Westerwald is a wartime refuge and later point of return in Ingeborg Bauer’s story. Her family settles there after fleeing Berlin, and she describes a town where life seems oddly ordinary despite the war’s losses. When peace arrives, she leaves for Cologne; later, her mother and sisters return to Westerwald, leaving Ingeborg and Hans Reiter together. The place thus marks both the family’s attempt to find safety and Ingeborg’s separation from it.

Wartime Refuge

After Ingeborg’s father dies in a bombing raid, her mother takes the family away from Berlin. They first stay in the countryside with one of her mother’s brothers, but there is little food, and the girls face danger there. The family then moves to a small city in Westerwald, in Hesse, where Ingeborg’s mother is from. Westerwald is presented as a refuge reached after successive displacements, not as a place untouched by violence: the city has itself suffered three bombing raids, though none is described as devastating.

An Uneasy Postwar Life

Ingeborg recalls that the inhabitants of the city lived as though there were no war, even as many men had gone to the front and air raids had struck the town. Her mother works in a beer hall, while the daughters take occasional jobs in offices and factories or deliver messages; the youngest sometimes attend school. Despite this activity, Ingeborg finds life both boring and strange. The contrast between the town’s everyday routines and the surrounding wartime disruption helps explain why its apparent normality does not provide her with a lasting home.

Ingeborg’s Departure

When peace comes, Ingeborg cannot bear to remain. One morning, while her mother and sisters are away, she leaves Westerwald for Cologne. She tells Reiter that she was sure she would find him there, or someone like him. Her departure is therefore more than a change of residence: it breaks from the family’s settled postwar life and directs her toward Reiter, whom she has sought since their earlier meeting.

Return and Separation

Later, Ingeborg’s mother and sisters decide to return to the town in Westerwald where the family had settled. Their departure leaves Ingeborg and Reiter alone again. Ingeborg welcomes the prospect of being together in peace, and her health improves considerably from that point; when the date set by the English doctor arrives, she is better than ever. Westerwald’s return to the narrative consequently marks a shift in the couple’s circumstances, even though the town itself remains offstage.

Narrative Significance

Westerwald is defined through movement to and from it rather than through a detailed portrait of its streets or buildings. It is at once a place of family shelter, constrained routine, and postwar return, while Ingeborg’s choice to leave it sets her on a different course from her mother and sisters. The narrative’s brief treatment of the town also sustains a contrast between historical upheaval and the dullness Ingeborg experiences in its aftermath: survival and ordinary work do not, for her, amount to a life she can accept.