Post-war poetry

Dear grandchildren,

What 17-year-old guy (or girl) do you know who loves poetry this much?! As I mentioned previously, my father Thomas had the sole of a poet. He was about as far from “macho” as one could get and never understood the testosterone-driven hyper-masculinity that American society clearly found so appealing in the 70s and 80s (look up the TV shows Magnum PI, Miami Vice, and MacGyver), and even through the early 2000s.

In this post, like the last few, Thomas continues to turn inward and we get to know more about his spirit and thoughtful personality as a young man. War and daily survival are no longer his sole focus and he is able to settle back into school and begin to ponder what he wants the rest of his life to look like.

Here are his words – and some poems!

I wrote to Nora: “You have no idea how anxious I am to start a normal, regular life and to get back into learning again! Being so unproductive in Adelsberg was the hardest part of those months.” I’m not sure how sincerely I meant that. Much of what we wrote in letters that went back and forth every few days consisted of things we had heard, but not quite digested. How could we have? Nora was a few months older than I, and probably many months ahead of me in maturity, although I wouldn’t have admitted it then. Her letters spoke of real yearning and commitment; they sounded very honest and they probably were. I was longing for the dark winter evenings when we took endless walks in the forests around her parents’ house in Adelsberg. Those walks, for me, were the essence of being together:

Es hat nun all die Stunden

still vor sich hingeschneit.

Die Erde ist verschwunden

in Schnee und Ewigkeit.

Und langsam schon und leise

verwandelt sich der Tag.

Der Abend auf seine Weise

erhebt sich hinter dem Hag.

Wir wollen nichts mehr sagen,

die Worte sind so laut.

Was wir im Herzen tragen,

ist uns ja alles vertraut.

Und wenn dann so beim Wandern

sich Schulter an Schulter lehnt,

fühlt einer in dem andern,

wie er sich nach ihm sehnt.

Die Flocken fallen und wehen,

die Dämmerung hüllt uns ein.

Wir wollen nur ... so ... hingehen ...

und ganz beieinander sein.

-- Manfred Hausmann

It has for all these hours

been snowing silently.

The earth has almost vanished

in white eternity.

Now very still and slowly

the day transforms itself.

The evening in its manner

rises behind the grove.

Let us not even whisper.

Our words, they are so loud.

We know so well what thinking

Lies deep in our hearts.

 

And then, when, in so walking,

shoulder and shoulder meet,

one senses in the other

the longing thoughts we share.

The flakes are falling and drifting,

The dusk envelops us.

Let’s just ... keep ... walking,

and feel together and close.

Ah yes, Nora… But there’s no time for dreaming! Reality demands that I try to buy some pencils for Nora! She’s taking drawing lessons and can’t find pencils, especially soft ones, in the Russian Zone.

For the first time in three years, I would soon return to a classroom. My old school in Chemnitz was a Humanistisches Gymnasium – that is, a college prep school emphasizing Latin, Greek, and the Humanist liberal education and the values that go along with them. The Theresiengymnasium in München was beginning to operate again on a limited basis. The school rooms near the Goetheplatz had been largely spared from bomb damage, the old Nazi teachers had been thrown out, and just enough coal was available to at least keep the rooms from freezing. Most of the windows were still boarded up.

(Theresiengymnasium today)

Like my Gymnasium in Chemnitz, it had the pedigree of a proper old school from the years after the First World War. It looked oddly familiar: dark hallways, massive wooden handrails on the stairs, with knobs on top to keep kids from having fun by sliding down on them. It even smelled like my school in Chemnitz, a mixture of locker room, pissoir, and chalk. Just about now my old classmates were probably returning to their own lives. I felt awkward: re-entering a childhood world as a walking anachronism.

The principal looked at my papers from Chemnitz. The report card from 1942 told him that Geography and Physics were my only “good” subjects; the rest were average or below, with Math and History just barely passing. The report card of March 1943, when the Nazis had thrown me out of school, wasn’t much better: Math was still terrible. So was Greek. But then I also had a piece of paper saying that I was certifiably “meticulous, courteous, focused, and tenacious,” plus affidavits about the private lessons in four languages and all that, and about the Nazi labor camp. The principal studied me, then studied the papers, weighing his guidelines carefully. He finally accepted me as the equivalent of a Junior — provisionally.

The two months I spent at the Theresiengymnasium apparently made little academic impression on me, because I hardly remember any of it. In fact, I remember nothing at all about Latin and Greek, other than how difficult it was to get back into studying. It had only been a year and a half since I last sat down to study a subject or write a paper, but what a tumultuous time it was! I’m positive my achievements in class were less than impressive.

I was especially impressed by two things: the classes were coed (a first-time and rather uncomfortable experience for me!) and the German lessons were interesting. I found study buddies in a clearly very sophisticated young man and a very pretty (but, OK, less sophisticated) young woman. The German teacher, to my great surprise, was a woman! Never in my life, in any school, had I seen a woman teacher before. She had a particular fondness for poetry (and thus, I, a fondness for her) and showed us how differently Conrad Ferdinand Meyer and Nicolaus Lenau used similar images to deal with loss:

Meine eingelegten Ruder triefen,

Tropfen fallen langsam in die Tiefen.

Nichts, das mich verdroß! Nichts, das mich erfreute!

Nieder rinnt ein schmerzensloses Heute!

Unter mir — ach, aus dem Licht verschwunden —

Träumen noch die schönern meiner Stunden.

Aus der blauen Tiefe ruft das Gestern:

Sind im Licht noch manche meiner Schwestern?

-

Lying on my vessel’s edge, my oars are dripping.

Drops are falling slowly, slowly in the deep.

Nothing that upsets me, nothing cheers me up.

A present without pain is trickling down.

Below me — ah, from daylight vanished —

Lie my bygone fairer hours, dreaming.

From the azure depths, the past is calling:

Are there sisters up there in the light?

The other poem, by Lenau, still comes to mind today when I’m near a stream:

Sahst du ein Glück vorübergehn,

Das nie sich wiederfindet,

Ist’s gut in einen Strom zu sehn

Wo alles wogt und schwindet.....

...Hinträumend wird Vergessenheit

Des Herzens Wunde schließen.

Die Seele sieht in ihrem Leid

Sich selbst vorüberfließen.

-

When you have met a passing bliss

that never will return,

It’s good to stare into a stream

Where all is surge and fading...

...And as you dream, forgetting will

Heal all your pain and heartbreak.

Your soul will see itself

Flow past, with all its anguish.

We analyzed these poems to death in class, but neither of them touched me especially deeply. I’m sure they were chosen by the teacher because there was still so much misery all around and so much healing to be done. Not a single one of the kids in class had come through the war without major losses: a father, an older brother, a friend, a home, an entire homeland. So much of the immediate past was still so painful – like festering wounds of the soul.

Our teacher read one poem to us and didn’t even ask us to analyze it. It is by Lulu von Strauß und Torney, who was still alive then:

Und wenn ich selber längst gestorben bin,

Wird meine Erde blühend stehn,

Und Saat und Sichel, Schnee und Sommerpracht,

Und weißer Tag und blaue Mitternacht

Wird über die geliebte Scholle gehn.

Und werden Tage ganz wie heute sein:

Die Gärten voll vom Dufte der Syringen,

Und weiße Wolken, die im Blauen ziehn,

Und junger Felder seidnes Ährengrün,

Und drüberhin ein endlos Lerchensingen.

Und werden Kinder lachen vor dem Tor

Und an den Hecken grüne Zweige brechen,

Und werden Mädchen wandern Arm in Arm

Und durch den Sommerabend, still und warm,

Mit leisen Lippen von der Liebe sprechen.

Und wird wie heut der junge Erdentag

Von keinem Gestern wissen mehr, noch sagen;

Und wird wie heut doch jeder Sommerwind

Aus tausend Tagen, die vergessen sind,

Geheime Süße auf den Flügeln tragen.

-

And even then, when I am long dead

My earth will stand in bloom again,

And seed and sickle, snow and summer’s joy

And white-hot day and cobalt-colored night

Will sweep across the cherished ground.

And then there will be days just like today:

The gardens heavy with the lilacs’ scent,

White clouds are drifting in a sea of blue,

The silken green expanse of growing corn,

And high above the endless song of larks.

And children will be laughing out of doors

And will break twigs from hedges by the road,

And girls will wander, arm in arm, and will,

Throughout the warm and quiet summer’s eve

Speak secretly of love with muted lips.

And then as now, the day in all its youth

Will neither know nor speak of any yesterdays.

And yet, just like today, each summer’s breeze

Will carry in its wings the secret sweetness

Of thousand past and long forgotten days.

Now, isn’t that enough reward for a couple of months at school?

That poem struck an immediate chord in me in 1946, and even six decades later, after we have spoiled so much of our environment, it is still one of the most comforting, almost cheerful poems I know, and few poems have had as much presence or given me as much peace as this one. With all its vivid images, it’s hard to get through a beautiful summer without being reminded of it over and over. With tears in my eyes.

