Tami Oelfken (1888–1957)

Tami Oelfken was born Maria Wilhelmine Oelfken in the Blumenthal district of Bremen, Germany, the daughter of a wool merchant. She trained as a teacher and worked in schools in Ohrwege and Grohn. She joined the artists' colony at Worpswede and became involved with the socialist Spartakus League. Eventually she resigned from her civil service teaching post, convinced that state schools did not fulfill the needs of contemporary and social education. In 1928, she founded her own school in Berlin, attended by the children of many artists and writers, but it was closed by order of the Nazis in 1934. She then went to England and France, but with the outbreak of World War II she returned to Germany, where she remained hidden with friends throughout the war. She began writing books, which included the novels Peter kann zaubern (Peter Is a Magician, 1931), Die Persianermütze (1942) and Traum am Morgen (Dream in the Morning, 1950). Her collections of short stories included Die Sonnenuhr (The Sundial, 1946), Die Penaten (The Penates, 1954) and Italienische Novellen (Italian Short Stories, 1956). Her diary from 1939 to 1945 was first published as a memoir in 1946 as Fahrt durch das Chaos: Ein Logbuch aus Zeiten des Kriegs (Journey Through the Chaos).