Memoirs of Juergen Wegat

Eduard Wegat, 1904 – 2001

My father, Eduard Wegat,was born on 17th February 1904 in Eszerischken, East Prussia. His parents names are Eduard Wegat and Auguste Wegat nee Peuk. Eduard, (my father) was the eldest of 4 children,the other’s names are: Lina, Karl and Gustaf. His mother also had children from an earlier marriage.The only one of those children living in Hamburg, and whom I knew well, was uncle Fritz and auntie Dolly Kutkowski.

Eduard’s father, (my grandfather) died in 1910 from alcoholism. Eduard was only 6 years old. His mother, being widowed with four small children married again. Her new husband was a widower, Gottlieb Blasko, who had grown children.

At the age of 14 my father started an apprenticeship with an engineering company in Darkehmen which built pumps and sank and drilled wells. He completed his apprenticeship on 2nd October 1922 and became a qualified Copper-and Blacksmith. Eduard worked for two other employers in or near Darkehmen until the 1st March 1925, when he made his way to Hamburg.

Hamburg was the gateway for most of northern- and eastern europeans immigrating to America,and this was Eduards intention – see the world!

While waiting for his immigration application to come through, he lived with his half-brother Fritz in Harburg and worked as a coppersmith. Also in Harburg he got injured in an traffic accident and ended up in Harburg Hospital. Here he met a nurse and his plans of going to America were put on the backburner.

Eduard also quit coppersmithing and began training as a nurse. He became a qualified nurse and masseur in the late 20’s and worked full-time in Harburg Hospital. Meanwhile his relationship with nurse Gertrud Hennig had blossomed and they became secretly engaged, as fraternisation between staff members was “Streng Verboten”. Nurse Eduard Wegat married Nurse Gertrud Hennig on 3-12-1932!

Gertrud Wegat, 1905 – 2002

My mother, Margarethe Gertrud Wegat nee Hennig, was born in Ransbach, Vogtland on 20th December 1905.

Her parents names are Alvin Hennig and Eva Margarethe Hennig nee Daemmerich. Gertrud had two siblings, Gerhard, born in 1904 and Hertha, born in 1908.

My mother’s Father Alvin was a schoolteacher by profession initially, but later became a Seventhday Adventist Pastor after changing his faith. After some years he became disenchanted and started his own church, the Seventhday Baptists.

My grandfather also became disenchanted with his wife Eva Margarethe, and after years of womanising, my grandparents were divorced in January 1934. He remarried, had another daughter and died in Hamburg in 1955, aged 75 years.

My grandmother remained single and lived with my parents for most of her remaining life. She died in Hamburg on 4-7-1966, aged 89 years. Gertrud became a qualified nurse in Berlin before settling in Hamburg.

I was born at Ivensweg 27a, in the Hamburg suburb of Barmbek on Christmas day 1937. Our housedoctor, who delivered me, was Dr.Fuchs. Doctor Fuchs was Jewish and in 1942 paid for this CRIME with his life in a concentration camp.

The block of flats where we lived was situated in a green and very quiet short street. On the opposite side of our street were “Schrebergaerten”,  gardenplots. Behind these was the Towing-Tank building of the H.S.V.A., the shipbuilding research centre where large models of ships were tested in a tank 450m long.

An almost circular open-air basin, 250m diameter, was connected with the towing tank. Here models were tested for manoeuverability, while in the towing tank models underwent different tests.

It is now 2008 and I am almost 71 years of age, but I still see in my mind the slowly moving lights of ship-models, as they were towed up and down that canal in that long building. Being in the hight of war, all those windows were meant to be totally blacked-out!

But the allied bombing raids never managed to hit their important target, the “Schiffbauversuchsanstalt”, instead in July 1943 our block of flats got hit and was completely destroyed. It happened like this.

My father was stationed at a military hospital in Busko, Poland. My mother and brother went to visit him. I stayed with auntie Dolly in Harburg, while Oma Hennig, who lived with us, stayed at the flat. Whenever the sirens sounded and a bombing-raid was imminent, it had become customary for people to take their valueables, papers and photographs with them into the shelters (basements). Our Oma left all OUR photos behind and everything got burned. That is why we have hardly any childhood pictures, only those which our mother carried with her.