Adulting in post-war München

Dearest grandchildren,

This entry speaks pretty much for itself. Thomas has found his way to München, found his brother and sister and now, as an orphan and a displaced person, he must begin to figure out what the rest of his life will look like.

Here are his words:

“Bitt’schön, wo geht der Zug auf Solln^[1]?” I said to the man with the heavy black mustache. He wore a uniform and looked official. I had practiced that sentence for the last half-hour while making my way through downtown München to the train station. I knew how Bavarians felt about Prussians (meaning anybody who speaks high German or another German dialect) and I didn’t want him to think I was a stranger here.

Proper high German for going (to a place) is nach (that place), but I thought that in proper Bavarian it was auf (that place), and I was rather proud that I knew that. Like all Germans, I loved the Bavarian dialect. I thought I remembered how it sounded from peacetime vacations in Bavaria and Austria so long ago. Unlike most Germans, though, I tried to imitate it.

The mustache looked at me, a bit bewildered. I must have said that wrong. I blushed.

“Nach Solln?” He said, emphatically. “18:15.” Obviously, he had seen right through me and now he tried to speak a language I would understand.

“On which track?” I wanted to know. He didn’t have to think about that one. There was only one usable platform and track. What amazed me was the amount of order which had already been reestablished here in the American Occupation Zone. The trains here actually ran on a schedule! For all I knew, the train would even leave on time. But then, things run a little more relaxed in Bavaria...

18:15. That would give me a bit of time to rest after the long trek from Hof, the town in the northeastern corner of Bavaria, at the Czech border, where I first had entered the American Zone yesterday. From there, I had hitched on a variety of trucks, staying on country roads, and avoiding the Autobahn because too many of the Autobahn bridges had been destroyed. It would take many years to fix those.

It was dark and cold on this winter night just after Christmas. I was hungry, tired, and dirty. I put one of my valuable suitcases up against a brick wall to sit on and put my feet on the other one with my backpack under my knees just in case I might fall asleep. This technique of sleeping had become a habit, helping me keep my three pieces of luggage with me at all times. The four of us had traveled far like that.

I was so ready for a bit of civilization. It had been more than a week since I’d seen civilized life, over there in the Russian Zone, at Nora’s house.

Nora. Since last April, she had been the center of my life. How hard it had been to leave her; we were practically engaged! In the days and nights before I left, we had become closer than ever. Now, knowing there would be a border between us, the parting was especially bitter, even if it was only a border inside Germany between the Western Occupation Zone and the Eastern one. As it turned out, that border cut the world in half for many years to come. When I sat there in the dark, even though strangers hurried by and huddled around me, my thoughts were far away, and slivers of poems floated through my mind:

Wie hab ich das gefühlt, was Abschied heißt,

Wie weiß ich’s noch: ein unverwundenes,

Grausames Etwas, das ein Schönverbundenes

Noch einmal zeigt, und hinhält, und zerreißt...

-

How I have felt what parting means!

I feel it still: a blunt and cruel something

That once more shows what had been beautifully tied

And holds it up in front of you, and tears apart....

Oh yes, the pain of leaving was real, just as Rilke had said. But it was not the only poem going through my mind. I felt vaguely uneasy about all that had happened in that last weeks between Nora and me. It had all been so new, so binding, so dangerous.

Es war noch Zeit, ich konnte gehn,

Und alles wäre ungeschehn,

Und alles wäre rein und klar,

Wie es vor jener Stunde war.

Es mußte sein. Die Stunde kam,

Die kurze, schwüle, und sie nahm

Unwandelbar, mit jähem Schnitt

Den ganzen Glanz der Jugend mit. Hermann Hesse

There was still time, I could have left,

And everything would be undone,

All would be innocent and clear

Like once, before that hour came.

It had to be. The hour came,

That short and sultry one, it came,

and severed with a sudden chop

The very luster of my youth.

The short train was backing onto the track and irrevocably, with a sudden click brought me back to the demands of the hour. I was almost at the end of my journey, and I was ready for it to be over. Since leaving Nora’s house I had lugged those suitcases onto freight cars and trucks, stood with them in lines full of refugees, and slept with them on straw sacks in the holding camp and in a tool shed of a railroad yard. Lugging them with me wherever I went. More trains, no beds, more trucks, and more sweaty walks, carrying with me all that was valuable to us three siblings. I was ready for civilization.

The small apartment above the fire house in München-Solln was quite civil — and even warm!

(The Solln firehouse today.)

What a relief to see that Rainer, Ulli, and Renate had arrived, and had managed to settle in. It was such an enormous relief to be together again, safely. My “room” was a couch in what passed for the living room. It was all quite homey, and they even had a pet: a hedgehog, of all things. He felt quite at home under and on the furniture, even on the kitchen table!

The morning after I arrived, I immediately embarked upon the most urgent task, registering at the police station. Not only was it the law (and still is!) to check in and out with the City whenever you move from one place to another, but it was vitally important to establish myself as a legal resident of München as soon as possible. I needed a priority standing among all the people who were vying for the right to live here. In those days, becoming a legal resident of a city was harder than becoming a citizen of another country is today. München, like practically all large cities, had seen the worst of the bombings and livable lodging was desperately rare. There were simply too many people who wanted to live here - people who had lost their homes elsewhere in Germany and had relatives or friends here, like I did, thousands of KZ (Konzentrationslager, or concentration camp) prisoners who had been freed by the Allies, and millions of refugees who were expelled from formerly German lands in the East. They had all fled into a destroyed and already crowded country. And then there was the human flotsam and jetsam of war that always seeks the cities. The Municipal Housing Office, which was in charge of assigning all lodging space, all apartments, all rooms, even all large closets (it seems), was simply overwhelmed.

I didn’t realize until a year later how critical it had been to establish my squatter’s rights there.

Next priority: food ration coupons. One could not survive on the rations of others for more than a day. Now, with the blessing of the Polizeiliche Meldebehörde^[2] in my hands, I could apply for ration stamps. I don’t remember what I got, but I remember being amazed at how generous the rations were compared to the shortages in the Russian Zone, where I had just come from. A week’s worth of rations in the American zone consisted of two pounds of bread, half a pound of meat, half a pound of fat or oil, a quarter-pound of sugar, jam or honey, plus some pasta, some legumes or rice, and some skim milk. The rest, mainly fish, potatoes, fruit, or vegetables, were catch-as-catch-can (but usually as can’t catch!).

Over the next four years, the food situation improved, but only very gradually. Fields had been destroyed, farmers had been killed or were in captivity in Russia, and millions of cows had perished in the fighting. The entire transportation system was severely damaged or destroyed and there was very little gas, even for the number one priority: food distribution.

Even today, having lived for half a century in a country where food is plenty, it hurts me, down in the pit of my stomach, to leave food on my plate or throw away leftovers. People who have felt the pain of hunger will never waste food again, not even when they can afford all they want.

More generational trauma here! Throughout my childhood I was reminded of the emotional and physical pain Dad speaks of here. He had felt the physical pain of hunger down to the pit of his empty stomach and the emotional pain of food insecurity was with him not only during the war, but for years afterwards, as well. My mother, like all Germans, also knew the physical and emotional pain of hunger. The result was that food and hunger - not mine, but others’ – took center stage throughout my childhood.

Appetite, though – eating when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re full – was an unknown concept to me during my childhood. We ate when we were told to, what we were told to, for as long as we were told to. The only context in which I heard the word “appetite” was in regards to spoiling it, never as something I could gauge or have any control over. I understand WHY I’ve experienced generational trauma regarding food but, in spite of a million diets, therapy, and even hypnotism, I still struggle to define my own appetite and to assert my own control over my own food.

Now it was time for more normal-life challenges, such as getting busy to build a future!

That required much thinking and discussion about professions and earnings potential, about personal talents and challenges, about visions and prospects. As the times dictated, those discussions were rather pragmatic and centered more on what was available and realistic, rather than on personal dreams. One had to focus on practicalities: where could I find work for a decent wage that would provide me with enough income to find a place to live and would entitle me to higher worker food rations?

Rainer had been very lucky to get a job with the American Military Government — why not try that? After all, working there got him a hot meal at lunch, and possibly access to cigarettes which were the hottest black-market item. Not only hot — they were the only hard currency: a single Lucky Strike cigarette was worth 5 Reichsmark and the “whisper exchange rate” may have been “four Ami cigarettes for one pound of bread.” Often, food or ration coupons couldn't be bought on the black market for any amount of money at all, only for cigarettes, but you had to be sure not to be caught “playing the black market” – which existed all around you. While walking down a street, you might hear a whisper. “Shoes? Fat coupons? Silk stockings?” If that item was something you wanted and could buy or trade, you followed the voice to the nearest house entrance or dark spot, and started bargaining. Just about anything could be found on the black market. Once, Rainer bought a bundle of plates of pure copper on a whim!

