December

Karin

It was April 1945

When I saw my friend Pippi again, she had two kitchen knives hidden in her pocket. She said that she had heard people saying the Russians burnt down houses with Nazi posters in towns they had conquered. So the two of us went around our block and scraped off posters with a swastika. We never finished our project, too little time between the too many air raids.  

One day Papa and I left the apartment and we sat on the park bench in front of our house. I asked Papa why he does not take anymore photos.  “What is there nice to take pictures of now?  Ruins? Sad people?” “ I am smiling.” He smiled too, got up, fetched his camera and took a photo of me. We could hear the cannons at the outskirts of Berlin. “Papa, we will call this picture ‘the end is near’.  And soon everything will be good again.” “No. It will never be good again.” Sad that grown-ups always now have to add unhappy words. 

And this is the photo:

 November

Opa Fritz  

Excerpts from Hartmut’s father’s memoirs (translated)

Fritz Sturm was drafted in 1940 and posted to a searchlight unit near Hamburg to spot British bombers. In April 1945 his unit was ordered to the front. Each soldier received 500 cigarets. Their mission was to destroy  tanks of the Allied Troops advancing along the Autobahn. His unit of 20 had withdrawn soon into a forest. The commanding officer had disappeared. They reached the outskirts of a village and were urged by the villagers to move on, because British soldiers are already occupying the village and they would be shot if they helped German soldiers. They split up into small groups of 4 man and continued move on through the forest for days. To their surprise they found a holiday home and were even more surprised when they were greeted by a friendly family. After a few days hiding there the 4 decided to give themselves up and marched into the village to the British post. That was the end of fighting and the beginning of over a year in  a Prisoner of War Camp. 

Opa Fritz had survived the war. 

October 

Hartmut

Hartmut remembers a lot about the war. He was over 8 years old when World War 2 started and just had his 13th birthday when it ended. Here is one of his memories of an air raid he described in his ‘Life Story’. 

There was a restless humming of voices in the cellar, the air raid shelter. Children cried, because they had been woken up from deep sleep. I myself reacted usually in an obnoxious manner, I hated to be woken up and pretended not to have heard. Mum became very frustrated with me. My sister Siegtraut on the other hand was alert and helpful. The situation improved when the neighbour came to help. Once in the cellar, Mutti gave us coloured pencils and paper and I drew pictures of German bombers dropping bombs on London, pursued by British fighter planes and attacked by British anti-aircraft fire. I also drew pictures of the land war, German tanks featuring in most of those drawings 

Usually, after an hour or two, sirens signalled the end of the alarm. People clambered back upstairs, but for most, the night had been disturbed so badly that they could not return to a restful sleep. 

 September

Ulrike

When I started high school, I saw how important it was too be cool, only I was not very good at it. Most of  my friends knew how to be cool. 

On weekends, we often went to the beach with a transistor radio and we stretched out on our towels in our bikinis, and talked about the surfy boys. Only I did to know what to say about the surfy boys so I just stayed quiet and listened. My bikini was a hand-me-down from one of my friends.

On school days, we all sat in a row on the concrete outside the classroom in our lunch breaks. Our legs were stretched out in the sun and we smothered them in cocoa butter. It was cool to have very brown legs. 

That was the only cool thing I was good at.

  August

 Karin

I remember my first day at school very well. It was summer 1942. In Germany it is custom that kids get a 'Zuckertüte', a huge colourful bag filled with lollies to make the start of the serious side of life a bit sweeter. I also remember the dress I had on: my Red-Riding-Hood dress Mutti had made. Our teacher was Fräulein Herbener. She had a  beautiful smile. I liked her. In the first year we had lessons for two hours only each day. We started to learn the alphabet still using the old Süterlin script and wrote on small slates with chalk. Sometimes the packed lunch rubbed on the slate in the school bag and the home work was smudged or obliterated. I found homework hard. All my letters were always crooked and often I had to redo my homework. That did not bother me too much. I just wrote the letters and words again and again as best as I could, but they never turned out much better. So after a while my parents and teacher accepted it - no, they did not give up on me. For my handwriting I always got the lowest mark. That did not bother me at all because in numbers and story telling I always got good marks. Within the first year of school, the system was changed and we started to use Italic letters. That was so much easier to write and also to read, but my handwriting did not improve. 

July 

Hartmut

1938 came along, Easter was around, and after Easter the time had come, when I had to start school. This, however, was spoiled by an attack of scarlet fever. My sister Siegtraut and I became very ill. We were kept isolated in our room. 

 I started school six weeks late. All the other kids in the class had settled in. On my first school day, Mutti dressed me up, nice and properly, with a new leather satchel. The satchel contained a slate within a timber frame. The school was the 7. Volksschule, Public School Nº 7, Berlin-Weissensee. My teacher was Herr Buchwitz. Herr Buchwitz was a lovely middle-aged gentleman, probably in his late forties. He wore pince-nez glasses, glasses that had no frame but were attached to the nose by a spring mechanism. He helped me along during the first weeks. 

We started writing using the Gothic Sütterlin script. This script is very  much up and down, with sharp edges. I can still write and read Sütterlin script. This script was replaced during 1941. From then on we learned the Latin script, very similar to the writing styles of most other European nations with the addition of the Umlauts ä, ö and ü and the ß (s sharp). 

I had a lot of catching up to do, because I had missed the first few weeks of schooling. Back home, Mutti sat down with me, and we read through the pages of the Fibel, the first year primer. I had to read, I had to write. Mutti was probably too critical; there were few praises but a fair amount of criticism. She was a perfectionist. Even in first class we had regular homework, writing down a couple of sentences or copying a paragraph from the Fibel. Not to upset Mutti, I wrote very slowly, and very neatly. But always at the end, paragraph almost finished, I made a tiny mistake, and I had to start all over again. Sometimes three or four times. Nonetheless, I must not have been too bad. At the first Parents’ Night Herr Buchwitz said to Mutti: “Der Hartmut, ja, der liest wie ein Alter.” He reads like a grown-up. Mutti was very proud, so was my Vati, when Mutti told him. 

. 

  June 

Opa Fritz

Excerpts from Hart’s father's 1973 memoirs:

(translated form German)

During the summer months my sister and I stayed often with my uncle and aunt. They lived in a village and had no children. Aunt and uncle were very kind and spoiled us. My sisters was almost two years older and had already started school. I wanted to learn to write too. So my aunt bought me a slate and a slate pen. With aunty’s help I practices strokes up and down, but did not manage to write letters properly. Soon aunt and I gave up. 

                                                         my sister Frida, uncle Karl, me Fritz, aunt Marie

The law demanded that children after turning 6 had to go to school. The schoolmaster used the cane frequently when pupils made a mistake. Although my writing was always criticised and I never achieved the expected standard I learned soon to read and I loved reading. The daily news paper published novels in sequences and in a few years these became my favourite reading. Father demanded that I read more the scripture book. I did and found it interesting too. I also used the scripture book to hide the news paper novel segments. 

The last 4 years of Fritz’s 8 years of schooling happened to be during World War 1.