Ida Belle - A Life: A Biography of Ida Belle Hegemann

By William Darrow

Ida Belle (Guthe) Hegemann was in her senior year at the University of Michigan when she met German city planner and author Dr. Werner Hegemann in 1918. The couple married and settled outside Berlin in 1922. During Germany's Weimar Republic Ida Belle and Werner had four children as Werner edited the Berlin architectural journal, "Wasmuths Monatshefte Baukunst & Städtebau," lectured and wrote books on architecture and city planning. As Adolph Hitler and National Socialism began to gain power in the late 1920s, Hegemann wrote history books challenging the Nazi worldview. In early 1933 when Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, Hegemann published a book directly attacking the Nazi leader. He fled to Switzerland on the eve of publication, his family following a month later. That book led to Hegemann becoming one of the authors subject to the April, 1933 Nazi book burnings. The Hegemann family came to the United States later that year, and Werner became a teacher at the New School for Social Research and Columbia University. The Nazi's seized the Hegemann house outside Berlin in 1934. Werner died prematurely in New York City in 1936 when Ida Belle was age 39 and the children all minors. Ida Belle was an observant eye-witness during the Weimar Republic, steadily exchanging correspondence with family. Upon losing her husband, she became a teacher and raised her four children in the United States. She wrote a history of events for her family in the late 1960s, and provided guided tours to Europe from the 1950s to the 1970s. She died in 1983.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0CPNTN1BW
• ISBN13: 9798868242281
• Release Date: December 2023
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 202 Pages
• Dimensions: 10.0" x 0.5" x 8.0"