In her riveting 10th nonfiction book, historian Pamela D. Toler (Women Warriors) profiles reporter Sigrid Schultz (1893-1980), who ran the Berlin bureau of the Chicago Tribune for a decade and a half, and repeatedly warned her American readers about the rise of Nazism.
Born in Chicago to a Norwegian painter and a mother of multiethnic European descent, Schultz always considered herself American, though she spent decades living abroad. A multilingual, only child, she worked as a teacher and a translator as a young woman before meeting several journalists from the Tribune as World War I ended. She took a job as a "combination interpreter and cub reporter," using her broad network of connections in Berlin to gain the interviews her colleagues wanted. The job gave Schultz the training she needed to become a star journalist, and eventually to head up the Tribune's Berlin bureau.
Toler's narrative paints a fascinating picture of her subject: a woman driven to hunt down the next story and to bring the truth to her readers. Determined to prove herself equal to her male colleagues, Schultz worked long hours, carefully verified her facts, and called herself a "newspaperman." She reported on local and national politics, the growing military might of the Nazi Party, and the lives of ordinary Germans in Weimar-era Berlin, often throwing parties to cultivate connections for stories. Toler charts the rise of the Nazis through Schultz's fastidious reporting on their activities and her clever ways of getting around the censors, including the use of a male pseudonym.
Due to illness and exhaustion, Schultz left Berlin for a planned vacation in January 1941. She ended up spending the rest of the war in the U.S., safe from Nazi violence but longing to return to her reporting work. She did return to report on the postwar trials at Lüneburg, helping to expose the horrors of the concentration camps. Toler chronicles Schultz's struggle to carve out a new place for herself once the war ended. She tried her hand at lecture tours, magazine articles, and book writing, though she admitted she was "just a reporter" in the end. Toler exposes the discrimination Schultz often faced as a woman in male-dominated press offices, but also highlights her successes: her broad network of informants, her sharply reported articles, and her invaluable contributions to the Tribune.
Vivid, insightful, and meticulously researched, Toler's biography turns a well-deserved spotlight on Schultz and her career. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams
Shelf Talker: Pamela D. Toler's riveting 10th nonfiction book delves into the life of Chicago Tribune journalist Sigrid Schultz, who, while reporting from Berlin, warned American readers about the rise of Nazism.