The black market was largely run by displaced persons, DP’s, in UN lingo, who were occupying a special place in society at the time. They were largely people freed from Nazi camps, and many of them spoke Yiddish, dialects, or languages we didn’t understand. They were considered “broken” -- dismal, miserable, homeless, and poor --yet with special access to goods and treated by authorities with tolerance. They lived mostly in the Bogenhausen District, an area of private villas that had largely survived the bombing. But the black market was not a place; it moved wherever there were crowded sidewalks or unobserved hiding places. And its currency was always cigarettes.

Rainer helped me fill out the application form for the Military Government and introduced me to a strange new world. It turned out that world didn’t want me. It was a very short interview, and it didn’t feel right. Aside from an unfinished high school education, I had absolutely nothing to offer. I didn’t know enough American English even for a dumb office job, and I didn't look like a good warehouse worker either. I couldn’t understand the American GI when he wanted to know how old I was. He kindly but firmly told me to come back with better English. At the time I was quite sure I wouldn’t.

So, what next? Schools were only beginning to open, though nothing was really operational yet. I spent a few days finding that out and ended up quite discouraged. I even tried to do a little studying on my own, but of course that didn’t get very far. At that time, Rainer still wanted to become an engineer. Under his influence, the idea of becoming an engineer made sense to me. It certainly was the kind of profession that Germany would need, and it had a certain glamour value, partly because it would be a respectably masculine and modern thing to do, partly because it was what Rainer wanted to do.

Rainer had worked at one time for a small company called Bauer Kompressoren, where air compressors were built in a small shop not much bigger than a garage. They were in operation now again, - or tried to be. Maybe I could learn something useful there and at the same time get worker’s rations. Besides, they were in Obersendling, only a half-hour walk from Solln.

        

Bauer Kompressoren hired me, and there I learned two things that I never forgot - arc welding and lighting cigarettes without matches. Arc welding has come in handy over the years. The cigarette lighting was of immediate value, as matches were hard to come by. I discovered that it was easy to jam a steel rod into a grinding wheel so hard that it took only a few seconds to glow bright red. Voilà— an instant cigarette lighter. Barbaric! (But macho.)

My guardian, Konsul Rothe, who was my father's old bank partner, was neither impressed with macho nor very pleased with where I was headed. In fact, being steeped in staunchly German values of the pre-war period, he was quite unnerved, and strongly urged a more energetic search for an appropriate institution of higher learning, leading to “the really only acceptable title” - a PhD (which he never got).

It worked. I quit Bauer.

A few years ago, on a visit to München, I drove through Obersendling againand I noticed the name “BAUER KOMPRESSOREN” in large letters atop a multi-story modern factory building. The letters alone were about twice the size of the shop I remember from 1946!

(The Bauer Kompressoren factory in Solln today. It is one of 16 Bauer locations worldwide!)

---

^[1] “Please, where does the train leave for Solln?”

^[2] Police Registration Authority

Brain of an engineer, soul of a poet

Dear grandchildren,

This entry from my father has been difficult to edit, as he jumps all over the place, from 1946-1947, back to 1945, and forward to 1948 and 1950! Try as I might, I can’t edit it to make chronological sense and still maintain his story. I’m leaving the chronology as is because I believe that it reflects Dad’s inner turmoil at the time, as well as his emotions when he deeply immersed himself in writing his memoir.

Whereas his storytelling of the war years focused on details of what happened in his physical world, his memoir at this point transitions to a focus on what was going on inside – his emotions, his sentiments, his fears, and his dreams.

I remember my mother (the original “Omi”!) complaining that when Dad wrote, he was “gone” to her. He would disappear into his office for hours at a time, deep into his writing and unavailable to the 21st century. I sensed this even from hundreds of miles away. NOW I finally get it, as I find myself doing the same thing – escaping from the real world of a global pandemic, insane and illogical people and politics, and an earth that is gasping and choking, choosing to focus instead on the past - and not even my own past, instead getting to know my grandfather and understanding my own father better, as I sit within the walls of my own office, deep into my own writing, unavailable to my own world.

Today is one of those days when I desperately want Dad back. I want to understand the young man who wrote this entry, the young man who lived so deep in my father, even to his dying day, but who so few people in his life since 1947 – including me – actually knew. His sister Ulli, my beloved aunt, is the only person still living who knew Dad back then, but she is trapped in her own world, one plagued by Alzheimer’s. I believe that her memories of those days in the distant past are still vivid and strong (because Alzheimer’s allows at least that one grace), but locked inside. I’ve encouraged her daughter, my favorite cousin, Claudia, to read some of this blog to Ulli, hoping to elicit some memories for her, but I fear that all these memories are left only in writings – and that breaks my heart. At the same time, I’m so grateful for my father’s prolific writings and for Ulli’s hunderds upon hundreds of pages of translations- letters to and from hers and Thomas’ parents, letters to and from friends in the 50s and 60s, and stories written in German, that we can now enjoy. My plan is to include some of Ulli’s translations on this blog.

I love Dad’s last line in this entry: “Starting with my mother, my most lasting lessons in life have always come from women.” 

While Dad was a bit of a chauvinist in some old-world ways, he had a respect for and appreciation of women unlike most men I’ve known. I believe that he always turned to wise women – including, and especially his mother and my mother -  for love, counsel, strength, and wisdom, and he mentioned a few times, when men were screwing things up politically, that if they would just step aside and let women run things, we’d all be better off.

Then he’d ask what’s for dinner.

Here are my father’s heartfelt words:

Wie kann das sein, daß diese nahen Tage

Fort sind, für immer fort, und ganz vergangen?

Dies ist ein Ding, das keiner voll aussinnt,

Und viel zu grauenhaft, als daß man klage:

Daß alles gleitet und vorüberrinnt...

- Hugo von Hoffmannsthal

-

How can this be, that those still-vivid days

Are gone, forever gone, and vanished all?

No-one can fully fathom this,

This thing too horrible that one could fret:

Everything flows and glides away from us ...

 

Writing about the immediate post-war years will be an intensely emotional experience for me. Bittersweet melancholy and great excitement are competing for my attention as I thumb through crumbling papers dated 1946 and 1947.

I entered those turbulent years during the last few days of 1945, when I arrived in München, exhausted, scared and confused, but full of wide-eyed expectations.

The mid-1940s were years of searching and defining. Where before there had been the external chaos of war, allowing only the energy needed to survive, now there was the internal turmoil of deciding who I was to become, requiring great emotional concentration. Now, things were happening much more in me than to me, and I began to realize that I had the soul of a poet, even as I prepared for life as an engineer – mostly because that’s what others expected of me.

Those years were the most wonderful time, when the war was finally over, when life lay open before me, and when love offered the purest happiness. But they were also the most terrifying time, when the pressures to somehow finish Gymnasium (high school) felt unbearable, when two eggs or a half a sack of coal were rare and coveted treasures, and when my heart felt like it could break in utter despair. My emotions felt raw and honest, turbulent and powerful. It was a time when hormones raged and discussions lasted deep into the night – discussions about what life was all about, what was to become of Germany, and who we ourselves would be.

I began to study engineering in 1948. I’m planning to end this narrative at that time, but the era didn’t really end until 1950, when I wrote: “My life has closed its circle. I have experienced all that life has to offer - all the triumphs of achievement and pains of failure, all the joys and all the pains of love. I have brought great happiness to some people and have received endless warmth from them. I have lost everything, and I have gained everything. If I die tomorrow, I will have had a full life.” I did not know then what riches lay before me, and I was fully satisfied with the wealth of the experiences I had already had because they felt so intense.

I write this memoir from the perspective of some sixty years later, no wiser, only more cynical.

In places I will quote from a wealth of letters, written at a time when we were fortunate to use pens and paper, not email, texts, or even telephones, as our main means of communication. I’m now very glad that I kept those letters through a dozen moves halfway around the world. In some cases, I even asked the recipients to return my own letters because nothing elicit images like words we, ourselves have written. Unfortunately, even letters don’t often reflect the little everyday tidbits, things that are the communal knowledge shared by all contemporaries, writers and recipients alike. Those significant details are often only found between the lines.

Poems were an integral part of my life, of my emotions, and of my outlook on the world. I will quote poems where they belong and will attempt to translate them in such a way that at least the meaning and the rhythm come across. It is very difficult to translate poetry, but I will try anyway so that someone with some knowledge of German can read the original aloud, hear the “melody,” and sense what it means. I read aloud and learned many of these poems by heart in those days, and they have retained their magnetism and power over the years. Even now, while weeding in the garden or walking on a hike, I find myself recalling them and trying to silently translate, coming up with different translations as I mull over what the original words and meanings.

I could not write about my life in those years without also talking about the women who crossed my path, and even walked it with me for a stretch. Some seemed temporary at the time, some did not. They were all significant to me, as they all helped who I am today.

Starting with my mother, my most lasting lessons in life have always come from women.

The post-war political background

Dear grandchildren,

Each chapter in my father’s book, The Rim of the Volcano, begins with a description of the political climate in Germany at the time. This one disturbs me the most.