I have some very distinct memories from Ivensweg. On friday nights we always had the weekly bath, and it being the beginning of the Sabbath (we were Seventhday Adventists) the evening meal had to be quick and simple, usually hot chocolate and kaiser rolls with liverwurst. It is still one of my favorites.

Ants have always had a fascination for me. I remember sitting on the curbstone of our street and disturbing the columns of marching ants in the gutter or those coming out of the gaps between curbstones.

My brother Siegfried, being 3 1/2 years older, naturally played with the older kids. I was considered a baby, but I was always big enough to defend him against older kids, or retrieve his toys from kids twice my size. That is how my glasses always ended up broken (I had to wear spectacles since age 2, when I had hooping cough and became quite crosseyed). I just could not resist teasing older kids and it always got me into strife. My big brother was of no help to me, I just had to stick-up for myself.

Sometime in 1942 I was sent to a “Kindererholungsheim”at the the Baltic Sea resort of Timmendorf for 3 weeks. This was to give city children a break from the constant bombing raids on Hamburg. The only unpleasant memory I have from there is a dish I really hated, but still had to eat. Mashed potatoes with spinach, which was cooked to a thin slurry, with an halfboiled egg floating in the centre. For many years I refused to eat spinach!

We were bombed out in early July 1943 while my mother and brother were still in Poland. As I said previously, Oma Hennig looked after our flat while I stayed with Aunty Dolly in Harburg.

Harburg suffered as much as Hamburg from bombing, and even though Onkel Fritz had built a very deep bunker in the clay cliff behind their house, my father did not think I was safe. Consequently my father came from Poland and collected me. The whole family was united again until October ’43 when my mother, brother and I returned “Home” but as Home lay in ruins, we moved in with Tante Lina in Harburg. We stayed with her until February ’44 when we returned to Busco, Poland.

The reason was, I became too terrified to go into the bunker during the never ending bombing raids. During one raid my mother and I had to take refuge in the basement bunker of a large six story department store. The building was
totally flattened, hundreds of shoppers died and hundreds more including us,were trapped in the sealed off bunkerb. It took rescue teams 9 hours to literally dig us out. For years afterwards I suffered every night from terrible nightmares.

It was safe and peaceful in Busko until July 1944,when the German army had to retreat further and further and the russians were at the doorstep. The German civilians still in Busko were put onto two buses, and under army escort –  tanks and trucks – driven to Kielce, the nearest safe city. It took us approx 16 hours to get there, 80 km.

The road went through very deep forests and the convoy was continually attacked by Polish partisans. All tires on the buses were shot out and the tanks pushed and towed us most of the distance. We were laying flat on the floor all the way and it was a miracle that we survived. Many did not.The buses were riddled with bullets.

From Kielce we made our way to Lichten, in Ostsudetenland, where my father was now stationed. On the way there we detoured to Krakau, to look up my mothers sister Hertha, who worked there as a teacher at a German school.

In Lichten I was finally enrolled at school and we stayed there until January ’45 when the Russians again stood at the door. My father meanwhile had been moved and was stationed in Austria (Lofer, near Cell am See). Again we followed him as there was no point in returning to Hamburg, no home nor any possessions.

The weeklong train trip through a very unfriendly Czechoslovakia was harrowing and fraught with danger. In hindsight I can only admire our mother, a very petite person, for her guts and determination to keep the three of us alive and to get us out of the Czech Republic.

The Austrians at that stage of the war also hated the Germans and we were much discriminated against. My father found us lodgings in a small village, Weissbach, while he was stationed at Lofer to train Volkssturm Truppen, (Homeguard).

Life was not easy for us, we did not speak-or understand the local dialect, and the villagers refused to understand the high German we spoke. Shopping for food at the only shop in the village was futile, there was hardly any food on the shelves and the locals were selfsufficient. So we went begging for food at the farms.

Farmers in the valley were stingy, but those high up on the Alms were goodhearted and always gave us something. Milk and bread, sometimes an egg, or smoked eagle meat. The bread was usually stale, but bread nonetheless. My mother kept it in a pillow cover until it became rockhard, then made breadsoup out of it. We didn’t starve!

