Half-Life: 1. Daughter of Radium

Joe Dunthorne investigates his family's complex history, centered on his great-grandfather Siegfried Merzbacher, a chemist who developed "Doramad," a radioactive toothpaste marketed in 1930s Germany. This exploration reveals the unsettling intersection of domestic life and the Nazi regime, as the family lived near the factory that supplied the German army with chemical weapons. Siegfried’s massive, unpublished memoir serves as a focal point, documenting his professional guilt and the family’s eventual escape to Turkey. The narrative highlights the tension between cherished family anecdotes—such as the bloodstone ring supposedly saved from the Nazis—and the darker, often suppressed realities of the past. Ultimately, the investigation underscores the difficulty of reconciling personal memory with historical truth, as family members struggle to confront the moral compromises made by their ancestors during the Third Reich.