Can you imagine your entire country – every city and most towns, as well as all infrastructure and all cultural, educational, and municipal entities – being completely destroyed? The thought of it feels hopeless to me; I can’t even imagine what the reality must have been like for my father, his siblings, and every single German, from the most destitute DPs (displaced persons) to common townspeople, to the elite. Everyone in Germany lost the war. Everyone.

Although my oldest brother was born in Germany, my siblings and I grew up in middle class America in the 50s and 60s. We never knew real loss, we never knew hunger, we never lost a home or a loved one to war, and we never feared for our safety. By the age of 17, my father had lost so much – both parents, his home, and his country. Then he emigrated to America in 1953 and raised his kids in a privileged, peaceful, and prosperous society – yet I believe that he somehow (irrationally, of course) expected us to understand what he had previously gone through in Germany. His experiences shaped every aspect of who he had become and I believe that he (and our mother) raised us four American children with German WWII experiences behind every decision, every belief, and every move they made. We children didn’t understand it, but we sure felt it.

A few years ago, my son Alex took a class on “generational trauma” at the University of Washington. He explained to me that many things get passed down through families, like heirlooms, genetic conditions, and physical characteristics, but  trauma can be inherited, too. Generational trauma is trauma that isn’t just experienced by one person but extends from one generation to the next.

All of a sudden, it all made sense to me. My siblings and I grew up experiencing generational trauma. In some unexplainable way, we were feeling remnants of our parents’ lives in WWII Germany before we were even born. We were American children, but we were raised in a very German household with parents who had experienced vast amounts of trauma. (This blog is about my father’s experiences, but my mother experienced trauma as well, such as her mother’s death during an Allied air raid, dying much the way Carl did. I should write about my mother’s experiences, too. Maybe I’ll add some of her writings to this blog!)

For me, generational trauma manifests in my issues with food – being told to eat everything on my plate with the reminder that my parents experienced severe hunger during WWII… and then also being asked whether I “really need to eat that.” I’m sure my three brothers experience generational trauma as well. I wonder whether my children do. Hopefully this blog will help you, my grandchildren, should you ever wonder whether your great-grandparents’ experiences so long ago still influence you in some way.

Here are my father’s words:

Nothing could illustrate the conditions in Germany in 1946 and 1947 better than these photos showing utter destruction which illustrate not only the physical destruction of some major German cities, but also the mental and emotional state of the population as a whole. There was hardly a single German city of any size, or in any part of the country, that had been spared from destruction by air. The deadliest and most destructive war in world history had eventually rolled over almost every German town. The mountains of rubble were nothing short of overwhelming, and burned-out minds and souls added to the sense of despair.

Dresden

Berlin

Cologne

Dresden

Nurnberg

Germany was reduced to almost nothing. Where the country was not limited by the ocean’s edge, it was occupied by the victors. The entire area to the east became part of Poland or the USSR, Czechoslovakia incorporated the Sudetenland again, Austria again became a separate country, France incorporated again areas like Alsace-Lorraine that had been fought over for centuries. And the rest of Germany was divided into four Occupation Zones, the eastern one Russian, the southern one USA, the northern British, and two sections in the west French.

Practically the entire populations of Silesia and East Prussia had to find room in a much-smaller country in which millions of residences were destroyed. The roads and rail lines were largely unusable. The food supply situation was disastrous, even in the much better-off Western Zones. When the food ration coupons were raised to 1500 calories per person per day, thanks to food from America, it became an occasion for much celebration and praise. Coal for heating homes that were still standing was so scarce that a bucket of coal was a desired black-market commodity, as was an overcoat that during the especially harsh winter of 1946–1947. The most common everyday needs like underwear, toothpaste, paper, pencils, shoelaces, nails, and soap were not obtainable except by barter on the black market - if you were lucky.

Two things began to lift the Germany out of its misery: Germans simply being German: organized, efficient, inventive, and industrious, and the United States’ Marshall Plan which provided funds to rebuild the allied countries of Europe after the war. Although it didn’t really take effect until 1948, it was most instrumental in Europe becoming a viable market again in the face of an increasing East-West tension and was instituted primarily to stop communism.

The gifts of Christmas 1945

Dear Grandchildren,

If you were to ask my father about the most influential and life-altering event of his life, I don’t think he’d mention his wedding to my mother or the birth of his four children. No – I think Dad would tell you about the week in December, 1945 when he traveled from Chemnitz in the Russian zone to München in the American zone.

When you read this excerpt, it will become clear to you why this journey so profoundly impacted my father, your parents’ beloved “Opa.” Remember that in December, 1945,Thomas was just barely 17 years old. He had lost both parents in previous past year and a half and, at the age of just 16, had found his father’s dead body, dug his grave, and laid him to rest. Not only was 1945 an incredibly influential year in world history, it was an incredibly influential year in the life of Thomas Heumann. And, based on these words from Thomas, I’d say that the last week in December was the most influential week in the most influential year in the life of my father.

Read on. What do you think?

Rainer and Ulli were already in München and I was determined to join them before Christmas. My arm was well again and “Dr. Mummi” had released me from home-hospital care. In Spring, Nora would go to school in Marburg in the American Occupation Zone anyway, so we assured ourselves that this would just be a brief separation.

At the Buddeckes’ house, the first peacetime Christmas season was already well underway. As Tante Gert baked Lebkuchen, the whole family gathered in the kitchen (the only warm room in the house) to watch the process. It wasn’t true German Lebkuchen – one dare not even hope for that in 1945 – but if we called it Lebkuchen, maybe we could convince ourselves that it had some familiarity. Tanta Gert mixed cold mashed potatoes with some flour and oatmeal, added a couple of spoons of the mysterious cornmeal, a spoonful of coveted brown sugar, a dozen saccharin tablets, dried egg and dried milk from the CARE package, and some baking powder, almond flavoring, and ersatz cinnamon. When it had been baked into hard flat sheets, she spread some jam over it. It didn’t really taste like Lebkuchen at all, but it evoked memories of what Christmas once was, and would be again someday. That was enough.

It promised to be a cold trip. Onkel Heinz presented me with an early Christmas present that proved to be one of my most useful possessions for several winters to come. He had altered his Luftwaffe officer’s coat to give it an almost elegant civilian look. It was long and warm, made from good peacetime wool.

(Photo: ZIB – militaria)

I felt a certain perverse pride wearing it. As long as I could remember, uniforms had been held in high regard in Germany, and everyone’s ambition was to wear some kind of uniform. It started with Hitler Youth, then the colored cap of one’s high school, the armband of the Flak^[1] helpers, and finally the uniform of the German Army or Navy or, most of all, the Luftwaffe. Even bureaucrats got to wear uniforms to show their status, so that the man who tended the railroad crossing barrier looked like at least a corporal. I was never allowed to wear any uniform, save the blue cap of the Humanistische Gymnasium for three years. Now I wore a warm heavy coat that had been stripped of all its militarism, and I was proud that I had never worn a uniform and at that moment I swore to myself that I never would. As I sensed the irony of the fate of this coat, I began to understand the meaning of the word “civilian”: the simple, the real, the civil, which needs no heroes or uniforms, no power or monuments, to establish its dignity.

When my older brother Michael was in fifth grade, he wanted to join the Berkeley Junior Traffic Police squad at John Muir Elementary School in Berkeley, CA. All the cool boys were on “Traffics,” and I remember that they had the coolest uniform. I remember a heated argument between my father and 11-year-old Michael in which my dad referred to this oath to himself that he would never wear a uniform – and apparently at this point he had extended his oath to his children. Michael did join the BJTP and he did wear the uniform.

  

About 10 years later I, too, defied dad’s “no uniform policy” when I became a cheerleader. I always felt that he asked himself where he’d gone wrong to have children who didn’t feel the same way he did about uniforms. But we were fully American children with American experiences. We had no real understanding of  the traumatic origins of my father’s stance came from until much later, when we were adults.

 

I’m sorry, Dad. Please continue…

On December 21, I rose at five o’clock, donned my demilitarized Luftwaffe coat, and headed to the Adelsberg bakery to stand in line. I’d heard that the bakers had found enough molasses to make pumpernickel bread, a special treat for their faithful patrons. It was light by the time the shop opened, and the line was long, but the wait was worth it. With our bread coupons for the entire week I bought 4 kg of Pumpernickel bread, half to share with Onkel Heinz and Tante Gert, and half to take with me on my very uncertain venture to the West.

By 9:00 I was on my way. Nora and Mummi picked me up in the old two-cycle DKW (Dampf-kraft-Wagen: Steam Driven car). There was barely room for three of us, two large suitcases containing my father’s salvaged art collection and the family silver, and my rucksack filled with all my worldly possessions, including four pounds of Pumpernickel.

(Photo: Revandshift.com)

In the early afternoon, the train headed to the border at Gutenfürst arrived from the east. It consisted of all freight cars, except for two passenger cars reserved for the disabled refugees and wounded soldiers returning from Russian captivity.

