Rita Reinecker, Dance with me, Papa

Life with(out) my celebrity father.

Synopsis

Rita’s earliest memory is that of a crowded Berlin, Germany, bomb shelter in 1944. She feels safe not because of the shelter, but because she is with her father. She is three years old.

Memory snippets describe life in Bissendorf, Germany in 1947, where her mother, Angela, helps support the family by going hamstern — begging local farmers for food; where Rita reacts to her mother’s overt preference for Hilmar, her little brother, who learns to use this to his advantage; and where her mother begins labeling Rita “nasty child.”

Rita’s father, a writer living in his own world of plot and dialogue, is emotionally unavailable. Wanting to be like her Papa, Rita looks forward to school and learning to write.

From 1948 until 1959, the family lives in Landstuhl, Germany. Rita’s father begins to gain fame with his writing. When she, at age eight, writes her first story for her Papa, he rewards her with money.

The 1950s are turbulent for Rita. Her father has reached celebrity status and travels extensively. In 1951, he moves to Hamburg permanently, but returns often for short visits.

Because this is how Rita knows her father — blowing in and out of her life like a warm wind —, her mother is able to keep the 1954 divorce secret. There are no fights, and he continues to visit: nothing changes. Her mother expresses her unhappiness with random beatings of Rita and Hilmar.

In 1955, Rita is sent to one of Germany’s most prestigious boarding schools, where she is “dismissed” after seven months. Feeling unloved by her father, Rita stops writing.

In 1957, while at a hair salon, Rita reads a gossip magazine and learns of her father’s affair with German movie star Hildegard Knef and of her parents’ divorce. This deepens the rift between Rita and her mother.

The late 1950s mark the years of Rita’s sexual awakening and curiosity: when lumpy fake breasts wander to her waist; when fear wins over the desire to “go all the way;” and the role of pigeons in that disappointing “first time.”

In 1958, escalating friction at home prompts Rita’s move to St. Moritz, Switzerland, where her father now lives. She is elated. She ends up, however, having little interaction with her father and spends most of her time with the housekeeper.

When Rita accompanies her father on a trip to Berlin, they stay with Hildegard Knef, whom she quickly despises. Her father then sends her to another girlfriend in Hamburg while he conducts his business in Berlin.

Four months after their return to Switzerland, Rita’s father suddenly decides to send her to a finishing school in Germany. Three months later, Rita learns of her father’s marriage to a woman three years her senior.

Of Rita’s four major relationships, only one is based on immediate, consuming, and mutual attraction — her first love, a fellow student in Munich. Wanting only to be loved, Rita hurls herself into the next three relationships: she succumbs to her need for romantic attention. In late 1966, she follows her American husband to the U.S.

In 1993, Rita travels to Germany to question her parents about her childhood, a trip in which she begins to unravel the tangle of her family dynamics, which eventually leads her to an epiphany about her mother, her father, and, most of all, to herself.