At school we were also bullied and discriminated against. Usually, I was left alone, and my brother Siegfried took the brunt, until our mother marched into school and confronted the culprits, mostly bigger boys, as all grades were taught in the same classroom by the one teacher.

A few weeks after settling in Weissbach the Americans started to invade Austria from the south and the German army retreated, our father being one of them. I still see in my mind the neverending columns of American tanks and trucks rumbling down the narrow band of bitumen into and through Weissbach, the locals standing by the roadside cheering and waving! From personal experience later in life I can say – never trust an Austrian. How they cheered when Hitler declared the ANSCHLUSS and they became a part of the greater Germany not so many years before and now they cheered the Yanks as their saviors.

Quite a large number of Americans occupied the village and took over the best houses and the only pub, right next to where we lived. Until now I had never seen Negroes before and we were all frightened of them, but all soldiers black and white were frienly and very polite, especially towards children. We were given chewing-gum, chocolate, lollies and marsbars, not to mention whole ration-packs.

The women of the village soon took in washing of the soldiers and were paid well, mainly with cigarettes, coffee, sweets or food. And peanut butter, huge tins of it. They used to eat a little out of the centre, then throw the can out, the same with cakes of Lux soap, use it a few times, then throw it out. They had everything in abundance and enjoyed showing it off.

The pub had a bowling lane in the basement and it was very popular with the soldiers. The only problem was they needed someone to set up the pins and return the ball after each throw, and that is where us kids came in. We were paid handsomely with mars bars, peanuts or fruit (the first time I ate bananas and grapefruit).

The soldiers found it very funny to play with life ammunition, they would pull the pin on a live handgranade, then hand it to a kid to throw it quickly into the nearby river. They would collect all the belly-up fish and hand them out to us. They were a welcome addition to our meager pantry. Once I came home with a nice little wooden box. It contained about six funny looking things made of metal and glass. Our neighbours husband happened to come past and see me playing with those thing. Apparently he turned ashen as he gently took them off me and placed them back into the box.

Someone had given me a box of detonators! Our neighbour took them to the commanding officer of the regiment and made a stink, and that was the end of us playing with life ammo – those detonators were very sensitive and could have blown up any time in my hands. My mother was very grateful to Mr. Dachsdoppler, as he probably saved our lives.

Our stay in Austria came to an end in October 1945. All Germans had to leave immediately. We had to make our way to Salzburg, where thousands of German civilians were herded together and put onto goods trains to be shipped back to the Fatherland. We had straw to sleep on, and we had blankets to keep us warm, but food was scarce.

Our travel by goods train from Salzburg in Austria to Hamburg in northern Germany progressed at snails pace. The total distance was roughly 900 kms. but it took 3 weeks to get there. Allied bombing had left the rail network in shambles, tracks ripped up or blown-up trains still laying across tracks. Detours around destroyed cities and towns and day long holdups were a day to day occurence, as was the lack of coal and water. The infrastructure simply wasn’t in place anymore.

At one little town we were “unloaded” and had to wait 3 days for another train. We found lodgings with a rail worker. I remember this well because speck was part of most meals. Seventh Day Adventists don’t eat pork, and our mother told us to put it into our pockets – do not eat it, it is unclean!

The towns name was Unterrosphe, near Giessen. It was an importent railjunction. I remember watching steam locos pushing goods wagons up a long incline and rolling down under their own steam as they were shunted onto a maze of different tracks.

While we waited for another train we were sorted out according to our final destinations. There were some hundreds of Hamburgers trying to make their way back to Hamburg, and finally they coupled six or seven goods wagons with us on board onto the back of a long goods train. It was roughly 400km to Hamburg.

We had been bombed-out but we owned a “Schrebergarten” in Barmbek. This is a garden plot of 800sq/m with a large garden shed on it. But no facilities. Where else could we stay, 80% of Hamburgs housing was destroyed. We had 3 lots of relations living in Harburg, my fathers sister Lina and her little boy Peter, her husband Ewald had died in 1942. He worked as a stevedore and fell to his death on nightshift when someone left the hatch cover off a hold on a freighter.

