The family traced their German roots back at least two centuries. Ellen's great grandfather had been granted citizenship (at a time when German Jews did not automatically qualify for it) because he had fought valiantly in the armies confronting Napoleon at the start of the nineteenth century. There was pride in German culture, and before 1933 not too much reason to consider themselves politically or socially separated from other Germans. Even though she would spend most of her life living in a Spanish speaking country, when looking for literary quotes it was to Schiller and Goethe that she would always instinctively turn. At the same time, her Social Democratic mother would have shunned the shrill nationalism that had become a feature of political life since 1919.