PREAMBLE

Adam and Bert were sitting on the river bank, trying to fish. In spite of their shining new fishing rods and a can of live, fat worms for bait, no fish would bite. After some time it got rather boring and in order to get some excitement into the experience, Adam suggested to his mate Bert if he would eat one of those worms. As a reward Adam offered the ten cents that was in his possession. Ten cents was quite a bit of money in those days and, with the lure of a shiny ten cent coin, reluctantly, Bert accepted the offer. Fighting the agony of disgust welling up inside him, he forced himself to swallow one of the wiggly worms and received his reward. Adam, now feeling deprived of the only cash he had possessed, suggested to Bert if he, himself, now would also eat one of the worms, would Bert be willing to return the ten cents back to him. With glee shining in his eyes, Bert agreed. Now it was Adam's turn to fight the urge to throw up while devouring his worm. Task completed, he got his ten cents back. They continued their futile attempts to fish. After a while, with a disgusting aftertaste still lingering in their mouths, they asked each other: "What the heck did we eat those worms for?"

From my collection of serious and meaningful jokes, I heard that story when I was still young and ever since I have been asking myself: Is that the way homo sapiens conduct their affairs in the world?

"... beliefs were formed in childhood in interactions with parents who loved their children—but who did not realize that their interactions with their children were frequently leading to such crippling beliefs." From an anonymous Parenting letter.

INTRODUCTION

“What on earth is going to become of him?” Well, that is not exactly how my life started, but that sentence imposed itself into my mind during all my childhood years, so that even now, some eighty years later, I can still hear it.

This is my autobiography. Beyond that, however, it is also a document about what I consider has been the ever so often forgotten link in human development. Let me explain:

A child is born. It is now customary to care for baby's security, nutrition and hygiene. As this procedure is widespread in the animal kingdom, so it is widespread among us humans, but there is the difference: In addition to physical needs, the human baby needs 'nutrimentum spiritus', that is food for its mind, food for the soul. The future personality evolves from the quality, or otherwise, of that mental nourishment.

Sure enough, many parents do this automatically without even thinking about it. Sadly, there are others who simply do not know how to do it. Regrettably, many do it the wrong way, paradoxically they do it while they care most sincerely for the child.

I was one of those children.
How has it affected my life – moreover
my self-image without a male model?
What have I learned in the process?

CHAPTER ONE

Dawn

While everyone's life has ups and downs, much of my life could have been described more appropriately as the ups and downs of a roller coaster.

A closer look at how all the events unfolded, as an umbrella theme the question emerges: Why do we waste so much of, what surely must be considered THE highest attribute that may exist in the entire universe: HUMAN POTENTIAL? How could that sacrifice be prevented?

CHAPTER TWO

School – 1

In our primary school years, we learn much about the world and its inhabitants. We are expected to put all the material we have been told together in a meaningful way. We have to accept the facts as they are presented to us and whenever we can remember them and put them down on paper as we have learned them we get full marks. To this day, however, I wonder how many of those kids in my class simply swallowed that material and, by contrast, how many may have put it on hold to think about it and come to their own conclusions, possibly later in life.

AT SCHOOL

In her young days Oma, being the oldest of eight girls, had attended a girl's school of high standing. Considering her lack of human understanding and her rather negligible speech I often wondered what they might have taught in those days. Still, as it now was my turn to start school, Oma supported me all the way. She provided me with a container containing sweets customary in Germany for school beginners, and found myself sitting in the all boys classroom for the first time. What might have come over me I still wonder. After the teacher had talked for 10 or 15 minutes I grabbed my school bag and went out of the classroom. Someone in the corridor told me I had to remain in the class, so I returned to my seat. I did so without question, after all, ever so often I had been told that I must be obedient. Oma often threatened me that, should I become too difficult she would sent me to an unspecified 'home'. That gave me a feeling of insecurity and I found it safer to just be obedient.

Looking back over the school years, not in strictly chronological order, what do I remember?

I was essentially a loner, an outsider. I could not relate to my peers. For a start, their way of thinking was foreign to me. They seemed to be carefree, have confidence and fun. With envy I remember listening to them about experiences with their parents. Their fathers took them to outings or games, mothers told them stories and hugs and kisses before bed time was the norm.

As I had none of that, there was nothing for me to contribute and join in with the others. Moreover, often I had to face Oma's anxious questionings: "Are the teachers happy with you?" and so the never-ending negative suggestions had eroded my self confidence and compromised my performance. Every year there was great doubt if I would be able to get into the next grade without having to repeat the previous year. I always managed it, but only just. At the end of a term, my results were anticipated with great concern. There were the Bs and Cs and the occasional D and always the comment: "Still und verschlossen". (silent and introverted). So, for the teachers, their job was done and there was no need to perhaps try to ask questions or intervene in any way. My academic performance was always marginal, except for spelling and physics. Here I got the highest marks. As only the negative aspects had been considered, those high marks meant nothing to me.

During the first few years I had difficulties reading the blackboard. I used to bend my forefinger to create a tiny hole. Looking through that hole, I had discovered that I could see a little better and even catch some of the writing. One day one of the boys brought a small concave lens to the class. When I looked through it, to my amazement, for the first time in my life I could see distant objects in focus. I was prescribed spectacles while wondering how the teacher could have missed my feeble attempts to read his writing on the blackboard.

Then there was the teacher of another class, Herr Koehler. He had previously known someone from our family, so he knew me. Sitting on a bench on the playground he pulled my earlobe in sort of fun. When I moved to do the same to him he slapped me in the face. I never came close to him again.

ABOUT WAR

Around grade three or four, we were prepared for the ideology of the time. The most disturbing lesson of my entire school life – for me – cast a doubt on everything about what mankind was supposed to stand for. As an eight year old I would not have known how to express my thoughts in words, but I felt it so strongly that even now, close to eighty years later, I still remember that moment. Teacher: “In this battle in France in World War one, 200,000 men got killed on that side and 300,000 men on the other. ” He put it to us as if that was the proper and expected manner how the peoples of the world conducted their affairs. Following this, what would have gone through my eight year old mind?

That is what is meant by ‘war.’. If some nations disagree about something or other, then they declare war and start murdering each other at a scale that seems astronomical. 200,000 on one side and 300,000 on the other. In just one of the battles of the war. How many wonderful people who under different conditions might have become most productive citizens or the best of friends, are forced to kill and pull each other to pieces? Any means, no matter how disgusting is used to destroy the enemy. To drive the obscenity even further, one side will ask Mr. God to bless THEIR weapons for a better chance to kill and maim the mean enemy. The other side, however, also asks Mr. God to bless THEIR weapons for killing and destroying THEIR naughty enemy. And so, obviously with God’s blessing, they reject no means of either killing outright (the lucky ones) or pulling any of their body parts off (the less lucky) or torturing them to death, often slowly and under conditions that nobody in their right mind would subject the lowest kind of vermin. (the most unlucky ones) Neither side will ask Mr. God for guidance how this conflict could be resolved using the God-given skills of language and co-operation, communication and understanding. Finally, when the killing has been done and the now weaker side is exhausted, the other side has won and is in the right. My eight year old mind then asked the question: if the losing side had possessed the more effective killing machinery and won the war, would they instead have been in the right and the others wrong?

In my emotional and intellectual isolation, there was nobody in my world with whom I could have discussed my concerns and get got some clarification. So it became a concept that did not fit in my reality as a square peg will never fit into a round hole. The issue remained unresolved then, as it did throughout my life.

Every now and then came what I used to think of as a real circus: "Der Fuehrer spricht." On those occasions the whole class had to sit still and in silence listen to Hitler's speeches on the radio. We may have felt the underlying emotion, but certainly were unable to make any sense of what he was talking or raving on about. To make matters worse, Hitler used many words we did not know. An invisible mob shouted enthusiastically and screamed "heil, heil.". After the radio was switched off we had to stand up with our right arm outstretched and sing the National Anthem. As in those days the anthem consisted of two songs, "Deutschland Ueber Alles" with the "Die Fahne Hoch,", toward the end of the singing our arms got rather sore. It was a relief when finally we were allowed to resume our seats again. What a senseless joke all that was.

