The German Girl begins in Berlin in 1939. Hannah is the 12-year-old protagonist and first-person narrator of the first chapter, which begins with Hannah confessing that she is thinking about killing her parents. She wonders how many aspirin it would take to kill her father before deciding suffocating them with a pillow would be the best method. She then claims that her parents are planning “to get rid of” her in some way (5), before concluding that “in the end, I didn’t kill my parents” because “they forced me to throw myself into the abyss alongside them” (6).

Hannah then describes aspects of her life in Berlin. Her mother Alma lives enclosed in the apartment; her only contact with the outside world is the route to and from the cinema. Her mother particularly enjoys Greta Garbo, who appears German but is actually Swedish. Hannah’s father Max had been “arrested at his university office” (7) and taken into custody for an offense that Hannah doesn’t understand. We learn that although Hannah’s family rents out rooms to other tenants in the apartment, these tenants look down on Hannah and her family. When a mother and her daughter, Gretel, find Hannah in the elevator, the mother chooses to take the stairs and calls Hannah “dirty people” (9).