poncet (French Ambassador), Ernst Hanfstaengl (friend of Adolf Hitler and his first foreign press chief), Louis P. Lochner (veteran American correspondent), Otto Meissner (head of the Presidential Chancellery, and later of Hitler’s Chancellery), Konstantin von Neurath (German Foreign Minister), Sir Eric Phipps (British Ambassador), Leni Riefenstahl (filmmaker), Hjalmar Schacht (Economics Minister) and Kurt von Schleicher (Chancellor before Hitler). By her own account Fromm met Hitler, Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess and Joseph Goebbels several times at diplomatic events, but was not friendly with any of them. Fromm portrays herself as a leading figure in Berlin political society, on intimate terms with ministers, editors and diplomats, and the recipient of confidential information from many of them. She makes much of her close friendship with Schleicher and his wife, and writes of her attempts to warn Schleicher that President Paul von Hindenburg was about to remove him as Chancellor in favour of Hitler. It is notable, however, that two of the best-known contemporary accounts of politics and the press in Berlin at this time do not mention Fromm: William Shirer’s ''Berlin Diary'',〔Johns Hopkins University Press, 1941〕 and the memoirs of Hitler’s press chief Otto Dietrich, ''Zwolfe Jahre mit Hitler'' 〔Otto Dietrich ''Zwolfe Jahre mit Hitler'', 1955; published in English as ''The Hitler I Knew'', Skyhorse Publishing 2010〕 As a Jew and an outspoken liberal, Fromm found her position increasingly precarious after the Nazis came to power in 1933. She was protected to some extent by her friendship with leading foreign diplomats and also with conservative members of Hitler’s government such as Schacht and von Neurath. In 1934 she sent her daughter to the United States. After 1934 she was no longer able to write under her own name, but her journalism continued to appear anonymously. She continued to be invited to diplomatic and social events. Deprived of most of her income from journalism, Fromm returned to her family’s trade as a wine merchant, exploiting her contacts with foreign embassies and wealthy Berliners. According to her account, she also used her contacts to secure visas for many German Jews desperate to emigrate. For this reason, she wrote, she refused to heed the advice of her friends that she should leave Germany before it was too late. In 1938, however, Jews were excluded from the wine trade. Left with no income, and in the face of increasing anti-Semitic persecution, Fromm emigrated to the U.S. in September 1938. In New York, Fromm worked as a typist and secretary, and met her third husband, Peter Wolff. With the entry of the U.S. into World War II in December 1941, Fromm decided to write a book about her experiences in Weimar and Nazi Germany. The book was aimed at a war-time American readership and is stridently anti-Nazi and pro-American in tone. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bella Fromm」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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