Another morsel: Aren't we Germans superior! There was a cruiser sailing along on one of the world's oceans, so the teacher explained. A German tourist stood at the railing looking out into the distance. An Englishman ambled past and said something like: 'Hello, how are you? Nice day...' The German turned around and said to him: “I am a German. If you wish to speak with me you must speak German.” He had said that in English. I could only feel sorry for the Englishman. Then this one: "When two violinists, one white and the other black, play the same piece of music, a white person will always put more soul into it than a black person." The absurdity of this came to my mind when for the first time I heard negro spirituals. In all those examples there were no discussions or questions about it. It was simply: I tell you. You listen and learn.

The Jews, of course, had to be dealt with in greater detail. They were bad. They just bought stuff for little money and sold them for ever so much more. And there were other factors that certainly didn't justify their existence. But then, well before the Jew hatred was taught in school, Oma had told me about them. In fact, years earlier she had known some Jews who were helpful and simply nice. Consequently, when I heard about the Jews in class, I switched off and asked myself the question: before a person is born, did anyone ask him/her if they wish to become a Jew or a Hottentot or a Chinese or whatever?. So, is it anyone's 'fault' that he became a Jew? So all their hate propaganda fell on my deaf ears. When years later, in the night of 9th to 10th of November 1938 the 'Kristallnacht' was executed, I was concerned about the injustice of the Jewish shopkeeper who had fought with the Germans in World War One. In an attempt to commend himself he had put his Iron Cross and other decorations in his shop window for all to see. It made no difference. His shop was smashed up like all the others. By then, of course I was 13 and well aware that I had to keep my mouth shut.

Returning to the earlier years, I had a long way to walk to and from school. I always walked alone, but one day on the way home I made friends (?) with a lady going in the same direction. We talked and I told her about those little cut out letters we used to make words. She took an interest in my little affairs, listened to me and responded in a friendly manner. For ever after, those few minutes stood out as the most memorable positive encounter of my young days. For a few hours I had felt like a person of some worth.

I learned to read and write with relatively little effort. Also, I was able to write fast. Whenever the teacher dictated some text, I wrote it down and then I looked around and waited. It seemed ages before all the others had caught up so we could go to the next sentence.

I had imagination. It may have been in fourth grade, in one lesson the topic was how by recycling so much material could be saved. As homework, we were to write a piece on recycling. The following day everyone presented his half page or so to the teacher. I had a different idea. I started with: "For millions of years I [the metal] slumbered in the ground..." I wrote a fantasy story that covered four and a half pages. The teacher walked from one seat to the next and marked with a blue pen what he thought how well the contributions were written. When he came to mine he frowned and dismissed my effort with: "That's rather long." I never wrote anything creative for him again.

I was familiar with the functions of electric motors. I had learned this from the mechanics set that Oma had bought for me. From those principles I thought of the possibility inventing a perpetual motion machine. I had ideas how to trick magnetism into a process that would have turned an armature without supplying any power from outside. I put those principles on paper and now, with no one else to help me, took it to my teacher to see and give an opinion. He barely glanced at the drawings while saying that 'those things do not work'. End of that story.

There was some talk about me learning the French language. "Oh dear," intervened Oma, "those irregular verbs..." To me that message meant that French consisted mostly of irregular verbs and that was surely too hard for someone stupid such as me to learn.

AT HOME

There were days when I really did not want to go to school. Oma allowed me to stay home. She even provided breakfast in bed. Bread rolls with butter and plum jam, served on a white and red table cloth was the usual menu. For the following day she wrote an apology that I had a headache and was unable to go.

On rare occasions Oma told me something of interest. It may have been about Kaiser Wilhelm or Bismarck or the way how people lost their fortune by giving it to the war effort 1914 – 18. Some people surrendered their gold and jewellery to receive iron replicas in return. One day, she told me the story of a King who had to 'flee to Holland'. To me that was clear. Holland was a haberdashery store about a mile from where we lived and so, that's where the King went. Elsewhere I wrote an essay about that enlightening event.

Mother was in an asylum in Koenigslutter, a town three quarters of an hour by train. Once a fortnight Oma travelled to visit mother and on those days sometimes I came along or otherwise I stayed home alone. That gave me a chance to conduct my own scientific experiments. I remember one such activity resulted in a fire. I was able to extinguish it before any damage became obvious. It could have gone out of hand and gave me a fright. I never told anyone. In another experiment I investigated if flies had feelings. I caught several, put them into a small bottle and heated it up over a flame. The bottle got hot and nothing unusual happened. Then suddenly hell broke out inside the bottle and a fraction of a second later everything was dead. That was something to think about. Then I knew that adding a spoon full of sugar to a cup of coffee makes it sweet. In yet another of my experiments I thought if I added lots of sugar, surely it would make it so much better still. When I examined my mixture I found it tasted the same. Then I noticed a thick layer of soaked sugar on the bottom of the cup. Another lesson was learned.

Oma's apartment was on the ground floor. One story up lived my mate Guenter. He was almost a year older than myself me and we sometimes played together. He was a compulsive thief. He stole money from his mother regularly to buy himself sweets and chocolate and the like. His mother didn't ever seem to notice. Guenter was generous and frequently shared his loot with me. As little kids we played in the backyard with mud. Years later, we sometimes put a purse on the pavement. It was connected to a thin string. We waited around the corner until someone came along and bent down to grab the purse, then we pulled it away. After Guenter had finished grade six he went to high school and in adulthood became a police officer.

As mother's piano had not found any use, Oma decided to trade it in for a radio, an 'Edler von Lumophon'. It was more furniture than radio and was kept in one of the good rooms. We carried it along the corridor to the kitchen on Sunday afternoons. There we listened to the regular afternoon entertainment sessions, hosted by Harry Langewisch with the music provided by the orchestra conducted by Otto Fricke. (Is it not remarkable how those names still linger in memory even after decades?) We enjoyed those sessions, however every time when Harry Langewisch announced that this or that singer would sing something about love, Oma expressed her disgust about that word. She hated it and had slandered that word on every possible occasion, in fact even before the radio had come into our possession. (When in the years that followed, Hitler's ravings how he 'loved' the German people with the mob's ecstatic 'Heil' following, I had developed a real complex about that word.) After the afternoon's entertainment, the radio would return to its place in the good room until the following Sunday.

The radio had introduced me how to connect the earth and the aerial and, to everyone's amazement, I had complete control over the operations of the then rather new technology. Sometimes I tuned to faraway places. With fascination I looked at strange city names on the dial, the radio stations in distant lands and listened to languages that I did not understand.

One of Oma's rare friends was Frau Weber. She lived about an hour's walk from our place. Often she came to visit us or we went to visit her. She was friendly but, apart from saying hello and good bye in a nice manner, showed no interest in me.

The two women used to talk intensely while I looked after my own affairs or simply sat there, silently and bored. From my perspective there was nothing to contribute. They never made any attempt to take me into any of their conversations anyhow. One comment that Frau Weber made, however, made a considerable impression on me: Telling Oma about some happenings, she said the proper word for genitalia. (Geschlechtsteile) At that time I had become aware how critical any consideration of sex and procreation had become. Adults, as I saw it, had no conception of how much tension, confusion and curiosity in the mind of children they had created by their secrecy. Mentioning private parts was avoided at all costs and, if necessary, unrelated words would be used to deflect from the topic. Hearing Frau Weber saying the proper word during a conversation, without inhibition and in my presence, gave me feeling of a tremendous relief, although I could not explain to myself why I had felt so strongly about it.

Occasionally I visited two elderly sisters, Frauleins Loeffler. They lived in the same street opposite us. Before their retirement one had been a teacher and the other the head mistresses of a girlºs school. Although it never came to a closer relationship between me and those kind ladies, they seemed to enjoy my visits. I told them about the fate of my mother, paraphrasing Oma's saying that I had heard her say so often: “That is a tragedy.” One of the ladies explained to me that it is polite to push the chair back after getting up. I still do it, even now.

