Portrait

Influenced by war since birth, Hanna Jansen has devoted her life to healing and restoring the human spirit.

Hanna Schötker (maiden name) grew up in Osnabrück, Germany, in the years following World War II. Though her childhood was a time of great depravation, she has many positive memories of it. "We children were free-spirited and loved the outdoors," she says. "To us, the ruins [of the war] were a world where there was adventure to experience. lt was a time that challenged my imagination." Hanna was a very serious yet often dreamy child, whose father, an art teacher and painter, supported her interest in theater and books.

After attending the University of Osnabrück from 1966-1969, Hanna went to Cologne for teacher training. She taught at various schools in Cologne, and in 1980 she began to train other teachers. In 1984 she became the moderator of in-service training of teachers and worked as an organizer for the City Government of Cologne. From 1985-1988 she was headmistress at the Comprehensive School of Cologne. Then, in 1988, marriage and the start of her family took her away from teaching, and she spent the next ten years writing lesson units and texts in literature and German language instruction for a large textbook publisher. She also spent time as an actress in the City Theatre of Osnabrück.

Marrying later and life, Hanna and Reinhold Jansen, a pediatrician, shared a dream of giving a home to children who did not have one. In 1987, they adopted their first child, a four-year-old son from Africa. Since then, the Jansen's have taken in twelve children, most of them refugees from war-torn countries.

In 2000, Hanna began writing again, and has since published four children's books. She is currently working on her first novel for adults. Her projects deal with themes of prejudice, racism, and exclusion and raise readers' empathy for victims of cruelty. Her book Über tausend Hügel wandere ich mit Dir (Over a Thousand Hills I Walk with You), a young adult novel based on the real-life experiences of her adopted daughter Jeanne d'Arc Umubyeyi, won Germany's prestigious Buxtehuder Bulle Literary Award in 2003. Translated into English by Elizabeth D. Crawford, Over a Thousand Hills I Walk with You is being published by Carolrhoda Books, a division of Lerner Publishing Group, in 2006.

Bibliography

• 2001 Der gestohlene Sommer, Thienemann, Carlsen Tb
• 2002 Über tausend Hügel wandere ich mit dir, Thienemann, Knaur Tb, 2003 winner of the Buxtehuder Bulle, award for best novel for young adults
• 2002 Ich heirate Felixa, Thienemann
• 2003 "Simon" in Mensch sucht Sinn, Gabriel
• 2004 Gretha auf der Treppe, Thienemann
• 2006 Participation at PEN "World Voices" Festival in New York
• 2006 Over a Thousand Hills I Walk with You, Foreword Magazine's Book of the Year Award
• 2007 Over a Thousand Hills I Walk with You, Independent Publisher Book Award, Gold Medal in the Multicultural Fiction – Children’s category
• 2007 Over a Thousand Hills I Walk with You, PMA Ben Franklin Award in the Juvenile-Young Adult’s Fiction category
• Named to the ALA Best Books for Young Adults (BBYA) 2007 list
• Named to the 2007 United States Board on Books for Young People
  (USBBY)/Children’s Book Council (CBC) list
• Named to the 2007 Edition of the best Children’s Books of the Year as a title with Outstanding Merit; Children’s Book Committee at Bank Street College

Questions and Answers with Hanna Jansen

Q: Tell me about your childhood.

A: My early childhood is imprinted with the aftermath of the Nazi regime. I was born just after World War II, during a very cold winter when the water pipes froze, there was no coal for heating, and there was hardly any food. When I was born, I already had a sister and a brother, six and seven years older than I. My father had returned the year before, starving and ill, from a prisoner of war camp in Russia. He took a job as a teacher in another city. He was an art teacher and painter.
In spite of all the difficulties and material needs we had, my mother understood how to shape our life so that there were high points. I remember evenings when we were all gathered around the kitchen table and my mother would read books to us. I learned to read by myself very early and devoured everything I could get my hands on. Just as early I also began to write-little stories, poems, and even scenes that I performed on the street with the neighbor children.
For me, the family was a place of security and belonging. I believe these experiences awakened in me the wish for my own large family!

Q: How did you and your husband decide to start adopting war orphans?

A: My husband, who is a pediatrician, came from a very large family with ten children. Each of us had always dreamed of giving a home to children who didn't have one. I had a son from a first marriage; my husband had none. But we were completely united in wanting to raise children in our lives. When we turned to the adoption agencies, we were told that we had hardly any chance because we were too old (I was forty at that time). We were disappointed, but we resigned ourselves to it. We were happy with each other and we both had professions in which we could be there for children.
That our dream has now been fulfilled sometimes seems to us like an act of providence. The first child, a four-year-old son, came to us in 1987 when his mother could not care for him. After him we took in three institution children and the baby of a Philippine woman who was seriously ill. Then, due to the horrific events in Africa, our family "exploded" in the nineties. We took in Fatia, a civil war refugee from Somalia. Next, one by one, six children from Rwanda who had lost their families during the genocide joined us. Most of our children were older, in some cases teenaged, when they came to us and had a sorrowful history. But over time they acclimated themselves to their new homeland and have mostly overcome their bad experiences. They stick together and go their own way.
The reason why my husband and I have kept finding the courage to "blindly" incorporate a child standing on our doorstep into our life is something like love at first sight. That we can give the children a second chance at life means happiness for us.

