"After taking my leave of him with a curtsy, I ran toward the Jannowitz Bridge. The cannons had stopped firing. As if it had been decided I should be the last one over, the fusillade recommenced as soon I was across the bridge. I had just reached the corner of Koepenicker Strasse when, with an awful crash, the steel arches of the bridge collapsed... and plunged into the seething depths."

The hairsbreadth escapes, as Charlotte makes her from a bombed prison to her friends' home in Berlin-Mahlsdorf in April 1945, are some of the best passages. Purple, yes, but how can you not be thrilled?

I came across her story in the Rosa von Praunheim film of the same name. But it turns out she was a Stasi "unofficial collaborator," from 1971 to 1976. Her file was closed with the note that her information was "unsatisfactory." But leaving out the fact of her cooperation casts the rest of the story in doubt. Surely her account of the fall of Berlin is embellished. And her account of murdering her father, the closer you look at it, is larded with exculpatory details, and details that explain how such a weak teenager overcame a middle-aged Nazi. (He delivered an ultimatum, explicitly threatening to murder her mother, and then, giving Charlotte one hour to decide, he took a *nap.*) Reports say there's no record of his murder or her juvenile conviction.

Her anti-Nazi sentiment seems genuine, though it is only sentiment.

She's still appealing. In the film, you see straight East Berliners reacting to her: her thinning white hair and slightly receding hairline; no makeup; no padded bra; just a frock and heels and pearls. She carries herself as if she believed Providence had delivered her safely from the war, to collect Grunderzeit furniture. Her aplomb gives their looks and their surprise no purchase. I think it's that character of hers, more than five years of collaboration, that safeguarded her as a transvestite in the DDR.

The Praunheim film is on youtube. The (staged) scene of her everyday life in public is here, at 1:10:04. https://youtu.be/Z4OcDuPv0-w