While searching for treasures in Oma's old drawers, I found an electric apparatus that in earlier years may have been bought for therapeutic use. Battery operated, it had two handles and sent a stream of electrical charges through the body. That was my first experience with what would later dominate my life: electricity. Many years later, on one occasion that early training may even have saved my life.

When I was approaching my eleventh year, Oma made preparations to move from Braunschweig to Koenigslutter, the town with the asylum where mother had stayed. Oma and I then could visit mother more often and without having to travel.

CHAPTER THREE

School – 2

Kids need stimulation if their inbuilt talents are to flourish. Research projects have shown that baby monkeys who are deprived of their mothers will take a cloth figure as a substitute. In a similar way, as I had grown up in a mentally isolated environment, once I had learned to read fluently I found stimulation in three books that I discovered somewhere in Oma's household. Those books were pivotal in the choice of hobbies and interests, choice of occupation and thinking, and finally my activities in World War two and beyond.

THREE BOOKS – MY REAL TEACHERS

The first one was a part-biography of German poet Gorch Fock. Stars Above the Sea, written by a certain Alice Bußmann. She wrote about Fockºs life, and his death in action in World War One. She gave many examples of his writings and here I found a deep sense of spirituality and poetic expression. Just one example: Two fishermen were out on the ocean. There was a frightening storm and they were wondering if they would ever make it back to the shore. The older man thought to himself: ‘If you should die, that would be bad enough, but I have wife and family to look after’. The younger man thought:‘ I have all my life before me, you lived through it already.’ For me that little story was one example how far we can be apart in our thinking and attitudes and without realising it. Furthermore it confirmed my observations and conclusions from Oma's encounters with officials in the welfare departments.

Fock had became my posthumous teacher. Inspired by him I had appreciated the richness of words. I started to write my own poems and little essays. With Fock's help I had created my own philosophy that I was unable (unwilling?) to share with anybody else.

The second book described the history of the railway from its beginnings over the following one hundred years. Oh, how enthusiastically I absorbed the construction and first travels of Stephenson's first locomotive, the Rocket. With amusement I read about the opposition to this new means of transport. Opinions emerged such as: "The noise will prevent cows from giving milk" or: "Humans are not meant to travel faster than 15 miles per hour." The book described the boilers, the mechanics, the rail system and the signalling. With many pictures I followed the development to the latest models of those ever more sophisticated steam locomotives, the latest technology at the time. It made me appreciate the real life power of those locomotives that took us on trips. When they arrived in the station I stood close to the edge of the platform with Oma anxiously calling me to step back. With half a meter between me and that wonderful steam snorting beast rolling past, I felt safe.

The third book I found did not feature any writers or inventors. It dealt with Physics. Despite my otherwise marginal school reports, in physics I always received top marks. To my mind the material I found here was so simple, so obvious, that I wondered why people would bother to write books about it. And yet, this third book dictated my destiny for all my life. In the very last chapter I found something so fascinating that it seemed to compensate for the easy stuff in the earlier parts of the book. I read the instructions of an apparatus to "make audible the electromagnetic waves in the air". That electrified me into action. For the following couple of weeks I wound coils, collected bits and pieces and improvised a lot. I had to melt sulphur and lead in a test tube to make myself a crystal. A somewhat damaged pair of head phones I was able to repair and, with the last wire in place, I experienced my first and most unforgettable success in life: I heard music and words coming out of my head phones. I had indeed made audible the electromagnetic waves from the air. I had found my purpose in life and with the typical pride of a ten year old I presented my mastery of those wonderful words to the world: "demodulation, high frequency, inductors..."

At that time, however, I could not have known that this book had been one of the most influential sign posts in determining my future career and, indeed, my whole life.

I went to the local Radio Doctor who had a small repair shop in town. I asked if he would save for me perhaps a discarded valve that still had some life left in it. This became the next step – an audione. Positive feedback for enhanced sensitivity followed later and now I could hear a number of different stations and from different countries. Two years later I fixed other people's radios and built gadgets of ever-increasing complexity.

Oma was not happy about my pursuits and often complained about me having 'nothing in my head but that radio stuff.'. (That was not true. Other interests were riding my bike, going for long walks and lots of reading.) And again and again I had to listen to the 'What on earth is going to become of him?'. Neither of us would have guessed that, without the chance encounter with that physics book, my life would surely have taken a completely different path. It may even have given some credence to Oma's so frequently expressed concern.

TWO MEMORABLE VACATIONS

One of Oma's many younger sisters was Helen. She was married to Herrn Justus Pabst, an overseas correspondent who was fluent in the French language and a keen and proud amateur photographer. They had a son, for me Onkel Werner and a well trained and nicely behaved German shepherd. I may have been seven years old when Oma and I visited them in Brambauer, a town near Dortmund in West Germany, to spend Christmas with them. Justus took me aside and, with the aid of a table lamp and a globe, showed me how the sun illuminates the turning world. He took pictures with a blinding flash and in the darkroom I watched how the pictures appeared on paper.

One of the more memorable pictures Justus took, and survived the war, was us posing around a table covered with several Christmas presents for me. They remarked about that I didn't seem to be happy about all those presents. They did not realise that, after two years without mother, I was in the process of withdrawing into my solitary world, allowing only partial communication with the people around me.

Later that evening I was in bed, looking for a long time at the glowing, S-shaped filament of the torch, part of the presents. Levers put filters in front of the light with the colours red and green.

When I was around ten years old, we had a budgerigar as a pet. We taught him to talk and he even imitated noises such as Oma coughing. With my forefinger moving up and down I showed him how to say hello, which he promptly learned and eagerly performed whenever he found it appropriate to do so. I had him well trained. On command: 'Hanschen come here' he came and sat on my shoulder. One day the window was left open while he was outside his cage. He flew out and right over the house into some gardens. I ran after him and my usual command worked. He flew to me and sat on my shoulder. I held him in my hand for safety and took him back inside.

We went on a holiday, this time during the summer school vacation. With no one to care for the bird, we took him with us in his cage. At the end of the long train trip he was dead.

After Oma's numerous younger sisters were born, brother Max brought up the rear. As a forest overseer he now lived on his property in Leuthen, a village near Cottbus, South of Berlin. This visit showed how much I was impoverished socially and intellectually. Here was a properly functional family trying to treat me as a normal school boy. It was a failure.

Seen through the eyes of a ten year old, the following snippets may convey how my mind worked during those years. Here are memories as they come to mind:

Aunt Martha, wife of uncle Max, disagreed with Oma's upbringing of me. She said what had been lacking in my life was encouragement, appreciation and love. Indeed, after my mother's suicide attempt I had never received appreciation or even a single hug. I knew Martha was right, but I was unable to reflect or react to her kindness. I could not share my feelings and thoughts with another adult. I had grown out of it.

The men of the family took me for a walk. Somewhere in the woods they asked me if from here I would be able to find my way back to the house. I looked around but had no idea. Then one of them pointed to the church tower clearly visible in the distance and said that all I would have to do is go into that direction. They must have considered me stupid. That's how I felt.

In a barn/workshop someone had left a large electric circular saw unattended and running at full speed. As there was nobody to disturb me I took pieces of straw and let the spinning saw cut them into small bits. One of the workers spotted me, freaked and quickly removed me from the saw.

A motorbike was leaning against a wall. I climbed up on it and it fell over. With all my might I lifted it up again, hoping that no person had watched me. I would not have dared to tell anyone about that adventure.

Barefoot I walked in the garden, picking some berries. I enjoyed the feeling of the gravel under my feet. In contrast to Oma's apartment, this place was heaven for me.

Inside the kitchen was a pump. As I was used to the single water tap in Oma's kitchen I watched how they operated the handle to get water out of the ground. Sometimes they had to pour some water in to get it going.

Sitting around the dinner table and everyone eating their sandwiches elegantly with knife and fork, I tried but made a mess. They suggested I should use my hands. So I did.

The rooster chased the hens all over the place. I resented that and chased the rooster. One of the men caught a hen, put it on a wooden block and with a swift blow cut off its head. Later that day we had chicken for dinner.

