Suzanne Glass: The Hatmaker's Granddaughter

About the author:
Like many writers, Suzanne Glass has used her life to feed her art, with fascinating results. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, she earned a Bachelor's in education and French at Cambridge and a Masters in simultaneous interpreting at the University of Zurich. As a journalist, the London-based Glass was noted for her high-profile interviews with Israeli prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Benjamin Netanyahu and former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani. For several years she wrote a lifestyle column called "Through the Looking Glass" for the Financial Times. Her first novel, The Interpreter, inspired by her early career, was credited in the film of the same name starring Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn. After publishing a second novel, The Sculptors, Glass drew on her family's experiences during and after World War II to write her first play, The Milliner. As the drama began its off-Broadway run at Classic Stage Company's Greenwich Village space, Glass shared her memories of the relative who inspired it.

I awoke from a dream on a long-haul flight from London to Chicago and started scribbling random thoughts on a paper serviette. Three hours and a stack of paper serviettes later, I realized what I had done: I had inadvertently written the first draft of my stage play The Milliner.

Like much of my work, it is partly drawn from reality. My grandfather was a hatmaker, a pianist, a linguist and—above all—a Berliner. Cultured, handsome and creative, like so many of his fellow German Jews in the Nazi era, he was forced to leave his homeland for London to live amongst the Brits. He thought of his new countrymen as "gray-faced introverts with defective taste chromosomes." He never enjoyed being among them and they, in turn, never exactly welcomed him with open arms. His accent was too German. They were confused. Was he a German or a Jew?

Throughout his life, my grandfather remained in love with Germany. Just like Wolfgang, the milliner and protagonist in my play, he longed to return to Berlin after the war, and did just that. In Wolfgang's case, the consequences of a Jew going back to Germany and falling in love with an Aryan cabaret singer were cataclysmic, even in 1946. And yet he was unable to stay away from the land of Brahms and Beethoven, Goethe and Schiller.

Perhaps it was from my grandfather that I learned my love of literature, or perhaps it was from my father, who talked to me in rhyme as a child and taught me to enjoy the rhythm of words and the joy and power of language. Whatever the cause, language became my passion. As a simultaneous interpreter in the EU, I regurgitated other people's words. As a journalist and interviewer, I interpreted and redistributed the thoughts and ideas of the famous. But I finally found my own voice as an author, creating characters who would speak my words, convey my views and come to life in the pages of my novels.

Writing a play was the furthest thing from my mind. Perhaps I should say, "I never dreamt I'd write a play!" The characters just started dictating their own destiny and yelling at each other in my head.

After the war, the lead character, Wolfgang, goes back to Berlin despite the death of his mother at the hands of the Nazis, and he ends up in 1948 as the first Jew to be put on trial in post-war Germany. I knew when I wrote the play that the subject matter was likely to be controversial. How could the Germans try the Jews in 1948? But I felt compelled to write The Milliner.

Three weeks into the off-Broadway run, I am still excited and moved to hear the cast speak the words I wrote on that flight to Chicago. The reviewers have been kind, and perhaps there are productions in London, Berlin and Tel Aviv to look forward to. Oh, and there's also the film script, which is well underway.