LETTERS FROM OMI: German Social Culture in the Late 30s and American Social Culture in the 70s

My dear grandchildren,

We’re all kids today.

Yes, I’m an old lady of 64, but reading this excerpt from my father makes me feel like a child again. My father is talking to me about how things were done in his day, how things are properly done, how things are best done. Four years after Dad’s death, this except still makes me feel rebuked by my father.

Why? Because my life as an American teen in the early 1970s was the polar opposite of my father’s life as a German teen in the early 1940s. Everything for me was about my social life – friends, fun, frivolity! And Dad judged that – heavily.

It’s taken me about 50 years to really understand that my father was an elitist and that he definitely had elitist prejudices, as did his father. You’ll see it peppered through this excerpt.

Here are my father’s words about academic and social life in Germany in the early 40s:

School classes took place daily from 8:00 to noon, and from 2:00 to 4:00. Those of us who lived close to school went home for lunch. I’m not sure what the “commuter students” who came to school by train every day did for lunch, because there was, of course, no cafeteria. No school, as far as I know, had one. I’m not sure if that’s still the case today, but I don’t think the attitude has changed much. “Schools are for serious learning, not for socializing!” It was an unspoken, but clearly understood principle that was supported by the entire community. Learning as much as we could was our primary “duty” at that age. Period.

(Thomas and Ulli, c 1939.)

I heard this message loud and clear as I grew up. I was an excellent student, but never quite excellent enough. In fact, when I applied to a graduate program in Education at Stanford University, I remember that part of my motivation was to show Dad that I could be a real scholar. I’d had a lot of fun in high school and college as an American student and my father (and also my German mother) definitely judged me for it. “You want to be a cheerleader? For football games? How does that make you a better student?” The idea of school being fun was so foreign to my parents! While my friends’ parents were intimately involved in their non-academic school pursuits, attending football games, encouraging their kids’ sports and other activities, mine pretty much just shook their heads. I remember bleachers full of other parents when I tried out for cheerleading and drill team, but mine were nowhere to be seen, They simply didn’t understand how these non-academic pursuits could be important to me.

(Me as a cheerleader… and a graduate, with Dad and Mom.)

That brings up the question of how we socialized without cell phones. Well, there are several differences between “there, then” and “here, now”! Maybe most importantly, we didn’t have nearly as much time after school as kids do here.

HA! What American school kid has lots of time after school?!

School was not only in session for more hours per day, there was also more homework, plus piano practice every day. If there was time left, we did things like chemical experiments or building something with the erector set.

…which is so much more valid than just hanging out with friends, or being on a school sports team. Is it just me, or do you hear a bit of holier-than-thou in my dad’s words? Keep reading…

Especially during the war, there were always other things to do: try to find a tire for the bike, stand in line at the butcher shop, or install emergency lighting for the air raid shelter in the basement. We siblings also did some fun things, like roller skating or riding scooters. In the winter, we went ice-skating at the tennis club. We simply did not know any different, and therefore had no need to constantly know where others were and what they were doing. Visits to friends’ houses were rare. For emergencies, there was the telephone, but every local call cost money, and any long-distance call, besides being prohibitively expensive, had to be arranged by the operator, usually hours ahead of time. Most importantly, we all had bicycles, and if we wanted to see someone across town we’d get on our bike and ride there. The idea of an impromptu get-together with friends just didn’t exist. Besides, after-school activities were much more rare than they are today. There were no school sports like you’re accustomed to here. We all had piano lessons, and we rode a bike, walked, or took a streetcar to get there. I don’t remember any family who had a car, so nobody could be “taken” anywhere. On weekends, we often did things with our parents and siblings, like a train ride, a hiking tour, or an afternoon of cross-country skiing.

(Thomas, Ulli, Rainer, c 1937. I believe they were building a scooter.)

My friends’ parents “took them places.” That is, if they had soccer practice or even just wanted to get together with friends, their parents often drove them. This was unknown for me. If I had plans after school, it was completely up to me to get there on my own. “Ride you bike!” my parents insisted, even if it was a 5 or 10-mile distance. Whereas my friends “rode bikes” for fun, my parents, at my age, used their bikes as transportation and (they made sure I knew) they were grateful for their bikes!

