eBook
Related collections and offers
Overview
In the aftermath of World War II, the author was among those relocated in what may have been the largest forced resettlement of a population in modern history — the expulsion of at least twelve million people from the former German provinces of East Prussia, Silesia, and Pomerania, as well as from German enclaves in Eastern Europe. As a result, West Germany's population swelled with the arrival of millions of refugees. With housing already scarce, jobs hard to come by, and religious differences often setting them apart, the newcomers were not always welcomed with open arms.
STRETCH recounts the thirteen eventful years in the author's life following his reunion with his father in Cologne, West Germany, in 1950. With both humor and suspense, STRETCH provides a fascinating glimpse into German life during a period when the country was experiencing a transformative economic recovery, but also at times struggling to confront the shadow of its recent Nazi past.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781452079295 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 10/28/2010 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Sales rank: | 784,163 |
| File size: | 534 KB |
Read an Excerpt
STRETCH
Coming of Age in Post-War GermanyBy Gunter Nitsch
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2010 Gunter NitschAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4520-7927-1
Chapter One
The engine of Mr. Meyer's overloaded Opel clattered and strained under the unaccustomed weight of its five passengers and all of our belongings. It was shortly after my thirteenth birthday on a raw, gray Tuesday afternoon in December 1950, and my father's new boss was driving my mother, my father, my eight-year-old brother Hubert, and me, from Cologne on the Rhine towards the town of Bergheim. Except for the rickety taxi that had brought Mutti, Hubert, and me to the border during our escape from East Germany two years before, this was my first ride in any vehicle smaller than a Russian army truck.A heavy carton packed with our two Bibles, my precious copies of Huckleberry Finn and The Leather Stocking Tales, my two atlases, and my stamp collection was crushing my lap. Hubert, who had barely managed to squeeze in between Mutti and me in the backseat, pressed against my side. He looked like an overstuffed piglet and breathed heavily. Occasionally I poked my elbow into his side and whispered, "Give me some space, will you?" but he would just glare at me and then nervously brush his straight blond hair off of his forehead.
Half an hour earlier our train had chugged slowly into the cavernous main railroad station where my father, without a trace of a smile, had waited for us on the platform. This was our second reunion since the war ended. Our first, two years earlier, had ended abruptly after only ten days with my father's announcement that he was leaving us behind in a refugee camp near the East German border to take a job as a pastry chef in Cologne. In the two years since he had left us, my father had only been in touch through infrequent postcards and even more infrequent transfers of funds. From my perspective, his abandonment had begun long before that. When I was a small child, he had been away at war and rarely came home on leave. Now I knew that, as the war had neared its end and while Mutti, Hubert, and I were trapped in Russian-held territory in the East, my father had been captured by the British and had lived in relative comfort in the West. Then one day, out of the blue, this man, who was a virtual stranger to me, had sent us tickets so that we could join him.
My father had introduced us to Mr. Meyer moments after we stepped down from the train and the five of us walked outside together. Even though they were the same height, the two men could not have been more different. My father strode, stiff and fashionable, in his high-collared suit and heavy overcoat, but his steel gray eyes darted over the three of us anxiously. Mr. Meyer slouched alongside us in a crumpled gray suit. In contrast to my father's bald head and gaunt frame, Mr. Meyer's thick blond hair was combed straight back and his belt was nearly hidden beneath his protruding stomach. Laughter crinkled the corners of his blue eyes and he winked at Hubert and me as he had struggled to fit our belongings into the tiny trunk of his car.
My father sat in the front passenger seat and stared straight ahead. Mutti was seated behind Mr. Meyer and gazed glumly out the window as the car rumbled in the direction of Bergheim, which was twenty-four kilometers away. I couldn't see her face, but I was sure we were sharing the same thoughts. Had we just exchanged a hard life in the Bodenteich refugee camp for something even worse? At least in Bodenteich I could do pretty much as I pleased; I couldn't begin to imagine what it would take to please my father.
