Background
Eleanor Ramrath Garner was born on May 25, 1930, in Philadelphia, United States. She is a daughter of an engeneer Josef and a homemaker Mathilde (maiden name, Rump) Ramrath.
Boston, MA 02215, United States
Eleanor Ramrath Garner attended Boston University.
2016
Eleanor Ramrath Garner with her granddaughter Ingrid Garner.
Eleanor Ramrath Garner with her husband Louis J. Garner.
Eleanor Ramrath Garner
Eleanor Ramrath Garner with her granddaughter Ingrid Garner.
2016
Eleanor Ramrath Garner with her granddaughter Ingrid Garner.
Boston, MA 02215, United States
Eleanor Ramrath Garner attended Boston University.
Eleanor Ramrath Garner with her husband Louis J. Garner.
Eleanor Ramrath Garner
Eleanor Ramrath Garner with her granddaughter Ingrid Garner.
(This dramatic autobiography of Eleanor Ramrath Garner rev...)
This dramatic autobiography of Eleanor Ramrath Garner reveals the daily struggles of growing up as a young American caught in World War II Berlin. This compelling story immerses readers in the first-hand account of surviving World War II as a civilian. It’s a story of trying to maintain stability, hope, and identity in a world of terror and contrasts, and it puts a very human face on the horrors of war, helping readers understand that each casualty of war is a person, not a number.
https://www.amazon.com/Eleanors-Story-American-Hitlers-Germany-ebook/dp/B078BBWBKX/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Eleanor+garner&qid=1575973009&sr=8-1
1999
Eleanor Ramrath Garner was born on May 25, 1930, in Philadelphia, United States. She is a daughter of an engeneer Josef and a homemaker Mathilde (maiden name, Rump) Ramrath.
Eleanor Ramrath Garner attended Boston University.
Eleanor Garner worked in Episcopal Community Services, as a grant writer and social worker in 1975-1980. She was also a copyright and permissions editor for college textbooks in Harcourt, Brace & Co., New York, New York, (1980-1993). From 1993 to 1999 she worked as a freelance permissions editor and copyright consultant for textbook publishers.
After a decade spent working in the publishing field as a permissions editor, Eleanor Ramrath Gamer took the suggestion of a colleague and wrote a book of her own: "Eleanor’s Story: An American Girl in Hitler’s Germany." The American-born daughter of German immigrants to the United States, eight-year-old Garner suddenly found herself an outsider in Germany after her parents returned there in 1939 after her father accepted a two-year-long engineering position in Berlin. Then war broke out, and the intended two years turned into a seven-year ordeal. Garner continued her childhood habit of keeping diaries and creating poetry albums as an outlet for her feelings. It would be to this material, as well as family photographs and letters, that Gamer returned to many years later when she set out to write her memoir, a process that proved to be both painful and cathartic.
In "Eleanor’s Story" Garner describes her efforts to avoid trouble while at the same time abhorring the Nazi culture of cruelty and prejudice. Like others, her family suffered hunger, experienced bombings by Allied forces, mourned the death of friends, survived the battle of Berlin, and withstood occupation by Soviet forces. These experiences comprised much of Gamer’s childhood, as she had reached her teen years by the time she returned to the United States.
For its truthfulness and evocative qualities, "Eleanor’s Story" garnered positive reviews. Heidi Borton, writing in Voice of Youth Advocates, praised the “immediacy and power in her recollections," judging the work to be “outstanding.” Borton also found Eleanor's relationship with her father to be of “particular interest.” Garner’s “story is rich in detail and insight,” praised Sandra Morton in Book Report. So too, Booklist reviewer Anne O’Malley called the memoir “stunning,” explaining, “This powerful coming-of-age tale is told with intensity and also the freshness of teenage years remembered.”
(This dramatic autobiography of Eleanor Ramrath Garner rev...)
1999For Garner, writing "Eleanor’s Story" proved to be a healing experience. She commented: “After completing my memoirs, I felt the forgiveness of the past. The child buried beneath the rubble of painful memories was restored to her rightful place in my personality. It has left me with a sense of wholeness. The split between the young girl and the older woman has been healed.”
For Garner, "Eleanor’s Story" is more than simply her own family’s story. “I see Eleanor’s Story not so much as a looking back at the past, but more as a collective remembrance, a common experience true on many different levels, one that not only reflects my personal history but the larger one as well,” she explained. “It’s a historical document, written from the unusual perspective of an American teen whose eye-witness account describes daily life under the Nazi regime and the struggle of civilians for survival. The book seeks to pull the reader into the heart of the war and how the young girl coped with the tragedies that unfolded around her, what sustained her, what gave her hope and strength to endure in the face of great odds. In essence, it’s a story about growing up too fast against the backdrop of monumental events in world history.
Quotations: "Wartime historical nonfiction tells the personal side of conflicts. These stories are of real people, how they lived, how they coped with the tragedy and horror of war. They speak for the masses and for the kind of society they lived under. These stories tell a truth that needs to be told."
Eleanor Garner is a founding member of Friends of Jung of San Diego, a member of Foothills Art Association, National League of American Pen Women, Art Alliance.
Eleanor Ramrath Garner married an accounting executive Louis J. Garner on September 22, 1951. They have children: James and Thomas.
Eleanor Ramrath Garner married an accounting executive Louis J. Gamer on September 22, 1951.
Ingrid Garner adapted for the stage and performed her grandmother's award-winning autobiography "Eleanor’s Story: An American Girl in Hitler’s Germany."