Q: How did you first learn about Jeanne and her situation?

A: In April 1996 we got a call from the African Mission in Cologne, which had already placed twins from Rwanda with us the year before. They asked if we would be willing to take on yet another Rwandan orphan. Jeanne, at that time ten years old, came to us with her aunt. Since her aunt could not look after her, Jeanne decided very quickly to stay with us. It wasn't long until Jeanne let us know what she had seen with her own eyes: the murder of her mother and her brother, as well as other horrific acts. Nightmares drove her out of bed at night. As soon as she could speak a little German, she began to tell us about her experiences, mostly to me, because we were very close from the beginning. She said to me later that she had the feeling that she had always known me. How such a thing is possible will probably remain hidden.

Q: What inspired you to tell Jeanne's story in Over a Thousand Hills I Walk with You?

A: Jeanne and I had already been discussing it together for four years. The older she became, the more we tried to see her detailed memories in the whole context of the genocide and to draw on other sources, in order to "understand" the connections better.
The genocide was continually ignored by Western media and Western policy, not only while it was happening but also for a long time afterward. Many people in this country did not even know where Rwanda was. This gave me the idea of writing a book in which the reader could develop a close emotional connection to a child who was subjected to such a dreadful experience. I also wanted to correct the picture of an "uncivilized Africa," so that no one could get the idea that the fearful crimes were committed by so-called "savages."
Moreover, writing the book meant for me personally coping with the terrible events that, through the children, also have become a part of our personal history. I wanted to draw Jeanne's parents and siblings out of the void of namelessness so that they could be seen as persons who were known and loved, proxies for the other millions of dead. It was also Jeanne's wish to give the victims a face and a voice. In addition I wanted to tell something about hope and the strength to live. Our conversations for the book were labors of memory and grief; they helped Jeanne to take leave and to open herself to her new life.

Q: How involved was Jeanne in the writing process?

A: Jeanne was not directly involved in the writing process, but she was my most important source. I kept asking her questions: how something tasted, how something looked, and how the life of her family and the people of Rwanda had been organized at that time. Jeanne is a relatively matter-of-fact person, with a memory that is clearly above average, so in that respect she was a very reliable witness. It was hard for Jeanne to return to the good memories of her family that, until then, she had split off from herself. To feel what she had lost called up enormous grief in her, which I had to cushion. Sometimes I could only hold her tight, not knowing how to comfort her. Nevertheless, this part of the work was very important. In order to be able to tell the story vividly and suspensefully as a novel, however, I had to unfurl my own powers of imagination and invent truthfully. Jeanne and I complemented each other in a marvelous way. With all that I devised for plot, I ended up being intuitively very close to the reality she experienced. Jeanne checked the finished chapters to give me feedback. My intuitions were sometimes so close to the truth that I would invent something Jeanne had in fact experienced. Some days she would come to me with the manuscript and say, "Mama, today you remembered something that I had forgotten."

Q: What did you wish to accomplish by publishing the book?

A: I want this to be a book against indifference and forgetting. Listeners often cry at my readings. The book allows readers to imagine all dimensions of the genocide, and the resulting closeness the reader feels to Jeanne's character awakens the wish to become more concerned with what happened in Rwanda, perhaps even to become active. In this respect, the book offers a contribution to the politics of peace-in an entirely different way from the many important nonfiction books on the subject that have come onto the market. Only when we allow such an event to enter our feelings will the mechanism of repression be breached. Natural catastrophes appear to move people more strongly than the catastrophes that originate with human beings. Yet humans deploy powers just as destructive. Human catastrophes could perhaps be avoidable if we could deal with the causes and give help in coping with the traumas. It is possible to change the conditions that are the foundation for such catastrophes. The international community must look clearly and not adjust what it sees according to its own interests at the time. Although I think that it is a book outside of any category, I decided to publish it first with a children's publisher because I wish that young people, who have their future before them, would be more intensely aware of the happenings in this world. I do not want them to close their eyes to the constant violations of human rights, and I want to prepare them for a world without military force. With the help of the book, I have the feeling of participating in a kind of network for peace. There is an African saying: When the spider's threads join together, they can hold a lion.

Q: What message do you hope your readers will emerge with after reading Jeanne's story?

A: Life is precious! We must handle it wisely and should never give up.