Did we have parties? I remember hardly any. We had occasional weekend afternoon parties for things like air rifle practice, where the host’s mother would bake a cake and serve juice. And did we ever drink alcohol in high school? It wouldn’t have occurred to any of us. Sure, at home, on occasions, we may get a glass of wine that tasted terrible, but lemonade was better anyway. In no way was “getting to drink” a big deal. Occasionally, in the summer, we’d drink a “Radlermass” (literally, a “cyclist’s liter”) consisting of half beer and half 7-Up. No one would have thought twice about it since it was completely legal. Asking for ID, or “carding” any one to qualify them to legally drink, was entirely unknown. Having a beer was just not a big thing. Nor did it have the reputation of being a “grown-up thing to do” Nor did it taste good.

I didn’t drink in high school, either. I believe that my father is referring here to my brothers’ and my kids – your parents. Like most American high school and college students, they drank – and sometimes too much. (Sorry “kids,” your bubble has been burst!) My parents didn’t understand why alcohol played such a role in the US, and I agree with them here. Maybe if the US had the same laws (or lack thereof), allowing beer and wine at 16, drinking wouldn’t hold such fascination for American teens.

At times, we siblings had conflicts because of the three-students-one-piano problem. We solved that by agreeing that whoever said “besetzt!” (“reserved”) first got to name his or her practice time. Once, Ulli and I had that problem, but the peaceful negotiation didn’t work and we ended up physically fighting. In that noble pursuit, Ulli somehow got a curl of her hair caught in one of my shirt buttons. Trying to free herself, she pulled away too quickly, leaving behind a lock of hair. (That’s my version!) She screamed, our mother got hysterical, and off to the hospital they went! (Ulli still has that bare spot on her head. She calls it her sacrifice for the love of music!)

Junior Prom, Senior Prom, dates, dress-ups, taxis -- how foreign all this was to me when I learned about it all from my kids growing up! Our schools were for boys only, and there were no organized or even semi-official coed events.

I was mocked and teased relentlessly for taking part in the fun (“shallow”) aspects of high school, like prom and dates. (Though Mom did sew beautiful dresses for me for the occasions.)

You were limited to whatever acquaintances you could make via your family. One advantage: approval was often automatic, because whomever you met was automatically from the “right kind” of family. Outside of that, making contacts with girls was hard. Very hard. Having a sister helped, having relatives helped, so it turns out that I was luckier than most.

“The right kind of family…” Carl and Irmgard raised their children with the notion of “us” and “them” and, it turns out, my parents raised their kids with the same unspoken, insidious, and quite influential attitude. To be honest, I didn’t even recognize this until it was brought to my attention many years into adulthood. “We” liked classical music; “they” liked Frank Sinatra. “We” lived in large, unique, classic houses; “they lived in mass-produced ranch-style houses. “We” spent weekends sailing, skiing, or attending cultural events; “they” spent their weekends “parked in front of the TV.” And my parents let me know, in no uncertain terms, whether my chosen friends were ‘acceptable” (from the “right kind of family”) or not. This is an example of how parental attitudes are passed from generation to generation, without us even knowing it. I feel confident I didn’t raise my kids with this sort of elitist attitude, and I don’t think my brothers have, either, but we’ve all had to specifically and intentionally break the cycle.

During the summer of 1941, at the age of 13, I was invited to visit the home of a friend of my mother’s who had “a good name” - even with a “von” in front of it. She had a house at the edge of a small lake north of Berlin with a big vegetable garden and lots of raspberries and gooseberries. She also happened to have a 13-year-old daughter named Kristine (yes, with a “K”!). We turned out to be each other’s first loves. We picked berries together, we found old magazines in the attic and looked at them together – innocently, in bed. We waded out in the lake with mud above our ankles, we swam in the pool at the little town of Liebenwerda nearby, and she hugely impressed me by a jump from the three-meter board. (When we were both in our forties, she visited us in Atherton. She told me then that she had never dived from the high board before then, or after.) We had discovered what “love” was, the mysterious and somehow taboo thing the grownups kept talking about. We longed for each other for a year, until I went there again, this time by bicycle, in one long day. “Nini”, as she was called, ended up in a “Napola”^{^[1]}, near Vienna, a Nazi boarding school where, at practically no cost, one could get a so-called high school education heavily infused by Nazi ideology.

A few months after my mother’s death, my father found Kristine again – in California!