The trip of only 100 km (about 60 miles) lasted until the early morning hours of the next day! What had been a double train track been reduced to a single track because the Russians took one as reparations - ties and all. And what remained was in such a precarious state of temporary repair that trains could only go at a snail’s pace. The train that I sat on was the lowest priority of all transports. Russian trains, freight trains, coal trains, and every other train took priority over our dilapidated refugee train. The passenger car stood for hours on a side track and sometimes we went backwards to let another train pass. I could see nothing of what went on outside. I had placed myself and my two suitcases near the oil drum stove. The suitcase made a decent seat with the rucksack as a backrest, and I was not about to give it up just to go to the door and look outside.

We finally arrived in Gutenfürst. The refugee processing station at the border was an old castle with a square inner courtyard — Schloss Voigtsberg in Oelsnitz. The morning was still dark and cold, and the place was dimly lit by two or three bare light bulbs trying to penetrate the misty melancholy of the place.

   

(Schloss Voigtsberg in Oelsnitz today.)       

Word got around that it would be best to stand in line at a stairway leading to an office where they would start processing people in the morning. I was lucky enough to be near the door leading to that stairway, so I immediately got a place in line inside the building. No one really knew anything for sure, and whoever was supposed to be in charge was surely still asleep.

(Could this be the inner courtyard Dad mentions, with the stairs leading to the processing office on the left?!)

I didn’t really care. I was so dead tired that I could feel the cold moisture penetrate even my heavy coat. It almost felt like a physical relief to give in to the urge to shiver with a mixture of fatigue, cold, hunger, and excitement. I sat down on the cold stone steps, put my arms and head on the suitcases next to me so that I would wake up should somebody try to move them, and before my eyes were closed all the way I was asleep.

A commotion woke me. It was light now, and I felt nauseated with sleepiness.

“Come on, get going, they won’t open today.”

I took the suitcases and rucksack and waited, too drunk with heavy sleep to even ask what was going on. I went outside into a morning which was cold but clear. The air was no longer oppressive, but brisk and biting, and a merciful sun was already shining on the high roof on the other side of the court. I put my luggage down, shook my head as if to shake off cobwebs, ran my hands through my hair and decided to wake up. Two girls were about to make their way into the door from where I had just emerged, trying to maneuver their luggage through the narrow opening.

“Don’t bother,” I said to them, “They won’t even open today.” We were exchanging rumors trying to decide what to do, when a kindly-looking Catholic priest walked by, stopped to listen in, and put his bag down. Obviously, no one knew what was rumor and what was true, so I volunteered to go and find out. And aren’t you glad you have a man around?

“Just wait for me here, I’ll leave my luggage; just watch it, please.” Two innocent-looking girls and a priest. If you can’t trust them . . .

I ran up the steps to the office, and indeed the door was locked, but through the frosted glass I could see people move about. I tried the door to the left — locked. The next door was ajar, and I was about to knock when I overheard someone inside say, “In ten minutes go out and tell all the new people to form a line at the corner tower to register — we’ll just have to put them up there, but don’t make any promises about when they can go.”

I had my hot scoop. I turned on my heel and raced down the stairs and out of the building and — nobody! They were gone! The collection! My father’s art collection! The silver!

I frantically looked around. There were people everywhere, but no priest, no two girls, neither the blond one with the blue coat, nor the dark one in the dirty white parka. There were no suitcases, just miserable, confused, lost people all around. I raced toward the tower, hoping that somehow they already knew. Not there. I tried to calm myself, then ran back to the wall where I had left them - and suddenly, there they were, my suitcases, the girls, and the priest, not twenty paces from where I had left them, standing in a long line that was forming rapidly.

“Haven’t you heard? The border will be closed until after Christmas, maybe until New Years, and we’ll have to stay here until then. You need to register in here before you can even get food coupons.”

I blushed — some fine scout I was! Two girls and a priest had the real information, and all I had to offer was just another hot rumor!

Eva-Maria, the petite brunette, had bright eyes and a mischievous smile. Something in her face was always in motion, and well, just maybe, it wouldn’t be all that bad to be stranded with her for a few days. Anneliese was tall, blond and much quieter than her big sister. “She’s my little sister but my big conscience,” Eva-Maria told me when we formally introduced ourselves. I would be happy to be stuck here with these young women, I decided.

Brother Antonio was another story. There was absolutely no choice to be made; he was with us to stay. I was afraid that if I separated myself now, Brother Antonio might tag along with me, without the girls, and that looked like the far less attractive alternative.

And so it came to pass that chance had thrown us four people together to spend the first post-war Christmas in a neglected castle in an insignificant corner of Saxony, in the middle of Europe. The castle would have dreamed on for a few hundred more years toward its eventual decay, had it not been for the fact that months ago some English, Russian, and American military aides had drawn a line on a map right where this Cinderella castle happened to stand, and the Big Three at Yalta had seen the map and found that it was good, and American tanks had rolled right by it, deeper toward the east, until somebody pointed out where the line on the map was, and the American tanks withdrew just to the west of it, and the Russian tanks filled the void.

And on the raging river of post-war migration, four pieces of flotsam had become entangled in the swirling currents. They would float downriver together for a bit, one may drift away and others would hook, some may sink, most of them would eventually find a piece of dry land somewhere - maybe not. They may drift apart and encounter each other again downstream, and one would not know the other, and the river would not know. Nor care.

Yes, the rumor, for once, had been true: the border would be closed until after Christmas and, for better or for worse, we were stuck.

By mid-afternoon we were standing in line at the corner tower again, this time to get some food coupons and be assigned a dormitory for the next few nights. The assignment of quarters was strictly arbitrary, housing bodies to a room until it was full, then on to the next room and the next list of names. They were not really rooms, but rather large halls with low ceilings and fat columns, stretching all the way across the width of the buildings. The ones on the ground floor, which in better times may have served as storage for carriages and farming tools, had stone or dirt floors and cots with straw mattresses. On the upper story, where there was a wood floor, the mattresses were put directly on the floor, practically wall-to-wall. It was there that I wound up with my new friends.

We were lucky to get a row of straw sacks along a wall, and we immediately collapsed into them, desperate for rest - rest from carrying, rest from standing, rest from walking, rest from waiting. Immediately, my arms and the legs became as heavy as my eyelids, so that lifting any of them became an effort. How quickly one can become thankful for a place to call one’s own for the moment, even if it is two square meters of flea-infested straw!

The peaceful solitude didn’t last long. When we heard that soup was being offered for the price of one food coupon, Eva-Maria and I volunteered to take the four aluminum mess bowls (who would ever go on a trip without one?) and get everyone’s ration while Anneliese and Brother Antonio stayed to watch our belongings.

We dined on our dilapidated mattresses, sitting tailor-fashion. For a fleeting moment, I thought of the sterling silver place settings in the suitcase against which I was propped. The engraved silverware, the platters and serving dishes, the porcelain-handled fruit knives.

For one crazy split-second it occurred to me that I could use one of those knives just for fun, but instead I pulled out my rusty pocketknife and shared the pumpernickel, a treat my friends found hard to believe. If one chewed it long enough it even tasted sweet. To crown the peaceful communal meal, Eva-Maria cut a brown-skinned apple into four neat sections, one for each of us. By the time we finished our shared meal, we had become a cell, a unit, a separate entity, no longer four disconnected individuals, but a group which, by virtue of nothing other than having spent the better part of a day standing in lines together, set itself apart from the ordinary crowd.

We talked all evening. It was no longer the normal exchange of survival tips. Now the conversation turned to ourselves, to past nightmares and future dreams, to past dreams and future fears, former beliefs and newly realized realities. And, most importantly, beliefs that were so deeply held and so important that, all better knowledge notwithstanding, they had been kept alive, in spite of the war’s terrible toll on everything we knew, in ourselves and in our world. Giving up these beliefs, with everything else we’d lost, would have been too painful. My favorite sayings, “Pour quelque chose malheur est bon^[2]” and “Wie es auch sei, das Leben, es ist gut^[3]” definitely fell into that category. But no one knew - least of all I - that I wore those beliefs like life vests, without which I would have sunk.

When others around us fell silent, we started to whisper. Soon, Anneliese fell asleep, but the communication between Eva-Maria and me continued, not on a verbal level, but rather by timid reaches in the dark, by feeling close, warm, and secure. I was lying between Eva-Maria and Brother Antonio, and while I was interested in the closeness and warmth of Eva-Maria, she was interested in my being interested in her, and Brother Antonio, if he was interested in anyone, I realized, it would have been me. Although the small wood burning stove had gone out long ago, neither I nor Eva-Maria were cold during that December night in 1945.

