Born March 31, 1935, in Gelsenkirchen, the center of Germany’s industrial Ruhr valley, Margaret P. Robinson was destined for a childhood engulfed by World War II and its aftermath. She survived and for the rest of her 86 years chose a life of adventure and civic duty.
She had already traversed the globe and was married with three children by the time her path led to Hanover, but it was from here that her impact took root and spread for four decades.
“What motivated her was a commitment to community,” recalled her friend and Professor of German Studies Emerita from Smith College Jocelyne Kolb, in September. “She took things very much to heart. She carried a sense of responsibility and wanted to make things better.”
Predeceased by her husband, Mike Robinson, an American ex-foreign service officer nearly 30 years her senior, Robinson died Aug. 24, 2021, in Concord where she spent the previous six years after suffering a stroke.
Their three children, Leslie, Kim and Patrick, extended family and friends gathered for a memorial service in May with the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Upper Valley, of which Robinson was a founding member.
Leslie Robinson, Margaret’s oldest and a writer from Shoreline, Wash., delivered the eulogy sharing events from her mother’s formative years.
An infant when Germany’s rearmament program began in earnest at the Krupp factory a few miles away, Robinson was only 8 years old when fighting engulfed her hometown. In 1943, after phosphorous bombs demolished the roof and top floor of the apartment building where she had lived since birth, her family fled about 75 miles north to the countryside, taking refuge in a relative’s home.
“She spoke of one particular dogfight right above the farmhouse,” Leslie said in the eulogy. “Two Allied bombers were shot down, too near the ground for their parachutes to open. The local mayor was supposed to collect the dog tags of the 12 Canadians, but couldn’t face it, so Mom and her cousin did.”
In post-war Germany, survival took priority over education. “There were periods her family existed on turnips,” Leslie said. When grade schools finally reopened, all children were required to walk through an exhibit displaying the realities of the Holocaust in graphic detail.
“Mom was in such disbelief after her class walked through, that she went back alone later that day to march herself through the exhibit again. That experience marked her for the rest of her life. She carried enormous German guilt.”
“I remember one time Mom asked me and my then-boyfriend, who also had a German parent, ‘Aren’t you both embarrassed to be German?’ ”
In a phone interview, Leslie described her mother as “compartmentalized. She didn’t talk about the war too often. She certainly didn’t bring it up. I didn’t know a whole lot until I got old enough to start asking questions as a teenager. She never really liked talking about it.”
Robinson’s internal conflict may not have been detectable, but her work ethic and dedication to both Germany and the U.S. were undeniable, ultimately earning her a Bundesverdienstkreuz, or Federal Cross of Merit, Germany’s top national award for civilians.
Created in 1951, the Order of Merit is awarded to “deserving men and women of the German people and of foreign countries” for “achievements that served the rebuilding of the country in the fields of political, socio-economic, and intellectual activity.”
Konrad Kenkel, associate professor of German emeritus from Dartmouth and married to Kolb, worked with Robinson during her years as the administrative assistant in the college’s German department, and the families became close over the decades.
“She really learned the lessons of German history and applied what she learned,” said Kenkel, also a German native. “She had an awareness of what had happened. She was also an extremely hard worker and embodied the idea of a work ethic.”
It wasn’t just her job that received Robinson’s focused attention. “She was a ridiculously hard worker,” Leslie said in a phone interview. She can still envision her mother scraping every bit of ice and snow from the family’s driveway in Hanover, including paths and sidewalks. “You’ve heard of German haus fraus cleaning the sidewalks? My mother would manicure our driveway, even in the winter.”
She never passed on the chance for adventure. In 1974, Robinson and her husband moved from Princeton, N.J., where they had settled in the early ’60s and had three children, to Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the Bavarian Alps, intending to teach the kids to ski and to speak German.
For a year, they lived in the same town that hosted the 1936 Winter Olympics, and skied all over Germany, Austria and Italy, the entire family packed into a “red VW bug with all the skis on top,” recalled Leslie in an recent email.
The siblings attended school locally, but classes were taught in English and most students were American. Ultimately, their parents’ attempt to kick-start bi-lingualism failed, but the year abroad instilled a love of travel and outdoor adventure. Younger sister “Kim is still poetry on skis,” Leslie said.
“My parents loved to travel and exposed us all to it at an early age,” Patrick emailed in September, having recently returned from a trip to Portugal. “We traveled by car, train, ship, and plane. Those experiences have definitely helped shape who we all are today.”
After the year overseas, the family decided to move to Hanover, based on “schools and skiing,” Kolb said.
“New Jersey was too flat,” Leslie said she remembered hearing as one of the primary reasons, “and my parents loved college towns.”
Robinson applied to be a research assistant in the German Department, and in short time, became its administrator, “a development of far-reaching consequence,” wrote Bruce Duncan, Dartmouth professor of German Language emeritus, in an informal history of the department.
“Her education had been interrupted by the war,” Duncan wrote, “but she was comfortable in higher academic and social circles, even diplomatic ones, and completely bilingual. She had a real feel for language and was the first person I turned to for help with a difficult translation.”
“She lent real class, as well as administrative skills, to the department. Her acumen and attention to detail gave us all kinds of credit with the powers-that-be.”
Kenkel echoed the sentiment. “She was very well-read. She always had a book in her hand — German or English — she was completely bi-lingual.”
“Smart, practical and efficient,” added Kolb. “She had a wonderful sense of humor, with a very quick wit.”
Duncan’s history relates how the department “soon grew spoiled by Margaret’s competence. The regular evening showings of German films to the broader community started out as a project shared by the faculty members, but before long, we quietly stepped aside when she started selecting and presenting the offerings.”
“The tradition of a departmental party at the end of the term was already an established tradition, but when she took over the roles of planner and hostess, it became the high point of the college’s social season. And because she knew all aspects of the department’s undertakings, students turned to her as readily as to faculty for academic advice.”
“She was a presence on campus,” Kolb said, “everyone knew her. And faculty and administrators would ask us earlier and earlier each year for the date we were having our party,” an affair that brought together students and professors from across the college.
She was the natural choice as the first administrator of the Harris German Visiting Professorship Program when it was established between Dartmouth and the Federal Republic of Germany in 1987, a joint undertaking that brings German scholars and professionals from all fields to Dartmouth.
Staying anywhere from a month to a term, visitors relied on Robinson for all logistics.
“Margaret was the perfect person to explain American culture; she was bi-cultural,” said Kolb. “She would suggest musical or cultural events, places to visit, and schools for their kids. She kept them happy and arranged everything.”
According to Duncan’s department history, Robinson officially retired from the department administrator position after 25 years, but continued working part-time, running the Harris program for a few more years.
“Margaret had a number of offers to move into higher administrative positions, but she chose to keep the flexibility she needed to care for Mike,” recalled Duncan in a September email.
One of the Harris program visitors is believed to have nominated her for the Bundesverdientkreuz for her work building transatlantic relationships. The German ambassador flew from New York for the event.
In her free time, Robinson was an active member of the League of Women Voters and sat on the board of the regional Visiting Nurses Association. With no singing background, she joined the Handel Society of Dartmouth College.
In her later years, she moved first into a smaller home in Norwich, then to The Birches in Concord after the stroke in 2015 left her mostly incapacitated.
Her spirit and dedication flickered brightly to the very end. Leslie recalled how her mother “continued to read the newspaper every day, retaining nothing, but firm in her belief that that’s what a citizen of the world does.”
L.A. Wetzel can be reached at LAWetzel@proton.me.