My Mother’s Loves

A story of longing – Peter Schneider’s moving overture to his mother

For decades, her letters written during and after the Second World War in the old German font Sütterlin lay unread in a cabinet. When Peter Schneider finally decides to have his mother’s letters transcribed, he comes upon an incredible story – one involving an open love triangle.

While he, his sister and his mother waited for the war to end in a little Bavarian village, his mother was somewhere else in her thoughts and in her letters: with a distant husband, a composer and conductor – and with her lover, a famous German opera director, who made quite a splash in post-war Germany with his sensational productions.

Through her letters and his reminiscences, Peter Schneider reconstructs his childhood and sketches a complex portrait of a fascinating woman who followed her passions without regard for the conventions of the time.