I watched as a heavily loaded wagon was hopelessly bogged. The two horses tried and tried but in spite of being whipped were unable to pull the wagon out of the hole. The man now got off his seat and mercilessly flogged the horses. I heard the animals' cry, sensed their agony and their desperation until with a tremendous last effort they pulled the vehicle out of the bog. I wondered if the man had done the right thing.

Someone brought a fox home. It was kept as a pet for a while. I collected sausage ends and fed them to the fox by hand. We became friends.

It was a hot day. A tied up watch dog had walked around the near-by tree. He pulled and pulled but with the now shortened lead he was unable to reach the water bowl that was provided for him. It would have been so easy for me to take him by the collar and lead him around the tree so he'd be able to get to his bowl. He must have considered me an intruder. His hostile behaviour prevented any thought of me helping him to get to the water. That experience became a metaphor for me. It reminded me of encounters with people much later in life.

With all those new impressions the holiday had become for me an enriching experience after all.

At home again I joined the 'Pimpfe', the Hitler Youth version for boys from aged ten to 14. To be part of that organisation gave me a sort of secret pride. Compared to my school experience, here I felt little rejection. Wearing the uniform, for me, became a symbol of belonging to the world and feeling good about myself. Little wonder that, after returning home, for an hour or two I was never in a hurry to change back into my ordinary clothes.

In those years before the next war, Germany under Hitler's guidance seemed to blossom and for us kids politics meant nothing for many of us. Only a few took it seriously. So I remember the instructions that an above ground grade Pimpf gave to me when I was to deliver a message of sorts to the higher up of the organisation. Standing in the street, at least five times he repeated and demonstrated how I should enter the office with a "zackige Ehrenbezeugung" (this expression had become almost a jargon of the time and the best translation I could come up with is: 'smart demonstration of honour'). On the way I rehearsed with some amusement how I would perform this in the right and proper Nazi fashion. To my mind that sort of behaviour was (and still is) meaningless and certainly did not lead to respect for the other person. So I also found the marching through streets while singing loudly rather futile. Ever so often I substituted some of the words with my own version for my private enjoyment. Nobody ever seemed to notice it. All that was compensated by the scout/cub-like activities that I really enjoyed to the fullest.

On at least one occasion we, us Pimpfe, were employed to deliver leaflets to a number of designed houses. As the quantity they supplied to us was far over what we could have expected to deliver, I just put many, perhaps up to twenty of those leaflets into each letter box.

All in all, the Pimpf experience was one small step for me to lift me out of the morass of negativity and the feeling of worthlessness in my ordinary life. After a couple of years our move away from Braunschweig brought the association to an end.

A NEW SCHOOL

The day had arrived when we left Braunschweig and moved to Koenigslutter am Elm. We could now walk to visit my mother in the asylum. A few years later, we were called to come in as mother was reported to be close to death. I watched her breathing until she stopped. “She is dead ”, I said to Oma. She started to cry. I didn't know then that mother had been murdered by lethal injection. As it became known later, under Nazi rule it was common practice to get rid of people considered unproductive for the Reich.

I went to school, now in fifth grade. There were 12 boys and some 16 girls in the class. Our teacher was middle aged Herr Karl Krofft, a sadist and a pervert. When he caned boys he seemed to enjoy it. One kid he had thrashed once, then called him back and thrashed him again. That was not punishment, that was torture. During lessons, while lecturing in front of the class, usually he had both his hands in his trouser pockets and played billiard with his genitals. He did this in such an obvious manner that none of us could possibly have missed it. One day he asked us if we thought he was a Nazi. Although he was not a member of that party and of course in civilian clothes, he virtually increased in physical size when he brought the class to the consensus that indeed he was a Nazi.

A lady teacher, Frau Erdmann, taught geography. Unable to control the class, while everyone talked and nobody listened, with the aid of some large maps of different parts of the world she would talk, seemingly only to herself. She had given up.

During the last of my school months I had the first ever teacher I did respect, the elderly Herr Saffe. He had no psychological hang-ups and was genuinely interested in our progress. After I left school he retired and I visited him to express my appreciation for his way of teaching.

A FRIEND FOR LIFE — AND SEPARATION BY DEATH

I was now between 13 and 14 years old. To this day I cannot remember what brought us together. It was some emotional event that ended in a real hearty handshake with Gerhard, together with a firm eye contact. From that moment on our friendship was sealed. Teacher Krafft used to say that “those two are going to be put into the same grave”. Like me, Gerhard had lived with his grandmother. Like me, he had some high ideals and yet we were able to use our sense of humour and enjoyed sharing the occasional boyish nonsense.

Supported by his wonderfully kind grandmother, I spent much of my time at their place. Our hobbies were similar. We took long walks through the forests, the wilderness and to strange places. We were avid readers. Our reading consisted mostly of adventure stories that I would classify as masterpieces (for boys of that age) to this day. Rolf Torring with his mate Warren and the black Pongo travelled through many parts of the world. Their experiences were described in a vivid manner. Those books inspired us to make plans for the future. They opened up the whole wide world we were going to travel one day as adults. We had our focus set on Africa. We bought tropical helmets and wore them on special occasions. We visited one man who had spent much of his life in that continent and told us about its life and animals and mysteries. That man supported our plans to one day in the future together go to Africa. But that was not to be.

Gerhard Graßhoff and I were not put into the same grave as teacher Karl Krofft had predicted. When he was between 16 and 17 years old, he got shot twice and died in action. He gave his watch to a comrade asking him to send it home. Throughout my later life I had have entertained the thought that I had to live two lives, one for myself and one for Gerhard. He was the most influential friend I could have met during my later school years. It was he who, at last, gave me a sense of belonging to the world, a sense of self worth and it was he who had encouraged me, many years after his death, to escape into the wide world.

CHAPTER FOUR

Foersterling und Poser

We are fortunate these days that schools are supported by career advisers. How a young person can go wrong in those days where such advice was not available, and with the support of only an elderly grandmother, is illustrated in this chapter.

CHAPTER FIVE

Music

With both my parents being professional musicians, the way I was introduced to music was rather unusual. Perhaps it should more appropriately be called utterly irresponsible. That was confirmed much later in my life. (My essay: 'A Composer in Hiding' explains this in detail.) My case is one example how a child can be turned off a certain occupation in spite of showing promise in that field.

Here I have to backtrack by a few years.

CHAPTER SIX

Return to sanity

It took me a few days to get acclimatised and try to return to the enthusiasm I had felt before the ill-fated episode in Hannover/Kleefeld. Out of some store came an old cello that obviously had been used for beginners such as myself before. Now I was ready to start.

A NEW BEGINNING

Lackel Klebe, my first teacher, was a musical genius. At the time he was the first cellist of the orchestra. His teachers (of professional calibre) had given up teaching him. At age 17 his mastery of the instrument was beyond compare. In fact he was able to take almost any instrument and play. For band music usually he played the tenor horn. Considered the Cinderella of instruments it was mocked often by the musicians. Modesty prevents me from relating which part of the human anatomy was considered good enough to blow it. But when Klebe played a solo on the tenor horn, he brought tears to people's eyes.

He instructed me to play the open strings with the bow from one end to the other, aiming to produce the biggest volume I could master. So I did. There was no chance that I might have disturbed the piece by excessive noise. The rather cheap cello with gut strings put a strict limit on the volume I could make. A day or two later Klebe taught me the C major scale over two octaves. I thought that was great fun and in the evening, as I was practising my new 'etude' in the empty rehearsal room, the first clarinettist walked past and stopped in his tracks: "I thought you only started a few days ago?"

A couple of weeks later I found an isolated place in the attic. Judging by the amount of dust and cobwebs I assumed it had not been visited for a long time. I cannot remember how I was able to carry the cello into this forgotten place while everyone else was still asleep. It became my morning routine. Well before the others woke up, I sneaked into my attic retreat and did my practice: Scales in different keys up and down the octaves, arpeggios likewise. (Practising scales regularly is not the most inspiring musical activity. It does, however, develop flexibility and accuracy. In time it makes playing proper music so much easier.) At seven o'clock the 'trumpeter on duty' blew his wake–up signal and then I mingled with the rest without anyone suspecting my morning activities.

