["And she turns around and sees it fully …" Psychological consequences in children of survivors of the "Hamburg Firestorm" (1943) in a systematic evaluation].

"And she turns around and sees it fully …" Psychological consequences in children of survivors of the "Hamburg Firestorm" (1943) in a systematic evaluation

Objectives

Is there a transmission of traumatic war experiences through the generations? In an interdisciplinary research project at Hamburg University psychoanalysts and historians investigated the long-term psychological effects of World War II bombing attacks in the "Hamburg Firestorm" (Operation Gomorrha) in 1943. In the frame of this work the paper asks for the psychological consequences in the following generation

Methods

Evaluation of 45 completely transcribed life-historical interviews (28 female and 17 male of an average age of 50.2 years) with descendants of contemporary witnesses (at the time of the firestorm between 3 and 27 years old) by systematic diagnostic assessment.

Results

There are no certain consequences for everyone. Most of the consequences occurred, when the mother was the contemporary witness and the child the daughter.

Conclusion

Different assessments on the intergenerational consequences of experiences of violence in World War II can be explained by the heterogeneity of the findings.