Mildred Harnack: An American Graduate Student at the Center of Berlin’s Underground Resistance to Hitler

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Kathy Ryan

Rebecca Donner

Mildred Fish was a Milwaukee native who earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UW-Madison in the mid-1920s and taught in the English department, as well as writing for the Wisconsin State Journal. She and her husband moved to Berlin in the 1930s and Fish-Harnack ultimately became a leader of the largest underground resistance group in Berlin during Hitler’s rule. But her contributions had been largely forgotten by the general public until her great-great niece, Rebecca Donner, wrote All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days. Donner will speak about Fish-Harnack, her award winning book, and her research for the UW Law School's annual Mildred Fish-Harnack Human Rights and Democracy Lecture.

press release: The 2022 Mildred Fish-Harnack Human Rights and Democracy Lecture features Rebecca Donner, "Mildred Harnack: An American Graduate Student at the Center of Berlin’s Underground Resistance to Hitler"

The lecture will take place in the Alumni Lounge of the Pyle Center. A Zoom option is also available.

The Mildred Fish-Harnack Human Rights and Democracy Lecture is named after a Milwaukee native who was a UW–Madison student in the 1920s. While living in Germany, Fish-Harnack assisted in the escape of German Jews and political dissidents. She is the only American civilian executed under the personal instruction of Adolf Hitler, for her resistance to the Nazi regime. This lectureship is designed to promote a greater understanding of human rights and democracy, and enrich international studies at UW-Madison. The lecture brings to campus a person who contributes to the cause of human rights through academic scholarship and/or active leadership. UW-Madison's Office of International Studies and Programs established the lecture in 1994 and coordinated it until the Human Rights Program was created.

Rebecca Donner is the author of the instant New York Times bestseller All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days, a bold work of deeply researched nonfiction about her great-great-aunt Mildred Harnack, an American graduate student who became a leader of the largest underground resistance group in Berlin during Hitler’s regime. All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days was recently selected as a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography and the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography. It was named one of the best books of 2021 by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, Publishers Weekly, New York Post, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and The Economist. It has received high praise from Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Kai Bird (“A stunning literary achievement”), NBCC-award winning biographer Ruth Franklin (“Epic in sweep, written with a novelist’s attention to detail and a historian’s perspective on social and political forces”), and New Yorker literary critic James Wood (“Donner’s story reads with the speed of a thriller, the depth of a novel, and the urgency of an essay, like some deeply compelling blend of Alan Furst and W.G. Sebald”).  

Rebecca was a 2018-19 fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York, is a two-time Yaddo fellow, and has twice been awarded fellowships by Ucross Foundation. She has taught at Wesleyan University, Columbia University, and Barnard College. Rebecca Donner’s other books include two critically acclaimed works of fiction.