Rubble left over from the Allied bombing littered both sides of the road. The houses that were still standing were heavily pockmarked with bullet holes. The windows of some of the buildings had been walled shut with mismatched bricks scavenged from nearby ruins. Why would someone do that, I wondered. Were the owners trying to keep intruders out? Or were the bricked-up windows helping to keep the buildings from collapsing altogether? Had my father been a bit friendlier I would have asked him, but now I didn't dare.
Five long minutes passed without a word being spoken. Finally, Mr. Meyer cleared his throat. "Well, Frau Nitsch," he said, trying to make eye contact with Mutti in the rearview mirror, "what are your first impressions of Cologne?"
"It reminds me of Königsberg and Berlin," Mutti said after a moment's hesitation. "Terrible devastation everywhere you look."
"It's bad, that's for sure, but it's a paradise compared to the way the center of town looked in 1945. You know, around the main train station where we just were? Nearly everything over there was totally flat. It's a miracle the cathedral was spared."
My father turned to Mr. Meyer and said bitterly, "Every time I come through this part of town, I get angry at the British and Americans for what they did here."
"What we did to the Russians wasn't any better," Mutti protested. "The stories the Russians told me about their civilian casualties would make your blood curdle. And don't forget that we started the war."
My father craned his neck around and glared at Mutti. "Now you listen to me! You'd better forget all that Communist propaganda and get on with your life or you'll never fit in here. Germany's different now. We've put all that behind us."
"Well, you may be angry at the British and the Americans," Mr. Meyer said to my father, tactfully ignoring my parents' argument, "but the currency reforms they put through two years ago have really helped us get back on our feet."
"Well, I'll give them credit for that," my father said.
Mutti changed the subject. "I never thought to ask — which of the Allies is in charge in this area?"
"Officially, it's the British zone," Mr. Meyer replied. "But the troops stationed around here are all from Belgium. I'll point out their barracks when we drive past Ichendorf."
We left Cologne, passing through the villages of Königsdorf and Horrem. Up to that point, we had been driving on a rather high plateau, but now, straight ahead of us, lay a vast marshy plain divided into rectangular pastures; some were enclosed by thick hedges, and others, bordered by ruler-straight rows of tall poplar trees. Never in my life had I been able to see so far. To our right, however, the plateau continued. Mr. Meyer nodded in that direction. "There's a big deposit of soft coal over there. See the smokestacks just behind the hills? Those are factories that produce briquettes and electricity."
"Is that how the houses are heated around here? With briquettes?" I asked timidly.
"That's pretty much all we use," Mr. Meyer replied.
"Well then, at least I won't be chopping all that wood for the stove," I blurted out, thinking back to the backbreaking hours I had spent swinging an ax ever since I was barely eight years old.
"You'll have plenty of other chores to do, believe me," my father said sharply. "I'll see to that."
Color had rushed into Mutti's cheeks. She reached across Hubert to place a reassuring hand on my arm, but I could feel her trembling through my sleeve. Grabbing tight to the box of books on my lap, I slumped down in my seat as far as my long legs would let me.
"Now, Willi," she said to my father, measuring every word. "Günter has been looking after us ever since Opa died back in '46. You needn't worry about his carrying his own weight."
"Just so everyone knows who's in charge," my father snapped.
Mutti turned to me. With her free hand she pointed to herself and forced a smile.
Not long after that, we drove into a small town. "Well, this is Bergheim," Mr. Meyer announced, "and on your right, that's my café where we'll all have dinner later."
Mutti smiled gratefully and said, "That's very kind of you, Herr Meyer. We're certainly looking forward to it."
