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Susanna Weiss
Fictional Character
In the Presence of Mine Enemies
POD: c. 1940
Type of Appearance: Direct POV
Nationality: Germany
Religion: Judaism (secret)
Date of Birth: 1970s
Occupation: Professor of Medieval English
Professional Affiliations: Friedrich Wilhelm University

Susanna Weiss was a professor of Medieval English at the Friedrich Wilhelm University. She was also a secret Jew living in Berlin in the Greater German Reich. She and the Stutzmans were present when Heinrich and Lise Gimpel told their 10-year-old daughter Alicia that she, too, was Jewish.

If such a thing in the Greater German Reich were possible, Susanna would have been an ardent feminist. She had little patience for the more sexist notions of Nazism, refusing to be a mere Hausfrau. In 2010, despite the protests of her department chair, Franz Oppenhoff, Susanna attended the annual meeting of the Medieval English Association in London. By coincidence the British Union of Fascists was also having a convention. Susanna found this meeting more interesting and so was present when Charlie Lynton was democratically elected the head of the party.

Susanna's attitude and her experiences in London made her a target of Oppenhoff who frequently attempted to undermine Susanna's credibility in the eyes of her colleagues. Susanna refused to be cowed, although she did walk a moderate line over the next year so as to avoid raising the suspicions of the state. Internally, she was surprised by the changes instituted by reformer Führer Heinz Buckliger. When some of her students asked her her opinion of the speech given by Berlin Gauleiter Rolf Stolle, she remained neutral. When Oppenhoff asked her to give a report on Buckliger's changes (without warning her ahead of time), she was able to issue a factually concise and non-committal statement.

When the State Committee for the Salvation of the Greater German Reich (spearheaded by Reichsführer-SS Lothar Prützmann) staged its attempted Putsch against Buckliger, Susanna headed out to the streets and to the home of Gauleiter Stolle, who'd been able to keep himself on the air with the help of a free Berlin televisor station. She ran into Heinrich Gimpel and his colleague Willi Dorsch, and became part of the crowd that thwarted the SS' attempt to arrest Stolle. She was also present when the Wehrmacht, siding with Buckliger, arrived to stop the SS. Susanna, Gimpel, and Dorsch surged forward to meet the SS panzers that had arrived. She rode a tank to the headquarters of Lothar Prützmann, and was among the first to learn that he'd committed suicide.

In 2012, Susanna joined the Gimpels when they told their second daughter, Francesca, that she was Jewish.

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