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Margarethe Dannecker Blog Entry |
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March 28, 2022, 2:34:30 AM May 29, 2023, 2:01:04 AM 3/28/22: r/SketchDaily theme, "Tattoos." ...I have also a bonus today! Normally I save these for Free Draw Friday, but I got an early start on her and my other art is atrocious so I thought I'd share. This week's character portrait attempt from my weird anthro alternate-reality WWII storyline is Margarethe "Gret" Dannecker. She's the stepdaughter of a labor camp commandant and she really, really, REALLY hates him, so she actively participates in a prisoner escape plot that leaves him dead; she even has the leader of the escape steal her stepfather's SS-Degen (dress sword) from his body as a trophy. She uses this to fight Nazis later on. There might be something Freudian about that. Gret is young adult through most of the storyline but is just a little thing, not even five feet tall, and has a rather childlike voice so she's easily mistaken for a kid; for this reason I decided to make her a white Pomeranian. WOW did I have a time trying to draw her hair. She tends to wear long, fancy, rather out-of-date dresses and as you can see from her appearance she's super-duper Nordic, which makes the other resistance members distrust her. There'll be more about her later in my art Tumblr and Toyhou.se. TUMBLR EDIT: All righty, and whoo boy. You'll notice I already said Gret Dannecker hates her stepfather, former camp commandant Obersturmbannführer (Lt. Col.) Ernst Dannecker (known as Dannecker the Devil or Devil Dannecker to his inmates), and I can't go into more detail other than to say she has pretty damn good reason. The entire dynamic between these two is eeerrgghhh. So when Gret notices one of the inmates starting to pay attention to her every time Dannecker helps her out of the car and walks her across the camp yard into the building (it's this really weird Take Your Daughter To Your Labor Camp Day thing with him), she seizes on this as an opportunity to get out of a nasty situation. She'll use that inmate to help kill her stepfather. Here's the thing. The inmate in question is Josef Diamant, a former jeweler turned document forger (he wears a yellow and green star to mark him as a Jewish criminal), and it turns out that HE'S just come up with a plan to use HER to help him kill Dannecker and escape the camp. So in effect, the two of them independently plot to use each other for pretty much the same reason. But neither of them is aware of this. Doesn't matter. Gret and Diamant start sending each other subtle signals every time she walks through the camp; he even manages to sneak her a ring he made out of random materials he found around the camp. When one day she shows up in a yellow dress with green ribbons, Diamant realizes she's down for whatever he might be planning to do. (This incident flies right over Dannecker's head, but attracts the attention of the kapo, Isaak Schindel, who smacks Diamant around a little bit demanding to know what he's up to, since Gret NEVER EVER mixes the colors of her clothes like that. Diamant doesn't rat out himself or Gret though he does ask Schindel how the hell he'd know what clothing combos Gret wears, has he been ogling her? Schindel doesn't like that. He jams his club into Diamant's gut but has to back off.) Dannecker's camp isn't a death camp but there are still selections and people die there rather frequently anyway. Gret persuades her stepdad to let her tour the crematorium (Dannecker isn't used to her being so amenable and agrees, despite probably thinking, "Damn, this is weird"); while he's briefly distracted inside making sure there's nothing too unpleasant for her to see, she signals Diamant to meet with her later behind the building. Security surrounding Gret is rather lax given that the guards and now Dannecker pretty much trust her with everything, so she manages to sneak off and meets Diamant for the first time. Diamant thinks she's infatuated with him; Gret thinks Diamant thinks she's infatuated with him. Hahahahaha. *cough* He starts pleading his case that if he can't escape the camp soon, Dannecker will end up killing him, as the commandant has a very nasty grudge against him since Diamant stopped him from beating another prisoner. (Dannecker departed, shocked at this impudence, only to return, shoot the prisoner, then chase down and corner Diamant and put the gun to his head and pull the trigger--and nothing happened. He'd removed the other bullets except one. He let Diamant know he was going to make him his "pet project" and ever since then has been subjecting him to all kinds of psychological and physical torture, especially numerous rounds of Russian roulette, and stabbing him in the hand with a jeweler's needle file, making him have to switch to using his left hand or else end up shot and cremated. I said they call Dannecker the devil, didn't I?) Expecting some argument, Diamant adds, "I know how you must care about your stepfather--" at which Gret interrupts with, "I HATE him! I want to tear out his eyes, bury him a thousand times over, and piss on his grave!" So, ahm...okay. 😳 She's on board. After learning about the presence of an unused passage leading under and out of the camp--a passage so forgotten and secluded that only Dannecker himself knows about it, and showed it to Gret one really unpleasant day--Diamant lays out his plan: Keep sucking up to Dannecker to keep him distracted from any odd things going on around the camp. (He has no idea what exactly Gret's home situation is, and she doesn't clarify.) And ask Stepdaddy Dearest if he can get her a gift--a nice new ring. And can she get another look at that passage to see just how far, and where, it goes? Oh, and try to procure a gun, with bullets, as well, and hide it inside the building. Not quite sure what good any of that will do, Gret goes along anyway. Diamant knows that Dannecker is already aware he was a skilled jeweler, and when Gret requests a ring as a gift, Dannecker has Diamant brought to his office and orders him to make one. He sets up a room with the necessary equipment and supplies for Diamant to design and create the ring, though he's to be kept under strict supervision so he never sneaks