The next day things resolved themselves rather conveniently. Brother Antonio found (or maybe was found by) two other priests and a Protestant pastor and his wife who somehow had managed to arrange — not an easy feat in a Communist country — to secure a small room in the living quarters of the castle set aside for clergy. After the clergy had withdrawn to chambers, Eva-Maria and I (Anneliese was too young for such conversation) speculated for quite some time on the technical details of that living arrangement. I began calling the girls my two new sisters, and that seemed to be just fine with them.

In the morning of the second day, we sat on our straw mats solving crossword puzzles and — good Germans, we! — reading Goethe’s Faust. As the day wore on without much else to do, the dormitory grew into more of a community. This, after all, was Christmas Eve, and if we were going to be here over the holidays we might as well make the best of it. It wasn’t long before someone found a scraggly little tree outside, and everyone in the room was busy all afternoon decorating it with anything they could find, make, improvise, or imagine. In the evening we even tried Christmas carols, sung in all the different German dialects, and the only ones who were silent were those who were too choked up to sing, and a group of orthodox Jews, bearded and with curled locks, who looked grim, mistrusting, and indescribably sad.

I can’t help but wonder how these Orthodox Jews survived the war and how they came to be part of this group. There must be a story there!

There are Christmas Miracles after all! On Christmas Day, by mistake or grace or overcrowding or Russian sentimentality, the border opened. The paper processing was very quick;, there wasn’t even time for inspection of luggage. Before midnight we found ourselves on the other side of the border, in the Moschendorf camp which was not a castle, but somber barracks, with new rumors, just as many people, better soup, and, surprisingly, an open gate.

When my “sisters” and I heard the announcement that we would have to be de-loused the next morning and then stay for three days in quarantine, we made a very quick decision, aided by the unlocked gate.

OUT! Out we ran, into the night and across the field toward the lights in the fog - the train station.

For the rest of the cold night, we hid in an equipment shack in the freight yard, bundled up against the cold in anything we had and huddled together in a gray mass of suitcases, pounding pulses, steaming breath, blankets, and excited whispers, in the unsure light of a switchyard lamp shining through the only windowpane that had not been boarded up.

We were awakened by a locomotive huffing and hissing right outside our hideout. It was still dark, but there were some railroad workers around now. I went out and called up to the engineer in the steam engine: “Where are you headed?”

“Marktredwitz, after we get some more cars,” he answered. And even before the engineer could blow his whistle again, the three of us had clambered aboard the completely empty, dark passenger car right behind the engine. The car shifted back and forth a few times and was then uncoupled and re-coupled so the engine was now on the other end of the car. The lights came on, the steam heat began to fill the cabin. The three of us fell into each other’s arms as though we were waking up from a dream: we were in a real train, a passenger train with light and heat, going south toward Bavaria!

(www.bahnausbau-nordostbayern.de)

We were in a country that was different from all we had ever known - different from wartime Germany and different from the Russian Zone. Here, for the first time in many, many years, peace could be felt. And all it took was a warm, uncrowded passenger car running on (unremoved) double tracks to give us a sensation of luxury and a new standard of normalcy of life.

The new normal lasted until just before Marktredwitz. A bridge was still out and that automatically meant the end of the line. Everybody out, and into a bus to town. Or rather: almost to town.

“Next stop - Hospital!” the conductor called out, and a moment later a flash of mischief flickered in Eva-Maria’s eyes.

“That’s where we get off”, she said with a matter-of-fact voice which betrayed the wink in the corner of her eyes. It allowed no serious questioning.

“Wait. What do you mean? Why . . .?”

“It’ll take too long to explain, never mind,” and we wiggled our way through the jammed bus to the door, heavy suitcases and all.

In the next two minutes, in front of the desk at the hospital, I saw easy-going Eva-Maria put on an air of urgency, almost panic, that was so well acted out that even I was tempted to believe it myself.

“Look, we just escaped from the Russian Zone and we are absolutely filthy, probably disease-ridden. You can’t possibly let us spread whatever we may be carrying further into Bavaria. Please,” — there was despair in her lowered voice — “Please let us have a hot bath!”

(Can I just say… this Eva-Maria was kind of a bad-ass!)

And so, instead of several days of quarantine at the camp, instead of the de-lousing sprays, we three got hot tub baths, soap, and even clean towels. Without even asking for it, we got some food from a redheaded nurse who had taken a liking to us and who seemed to have a boyfriend in the kitchen who slipped her some bread, cheese and hot milk.

How conquerable the world looks after a hot bath, a hunk of bread and cheese in the stomach, and someone flirtatious alongside! Did it matter at all that the day was bitter cold? Did it matter that Germany had just lost the war? Did anything matter as long as we had found this ride on the back of a truck, standing on a pile of coal, leaning over the cab? What mattered was that I had my arms around my “sisters,” that we kept each other warm, and that the truck was going south, toward the low sun of the hazy midwinter noon, toward a freer country, toward family, into a new year.

And there behind us, teetering on lumps of coal, was a badly scuffed suitcase, containing the peaceful portrait of Sophia Hauber with her dreamy eyes, and a Baroque cookie box badly in dire need of a polishing job.

The portrait of Sophia Hauber which, in December, 1945, sat in the badly scuffed suitcase that teetered on lumps of coal, now lives on the merlot-colored wall of our music room in Gig Harbor, Washington. Leo, my first (and so far only) grandchild loves Sophia and when he stays with us, he insists on saying good morning to her when he awakes and goodnight to her before he goes to bed. If only Carl could see his beloved Sophia and his great-great-great grandchild!

And that Baroque cookie box is still in dire need of a polishing job as it sits on the kitchen shelf in Michael’s house. Dad gave the cookie box to Michael for his 50th birthday. I expect and hope that it will continued to be passed down in Michael’s family.

 

---

^[1] anti-aircraft

^[2] any misfortune is good for something

^[3] however life may be -- it is good

Well, this is awkward!

Dear grandchildren,

It’s a bit…well, awkward for a child – even a grown child – to hear details about their parent’s sexual history. I probably skipped over this little chapter when I read Dad’s book the first and second times. But this time I had to edit it.

And you know what? It’s actually really sweet.

(Except that it’s my Dad. So, ew?)

I was sitting in the waiting room of the medical office, along with maybe twenty other miserable specimens of humanity. Dr. Barbara von Renthe, Nora’s mother, was one of the first doctors allowed to open a medical practice again, and hers was in a large office complex that housed mainly the Russian occupation headquarters.

I had developed a bad infection in my left armpit and my arm was in a sling, the elbow held away from my body by a makeshift contraption Nora had fashioned for me. Rainer and I, along with Ulli and Renate, had planned to leave the next day for München. We expected that it would be a journey of at least a few days and that we would need to use any means of transportation that presented itself at the moment. The trip would require quick decisions, breathless sprints, long hours of waiting on cold train station platforms - and all this with heavy and precious luggage.

Every time a burst of pain shot through the carbuncle in my armpit, my face distorted. Nora was probably right: I was in absolutely no condition to undertake this kind of trip. She had been trying to convince me of it, and now was enlisting her mother’s medical authority to support her efforts to keep me back a little while longer. Now it was looking like Rainer, Renate and Ulli would probably have to leave for München without me.

When it was finally my turn — the last hour had gone by faster because Nora had arrived and was sitting next to me — “Dr. Mummi” took one look at the mess under my arm and proclaimed “You belong in a hospital, but they don’t have room. The next best thing is our house, and Nora is going to be your nurse. And you, Nora, will have a chance to show what you can do as a nurse, since you want to become a doctor!” She cleaned and dressed the nasty infection, gave me some sulfonamides — the new wonder drug from America — and released me into the care of my sweetheart-nurse, with detailed medical instructions to the exuberant apprentice.

Nora basked in her new role. She had been a nurse’s aide before, but never had she taken sole responsibility for a patient.

Once we reached Nora’s home-hospital, I was bedded down in a guest room that connected to a hallway and shared a a common balcony with Nora’s bedroom. It was the only available room in the house, and I was much too miserable to wonder whether it was by design that I got this room - and if so, was it mother’s or daughter’s idea, or both?

I recovered quickly. The antibiotics did their work, the hot compresses and the Ichtamol relieved the pressure of the bursting pus pockets, and after a few days my temperature was almost back to normal. While I recovered, I was alone much of the day, while Nora was in school and her mother was in her medical office, but evenings with Nora were long and beautiful.

One night, I lay awake debating whether I should be bold enough to go through the door and visit my “nurse” next door. We had spent all evening reading love poetry in German, French and English, and torturing each other with our resolve to waituntil we were “mature enough.” But when the lights were out and separation seemed so cruelly final, I decided that I really hadn’t meant all I had said that evening about waiting and all that.

I half thought, half whispered Nora’s name, tentatively, like a question.