An accomplished cellist from a theatre in another city was assigned officially as my teacher. Somehow amazed about my rapid progress, I never disclosed my secret practice routine in the attic to him. In fact, no one ever knew or suspected it. Furthermore, my futile mandolin attempts years earlier had born some late fruit after all: They had introduced me into the behaviour of strings on musical instruments generally.

After my initial training period, I received a much nicer cello with proper strings. The instrument was presented to me, as they had said, by the government because of my rapid progress. (Years later my father showed me a receipt. It was indeed he who had paid for the instrument.)

I joined the orchestra in rehearsals and performances. As an unexpected reward for my cello playing, the music directors one day surprised me with a ticket and the train fare to attend a performance of Mozart's "Magic Flute" at the Braunschweig Theatre, an hour's train trip from Helmstedt. Although such a reward was unique in the history of the music school, I remember feeling surprised at the time rather than rewarded. I could not accept having deserved it. But then, to underestimate my performance had become an established habit that followed me throughout my life.

Lackel Klebe was conscripted to war service and I took his place as the first cellist. Only a few weeks after his departure, the message came that Klebe had been shot and died in action. (Much later in life, in his memory I composed three 'Songs from Beyond the Grave.' I could never accept that a young person so full of life, of energy and talent could simply be shot dead. So I imagine that sometimes in the night he rises out of his grave and plays his tenor horn once more.)

Then followed a few months that I can only describe as THE happy time of my life to date. Although in my mind I always felt like not really being quite good enough, I was an accepted member of the orchestra. Apart from some military stuff and drill, we played symphonic concerts, light music, military type marches and parades and contract assignments in small groups. I even remember sitting on the stage to play a piece with piano accompaniment in front of an audience. Of all the different composers in our repertoire, the most memorable ones for me were those of Franz Lehar. To this day some of his melodies take me back to the time of achievement and nostalgia.

Most of the rehearsal work was done by a strict, ex military musician, Herr Gustav Soelter. In contrast to the elegant Musicdirektors Erhard Wolff and his father, the then retired senior Musikdirektor, Herr Soelter did not mince his words. He came at seven in the mornings and after the wake–up call, sought those still in bed. I can still hear his penetrating voice: "Immernoch in der Scheiße..." During rehearsals he sometimes bashed one or two less able youngsters to tears until they could play their notes to his satisfaction. Musically he was superior to the music director. Due to his conduct, however, he was commonly known as The Bull.

The days began by everyone going downstairs into the wash room. Here were eight taps of cold water available for washing one's face and hands. In the winter we sometimes had to postpone this activity until the pipes became unfrozen and water was available again. Then came the daily scales where all the wind instrument players joined in the rehearsal room with The Bull announcing which major or which of the two minor scales were to be played. He conducted every note with slow four–to–the–bar movements for a minute or two. Then he came to a 'fermate', then stop. Now the next note would be played in the same fashion and so up to the octave top note and back again.

Such practice may seem strange to the uninitiated. Sustained notes in this way, however, develop wonderful control, ease of playing and the production of a good tone as well.

After this, long folded tables were put into position and breakfast served. This consisted of a large slice of bread with jam spread over it and some sort of milky drink. After that the tables were folded up again and the announcement came if the following rehearsal was either for orchestra practice or band music. Those rehearsals would start at 9 and finish at 12 noon for the main meal break. The afternoons were dedicated to solo practice and other, often smaller groups playing selected works. So I remember the enjoyable Haydn string quartets we used to play once I had acquired a certain degree of proficiency.

CONSCRIPTION

One of the students was trombonist Alwin Mueller. His mother had lost her husband and six or seven of his older brothers in the war. As he was the youngest in the family and the only survivor, the normally merciless Nazis allowed him to be excluded from military service.

Apart from the meagre meals, the occasional drone of many planes in the night and the preparedness to move into the cellar should an air attack ever happen on Helmstedt, we gave little attention to the war except that every now and then one of our sixteen or seventeen year olds was conscripted to join the war effort. Luckily for us, our music school was officially accepted as a supplier for a greater military band, the "Musikkorps der SA Standarte Feldherrnhalle." Many of those who had to leave us in this way joined that unit and so at least continued to make music for a while. After having been rejected for military service earlier because of my short sightedness, in June 1943, less than two years after I had begun to learn music, it was my turn. I gave up my studies and position as a cellist to join the Musikkorps as a trumpet player.

After my arrival at the home base – Gueterfelde, South of Berlin – and some physical examinations, the Musikkorps returned from their previous tour in early July. Now I had the opportunity to familiarise myself what the band was about: There were 88 musicians and the drums and pipes unit brought the total number up to 108 men. With either three buses or three reserved train carriages, the band travelled from town to town, marching with music and parades during the day and giving concerts in the evenings. Now I was part of that band.

The following days were filled with merciless drill, exercises of the different parade procedures, preparations for the next tour and rehearsals for some sessions on the radio. The rehearsal room was too small for a band of such a size. The noise within that confined walls space was deafening.

At night we used to watch the air attacks on Berlin with the masses of search lights and flak, the occasional plane that crashed to the ground, the noise and the firework of exploding bombs and fires rising up into the air.

The next tour began. In quick succession we travelled to places such as Vienna, Munich, Augsburg, Nuremberg, Prague, Dresden, not forgetting a myriad of lesser known places. During my time with the band I counted over one hundred different locations where we had presented our music. Apart from a few days' leave, it kept us busy with the preparations for the next march, the next open air concert, the next program, the next evening concert. There was little time left for reflection.

Anybody who has to travel to different places in the world commercially knows how frustrating it is when their itinerary does not include some time for sight seeing. Such was our situation during that time. The busy schedule during our concert tours left hardly any time for enjoyment or just rest. Some memories, however stand out to this day. For example in Linz, Austria, our three buses took us to one of the surrounding hills (possibly to a castle. I can't remember) for the evening concert. Travelling up on the serpentine road we saw Linz in the twilight of the evening. The wonderful cityscape, the streets lights already lit and with the Danube sweeping through the town that became an unforgettable sight.

In Leipzig we had an opportunity to visit the Völkerschlachtdenkmal, (Monument of the Battle of Nations) one of the most ambitious monuments in Europe. It commemorates Napoleon's defeat at Leipzig in 1813. The guide took us right up into the dome area and sang three notes in succession. The reverberation lasted for some 15 seconds, so we could hear the various chords dying away ever so slowly.

In Breslau (now Wroclaw) we gave concerts in the Centennial Hall. That building was the largest known at the time of its construction. I remember going up the stairs right opposite the tremendous stage. The people on the stage from up there looked like ants crawling around. Above the stage I saw the hall's tremendous pipe organ. When we played music such as 'Preludes' by Franz Liszt, that giant organ joined us in the fortissimo parts. It was overwhelming. (In 1913, after its completion, this instrument was the greatest organ in the world. After W.W.II it was dismantled and two out of three sections went to other locations.)

One of the evening concerts in the Centennial Hall was interrupted by an air alarm. The lights had to be switched off and we continued playing in the dark. In the news broadcasts the following day, German radio stations announced: "... those brave people, in spite of... etc."

I do not remember the date, but sometime during my military music service I noticed increasing pain under my tummy area. I had no idea what it might have been and so I dismissed it until I was unable to stand upright. A diagnosis showed a badly infected appendix and I was rushed to a hospital in Berlin. Several days after the operation an air raid forced us to go into the cellar. I remember coming out again after the raid was over. I was so weak, my climb up the stairs put any climbing up Mount Everest into the shade.

After partial recovery from the operation I was put in charge of a dozen Russian POWs who were assigned to sweep the streets. I had to carry a rifle on my back, supposedly to give the impression I was someone important. I made friends with those people. Many of them spoke some German and we talked about music, a topic dear to them.

When I left the hospital, the sister-in-charge told me that the doctor who had done the operation, a Dr. Wandel, most certainly had saved my life. My infection was so advanced that a less experienced surgeon may not have been able to get me through. After that unplanned interruption I rejoined the band.

