I learned from my father that we were well off and we should be grateful. He wanted us to observe the people who were working hard in the fields. During the last two years we were there he wanted Marianne and me to work for a week in the fields tying sheaves of grain, from six in the morning until six at night, for the same wages as the laborers. During the two-hour lunch break, the women who worked alongside us went home, cooked a meal and took care of their families. My father had no sympathy for the women from our circles who suffered from depressions which for some reason were quite common. “Look at the workers,” he would say, “they have no time for such nonsense”.
Source: Wilma and Georg Iggers, Two Lives in Uncertain Times, New York: Berghahn Books, 2006, p. 6