My father also had two brothers living in Harburg, Uncle Karl and his wife Hertha. They had one son, Erich. The other brother was his half brother Fritz Kutkowski and aunty Dolly. They had one son, Georg. He was married, his wife’s name was Liesel. Fritz and Dolly also had a daughter. Her name was also Liesel. Anyhow, none of the relations were bombed out, and aunty Lina took us in as she had the largest place. Until now we had no idea whether our father was dead or alive, as we had not heard from him since he was posted from Austria.

When we turned up at Tante Lina’s she had good news for us, she had received a card from my father. He was a POW in an American camp near Aachen, close to the Dutch border and he was hopeful to be released soon. This turned out to be correct. He knocked on our door in December ’45, carrying a battered suitcase filled with goodies, complete
ration packs, marsbars, soap and american cigarettes. These were worth a fortune, and bought absolutely anything on the black market. As most retail shops had empty shelves, black market trading had really taken off, despite a heavy presence of police.

Those cartons of Chesterfields and Lucky Strikes eventually paid for all the hard to get building materials my father needed to build a house on our garden plot. This began to happen in spring of ’46. We stayed with Tante Lina until spring, when my father managed to rent a more solid weekender than our own one in close proximity to our garden. Our shed had to be demolished and the site cleared.

The house was to be of very simple design. Length 13 meters,width 7 meters, divided into 4 rooms with a kind of lean-to added to the width of the house. This gave us one large and 1 small bedroom, living room and kitchen. Toilet, shed and chicken coop were under the lean-to, the bathroom consisted of an extra basin in the kitchen. Under part of the livingroom we would dig out a cellar with a trapdoor. This would be for storing home made preserves and the traditional yearly supply of potatoes – usually one ton, delivered in October. My father was no bricklayer or carpenter, but he was handy with tools. A bricklayer helped with the foundations and the layout, he also laid all the corners, while Dad did the filling in. Bricks were cheap, and that is where we boys came in.

We collected them from the ruined appartment buildings and carted them home by wheelbarrow. But first they had to be cleaned, also sorted as we didn’t want chipped or broken bricks. I will never forget one little episode; we always carried – or threw our bricks to our collection point were we cleaned and stacked them. On that day Siegfried and I were both throwing our bricks. He was in my line of fire and had crouched down to pick up a brick. Just as my brick flew overhead he came up and interrupted the
bricks flight path. It knocked him out cold, and blood was pouring from a deep gash on his head. But he came to while I tried to stop the bleeding with my handkerchief. My big worry was our bricks. We were not the only ones collecting them and if I took my brother home, someone would take our cleaned bricks. So I told my brother to stay put while I raced home and got our mother.We eventually carted him home in the wheelbarrow. Our mother cleaned and bandaged his wound and he was alright and didn’t need stitches. But our bricks helped to build someone elses “Behelfsheim”, or emergency home.

Dad needed double-T steel beams for the roof structure. Finding these in the ruins was not a problem, but most were either too short or bent and twisted. We carried the best ones we could find home and when he had enough to do the job he borrowed a trailer and carted them to some welding place where they welded them into straight length to fit the roof. I still remember helping my dad to drag those seven meter beams to the building site on that little trailer, no pump-up tyres! My darling brother never seemed to be around to help, and I was only 9.

It was now probably the middle of 1946 and the building progressed nicely. I think the roof was on before winter started. Dad had by now started working. He worked at the Eilbeker Krankenhaus (hospital) as a nurse and he travelled there by pushbike. Suburban tram and train services were still very unreliable, as electricity was only generated on an off and on basis, at home we used home-made carbide lamps for lighting.

The winter of 46/47 was one of the coldest on record, and a lot of people froze to death for lack of warm clothing and heating. The one-room weekender where we lived was only built for summer, and the icy wind and cold whistled through the cracks. We had no heating at all, but dad knew of a way to put sawdust to good use, perhaps he had seen it in his blacksmithing days in Prussia. It was a very simple heater, and it consisted of 2 steel cylinders roughly 0.8 x 2.0 meters in size, but one being slightly wider than the other, and fixed on a metal base one within the other. The inner cylinder was filled with sawdust and lit – there was some kind of firing mechanism at the bottom and a flue rising through the centre, long enough to pass out through the ceiling and roof. The heat was teriffic and the flue and inner cylinder became red hot. That freezing winter we were never cold. One drawback this type of heater had was that they were prone to blowing-up and we were not allowed to put too much sawdust in at a time.

