More than occasionally, I caused disagreements between my parents. To my mother, good manners and appropriate clothing, including bras and hairdos were very important, while to my father these were superficialities. The fact that I took seven years of piano lessons, despite my teacher Herr Schlesingers absolute lack of pedagogical talent and my lack of interest, was a result of my mother’s attitude that in the right kind of circles playing the piano was expected.
[…]
From early childhood on I had certain attitudes that came from my father: life is better in the country than in the city; dialect is better than High German, casual is better than formal, and friendships with people below the bourgeoisie are better than with people from the higher classes. My mother saw things differently. For example, she would not allow Marianne to associate with a certain girl because she was illegitimate and because her grandfather was the town gravedigger.
[…]
How can I describe my father without giving the impression that here is an old woman who has a crush on her daddy? Someone who knew him could perhaps make plausible, why he meant so much to so many people. There is nobody with whom one could compare him. Meanwhile, I also see his faults, and that because of him my life has not been easy. His intelligence was remarkable, and he could immerse himself in other peoples problems like no one else, and he did that often. We felt safe with him, even when we had to emigrate. He enabled many people to emigrate and so saved their lives.
Source: Wilma and Georg Iggers, Zwei Seiten der Geschichte. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002, p. 21ff (translation)