"Zieverich, where you'll be living, is just on the other side of the Aachener Tor, the old city gate ahead of us." From a distance the gate, with its two thick brick and mortar towers attached to an arched passageway, didn't look wide enough, but Mr. Meyer's Opel had no trouble passing through. As soon as we entered Zieverich we drove past a huge meadow on our right and a swamp on our left before crossing a wide cement bridge over the Erft River. Just beyond the bridge on the left, a driveway separated a Lutheran church from a three-story building with two separate entrances. Mr. Meyer made a U-turn on Aachener Strasse and parked in front of the entrance farthest from the church.
"So, here you are," he said. "This is it."
A meter-high stone wall separated the front yards of the two attached parts of the house. The left half of the building had a fresh coat of plaster and large windows with crisp lace curtains and dark brown shutters. A front walk crossed a garden and led to a flight of steps going up to the door. On the right side of the wall, six cement steps led down below the level of the sidewalk so that both the path and the first floor of the house on that side were well below street level. The right half also had smaller windows. There were curtains but no shutters. And the front wall was still deeply pocked with bullet holes and shrapnel scars.
Mr. Meyer opened the car door for Mutti and then went to the trunk to retrieve our things. Ignoring Hubert and me, my father joined him. I struggled desperately with the door on my side but couldn't open it. Mr. Meyer, noticing my predicament, put our possessions on the sidewalk and came over to let Hubert and me out. "It's a little tricky," he said soothingly as he opened the door. Why couldn't my father be like him, I wondered.
Mr. Meyer shook hands with both of my parents. "It's so nice to see your family reunited at last," he said. "Now I've got to rush back to the shop. I'll see all of you in an hour for supper."
"Well," my father said as Mr. Meyer drove off and we walked up to the front door, "we should let our landladies know we've arrived. At least one of the Lemm sisters should be home at this hour."
There were four doorbells. The bottom bell with the blank nametag was ours. Next up was Poltermann, then van Knippenberg. The Lemm sisters' bell, which my father now pressed twice, was on the top. After a minute or two, we could hear the tapping of high-heeled shoes in the hallway and then a middle-aged lady opened the front door. Miss Lemm was wearing a long-sleeved, dark-blue, ankle-length dress. A stickpin cameo brooch held her collar tightly closed. Her hair was pulled back into a neat bun.
"Frau Nitsch and children, so glad to meet you," she said, shaking each of our hands in turn. "I'm sorry that my sister isn't home to welcome you, too. Come in! Come in! No sense letting in the cold air and I'm sure you'd like to get settled."
We followed Miss Lemm into the narrow entry hall and she stopped at the first door on the left. As my father reached into his pocket for the key, we heard the sound of footsteps coming from the apartment across the hall. "Please be sure to let me know if you need anything," Miss Lemm said, wringing her hands nervously. She suddenly seemed anxious to herd us all into the apartment. At that moment, the door behind us was flung open and out popped a tall skinny man with an enormous handlebar mustache and stringy black hair that hung at least five centimeters over his shirt collar.
"Well, here we go again!" he boomed. "More damn rrrefugees! As if we didn't have enough already!" He intentionally mispronounced the word "refugees" by imitating the rolling "r" of the East Prussian accent.
"Now listen here, Herr Poltermann," Miss Lemm started to say, but Mr. Poltermann went right on.
"Don't take me too seriously," he said with a chuckle. "I can say whatever I like 'cause I'm a damn rrrefugee myself. Name's Poltermann. From the Sudetenland. Just got back today from my in-law's place in Fortuna."
"Nitsch," my father said, extending his hand.
"Well, well, well," Mr. Poltermann replied, looking the four of us up and down. "A hearty welcome to Villa Lemm! So you'll be living down here with us Untermenschen on the ground floor. I'm sure Fräulein Lemm has told you how to find your way to the shithouse at the end of the long brick path in the back. Refugees like us don't get indoor plumbing like the fancy-pants natives upstairs. Oh, no. We have to trek way out back through the snow in the dead of night and sit there freezing our asses off in the dark while the wind whistles through the ..."