Christmas of that year, 1946 I remember quite well, we had a tree with a candle stand – a “bunten teller”, which is traditionally a large cardboard plate with christmas motiffs.

It is usually filled with red apples,walnuts hazelnuts, dates, figs and chocolate. Fancy sweets and imitation marzipan were a bonus. And of course home baked Christmas biscuits. Toys were almost impossible to come by unless you had American cigarettes for payment, or go to a “tauschgeschaeft,” shops were could exchange or barter for goods. I remember standing in front of one such shop many times and admiring the Maerklin trainset displayed in the window, and playing with it.

Coming back to Christmas ’46, I probably got some home sewn clothing and perhaps warm knitted socks, but I also got a box of building bricks, real stone bricks in miniature, each perhaps 5cm in length, and enough to build a house with. It was a beautiful present, quite expensive, and very hard to get. I was a very happy little boy that Christmas, and birthday, as both fell on the same day.

Spring in ’47 was a long time in coming. All that snow melting, additional to heavy spring rains caused a lot of severe flooding in Hamburg.The weekend garden colonies, such as where we lived, had no roads, only unmade footpaths.These of course turned to mud or were just little rivers. It was the ideal playground for children. Access to most houses was by bricks and planks placed upon them, and we had a ball, playing with homemade boats and rafts, pretending to be on the high seas. My battleship capsized at one time and I ended up in the drink. Somehow I fell onto a broken bottle and badly slashed my left wrist. I managed to make it home without bleeding to death. Luckily I had only nicked the artery and mum soon had me bandaged up. The scar is still visible today.

Sometime in ’47 we had to move. The older couple which owned the place but had not been bombed out, had family evacuated from Hamburg during the war. Now it was safe for them to return and we had to move. We found a similar dwelling a few doors away and stayed there until our own house was ready. It still required a lot of work, as even American cigarettes could not buy some of the materials and fittings still needed. I remember dad saying that he had to pay 70 marks or 50 cigarettes for one bag of cement on the black market. He didn’t have 70 marks, and his stash of Lucky Strikes was getting very low. One bag of cement wouldn’t go veryfar, and that was probably the reason why we only had stamped clay floors in the house. But we finally had our very own roof over our heads before winter came.

As our sawdust combustion heater was too unsightly as well as unsafe, my father built a “Kachelofen”. This was a contraption roughly 1.8 x 1.0 x 1.0 m in size. It was built of fire bricks and cladded with ceramic tiles. The firebox and grate were at floor level and 2/3 up was an open recess to keep dishes hot. On the very top we used to dry wet garments or warm our eiderdowns before going to bed.

In the early days doors were a luxury. There were only three; front door, back door and toilet door. All other openings just had curtains; the same applied to light fittings, there weren’t any. Just bare globes dangling on wires. But that doesn’t mean we had electricity. Some was available for industry, but not for domestic users. It meant candles, which were hard to get, or carbide lamps. These gave off a nice white light but you had to put up with a constant hissing sound. Light fittings were mainly of the ceramic kind, and as they were all salvaged out of the ruins they were all brittle from fire or age. Dad had collected some to be used on our lights and we were not to play with them. But once while he was at work I had to find out how the bits fitted together. Of course some ended up in pieces and elastoplast tape would not hold. It was a long time before araldite.

My mother didn’t often hand out punishment, it was always – wait till your father gets home. If this happened in the morning you were in fear all day of the belting you had coming. He never disappointed and it was a cruel way to punish children. Dad was hardly in the door when he was told by our mother… do you know what he did today? Then the belt came off and we copped it.

And the buckle would inflict a lot of pain. How can one reconcile that with being almost fanatically religious? Our parents could never understand why my brother and I never embraced religion once we were adults. We both totally turned our backs on our Seventh Day Adventist upbringing. I remember one occasion, my brother would have been 16 or 17, when he got a belting from our darling Father. My grandmother and I both tried to intervene when he got flogged and kicked between the legs.