ANOTHER CLOSE SHAVE

One experience that could have wiped out the whole musical parade unit is worth mentioning in some detail. One day in the winter of 1943 to 1944 we did our music, marching and parading during the day with the usual evening performance and hardly any rest in between in Augsburg, a college town, South/West of Bavaria. Towards 11.00 pm, we arrived at the station expecting a train to take us to Frankfurt where arrangements had been made for the night's accommodation. We waited for the train to arrive. Some hours later we still waited. The air became saturated with what is often described as 'Strong Language'. With temperatures dropping to below zero, shivering with the cold kept us awake. The train finally had arrived around 4 o'clock in the morning. Instead of arriving in Frankfurt at least in the middle of the night, it was now daylight. Our advance people who always arranged the accommodation greeted us with: “You lucky devils. You would have been sleeping in a sector of a certain hospital. There was an air raid. One bomb landed right in the centre of the hospital and not one came out alive.”

During that time, for a few weeks I had one reprieve. Preparations had begun for a performance of an oratorio in Elbing, a town in the then N/W corner of Germany. The orchestra needed another cellist. Although I felt funny playing the cello, clad in a military uniform, it was a tremendous occasion. Apart from the orchestra there was a soloist from the Danzig Theatre, a massed choir of around 250, a solo choir of 50 and a girls' choir in front. (BDM teenagers. 'Bund Deutscher Maedel', the female version of the 'Hitler Youth').

The music was composed, not by a professional, but rather a chemist. who had created an impressive musical experience. It centred around the glory of the German Reich, the certainty of winning the war, and selected letters from the front were read by an actor. After the rehearsals the oratorio was performed twice. Several days later, because of the enthusiasm it had created, everyone was recalled for a third performance.

THE END OF MY MUSICAL CAREER

I had no idea how I could have drifted into another world during those days. I hadn't asked for it. It simply crept up inside me as if directed from a force outside myself. In the front row of the girl's choir, right in the centre, a face attracted my attention. Well, it was really much more than that. Never before had I seen a face of such beauty, such utter loveliness. She was an angel. She had taken possession of me without her even knowing it. I was hooked into something I had never known before. After the third performance of the oratorio, it took several days to get the order and a train ticket to return to my unit. This gave me the opportunity, although I knew the chances were nil, to aimlessly walk through the town. Stretching my mind to infinity, I hoped I might meet her somewhere. When finally we did meet I found myself unable to deal with the situation in a way one might have expected from a more 'normal' young man. Still, we spent a couple of hours together (that story I will relate elsewhere) until the train took me back to the Feldherrnhalle mob. Here the marching/music routine continued until August/September 1944.

The people in power apparently had decided they could not afford the luxury of such a large music band anymore. The war had become too critical. With my musical career now finished I had decided to use my boyhood experience in the radio field. I applied to become a radio operator and went to another barracks to be trained in Morse and radio communications.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Training for war service

Morse used to be the language of wireless communications and now appears to have lost its favour. It certainly is slower than the spoken word. It has the advantage, however, that by certain filtering methods it can be received under unfavourable conditions where speech would become unintelligible by atmospherics and other noise. Morse now would become my new kind of music.

TRAINING FOR WAR WITH A BIG BANG

Although my memory over all those years gets somehow shady, I recall that between one and two dozen men, aged below twenty, had been assigned to become radio operators for Hitler's war. The training began by learning the Morse alphabet. It was followed by tuition in the use of transmitters and associated gear. For a few weeks we were sent to practice exercises where groups of five with their radio equipment went to places some 20 to 40 km apart. They communicated with mock messages. Different frequencies in the short wave band were assigned for each day. Compared to the strenuous time we had in the music band, this training was much easier and in fact, great fun. The last of these exercises ended with a big bang, an experience that I still remember clearly.

Our group exercised in the local area. We had no motor transport. Our gear was carried in a large trailer designed to be moved by hand, or I should have said, multiple hands. We stayed out in the field while the exercises went on continuously for three days and two nights, virtually without rest or sleep. To return to our barracks in the darkness of the night, we pushed the trailer along a highway. I was pushing the rear on the right side, virtually sleep walking. Suddenly there was a crash. I saw transmitters and receivers thrown up in the air and the trailer reduced to a wreck. A car had hit us from behind. In those days the headlights were covered, leaving only a small slit, so the driver was unable to see us in the dark. My comrade who pushed on my left suffered severe injuries and I did not expect him to survive.

WAR SERVICE IN EARNEST

After our training, a few weeks later we were stationed in a village not far from Koenigsberg, a town in the far NW corner of Germany. A little hut served as our radio station and we communicated the for us meaningless messages to and from ships on Long Wave. Here we did have some free time and were not suffering from sleep deprivation. One day, yearning to listen to some good music from a broadcast station, I heard Beethoven's Leonore Overture # 3. It emanated from a pair of headphones, put inside an aluminium food container for amplification. It became a peak experience.

Another day, after exploring the countryside, one of my comrades rushed in exclaiming: “You play the organ, don't you?. There is a church, all the doors are open.” Well, I am not an organist. I just happened to pick up some keyboard skills for harmony studies, so I improvised some bits and pieces on that rather beautiful two-manual organ. I was impressed by the harmonious sound of a certain wooden rank. Then the shooting started again and we rushed back to our radio hut. Looking back along the way, I saw the church now totally engulfed in flames.

There were a number of experiences too sketchy to record in a sensible manner. However, in one place some of our superiors had decided to select some of us, me included, to take part in an officers training course. Not only did I have no inclination to become an officer, it also would have taken me away from some very good comrades. How to get out of what would possibly have been considered treason with severe consequences to follow?

We had to attend a written exam. Question one: "What do you expect from a Nazi Officer?" I reduced my mind to age eight and wrote a sentence that is so banal, it is almost untranslatable, and yet, it could have been expressed by someone simpleminded. In a similar way I answered the rest and became one out of two considered unsuitable to become an officer.

Some time later I heard that those selected had been sent to a place where the Russians had 'cleared' the area with flame throwers. Instead of becoming officers they were burned to death. This however was never confirmed and could have been a rumour. In any case, I never met any of those men again.

AN OCEAN CRUISE WITH A DIFFERENCE

As the war came closer and closer, we found ourselves encircled by Russian forces. There seemed to be no chance of escaping to a safer place. Being taken as a POW by the Russians meant transportation to Siberia, forced into slave labour and most likely never to be seen again. A requisition from Berlin for some urgently needed radio operators solved the problem for me and one of my comrades. A ship, overloaded with refugees below deck and military personnel on top outside took us away. Two similar ships on the same trip before us had been torpedoed and sunk. We were the third and survived. Day after day we moved at a snail's pace, ever so often some a few km at a time, then the anchors went down again and an ominous silence ensued once more. It may have taken seven days to complete the journey.

With not much more than standing room on deck, I was able to crouch into a space behind one of the big drums carrying steel cables for the anchors. Our daily ration consisted of a slice of bread and a square piece of some sort of salami. When the bread slices ran out we received a handful (one hand, not two) of bread crumbs. Crouched in my place I dreamt the same dream, again and again. I was cooking some small patties in a frying pan. Time and again I prepared the dough with the greatest care and then they went into the pan. In spite of all my attention to every detail I was never able to eat the stuff. Every time before it was ready to eat I woke up.

Will I ever forget the sight: A golden, late afternoon sun shone on the houses of Luebeck as our ship slowly crept into the harbour. Will I ever forget the feeling of having terra firma under my feet once again. On the way to some destination that I cannot remember, my comrade and I went over a field and stole some potatoes out of the ground. There was a small house on top of a hill. We knocked on the door and asked the lady if she would be kind enough to cook those potatoes for us as we had not eaten in days. “Come back in an hour”, she said. An hour later we were seated at the table with a table cloth and a wonderfully prepared (for the time) meal. Before leaving I asked why she did this for us strange people. She replied that her son was in Russia and she was hoping that in a similar situation the same might happen to him one day.

