January  

Our first home was in Berlin. We moved together as students in September 1956 a few months after we got married. We could rent two rooms with kitchen facilities and shared bathroom in a huge apartment in the suburb Tiergarten at Levetzowstrasse 16   

    our window                                                                                                                             our view 

The location was ideal. The old building was right at banks of the river Spree and close to the huge city park Tiergarten not far from Brandenburger Tor. The buildings on both sides were destroyed during World War 2, and only on one side a new modern apartment block was built.

The two rooms were quite big and we subdivided them with walls made out of plastic shower curtain material. A small part of the living room became our bedroom and half of the room with the stove and sink became later the room for our 2 kids. Hartmut’s aunt lived in the other 3 rooms. 

The place was dark, never got any sun.    

 We were very happy there for the 3 years we lived there before we migrated to Australia. 

  2021

  Childhood Stories will be my theme this year 

Every one has some childhood memories. And some people write their life stories down. I did too, so far only part of it, my childhood. Hartmut, and also his father, Fritz, wrote their whole life story. One of our children, Ulrike, used her childhood memories for her artwork. 

Every one talks now and then about their memories especially from childhood.

So this year I will use childhood memories for my blog.

 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.