Many years later I confronted my father about it and both my parents denied or exused their actions. Such was life, but in general I had a fairly happy childhood. Church services on a Saturday morning were a bit boring but going on a two or three week camp during the long summer holidays made up for it. In the ’49 holidays we went to Lohmuehle, 60 km. from home.

The camp was situated at a lake and there were approximately 70-80 kids. The tents, large ex American Army, were set up in an oval shape on a big sheltered and grassy paddock. Meals were usually served out of large couldrons from the middle of it and you could come back for as many helpings as your heart desired. I certainly didn’t argue about this.

We had lots of activities; swimming in the lake, long walks, games and competitions. After tea at night we usually sat around a large bonfire and sang folk or religious songs, one of the leaders always accompanying us on a guitar. And after the last song and a good night prayer we all received a piece of chocolate before heading for our tents. Boys on one side of the oval, girls on the other, and no fraternizing!

Both my brother Siegfried and I were allowed to go on these yearly camps until we were 15 or 16 years old. Each year they were at a different location, but never too far from Hamburg. One year at the Baltic Sea, once at the north sea near Cuxhaven, and another at the Moellner lake in Schleswig Holstein.

There were two or three other summer camps I went to, one in the Lueneburg Heath and one at the lake at Ploen in Holstein and I have nice memories from each camp.

The late 40s, early 50s in Hamburg were quite uneventful. The family had finally moved into the new house, even though it still required a lot of work. Our correct adress was Kleingartenverein 556 Schmachthagen, Parzelle 124, Hamburg-Bramfeld. It was a 5 minute walk to the major shopping strip in Fuhlsbuetteler Strasse, which went as far as Barmbeker Bahnhof, 4 km in distance. From here you could catch a tram right into the city, or change over to the U-Bahn at the Barmbeker Bahnhof. Our other mode of public transport was the S-Bahn, but the nearest station was Ruebenkamp, behind the Barmbeker Hospital, and it was a 20 minute walk. A long walk in winter at minus 20, and you always had a head wind. Warm winter clothing were only a dream in those days.

It would have been in 1949 when I managed to put my first bike together. Second hand bits and pieces, bald tyres and no gears or free wheeling, but it was a bike, and my whole pride and joy. Us boys never got any pocket money, so we collected scrap metal in the ruins, copper gas pipes or lead water pipes, copper wires and wallpaper for waste paper. It was all turned into Pennies and Marks.

Once I was caught by a watchman loading a heavy cast iron heater (central heating) onto my handcart. I had salvaged it from the basement of a bombed-out block of flats, which was being rebuilt. And because of new building materials being stored on site, the builders had a watchman. I got a belting for my troubles and also had my cart confiscated, but I was lucky the police were not called. Later I went back with a friend. While he distracted the watchman I got my handcart back and took off. It was a very close shave, but you had to be resourceful!

The proceeds from scrap metal sales was usually spent on sweets, and double dutch licorice or chewing gum were a favorite. If I could get enough money together I would buy a rubber ball. Leather footballs were unobtainable, but not very far from home was a factory where they recycled old rubber and tyres to mould and vulcanise various products, including balls of different sizes. The quality wasn’t very good, the balls were never perfectly round and the rubber was porous, so they leaked air. As they had no pump-up valve the balls soon became useless. Sometimes we took the balls back and got them repaired or pumped up again, but it always depended on who came to the counter.

Another pasttime, which was very popular, was “pretend car races”, trudelreifenrennen, our cars being old bicycle rims which we pushed and guided with wire hooks, as we raced with them around a home made banked oval. We went to a lot of trouble to build our racetracks and even held races away from home.

This of course was before the advent of having bicycles. We still used the same tracks, only the racing became more sophisticated and the competition more fierce. 

Quite a few of my friends or school mates were also bombed out and lived in basements of bombed-out apartment buildings. Most buildings in Hamburg had cellars, with most of them reinforced to hopefully withstand the impact of bombs. The heaviest and most destructive bombing raids on Hamburg happened during July 1943 (when we also lost our home). Approximately 650,000 Hamburgers were evacuated from Hamburg, including ourselves.

After the war ended people slowly started to return to Hamburg. But it lay in ruins and people had no choice but to live under the ruins in cellars. How, I don’t know, as there was no electricity or sanitation. People simply made do, and the places I saw were quite homely and comfortable.

