Together Apart - Sample

1. Together again So here I am again, looking up to the front door. The house looks well kept as does the garden, which was already mature, when we played in it as children. More than thirteen years have passed since this door closed behind me for the last time. Then we had no idea that it would be a goodbye for such a long time. When Michael and I came down the road leading into the town centre I recognized the corner, where we had to turn left, immediately. It was as though an in- built compass was guiding me to the right address. When I had tried to call for the first time and the telephone was answered eventually the answering voice sounded so familiar, that I thought it was Ute. It came as a bit of a shock that this was her grown-up daughter, who was only a toddler when I saw them the last time. How will it be when the door eventually opens? Will we feel awkward? Will we be disappointed because the long years have changed us so much that we have nothing in common any more? Anxiously I open the gate and ring the doorbell. They must have been waiting for us, the door opens so quickly. Ute and I fall into each others arms. There is a lot of laughter. No tears. We can’t stop telling each other how absolutely delighted we are. And that it is unbelievable. We are not the only ones who feel that way. “Unbelievable” is one of the most used expression in those months. Eberhard grins and gives me a hug. He was already part of the family when we were separated. Michael on the other hand is a new factor. Of course, they know of him. I have mentioned him in my letter and on the telephone. Still there is the question how he would fit in. After all he is what in Germany still ranks very highly on the ladder of approval: a professor of physics! I introduce him. The men shake hands formally. But I can sense that he appears much less frightening that they thought he would be. We slowly make it to the living room. There is so much to tell. All these years! So much has happened. But very soon it feels as if Ute and I were never separated. We just fall back into a relationship which started when we were children, continued into our adulthood, was forcibly interrupted by history and now that the winds of change have blown us together again, can be continued as if we had spoken only yesterday. That it worked out like that is one of the wonders of my life. 2. Where we come from Ute and I are nothing wonderful or even exceptional. However lately I realised that between us we cover a lot of German history of the last century. So, it might be worthwhile telling our story. Our mothers were cousins, as their fathers, our grandfathers, were brothers. While I liked Ute’s grandfather Hermann very much I was more in awe of mine, Karl Walther. My grandfather was a large man with a moustache which, while he was young, optimistically pointed upwards in an imitation of Kaiser Wilhelm’s. After the First World War and with the Kaiser in exile that feeling of optimism must have vanished, because from then on, and while I knew him, his moustache always hung down and made him look a bit like a walrus. Hermann unlike his older brother was a short man with a lot of wrinkles in his face which came from smiling. In my memories he knew a lot and was always ready to tell a joke or a funny story. They came from Kölleda, a small village in Thuringia, where their forefathers had been peasants. Both of us, Ute and I, own identical drawings of the house in which they grew up, very naive but moving sketches. A few years ago, Ute went in search of the house, but she could not find it. It might have been replaced by another building or renovated to the point of being simply unrecognisable. Both brothers left their village. Hermann stayed in Thuringia and moved to Erfurt, the main city in the area. Karl ended up in Breslau in Silesia, where he got married and where my mother and her two brothers were born. Karl and Hermann did fairly well in life despite their humble beginnings. Both built houses for their families (which was no small achievement, as at that time the overwhelming majority of the population in Germany could only afford rented accommodation). My mother’s eldest brother, Karl jun., joined the armed forces and became an officer. My mother Erika and her younger brother Wolfgang both went to university. Being born shortly after the First World War, our mothers and fathers grew up in the thirties and forties, when Germany was a fascist and racist dictatorship under Hitler and the NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei /National Socialistic German Worker’s Party). When Hitler came to power Erika was 13 years old and Ute’s mother Gerti was of about the same age. I do not think that any of my mother’s family were convinced Nazis but neither did they actively oppose. There was still a strong tradition in Germany and in this family to obey orders, to trust in and to conform to the authorities. Nevertheless, the family stood by Erika, when she decided that my father Ernst was the love of her life and that she was going to marry him. Ernst came from a Jewish family and lived a precarious semi-disguised existence in Nazi Germany. Her family knew about his background, they knew that if he was ever found out, it could be dangerous for all of them, but nobody betrayed the young couple. My parents got married in October 1944, coinciding with the horrible peak of terror against the Jews of Europe. After only two weeks of a strange kind of honeymoon under the fire of the approaching Russian front the young couple was separated. Only in 1948 did my father come back from Russian Prisoner of War camps. In contrast to many war-time marriages, which did not last, for my parents only death could part them. In 1999, when my mother died, my parents had been married for more than 54 years. During the winter of 1944/45 it became more than obvious that the war would be lost. Nevertheless, all men between sixteen and sixty-five were now drawn into the army in a last desperate attempt to stem the tide. So, our grandfathers, who were in or approaching their sixties, had to become soldiers once more. With the men away at the Russian front and the fighting coming closer and closer Erika and her