Prologue: The World at War
The two world wars that spread from Europe to Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. I knew Germany had lost both of them, and that our country had gained its independence as a result. That was all I needed to know. Of course, the textbooks contained a hundred times more information, but it wasn’t my area of interest, and I had never once bothered with a history exam.
I lived my life—taking the college entrance exam, attending university, serving in the military, preparing for employment—without ever regretting that decision. Not once. Or rather, I hadn’t. The reason it had become past tense was that I was now beginning to feel the necessity of a little regret.
“This is insane…”
I regained consciousness in the back alley of factories that thundered with a terrifying rumble and belched smoke. The sky was pitch black from the endless soot pouring out of the chimneys, and the air was not merely murky but downright poisonous. At first I thought I had been dropped into some apocalyptic SF movie setting.
But after steadying my emaciated body and stepping out of the alley, the world came into slightly better focus. Grim colors and brick buildings that looked like they belonged to a bygone era, strangely quiet streets. And above all—I was a girl. One who could not have been more than ten years old.
I picked up a random leaflet from the street and read it. Understanding came quickly. Are you prepared to pledge loyalty to the Fatherland (Vaterland)? It wasn’t English, but some language I had never seen; yet for some reason the words flowed effortlessly. The purpose of the paper—featuring a bearded soldier in a spiked helmet pointing outward—was painfully obvious. War propaganda.
The flag fluttering in the corner, black, white, and yellow, looked vaguely familiar from the imperial era. So this had to be the First World War. Wasn’t it supposed to be red instead of yellow? I wondered, but it didn’t seem worth worrying about.
Well, it was surprising, sure… If I had still been a man, I would have been a thousand times more shocked. But right now I appeared to be a girl. Which meant I wouldn’t be dragged off to the army. And if the swastika of the octopus bastards who would rule Germany in the next war was nowhere in sight, that was something to be grateful for. I was just beginning to feel relieved when—
“Hey! What are you doing over there?!”
Someone was shouting. At me?
“Me?”
“The shift started ages ago! What are you loitering for?! Get inside!”
What is this guy’s problem? A man who looked to be in his fifties was suddenly barking orders at me. The words Who the hell are you? rose to the tip of my tongue, but this was the First World War. Proper human rights were more than a century away. Without another word I ran toward the shouting man.
“What are you doing? Get in here and work.”
He was suddenly telling me to work?
“What’s going on?”
“What?” He let out a sigh, looking utterly dumbfounded. “Are you a Russian or French spy, kid?”
“Excuse me?”
“No, of course not… Look at this clueless child. Come with me.”
“Wait, hold on!”
Russian, spy—what was he even talking about?
“Clueless? That’s a bit harsh.”
“If you’re not clueless, why aren’t you working? We’re already short-handed in this sector. You’ll make clothes here. We’re still nowhere near the quota the government demands.”
“…Pardon?”
“Still not with us, huh? Johanna! Teach this one how to work!”
I was shoved into the middle of the factory and stood there dazed until a middle-aged woman came and took me by the arm.
“Wait, just a moment—”
“To think they’re putting children this young to work… Germany has truly gone mad. Have you never worked in a factory before?”
“No—of course not!”
A normal person would have no reason to work in a factory, or so I thought, but apparently it was quite common here.
“Poor thing. Still, be grateful you’ve been assigned to weaving. It’s less dangerous than other sections…”
And so, in this world I had suddenly fallen into, I suddenly found myself working in a factory. The woman—Johanna—taught me how to operate the loom: how to move my hands, what to produce, how much I had to make each day, what behavior was permitted and what was forbidden, and countless other things. Honestly, being told not to speak or even look around during work seemed excessively harsh, but… I had to survive. The man from earlier had been carrying a pistol at his waist.
So I worked. And worked. And worked.
“Ow!”
My hands were pricked countless times. I thought you said it was less dangerous.
“Who’s screaming over there!”
“Ugh, it hurts, can’t I even make a sound…”
“What? Who just talked back?!”
“No—ahh!”
I was beaten with a club for muttering. Setting aside the fact that I was now in the body of a teenage girl, who in their right mind beat someone with a stick for a single complaint? Even the military of fifty years ago hadn’t been this brutal.
So I worked, and worked, and worked… Just when was this going to end? The pattern repeated itself about twenty times before the bell finally rang to signal the end of the workday. The sun had long since set. My hands had been stabbed and sliced dozens of times; the blood had dried into dark, crusty streaks.
“Report at seven sharp tomorrow. Coming early is fine, but if you’re late, you’d better be prepared.”
The wretched factory owner, whose malice had risen far beyond mere unpleasantness, ordered me to return at seven the next morning. I had worked all day without a single meal. Was this even legal? And tomorrow the shift started at seven again. In other words, I was expected to work from early morning until late at night without rest.
“Goddamn it…”
I waited until I had fled far from the factory before muttering the curse under my breath. So this was why people went on strike. The realization came after only a single day, but another worry immediately crossed my mind. Where was I supposed to sleep? What was I supposed to eat? I had been so busy working since arriving that I hadn’t even considered it.
