I want to welcome everyone to the first reading of the next book.

The book is called Blockade, The Diary of an Austrian Middle class woman 1914 to 1924 by Anna Eisenmanger. This was first

published in the States in 1932 and it was translated out of German by Winiford Gray who did a lot of

translating back in the day so this this isn't a an internet translation. What I will say is is that it's people

ask what it was like immediately after World War one what what the treaty of war

treaty of Versailles caused German, Austrian life to be like.

And my friend Mark sent me this years ago and I finally got around to reading it and I think it paints a picture. It's not very long and I think it's something that you can add to like the early Gerbles diaries and other books about the time after the treaty and what the you know what we'll call the allies did with a blockade. And yeah, I'm just going to start this and it has a preface where she talks a little bit and

the dedication is to all women in the world and yeah this isn't a

a feminist screed although maybe some feminists would take it that way but the way we'll read it is how you would expect us to read it.

So I'm going to start off here.

Preface. Before me lies a collection of Little Black Diaries. Each of them represents a year and together they cover the period from 1914 to 1924. They contain a space for each separate day, but some of the spaces are blank.

Often for a whole week or more nothing had been written.

Other pages are crammed with notes scribbled with obvious haste and frequently illegible yet I have no trouble

in deciphering them.

Every word is burnt into my soul what letters of fire.

They tell of events and experiences during the world War in the post-war years, experiences which at that time gave an aim and a purpose to my life, the life of an Austrian middle-class woman.

They tell of my struggle against the wants and misery of the war and post-war years.

During the first years a struggle was waged mainly against the wants and misery of others.

Later, later, it became a desperate struggle against the poverty and

distress which daily and hourly threatened to deprive me and all those dear to me, not only

of all our material resources but of life itself.

Today I scan these bald sentences which to me say so much.

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