Popular autobiographies are increasingly gaining attention as eyewitness accounts, yet they have largely been overlooked by German literary studies. Sonja Unterpertinger now examines the life narratives of three women from the rural agricultural sector, originating from the southern German language area of the 20th century. Fundamental concepts related to individual and social memory, as well as the process of remembering, are clarified, and the similarities and differences between memory and literature are explored. Through the autobiographies of Anna Wimschneider, Barbara Passrugger, and Maria Gremel, the formal, linguistic, and content-related features of popular autobiographies are analyzed: How did these women from a rural background come to document and publish their personal histories?.