Bella Fromm (20 December 1890 – 9 February 1972) was a German journalist and author of Jewish heritage, who lived in exile in the United States during World War II. She is best known as the author of Blood and Banquets (1943), an account of her time as diplomatic correspondent for Berlin newspapers during the Weimar Republic, and of her experiences during the first five years of the Third Reich. Although this book was published as an authentic contemporary diary and is frequently cited as such, recent research suggests that Fromm wrote it in the U.S. after leaving Germany.
Life
Fromm was born to Siegfried and Greta Fromm and into a family of prosperous wine merchants of Jewish heritage. She was born in Nuremberg and grew up in Kitzingen in Lower Franconia. The Fromm family was originally from Spain, but lived in Germany for 500 years until the Holocaust in Germany. By her own account, her family were in good standing with the Bavarian royal family and other leaders of Bavarian high society. Her father died when she was a child, and her mother died in 1918. In 1911 she married a Jewish businessman, Max Israel, with whom she had a daughter, Grete-Ellen (known as “Gonny” in Fromm’s writing), and two grandchildren. After her divorce from Israel, she married Karl Julius Steuermann, from whom she was also later divorced. Her third marriage was to Peter F. Welles, a physician.
During World War I, Fromm worked for the German Red Cross and was decorated by the King of Bavaria. After her mother’s death, she inherited the family fortune and was able to devote her time to social work. The Inflation of 1923, however, destroyed her wealth and she was forced to look for work. Using family contacts, she was employed by the Ullstein press, a major Jewish-owned publishing house, and worked for the Ullstein newspapers, notably the Berliner Zeitung (“BZ”) and the Vossische Zeitung, a leading Berlin liberal newspaper. Initially confined to traditional roles for female journalists such as fashion and social gossip, Fromm proved talented and ambitious and soon graduated to writing about politics and diplomacy.
Journalist
As a diplomatic correspondent for the Ullstein papers, Fromm became a well-known figure in Berlin high society. Among those with whom she may have been acquainted were Frederick Birchall (The New York Times correspondent and editor), Aristide Briand (French Prime Minister), Vittorio Cerruti (Italian Ambassador), William E. Dodd (U.S. Ambassador), André François-Poncet (French Ambassador), Ernst Hanfstaengl (friend of Adolf Hitler and his first foreign press chief), Louis P. Lochner (veteran American correspondent), Otto Meissner (head of the Presidential Chancellery, and later of Hitler’s Chancellery), Konstantin von Neurath (German Foreign Minister), Sir Eric Phipps (British Ambassador), Leni Riefenstahl (filmmaker), Hjalmar Schacht (Economics Minister) and Kurt von Schleicher (Chancellor before Hitler). By her own account, Fromm met Hitler, Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess and Joseph Goebbels several times at diplomatic events, but was not friendly with any of them.
Fromm portrayed herself as a leading figure in Berlin's political society; she was on intimate terms with ministers, editors, and diplomats, and knew of confidential information about many of them. She makes much of her close friendship with Schleicher and his wife and writes of her attempts to warn Schleicher that President Paul von Hindenburg was about to remove him as Chancellor in favor of Hitler. It is notable, however, that two of the best-known contemporary accounts of politics and the press in Berlin at this time do not mention Fromm. This including: William Shirer’s Berlin Diary, and the memoirs of Hitler’s press chief Otto Dietrich, Zwölf Jahre mit Hitler
As an outspoken liberal (and because of her Jewish heritage), Fromm's position on German affairs became increasingly more precarious after the Nazis came to power in 1933. She was protected to some extent by her friendship with leading foreign diplomats and also with conservative members of Hitler’s government such as Schacht and von Neurath. In 1934 she sent her daughter to the United States. After 1934 she was no longer able to write under her own name, but her journalism continued to appear anonymously. She continued to be invited to diplomatic and social events.