A STORE HOUSE IN A SHAMBLES

A different side of the war was presented to us when we landed in Berlin. We were supposed to establish a new communications unit. Our group consisted of four, including, let me call him our commander, and one driver.

Words cannot describe the chaos all round. Most of the buildings were destroyed or badly damaged. Enemy planes appeared to have taken joy rides over the houses and here and there shot at whatever they could find worthwhile to shoot at or dropped down the occasional bombs. I was starving and went into some of the ruins to find something – anything, no matter what – to eat. The people had all fled and there was not even the odd bread crust to be found. In the cellar I noticed an ordinary alarm clock that I took with me. It became our station clock and is in my possession to this day.

We were supposed to collect the necessary gear and assemble it to build the requested new short wave radio station. The store house was in a shambles. There was no responsible person to help us. We found transmitters but no connecting cables. We had no vehicle. Only with difficulty and improvisation we were we able to get a 30 Watt transmitter/receiver apparatus to work. Our driver had disappeared, and arrived later in an enclosed LKW, a smaller type of truck. "I stole that one,", he reported, "but it'll do for us I think.". It was ideal with a table in the middle and benches around. With the equipment installed as best as we could, our commander reported for duty.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The end was nigh

At this time of the war it had become obvious to most of us that the hostilities had made it less and less likely to guarantee the continuation of the 'Third Reich' for what was remaining of the following one thousand years. We felt like little fish in the rapids of the conflict too great for us to change. We had to do our duty and did so in a state of helplessness.

CHAPTER NINE

The Bemerode POW Camp

One of the methods for many countries to win the war is using propaganda to instil in their soldiers an intense hatred for the enemy. This carries over to those who end up as prisoners of war. People who are now disarmed and defenceless, after having sacrificed their normal life to defend their side, are often punished in most inhumane ways. As we have learned from the treatment of POWs taken by the Japanese and/or the Russians, they may be forced into slave labour in conditions that for many makes it unlikely ever to see their families or their homes again.

I don't believe in phenomena such as ghosts, however, but I wonder if someone 'out there', a spirit guide perhaps, prevented a fate infinitely worse than the life as a POW that I was facing now.

LIFE AS A POW

Bemerode is a small town south/east of Hannover, where the British had established a POW camp. It housed, from memory, maybe two or even many more thousand men. After the short stay as POWs under US control, we were transported to this, for us more civilised camp. It was really more than a camp. We had a roof over our heads. We had even beds to sleep in. This is not quite correct as I should have said, to sleep ON. After all, considering our sleeping arrangements over the previous months, now sleeping on bare wooden boards was real luxury, especially as we were able to sleep for some hours without interruptions. For covering myself I had a pre-loved, grey army blanket with several ventilation openings that had been provided by thoughtful moths. The uniform jacket that I wore during the day served as my pillow. We received regular low-calorie meals to keep our weight down. In brief, our quality of life had risen sharply.

There is a psychological term: Habituation. This is the human habit getting used to certain conditions. But when a second term comes into play: Comparison, the third term: Reality can bite. When we compared our existence as POWs with the reality of civilian life, some degree of frustration set in. That was characterised by the ever increasing use of the word: 'Entlassung' – dismissal from the POW experience and getting back into civilian life. The prospect for this seemed months away and so, to minimise the boredom, several activities emerged.

In a discarded telephone cell I found one of those large single cell batteries that used to power some telephones in those days. I also found bits of wire and a piece of wood. I build from those bits a small electric motor that to everyone's surprise actually turned. I also became a member of a choir that a bright musically inclined inmate had organised. Another group learned English. I still remember lesson one: 'We are in a room. The room has four walls. Open the door...'. Only later in life I appreciated the importance of learning a foreign language mostly by sentences rather than an endless string of single words.

I remembered a friend of ours in Koenigslutter, the town where we lived years earlier. Frau Lohmann, the wife of baker Lohmann, looked after the shop. Her most characteristic behaviour during the time of Nazi rule was that she never greeted the customers with the then compulsory "Heil Hitler.". (In Germany, people who walk into a shop usually greet with "Guten Morgen" etc. and leave with "Auf Wiedersehen.". During the Nazi rule that was substituted by Heil Hitler.) So, no matter who entered or left her shop with "Heil Hitler" received the conventional reply instead. Amazingly, she was never reprimanded for this and when we met some time after the end of the war she simply remarked: “;Hitler was not my man.”

As we were able to receive and send mail now, I wrote to Frau Lohmann, who replied that she had heard from Oma and included her address. Finally we had established communication. Oma's first postcard started with: "... is your stomach all right or your heart?..." (taking me back to the time when as a boy she took me to all those doctors) then she explained that on the 15th of February 1945 at noon, for the first time in the war, lots of planes appeared over the town Cottbus where she had lived at the time. She looked out of the window and saw an object a metre long and half as wide falling down in her direction. She put her hands over her ears and ran to the other side of the apartment. While she had survived that first-ever bomb in the first-ever air raid on Cottbus, the house was destroyed. Oma was transferred as a refugee to a family of farmers in the North of Germany. This first exchange of messages between us for many months must have been a relief to her: finally she knew I was alive.

A CHANGE OF CAREERS

As the weeks crept along, to make life more interesting, I decided to apply for a position as a cook in the camp's kitchen. A stern German ex-officer examined me: "What do you know about flakes?" "Potato flakes, corn flakes, oats..." My answer must have impressed him because he simply asked me to report at the kitchen 6.30 the next morning.

The kitchen was rather large. There were about a dozen vats, that each were filled with I don't know how many hundreds of litres of water, the main ingredient of the meals. That was heated to boiling by the wood fire underneath. Then we poured an amount of potato flakes and cabbage into the water and let it boil for some time. Finally we added salt to give the soup its exclusive taste. Looking at the bright side of life, providing virtually the same meal every day made the issue of menus obsolete.

As I now had control over the amount I could eat, I did. In fact, I may have eaten three or four times the portions that those outside the kitchen received. This may have been the cause for some several days of diarrhoea that I kept well hidden from the others. I did not want to lose my position as a cook. A couple of months later, it may have been October 1945, I developed jaundice. As it did not improve I had to leave the camp and was transferred to a hospital in Bad Pyrmont, a small town not far away.

TOWARD A CIVILISED EXISTENCE


Here a new life began. I found myself in a real bed with sheets and pillows, clean underwear, and nurses caring for our well-being. I can't remember any doctors to see me, but I recovered quickly and was able to move freely around the area with some others. With fascination I read a book by Gunnar Gunnarsson: The People of Borg. We visited open air concerts and went for walks. The meals were not brilliant but it was a relief from the monotony of the catering in Bemerode. A few months later I was free to go. There were no dismissal papers that I remember, nor ceremonies to mark the end of my war service. Although my attire didn't show it, I was really a civilian again.

CHAPTER TEN

A free citizen after all

With mixed feelings I found myself in a sort of limbo. I was homeless, utterly unqualified and had no prospects of any work. For a short time I found refuge with Oma.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Marburg

I did not realise at the time how much progress I really had made with the opportunity to enter a professional life. The skills and knowledge gained in my new workplace built the foundation for success for many years to come.

AT LAST A PROPER JOB

In 1952, during a preliminary visit, for the first time I met my future boss Herr Helmut Strecker, owner of my new work place–to–be: 'PHONOLA', in Marburg an der Lahn.

As soon as I cast my eyes on him I was relieved. He was an intelligent man with whom, as it turned out later, I was able to establish a good working relationship. A week later I moved to Marburg to start work. Here I might side track for a minute to relate one of those coincidences that are just too strange to believe. In those days I did all my travelling on my faithful old BMW motorbike. On the earlier trip from Helmstedt to Marburg I arrived with my tank still a third full. This time I had not considered the weight of my luggage and because of the rainy weather had to make more use of the lower gear. I arrived at the front of the shop, stopped the bike and at the very moment when I moved my hand toward the key to switch off the ignition, the motor stopped. I had used the last drop of petrol. The chances of this happening could only be described as astronomical. How lucky can you be. A dreadful thought: I could have come to a stop a few kilometres before reaching Marburg.

