writing_womans_lives_symposium_paper_book_v2

lasted until his death in 1947. During the 1929 stock market crash; Linke learned political economy,
feverishly read and analyzed international newspapers, debated economic issues, typed speeches
and wrote for the weekly chronicle section of the journal. With a new set of eyes she understood an
economic truth over religious and ethnic scapegoating. Their sincere unifying goal was to save
Germany from extremism. When Hitler entered the Reichstag, he eliminated opposing economic
opinion, forcing the sale of Volkswirt in 1933 to SS entrepreneurs. On an earlier trip to Britain, Linke
had briefly met journalist‐novelist‐activist Margaret Storm Jameson in Scarborough at a Labour
Conference in 1931. Gustav and his family fled to the US while Lilo went to Britain. When a desperate
Linke arrived on her London doorstep in June 1933, Jameson helped establish her as an Englishlanguage
writer. Although a Left‐liberal, Jameson admired Linke’s steadfast humanist values.
‘What do you want most?’ I asked her.
The answer I expected was: To have the money to travel.
Or: To be heard of. In a serious voice she said,
‘To live, to work, to build a world where is freedom and bread for all.’13
In the mid‐1920s, Jameson’s social conscience questioned growing poverty in Europe. When the
economic crisis in the early 1930s exacerbated tension in Europe, she saw it a responsibility to save
European refugees. In her role as President of PEN in 1938, Jameson had firm opinions on the role of
literature. Protagonists in Jameson’s novels were not communists but active community members
who experienced a “gradual transformation of personality as the proper means by which behavior
should be modified.” 14 Jameson declared it a writer’s duty to “go and live for a long time at one of the
points of departure of the new society.” 15 Moreover, Jameson argued, “People should learn to
consider the interests of others even to the extent of preferring them and thus counteract selfishness
and self‐interest.” 16 With little money, Linke lived with workers, the poor, slept in train stations and
stayed with friends she cultivated along the way, settling for extended periods in France (1932),
Britain (1933‐1934), Turkey (1935), Britain (1936), Paris in 1937 and 1938, and visited Holland and
Italy.
Experiencing a problematic national identity as a German—normally an oppressor nation but in
crisis under Hitler—Linke was receptive to learn from others and cultivate humility to overcome a
learned sense of inferiority. Germans were stigmatized in Britain, Europe and Latin America, facing
constant prejudice. Hence, Linke developed a keen sense of this imposed inferiority both on those of
her own culture and those of other cultures. This ensured her praxis of “delicate empiricism” which
was void of Eurocentric, colonial or scientific gaze. Her texts were imbued with optimism, reflecting
her own hopefulness, to help inspire others to flourish in difficult times. In short, “fortunate
encounters” put Linke on a path in search of “truth” via knowledge to meet, hear, suffer, understand
and learn—Erfahren—knowing through experience. In her determination to rewrite facts fallaciously
propagandized in new mass media, she enlightened English‐readers about real Germany and all other
cultures and nations she would journey. 17
Deciding to leave Britain in June 1939, Linke landed in Panama, disembarking the Reina del
Pacifico ship burgeoning with refugees and émigré from Europe. She travelled through Colombia,
Venezuela, Peru and Bolivia and eventually settled in Quito, Ecuador, where she became a naturalized
citizen in 1945. In her role as progenitor of social justice working with and for the marginalized poor
and working peoples, Linke was active in literacy, hygiene, midwifery and reforestation projects,
inspired by Turkey’s modernization efforts, which she witnessed during her journey there in 1935.
She performed children’s puppet theatre in the streets of Quito, taught English in schools and later
became a spokesperson for the National Union of Journalists (UNP) in Ecuador. She took her
malnourished Berlin nephew, Hans, into her home in Quito. In Bolivia in 1952 she lived with tin‐mine
workers, documenting their struggle for nationalization of the mines, which she published in Road to
Revolution. 18 In the working class district of Calderon, north Quito, Linke founded the school Escuela
Fiscal Mixta Lilo Linke in the early 1960s, providing education to boys and girls aged five to twelve. 19
Author to over ten books, short stories, articles in journals and newspapers, discussions on BBC radio
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