Fortunately the girl’s body had a smaller appetite, so the hunger wasn’t unbearable. Still, my instincts rebelled against sleeping on the street. It was frightening, and I simply didn’t want to. As I stood wondering what to do, the woman who had first approached me and taught me the work came over.
“Child, aren’t you going home?”
Right. I was a little girl now. Of course she would worry.
“Um… I don’t have a home.”
“No home? Oh dear, it must have been seized. I hope your father returns safely from the front. If you have nowhere to go, come with me.”
Her name was Johanna. She seemed to have decided I was an orphan whose father had been sent to war, whose mother had gone missing, and whose house had been seized for unpaid debts. Whether that was true or not made little difference. Johanna took me to an orphanage.
“Frida, this is the child who started at the factory today. She says she has no home and nowhere to go, so I brought her.”
“Good heavens… Don’t worry, Johanna. I’ll look after her.”
And so I was placed in the care of the orphanage.
“You poor thing. What is your name?”
“…My name?”
I wondered what I should answer. I could give my old name, but… no.
“I… don’t remember.”
I wasn’t going back. I would never be able to return.
“You don’t remember?”
It sounded like nonsense even to me, but Frida nodded with understanding, thought for a moment, and said, “Then let’s call you Emilia. Emilia. How does that sound?”
“Um… yes, I like it.”
Emilia. Even my name had become that of a girl. It was now mine.
“Do you remember who your father was?”
“I don’t know.”
Frida looked at me with eyes full of pity. “Then let’s make it Heinz. Emilia Heinz. What do you think?”
“Heinz?”
“It’s my surname. Is that all right?”
So this “Frida Heinz” was giving me her own family name.
“Yes, thank you.”
Emilia Heinz… Not bad. In any case, a name wasn’t that important. What terrified me far more was the thought of having to go back to work tomorrow.
“Good. Go to bed early. The factory owners are especially cruel to children like you.”
And apparently it wasn’t just that one bastard—factory owners were generally like that. Was I a slave? These lunatics… But there was no point in complaining. For the first time since arriving, I had met decent people. After a brief conversation I quickly devoured a piece of bread for dinner and fell asleep.
Two years passed like that.
In those two long years, almost nothing changed. I had grown a little taller, but the workload remained the same. Every single day was identical. At some point I grew used to chatting with the other girls at the factory, and I even became accustomed to naturally joining their secretive conversations.
The work never varied. From seven in the morning until eleven at night, every day. The factory lunch—already tasteless bread—had recently been replaced by even worse turnip porridge. The owner tossed us worthless banknotes that were barely enough for one meal, claiming the money came from the government rather than his own pocket. My murderous intent toward him remained unchanged.
The news that reached us was uniformly bleak. Every morning the newspaper read aloud in the factory boasted that Germany was winning, that France’s surrender was imminent. But the stories we heard after leaving the factory told a completely different tale. Germany was gradually being pushed back. The Kaiser had been forced to the negotiating table with Britain and France, and the terms were tilting heavily against Germany.
Frankly, whether Germany won or lost was of no interest to me. If they would just let me rest an extra hour a day or give me one more mark, I would accept anything. Truly. That was all I wanted.
Then came the winter of January 1919.
“General strike! Everyone up!”
It had finally arrived. The protests that had been growing since November of the previous year—among workers and soldiers alike—had at last merged into one. Newspapers secretly circulated among the workers had announced a nationwide general strike on January 5th. When the day came, the streets were packed with furious citizens.
The factory owner who used to strut around with a pistol on his belt, acting as though he owned us, had already fled.
“The incompetent Kaiser must step down immediately! The government must listen to the workers! End the war and give us bread!”
The sense of liberation I felt for the first time in ages was intoxicating. Caught up in that feeling, I ran into the street with the other workers and shouted slogans.
“Give us what is ours! Pay us fair wages!”
As we marched through the streets alongside countless exhausted citizens and workers who simply didn’t want to starve, I saw them.
“It is not the Social Democrats who claim to stand for the workers yet offer only empty reforms, nor the Kaiser in far-off Vienna who plays with human lives from a distance. The ones who will lead you are none other than yourselves!”
I later learned they had come from the original capital of Vienna, where they had been organizing the revolution, to encourage the demonstrators here in Essen.
“Two thousand years ago, the slaves under Roman tyranny rose up under the leadership of Spartacus. We are the descendants of Spartacus. If you do not wish to live as slaves, if you truly desire a society where everyone is master—”
Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.
“Act now! Long live the workers! Long live the revolution!”
With a roar that seemed to split the heavens, the revolution began.
The revolution did not succeed. The workers’ power had been formidable, but in Vienna—the heart of the uprising—the Kaiser’s police violently suppressed the demonstrators. Once it lost its center, the revolution scattered. The same happened here in the Rhineland. Only later did I learn that Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who had seemed like a ray of light descending from heaven when I saw them speak, had been assassinated.
Name: Emilia Heinz
Location: Essen
Date: January 1919
“I’ll submit my application.”
That was when I entered the world of politics.