In its Introductory speech at the German Academy German scholar Eckhard Heftrich described the uncompromising rejection of the Nazi regime in his parents’ house as a biographical stroke of luck. Heftrich was born in 1928, grew up in the Third Reich and experienced its agony as an adolescent. He belonged to the age cohort of those rescued who had their own, conscious experiences of the German catastrophe, but were no longer consumed by it.