So work began. While we also repaired some radios, most of the work centred around sound work: recording on magnetic tape, producing records and providing large sound amplification at public gatherings, festivities and the like. In addition we had an arrangement with the Marburg Theater to provide sound effects and the music for their various productions. This became mostly my activity.

As payment, in addition to accommodation and all meals provided I received 75 Marks per month. While this was not good pay, at last I had a job that involved proper professional work. Herr Strecker had a great sense of humour and our relationship was harmonious.

THE PEOPLE AT PHONOLA

My new bosses son Uli, then around seven years old, became my special friend. He had lost the support of his mother due to the parents' divorce and so Uli was not a happy boy. With bitter memories of my own boyhood, throughout my life I had the urge to support children who in some way were disadvantaged or growing up, as I did, without either a mother or a father or at least a male model in their lives. (Years later when Uli was a middle aged man we made contact again. In his letters he told me then how he had suffered because of his parents' divorce and how much I had helped him in certain situations such as when he was bullied at school.)

Across the street from Phonola lived trumpet player Schmideke. He was one of Phonola's friends and used to drop in every now and then. He did not know any scales nor could he read music. He simply improvised wherever his fingers would lead him to. He planned to migrate and finally went to Canada. A few months later a letter arrived in which he had complained bitterly about the scarcity of job opportunities. He expressed his disappointment about having gone to Canada. This, however, did not suppress my hopes of one day leave leaving Germany. After all, my trumpet playing was of professional standard and with my skills in the technological field, not to mention my flair for mechanical things plus some photographical know-how I had learned in Helmstedt, I expected more opportunities for starting a new life in another part of the world. While still hoping to emigrate one day, for the time being I enjoyed my activities at Phonola.

In those years after world war two, the United States of America was high in our esteem. We had a number of the, at the time occupying, American military troops. Sometimes American soldiers wanted to send sound greetings to their loved ones at home. They were welcome customers and always surprised us with their confidence and freedom from inhibitions while recording their messages.

One of Phonola's more interesting customers was Herr Germer. During the war he had been engaged in weapons research and constructions. I gathered he may even have been pivotal in the V–series of missiles directed at London. He told me that after the war, when the whole truth had become evident, he had decided never again to work with so-called defence machinery. Instead he had established an centre for health and well being with great emphasis on relaxation. With my newly acquired skills in sound recording and mixing, combined with my musical interests, we created relaxation recordings where he spoke the text and I selected and mixed in the music. From those recordings we created records for distribution to his clients.

As Germer and myself I had good rapport, he told me some experiences from his past. One is still in my memory. During the war he struggled for days with a certain mathematical problem. Unable to come any closer to solving it, one morning he found the solution in his own handwriting on the writing pad he habitually had on his bedside table. He had no conscious recall of writing in the night.

During my activities with the Marburg Theatre, one person I remember with admiration and shame was the actor Hans-Martin Koettenich. He was invited as guest actor for a production of Danton's Death. Previously we had recorded an orchestra performing the specially composed music on magnetic tape. During the rehearsals, whilst I was busy with the technical apparatus, several times I heard his mighty: "My voice..." As I found out later, those were the scenes when he played Danton defending his actions to the persecuting tribunal. As the production began to take shape, I learned that Koettenich was one of Germany's leading actors, well sought after in radio and theatre.

He was sitting with us during a break and the conversation was about acting. He asked us how we would say the sentence: "My friend has died." After several had given their more or less dramatic version, Koettenich gave his. After a couple of seconds of silence he spoke with the utmost simplicity: “My friend has died. You have to allow your audience to create in themselves the tragedy of the event”, he explained. “As an actor you have to guide them to it”.

As the conversation continued and I had not said anything, someone prompted me to contribute. I felt paralysed in the presence of such a great man and said: “Talking is silver, silence is gold”, one of those common phrases in the German language. It would have been difficult to find a more inappropriate sentence, but compulsively I acted in accordance to the conditioning from my earliest years. I was inferior. I belonged to the lowest five percent in IQ scores.

One of our customers was a man in his early thirties. Helping with Hitler's war, he lost two legs and his left arm. He had to be handled like a baby for even the most fundamental natural functions. His wife appeared bitter and resentful and treated him rather badly. After all, babies do grow up. The German government compensated him for his sacrifice by granting him a TV set. Every now and then it went bust and we had to go and fix it.

A SYMPHONY IN A TREE

One day – was it Herr Strecker or me? – found a magnetic tape, unmarked and of unknown origin. (In those days, for high quality sound we used open reel tapes, running at 78 cm/second. That was the same as the standard of the German radio stations. Cassettes had not been invented.) When we put that tape on the machine, a male voice appeared, speaking a language we had never heard before. Strecker was university educated and had some language skills and I would have been able to recognise the more common languages, but we simply had no idea where this might have come from. We contacted a linguist from the Marburg university. He was equally dumb founded and unable to give us a hint. After a few days we decided to spool the tape forward and play it from the other end. Now we listened to a talk in perfectly spoken German.

Talking about open reel tapes, we had recorded an orchestra. The tape had not spooled too well, so we tried with both our hands to put it on a machine to rewind it. Just before we managed to complete the job, it fell apart and ended on the floor. To save the tape with its precious recording, we moved it into the stair case, where we had more room to untangle it. In the meantime the tape had dispersed itself all over the place and a sudden wind sprang up, blowing a part of our recorded music through an open window into a tree outside. It took us hours to save the music with several cuts and rejoins and finally all was well.

Queen Elizabeth was crowned at the celebration ceremony on the 2nd June, 1953. With great anticipation, that occasion marked the official opening of television in Germany. With contrast and brightness adjustments and vertical and horizontal holds, the TV sets were clumsy to operate and frequently broke down.

GETTING CLOSER TO A FUTURE LIFE FAR AWAY

I applied to migrate to Canada. Some correspondence followed, questionnaires, birth certificates, physical examinations, police records and the way finally was open for me to migrate to Canada. I had befriended a Mr. Brookmann, a nice, somewhat physically handicapped gentleman who owned a bookshop. He was always interested in my progress. When I told him about my Canada preparations he looked somewhat concerned. He referred me to a certain Herr Gersch who, as he explained, had spent some time of his life in Australia. Herr Gersch talked enthusiastically about this faraway continent, the history, the people. The more pleasant climate in that part of the world also played a part, considering what I would have to have expected in Canada. But the keynote was that I should apply, so Mr. Gersch advised, as a semiskilled worker, giving details of my knowledge and experience. From here things began to speed up. My application to go to Australia was accepted and I cancelled the move to Canada.

For the last few weeks before leaving Germany I was offered a position doing radio repairs with better pay in another town called Butzbach. I planned to be versatile in my new country. With improved wages, I bought a better photographic enlarger, associated chemicals, films and other parts and collected some electronic bits and tools. I added the rather heavy music box my grandfather gave had given me and with other bits and pieces plus my trumpet I was well over my allowed weight limit. I saw no problems in having to pay for the extra freight.

Herr Ferba, my new boss, was the owner of a radio shop. He continually used to whistle or sing: "You must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss," one of the popular tunes of the time. He never got much further, so he started again from the beginning. He had tried to invent a polarising headlight arrangement that would have made dimming the car headlights obsolete. His repair workshop was in a cellar, somewhat airless and damp. Ferba was an easy going person, although more confident than trained. He found some faults rather quickly while pronouncing proudly that he had no training in the art of repairing radios. This may have been the way I perceived it, but he made me feel foolish (harking back to my childhood years. I was really conditioned for this!) and below his ability to really do a good job. Still, when I departed he gave me a nice reference: "... sorry to lose Mr. Schmedding due to his migration to Australia."

The first snow of the winter began to fall. I packed all my belongings and joined others in a camp where the preparations for the journey to Australia took place. I had reached the point of no return and looked forward to what I expected to become the greatest adventure of my life. Now I was only one step away from leaving the Northern hemisphere for good.

EPILOGUE

In the introduction to this autobiography I wrote:

“... I was one of those children.
How has it affected my life – moreover
my self-image without a male model?
What have I learned in the process?”