All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler

by Rebecca Donner

And Otto? He was Mutterseelenallein. The literal translation is “mother-soul-alone.” A man suffering from this type of sadness is so lonely he feels as if his mother’s soul has been ripped out of his own. When Mildred speaks the German word, it is so much richer and more wretched than any English word for “sad.”