out any of the tools. No matter, he hadn't planned to. Diamant gets to work on the jewelry while Gret asks to see the passage again (by now Dannecker is seriously confused by just how into the camp she seems to be, but hey, he won't complain), and for a while life goes on as usual. Not long before the ring is finished, Diamant signals that things are about to go down, and lets Gret know the day. Several other inmates, including Sinti Roma petty criminal Lukas Mettbach and former accountant Arno Spiegel, have been watching all this unfold with mixed skepticism and curiosity. Diamant tells his guard he finished the ring; he's led to Dannecker's office and the two are left alone, because Diamant hasn't caused any trouble this whole time despite having lots of opportunities (plus like I said, security has gotten a bit lax). WELL, of course that doesn't last. While Dannecker is admiring the ring, Diamant pulls out the gun Gret had hidden for him, and removes all of the bullets but one; he starts explaining the situation to Dannecker, pulling the trigger repeatedly to make his points, but the gun goes off before he can finish describing the plan he's now carrying out--Dannecker falls dead, shot in the forehead. Well...huh. Diamant's never killed anybody before so this is rather more startling than he'd expected; nonetheless, he regains his senses enough to take Dannecker's SS-Degen, or dress sword, which Gret had requested. Outside in the hallway, Gret confronts the guard who comes running back at the gunshot sound, and makes up a clumsy excuse that she accidentally fired a gun in her stepfather's office, he got angry, threw her out, and requested that no one bother him for a while. Dannecker has a history of shutting himself (and usually Gret) in his office and demanding to be left alone, so the guard thinks nothing of this, and leaves. Diamant exits the office and the two go running down the hallway toward the back of the building where a little-used exit is located. Along the way, they're spotted by Schindel, who's inside the building running errands for Dannecker, but he doesn't attempt to stop them, seeming way too bewildered. (He nopes the hell out of there and returns to the file room he'd been in.) At the back exit, they meet Mettbach, Spiegel, and several other prisoners who decide to come along; a senior prisoner distracts some nearby guards while they head back into the building and make it to the unused passageway. This leads outside the camp and under another building; it turns out there are various little-used passages leading between various houses, and though the camp passage is again abandoned, the other passages are utilized and this is the very very start of what later becomes known as the Diamond Network. It takes like an hour for anybody to even realize something is amiss, when the guard from earlier has to deliver a message to Dannecker but Gret had told him Dannecker requested to be left alone. The adjutant, Sturmbannführer (Major) Lars Franke, who'd just visited Schindel (who's himself sweating bullets wondering WTF is going on, WHY ISN'T ANYONE RAISING AN ALARM?!?), decides to check in on him and well WHAT DO YOU KNOW, the commandant is dead, a check shows that about a dozen prisoners are missing, and Gret is gone, too. Everyone (well, except Schindel, whom Franke briefly tries to implicate in the escape until the guard sticks up for him) assumes Gret was forced to lie about her stepfather and then was taken hostage by the escapees, and a search begins. This story slowly starts to fall apart, however, and eventually it becomes clear she actively colluded in her stepfather's own murder. At that point, she's no longer considered a kidnapping victim, but a traitor, and the order is given that if she's found she's to be executed on the spot. And thus begins Gret Dannecker's life as an Allied collaborator and member of the Diamond Network. You go, girl! ...I'm not sure why I dumped out that entire story but there if is, not deleting it now. 😕 Although she and Diamant engage in a very brief relationship (non-romantic in nature), the other members of the Network, especially Lukas Mettbach (who, of the several core members, underwent the worst tortures, having been shuttled around various camps, barely surviving selections, and for a while turned into Dr. Mengele's guinea pig), don't trust pretty little blue-eyed, blond-braided, cold-natured Aryan Gret one bit, with Lukas even calling her "Nazi b*tch" more than once. (Gret doesn't really care.) She finds herself in a really odd position given her Nazi ties, not all of which she disavows; her mother, who doted on Dannecker (the well-off SS officer basically saved her and her children from a poor, difficult life, just so he could get at Gret), disowns her, so the Network is her only remaining connection to humanity, and even they don't fully accept her. She has a very odd, cold, emotionally stilted demeanor which others find offputting, and can quite easily detach herself to engage in violence; she especially likes running people through with her stepfather's own sword, which she maintains well and treats lovingly. (Uh, yeah...weird.) Ironically, these traits end up v-e-r-y gradually endearing her to...Lukas Mettbach, who actually understands her particular mindset and the bottomless rage fueling it, and they end up as a couple after the war, both working in Diamant's new jewelry shop. (While convincing the itinerant Lukas to settle down, Gret shows him her room over the shop--it's full of stolen weapons and Nazi iconography. Ah, Gret. Never change.) [Margarethe Dannecker 2022 [Monday, March 28, 2022, 2:34:30 AM]] 5/29/23: r/SketchDaily theme, "Expressions." Was a long day so I decided to try some rough character sketch practice. Would be nice to draw them in different poses. These aren't technically expression practice though a few have one (Schäfer has his lovely deer-caught-in-headlights look). I'd just like to get better at this. (You can see the first effort really sucked. Seems a boxy shape is better than a round one.) They were done sans reference so some details are off. I drew different expressions exactly a year ago, it turns out. Didn't realize it'd been so long. [Rough Character Sketches 2023 2 [Monday, May 29, 2023, 2:01:04 AM]] |