mother decided to flee from Silesia. The family had discussed their possibilities and had agreed on Hermann’s house in Erfurt as a meeting point if they lost each other in the chaos of the eventual collapse. Fortunately, this house was not destroyed, so this was where my mother and my grandmother headed to seek temporary shelter and to wait for news from their men all of whom eventually were captured and imprisoned in Prisoner of War camps. Thus, it happened that Erika and Gerti, the cousins, who had known each other from family visits and occasional joint holidays, lived under one roof for a while. Conditions were crammed and dire. Three generations of the family had to move together to make room for refugees, who brought little or no belongings, only a rucksack or a suitcase, if they were lucky. The city was destroyed like any other German town and to survive amongst the ruins was a daily challenge. It was the US army, which first entered Erfurt. After they captured the town all the inhabitants were ordered to leave for twenty-four hours, so that the soldiers could search and pillage without interference and the army could confiscate the buildings they needed for their purposes. When my family eventually was allowed to return from the fields and forests where they had hidden for those anxious hours, they found that all their valuables had gone. However, the soldiers had filled the cradle of my one-year old cousin Goetz-Olaf with lots of sweets. But the Americans did not stay long. In the treaty of Yalta 1945 negotiated by Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill, the Big Three had agreed on how to split up Germany. Thuringia was supposed to end up under Soviet control. Therefore, the American Army left and the Russian Army moved in. Years of Nazi propaganda and the way the Russians had fought their war meant that the defeated were extremely fearful of this move and anxious about the future. Consequently, many people tried to escape to the western zones, which were occupied by the USA, Britain or France. My mother had another reason for considering moving on. My father’s family has its’ roots in Frankfurt am Main, which lay in the American zone. It was expected that if he survived the Russian POW camp he would eventually be released there. So, with the help of my father’s relatives, she fled again, this time to Frankfurt where she moved in with her mother-in-law, my “Oma”, hoping and longing for my father to come back. My grandfather also survived. He eventually arrived in Erfurt. My grandparents left Hermann’s house, to allow more space for other family members, and moved into a flat just around the corner. As it was normal then they did not have the flat to themselves. In the middle of all this destruction everyone in Germany, in all zones of occupation, was allowed only so much space and had to make room for bombed- outs and refugees. So, my grandparents had one room and had to share the kitchen and the bathroom with other families. 3. With us were born two German states Ute was born in May 1949 in Erfurt. In April 1950 I arrived to the delight of my parents, the “Friedenskindchen” (child of peace), they had longed for. Although Ute and I were close in age and had so much in common, it was by chance that we had landed on different sides of the gap, which, for most of our lives, seemed totally unbridgeable. Both superpowers, the USA and the Soviet Union, were determined to make their part of Germany a buffer zone as well as a showcase for their respective systems, and on each side they found enough politicians that were happy to follow suit. The Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic Germany) was established on 23.5.1949 (actually five days after Ute’s birthday) in the area that was previously occupied by USA, Britain and France. The Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic), the area under Soviet occupation, followed on the 7.10.1949. Ute still jokes that as neither she nor her husband was born in the DDR, the state had no right to claim them as loyal subjects. Until the building of the Wall in 1961, one could still travel between the different zones, despite lots of bureaucratic and other obstacles. So, my parents and I went to Erfurt regularly. For my grandparents it was much more difficult to visit us in Frankfurt. One of the many hurdles was that from 1948 both zones had their own currency, and while the Deutsche Mark was freely convertible, the Mark (later Mark der DDR) was not. So, if people from East Germany wished to travel, they faced the added difficulty of travelling without means. In Erfurt I stayed with my grandparents, sometimes with my parents and sometimes on my own. They still shared the flat with other people, and it must have been fairly crowded. But I never thought about it, because I did not know any better. In Frankfurt too, we had to share our flat with other people, my grandmother had one room and we, the young family, had another, until a few years later, when I already could walk and talk, we gained access to some extra space. Ours was the bathroom which doubled as a kitchen, while another family had the use of the proper kitchen, where on Saturday evening they filled a basin for their weekly bath. For me that was how things were. My generation grew up in cities which still lay in ruins. It was our play ground. We had no inkling how much it must have hurt the adults who remembered their surroundings un-destroyed as they were before the war. Only later did I start to reflect on how difficult it must have been for the adults who had been accustomed to living in their own houses with all amenities. Only then did I understand that a certain abruptness in the behaviour of my grandparents might have resulted from their grief and shock at their situation as refugees who had lost everything and in their time of life had to start once more. Being in Erfurt I spent a lot of time at Hermann’s house playing with Ute. Three generations still lived there: Hermann and his wife, Gerti and her husband and of course Ute. If I remember correctly, they also had to take in lodgers. So, space must have been fairly limited as well, but the house seemed large in comparison and they had a garden which was my delight.