"Please, Herr Poltermann, I beg you! You know very well that this is only a temporary solution," said Miss Lemm.
"Well, you're a nice one! What do you mean, temporary? My family has been living under these primitive conditions for a year now!"
Miss Lemm turned to my parents. Her lower lip was trembling. "What Herr Poltermann has forgotten to say is that as soon as my sister and I have the money we'll install a toilet in the first-floor laundry room."
"Don't make me laugh," Mr. Poltermann said sharply. Then he grinned at us. "You'll see soon enough! Auf Wiedersehen!" And he ducked back inside his apartment.
Miss Lemm wrung her hands. "A very difficult gentleman, as you can see," she said, smiling weakly at Mutti. "The van Knippenberg family lives on the second floor and my sister and I live on the third floor. The van Knippenbergs are an old established family in this area, very refined people. They have three daughters. They lost their only son in a bombing raid in 1944. He was only fourteen, the poor dear." Miss Lemm barely paused to take a breath. "Herr van Knippenberg is the principal of the Catholic school here in Zieverich. I presume your boys will be attending there."
"The boys will go to the Lutheran school in Bergheim," my father corrected her.
"That's too bad," Miss Lemm said. "It's two kilometers each way, and a few days a week they'll have to go back and forth twice when the school has morning and afternoon shifts."
"I'm sure the walk will do them good," my father said. That's easy for him to say, I thought to myself, trying to imagine my chubby little brother walking eight kilometers a day.
"But at least you won't have far to go to get to church," Miss Lemm hastened to add. "It's right next door. Pastor Kampe and his family live in the other half of this building, by the way. Oh, and I almost forgot. We all use the other room on this side for doing laundry. You'll find the entrance back there by the staircase."
"Thank you so much for the information and good evening, Fräulein Lemm," my father said as he inched closer to the door of our apartment.
Miss Lemm nodded, smiled, and walked further down the hallway to the wooden stairs leading up to the apartment she shared with her sister. When she was out of earshot, Mutti asked my father, "Is that customary here to have such long conversations in the hallway?"
"There wouldn't have been space for all five of us to talk inside," my father replied as he finally turned the key in the lock and we got our first look at our new home.
I let out a low whistle. "It's not much bigger than our room in the refugee camp in Bodenteich!" I would have said more, but the angry look my father shot at me kept me quiet.
To our right, a row of clothes hooks attached to a thick wooden board had been nailed to the wall. A double bed took up all of the remaining space on that side. A sink and stove were to the left of the doorway. On the far left side of the room, a single window faced the front yard, and next to it, a couch, a rectangular table, and two stools completed the furnishings.
"I see what you mean," Mutti said. "There's barely enough space in here for the four of us. Where will the boys sleep?"
"Hubert can sleep on the couch and Herr Meyer gave me an old military folding cot that Günter can use. It slides right under the couch. We'll have set it up every night, that's all."
"Where?" Mutti asked, eying the narrow area between the table and the double bed.
"Oh, it'll fit all right. When the boys go to bed, we'll just have to move the table and chairs over there." He pointed to the cramped space in front of the coat hooks.
I looked up at the single ceiling light over the spot where my cot would be. I took a deep breath and said to my father, "Could I ask you something? When I go to bed, will that light still be on?"
"Of course it will," my father snapped. "Do you think your mother and I are going to spend our evenings in the dark?"
"Don't be so hard on Günter," Mutti objected. "He has the right to ask a simple question."
"Now you listen to me, all of you," my father replied. "This isn't going to be easy for any of us, but there's a housing shortage and we'll just have to make the best of what we have." Not another word was said as Mutti unpacked a towel from her bag and we all washed our hands over the kitchen sink before setting out for Café Meyer. We left the house, climbed the cement steps that led up to the sidewalk, and turned in the direction of Bergheim.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from STRETCH by Gunter Nitsch Copyright © 2010 by Gunter Nitsch. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.