The door, which had only been ajar, opened slowly, silently, and the lovely naked figure, silhouetted against the night window, moved toward my bed. “Tes pas, enfants de mon silence...” I thought as my heart pounded in my throat, “Ombre divine...^[1]”

Without a word, Nora slipped under my blanket. I put my arm around her and whispered in her ear:“....Car j’ai vécu de vous attendre, et mon cœur n’était que vos pas...”^[2]

---

^[1] “Your steps, as children of my silence … heavenly shadow….” (Paul Valéry)

^[2] “...for I have only existed on expecting you, and my heart was nothing but your steps…”

The Suitcase

Dear grandchildren,

My father didn’t tell us many stories about his life during and just after the war when I was young, but this one was told fairly often – and a re-telling was always immediately requested.

Here is an example of how one quick moment in history and one blatant misunderstanding can have a huge impact on the future.

The suitcases mentioned in this entry have histories of their own, beginning in the dusty bank vault in Russian- occupied Burgstädt and traveling across oceans and through time. When Dad emigrated to America in April, 1953, he had very few possessions or money to his name, but he did have one piece of luggage – the suitcase! (I have no idea what happened to the other one). 

Since 1953, this suitcase lived under Dad’s bed in every house in which he’s lived. I don’t remember him ever sharing its contents with anyone, but in 2014 he proudly pulled the large black suitcase out from under the bed to show it to Julia Essl, Provenance Researcher for the Albertina Museum in Vienna who had come to Ashland, Oregon to meet my father in person and learn more about his perspective and knowledge of his father’s art collection.

And a few years later, just weeks before he died, Dad shared the contents of the suitcase with his beloved granddaughter, my daughter Elisabeth.

Since dad’s death, some of the art from the suitcase has found its way back to Chemnitz in a loving donation from my father to the Chemnitz art museum, where his father Carl once sat on the board, some of it was bequeathed to the Albertina Museum in Vienna, and some of it is now with his children.

Here is Thomas’ description of what happened on that late summer day  in Burgstädt.

In summer, 1945, Burgstädt, just 25 km from the sooty industrial city of Chemnitz, wasn’t much of a town - just a neglected jumble of old houses clustered around a small Marktplatz, unscathed by war, and a bit smudgy from neglect and the passage of time. The town’s industry centered on cotton and linen textiles, with just enough commerce to justify a small branch of Father’s bank consisting of one teller, two tiny offices, and a miniature vault.

Of all places in Germany accessible to Carl Heumann near the end of the war, Burgstädt seemed to be the most unlikely hamlet to become a bombing target, and thus the safest spot to hide his most loved possessions - two specially made suitcases filled with drawings, watercolors, paintings, and etchings of German Romanticists. It was a collection that was more complete than any other in Germany, except perhaps for those in the large museums of Dresden and Berlin. Carl had a special personal relationship with each of the hundreds of pictures in the suitcases. He had a deep aesthetic appreciation of the art itself, made deeper and more tangible by his own research into the artists’ lives, into each painter’s style, and into each artist’s connection to other artists of the time, and to the world in which they lived. It was this research and Carl Heumann’s keen perception that had kept him sane and even reasonably fulfilled during the years of his “internal emigration” when he had to curtail his communication with the real world until he barely lived in it. He breathed the 100- or 200-year-old air of the pictures and, in a strange untimely way, regarded the artists as friends. As a result of his passion and the small world imposed upon him in which he was confined to his house and his own thoughts, he became the expert of the period of the artists and their thinking. He was respected for knowing his art inside and out and for understanding each piece’s relation to other art forms that had preceded it and that stemmed from it.

This mini-vault in the mini-bank in the mini-town in Saxony, like the factories and anything else that could be moved, unscrewed, pried off, and shipped east as war reparations, had been confiscated and locked up by the Red Army. It was Rainer’s mission that October day to rescue a piece of German “Kultur” from the paws of the Russian Bear.

Rainer returned home triumphant, one suitcase in each hand.

We couldn't believe it! “How in the hell, Rainer?!”

“It wasn’t easy, and I did a lot of fast talking,” Rainer began. “First, I found out that the private bank had been closed down, of course, and that everything from the safe had been moved to the Russian commander’s office. I finally found the Russian in charge. He was a middle-aged, low-ranking officer with the face of a village blacksmith. He spoke only a few words of German and gave me a blank stare most of the time while I tried to explain and plead and beg. I tried to tell him that our father was a Jew, that he had been persecuted by the Nazis, that we had been in camps, that our parents were dead, that our father had been a well-known art historian, not a bad capitalist, not a Junker (a noble landowner, very much looked down upon by the Russians), and that we were poor now.”

Rainer continued. “He took me to a dank, poorly lit basement where the contents of the bank’s safe deposit boxes had been dumped onto a table. There, I saw some of Mother’s jewelry and pointed out three or four pieces I recognized. But I didn’t want to wear out his patience with Mother’s jewelry because there, in a corner, were Father’s two collection suitcases! I pointed to them and insisted that these pictures were all the memories we had now, but he gave me the same blank stare. He then began to get a little impatient. He opened the cases and thumbed through the pictures and actually studied some of them with a rather thoughtful expression. I guess they looked harmless enough to him, nothing subversive, militaristic, or capitalistic here - just bucolic landscapes, peasants, portraits, nudes, and animals. He looked at a drawing of a horse for a long time, and even put it aside as though he wanted to keep it for himself, but I told him that this was a very dear horse which meant a great deal to a cousin of mine. He said something in Russian, but all I understood was ‘nyet.’”

“I kept talking,” Rainer explained, “saying the same things over and over again, slower and simpler, but I could tell I wasn’t getting through to him.

Then, suddenly his face lit up, his eyes and his mouth opened, and he summoned all his knowledge of German and said, ‘Papa tot?’“ sliding his finger across his neck, the international sign for ‘dead.’

“‘Papa machen?”he asked, as he made a painting motion with his hand, asking wordlessly if our father was a painter!”

“I just nodded. Then he nodded in response for a long time, obviously thinking, weighing his official socialist responsibility against his human instinct. “Papa tot (Papa is dead),’” he said again. “Papa malen!” (“Papa paints!”) and he shut the suitcase, pushed it toward me and almost smiled. I think he even felt good about what he had just done.”

Our father was never a painter – and even if he were, he could have never created the exquisite works of art that were laid out in front of this Russian and Rainer in that damp old bank vault. But “Papa malt!” was close enough for both of them at that moment, and Rainer came home triumphant, one suitcase in each hand!

    

        -----

The Russian occupation force was very much in control of everything that happened in Chemnitz in 1945. The major thrust at the time was land reform, which meant taking the land of the rich aristocratic “Junkers” and giving it to peasants, who would then live on the property in a collective farm, Soviet style.

The Russians were also most particular to remove anyone with a Nazi history and eventually anyone of the bourgeoise class. We expected that as people who had been persecuted by the Nazis we would at least be tolerated in the new society, but we saw signs that the opposite was beginning to develop. Not only were we of the bourgeois class and had gone to a bourgeois high school, but we were also partly of Jewish descent. The Russians had no love for either group.

In 1945, we still thought we were credible witnesses, unlike our uncle Heinz who had been a Luftwaffe officer and thus clearly suspect to the denazification apparatus. On Heinz’s request, Rainer wrote an exonerating testimonial for him:

“Chemnitz, 26 September 1945

“We confirm by our signature below that Heinrich Buddecke and his wife, residing in Adelsberg near Chemnitz, have housed and educated our sister Ulrike Heumann after the death of our mother Irmgard Heumann, née Buddecke immediately following the her death  in early January 1944. This effort occurred in full agreement of our father Carl Heumann in Chemnitz who was a banker and Portuguese Consul, and is now deceased. Our father was <ethnically> Jewish and was very happy that through this accommodation his daughter, as a “half-Jew,” was protected from difficulties with the then governing Nazis. This protection could credibly be assumed since my uncle was a member of the Nazi party.

As we know from repeated visits, and from statements from our father, the Buddecke couple assumed that task with great care and in full approval by our father. Our father has mentioned repeatedly that he was grateful for the help his relatives provided for his child.

Herr Buddecke contacted us immediately after the death of our father, and has been particularly helped with a dignified burial and with salvaging of existing estate property on our account.

The Buddecke couple continued to care for our sister Ulrike after the death of our father in the same manner as just described. We are taking her with us to Munich because we are in the process of establishing our own household there.

Signed: Rainer Heumann

Note: The back of this contains the notarization by attorney Gerhard Thierig.

Source: Sächsisches Staatsarchiv Chemnitz

under # 30182, Notary Gerhard Thierig, Chemnitz.

Unfortunately, some of this is patently untrue, particularly the next-to-last paragraph. Heinz wasn’t anywhere near us to inform us of, let alone help us with, the death and burial of our father. Nor, to my knowledge, did he have anything to do with “salvaging Estate property.” This notarized document is an example of how one typically stretched the truth in the interest of family solidarity at the time of “denazification.” This is not to say that Heinz and Gert did not go out of their way to take in Ulli at the time. They did, and we have always been grateful.

