Eleanor Roosevelt in Imbach

Leverkusen 1945, die frisch verwitwete amerikanische First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt mietet sich incognito eine Unterkunft bei Marlene Himmelreich. Die 60-jährige Eleanor ist gerade Witwe geworden und weiß noch nicht so recht, wie ihr Leben ohne das Weiße Haus weitergehen wird. Sie bringt die junge Deutsche zum Reden. Sie will verstehen, warum so viele junge Menschen sich so für das Dritte Reich begeistert haben. Der Roman wirft ein neues Licht auf die jungen Frauen im "Lebensraum Ost", die sich selber als "Aktivistinnen" bezeichnen und genauso brutal waren wie die deutschen Männer dort.

The grandson of Marlene Himmelreich, Helge Feynsinn still wants to go into the teaching profession to finally become an adult and drags himself through his legal clerkship to a comprehensive school in the focal point of Cologne. Together with his girlfriend, he comes across a mysterious photos and notes on the life story of his grandmother Marlene Himmelreich.

We follow the life of Marlene Himmelreich from school to her departure for Krakow, Poland. As a young woman, she was one of the secretaries, nurses, teachers and kindergarten teachers who moved to the "Lebensraum Ost". In Poland, Marlene, the convinced member of the BdM, is confronted with the brutal behaviour of the Germans towards the Polish population. Her friend Karl is a chemist at the Farbenwerke Bayer von Leverkusen, which carried out experiments on people during the Third Reich in Auschwitz as part of the union of IG Farben.

In 2015 Helge Feynsinn is in Budapest, when the war refugees are allowed to move further north. Back in Cologne he is involved in refugee aid. When his girlfriend Katharina breaks up with him once again, everyday school life becomes unbearable and the difficult relationship with his parents catches up with him, he first takes refuge in brutal computer games and sets off in search of himself and his family history.