An unexpected visit, a surprise bounty, and a branding of rebellious hope

Dearest grandkids,

In this entry, Thomas describes a happy event in 1945 - a reunion with his brother Rainer, who hadn’t been heard from in a year. Can you imagine? Instant electronic communication, like email and texting (and whatever will be invented after I write this!) not only didn't exist then, but Germany was in complete chaos, so ALL communication had been broken down for months. Thomas feared that his brother had been deported or even killed, which – given that he was a half-Jew – was completely plausible, even probable. 

I’ve spoken previously about “generational trauma.” I could feel it when I read Thomas’ description of his hunger and then of the family's sheer delight upon receiving what we would now be considered mere staples. Although I’ve never been truly hungry, I often heard about hunger from my parents who, like any parents, raised their children with their own experiences serving as their blueprint, and I somehow internalized that. I’ll elaborate on it later in this post.

Here are Thomas’ happy words.

Already the days were getting noticeably shorter and having electricity for only an hour a day was becoming more of a nuisance, but not a real hardship - at least not when compared to the hunger. Yes, there was hunger all over the land. It was not the kind of famine where whole populations are decimated and die in the streets, but neither was it the “oh-dear-I’m-absolutely-famished” hunger of well-fed people. It was the hunger that comes from years of shortages, from occasional days of nothing to eat at all, or maybe only a potato. It was hunger that is not yet agony, but is painful enough so you have trouble staying asleep at night. It was during one of those nights when I got up not long after midnight just to be sure to be among the first in line in the morning at the baker’s shop. In the morning they would bake — if the bakers had flour, that is.

Yes, there was bread that morning, and I got four whole pounds with the coupons from the family. As I approached the house, I heard excited noises – everyone talking at once, not angry, not alarmed, but happy - and before I reached the front door, Ulli called out “Rainer is here, and Renate, and she’s going to have a baby, and they are married!”

(I don’t have a single photo of Renate, the wife Rainer brought to Adelsburg that day! He and Renate divorced when their child, Andreas, was very young.)

After not seeing our brother for a year and wondering silently, with greater doubts and fears as each day passed whether something might be really wrong, here he was  - a grown man, with a mustache - and a wife! Rainer would know better than anyone what had to be done now!

Rainer seemed to know how to get food - or maybe life was just better in München, which was now in the American Zone. He brought us bread that was much lighter than the stuff I had stood in line for that morning at daybreak. And then he surprised us with a slab of bacon, real bacon, almost a pound of it! And then he showed us an incredible treasure from a land where living must be good and easy: nestled in a small box were real American cigarettes! “LUCKY STRIKE” said the bold letters on the protective box. They smelled like no cigarette I had ever smelled before, sweet and rich. Tonight, we would all share one, Rainer promised.

The cigarettes were only the beginning of the unfolding miracles. Rainer and Renate also brought a rucksack filled entirely with two cartons, one of them still sealed. They were not ordinary cartons. “C A R E” it said in big letters on the outside, and Rainer explained that it was from Onkel Willy in America. He teased that inside the box were items that we had heard rumors about, but had never seen. One of the boxes was for all of us, while the other one for two friends of Onkel Willy’s who in Saxony, to be re-packaged and forwarded from somewhere in the Russian Occupation Zone because the Russians would not permit CARE packages to be shipped into the Zone directly.

Everyone in the house gathered around the dining table where Rainer was about to pour out the horn-of-plenty in the shape of a cardboard box. The box itself was made from material so strong and so smooth that it evoked visions of peacetime and luxury.

With relish, Rainer unpacked and displayed the contents, one by one. Bags, boxes, and cans labeled with exotic names and strange titles. Dried egg powder, dry milk that tasted delicious just from a licked finger, flour so white and so fine that it seemed unearthly. A can of shortening (whatever that was), and two cans that contained SPAM, which seemed to be some sort of meat.

Then came the real luxury: a can of coffee, a whole pound of honest-to-goodness coffee, the type that came from coffee beans, not from barley! Very few people in Germany had tasted real coffee in a very long time, and the few who had any coffee at all at this point had saved it from early in the war when there had been special distributions of 50 grams per adult after a particularly fierce air raid. On high and holy days, those lucky people would mix the real coffee with the ersatz coffee, one teaspoon per potful. And here -- here was a whole pound of it!

No one could figure out what the funny looking powder called “corn meal” could be, but there was no doubt at all about the bars of chocolate, or the whole pack of cigarettes. Raisins, dried soup, green peas, rice, even some jam with real fruit in it — all treasures, all exotic because of their origin and the long trip they had behind them. What a great country America must be!

We finally reached the bottom of the box. We went to the kitchen trying to figure out what we could do with corn meal. Ceremoniously, Rainer opened one can of SPAM as one would unveil a new piece of art, and they passed it around to smell.

Interestingly, I never had corn meal muffins or pancakes, or anything made with cornmeal as a child. Even when I was an adult and had fallen in love with buttery cornbread, making it for my parents a few times, they were not fans. Only quite late in life did they begin to appreciate Mexican food, which uses a great deal of corn meal. I guess this one experience really affected my dad.

I also never had sweet potatoes as a child. Only a few years ago, as I cooked Dad a dinner recipe that included roasted sweet potatoes, did I ask him why. He explained that regular potatoes become sweet as they age and that, with the severe food shortages during the war, he often had no choice but to eat old, sweet, potatoes. Of course they had no relation to the delicious American sweet potatoes that we eat now, but my father simply couldn’t even try something called “sweet potatoes” once he left Germany!

The fried SPAM was supreme, and there was enough so everybody could have a whole slice. The corn meal looked like Cream of Wheat, so we cooked it like Grießbrei. It turned into a thick, almost hard solid which, even when salted and sugared, tasted bland. What little one could taste was new and strange. But all of us all ate it with delight because if it came from America it must be good. We decided that we probably just didn’t know how to cook it right.

After dinner, which concluded with a whole cigarette for each of the men, Rainer and I went to the little attic room where we tackled the problem of distributing the still unopened box into two smaller boxes for mailing to the lucky and unsuspecting recipients. We had two boxes of about equal size. Since the CARE package contained either two of each item, or at least equivalents, it wasn’t hard to separate. We even used the original shredded newspaper material to carefully fill the voids. (They shred the paper, Rainer said, because they don’t want us to read it.) But no matter how cleverly we arranged the coffee on its side, how hard we stuffed the dried apricots in the corners, it simply wouldn’t all fit. At last, we hit upon a particularly clever arrangement that stowed everything neatly, except one O’Henry candy bar. A mighty moral struggle with inevitable outcome ensued. “How, oh Henry, can we fit you?” “Henry, oh Henry, you are too fat!”

Henry lost. So did our morals and ethics. But, Oh, Henry — was it delicious!

I am overweight and have been for much of my life. I have an odd relationship with food, consuming it mindlessly until my plate is clean, with no regard for appetite. In fact, I don’t think appetite has ever played any role at all in my eating. I just eat until the food is gone. This is how I learned to eat. Not “eat till you are no longer hungry,” but “eat everything on your plate; you’re lucky to have this food and not be hungry like we were!” I’ve been on a variety of diets and have gone to conventional therapy and even hypnosis therapy to address my deep-seated issues with food. Ironically, the method that seems to be working now is to actually make myself hungry – intermittent fasting! I’m not a psychologist, so I can’t really explain it, but I have a feeling there’s a connection here somehow to what I learned as a child, possibly rebelling against it, or maybe embracing and reflecting my father’s experiences with hunger in his youth. Big difference, though – I get to eat when the clock says I can. Dad couldn’t.

Later, Rainer showed off a scar on his arm with the flair of a war hero displaying his wounds. Rainer’s and Renate’s pride of that scar said something about why they were now married.

During the last year of the war, until Rainer was shipped off to labor camp, they were both closely involved with the München underground student movement of which the Scholls — the executed brother-and-sister instigators of a brief but bloody student uprising — were the most visible members.

Renate was an art student and Rainer was working as a machinist at BMW. They saw each other almost daily, although it carried great risks, because for each of them these dates only compounded their crimes. As if being a Mischling was not enough of a strike against Rainer, now he was associating with the dissident underground! And Renate aggravated her own sin of association with revolutionary elements by committing Rassenschande (sleeping with a Jew).

On the 20th of July, 1944, they were both at the University with lots of strangers around them when the announcement came over the radio that there had been an assassination attempt on the Führer.

What does an impulsive girl, who is equally in love with the man next to her as with the idea of being a revolutionary, do when she hears news that sounds like the revolution has begun and she will soon be allowed to openly date (and possibly marry) the half-Jewish man she loves? What does she do when she must not give herself away, must fear everyone around her, when she must put on a somber face, when all she really wants to do is let out a jubilant scream, jump for joy, and dance?

She bends down, buries her face in her boyfriend’s arm and bites it - hard, to prevent herself from opening her mouth in a liberating scream that’s in her throat and wants desperately to escape!

For the rest of his life, Rainer had the scar to remind him of that moment of joy and hope, disappointment and agony.

Obviously I have no photo to depict this event, but in my mind’s eye it’s a movie that I’ve watched over and over since I first heard the story from my father when I was a young adult.