In April 1949 I successfully completed grade 5 of my schooling. At that time in Germany the minimum of schooling was 9 years. If you were bright enough you went to high school after completing grade 5. You could sit for your intermediate certificate after year 10 and for your leaving certificate after year 12.

My brother Siegfried had left school in 1950 and started his apprenticeship as a compositor (typesetter) at the publishing house of the Seventh Day Adventists. Asking him years later if he was happy with our parent’s choice of his profession, his reply was that he had no say in the matter, and he simply made the best of it. Also, in 1950 apprenticeships were still hard to obtain – but back to myself, I was bright enough, and my school reports were good enough to go to high school. But my parents could not be convinced, I was too lazy to study, I didn’t know what I wanted and they knew what was best for me. I am sure money came into this as well, because attending high school was not free, so I stayed at primary school for another 4 years, until April ’53.

What did I want to do in life? Playing around with wood I always enjoyed, also fiddling with mechanical bits, so I would have liked to become a cabinet maker or some kind of mechanic, in German called a Feinmechaniker. Counselling through school in the last year established that I would have been good in both these trades, but my parents had other ideas. You are becoming a bookbinder! At the same place where my brother had just finished his apprenticeship, Grindeldruck gmbh. A family friend from church was bindery manager there and had the authority to take me on.

Years later my parents admitted that they wanted their children to stay and work within the church and be sheltered from sins and temptation in the big bad world.

My apprenticeship ran from April 1953 for three years,and I enjoyed it very much. Bookbinding is really a very interesting and varied trade, and 50 years ago there were actually 2 separate trades, hand binding and industrial binding, with different trade school teachings. I had to learn both, because of the great variety of work at Grindeldruck. From gilt edged, leatherbound bibles to large edition , clothbound volumes. Not to mention a hundred different paper, cardboard or leather products which had nothing at all to do with bookbinding. I was one of three apprentices, one each to each year of our theee year training, and we were taught by an old master bookbinder, Herr Kaeselau, who was 62 when I started.

He didn’t like boys very much and whenever he could he would get a young girl from the main bindery to assist him. He would then find reason to denigrate and embarrass us boys in front of the girls. We hated him! And of course we tried hard to pay him back or get even. I became quite good at this with practice, as I, the youngest, had to suffer the most. I could almost write a book about the things I did to him. Many times he suspected me to be the culprit but he could never prove it. Which again made things worse for me, especially since I made sure he could not fault my work.

An apprentice’s wages were quite low, 50, 60 and 70 marks per month for each respective year. Normally my parents would have taken 30 marks per month board off me, but, as I had to travel to work by bike, I convinced them that I really had to have a new bicycle. The old one was too unreliable and heavy. It also had no proper lighting. So they agreed to buy a new sports bike for me on credit, but instead of paying board I had to pay it off over 2 years. I was over the moon!

Going to work on the bike took 25 to 30 minutes and it was a lot of fun. Except in winter, but then I went by tram and underground, which took almost one hour. Siegfried, my brother came out of his time when I started my apprenticeship, and until he got himself a Vespa scooter in ’55, we usually rode to work together. Our route took us through the Stadtpark, a very large park with 2 lakes, one of which also doubled as a swimming pool. Quite often in summer we would leave for work early and go for a swim. Despite encountering horrible large water rats we always had fun, as there were usually other teenagers having a dip on their way to work.

In Germany the working week was still 48 hours, and the workday started at 7am, which meant getting up around 5am, washing your face, brushing your teeth and since our mother never ever got up for us, getting your own breakfast. This always consisted of a bowl of uncooked oats with sugar and hot or cold milk. It filled you up and was healthy! Sandwiches for our lunch mum always made the night before.

Getting back to washing your face, we didn’t have a bathroom, only a basin in the kitchen, no hot water either, and on days when we took public transport to work we dressed up properly. A suit with collar and tie. Then you had a decent wash, which meant washing your neck and wrists to keep collar and cuffs clean. And underwear was changed once a week. So, having a swim before work meant you arrived there clean, but you still smelled of perspiration from the bike ride. During the colder season we always went to the local indoor pool on a Friday afternoon, before sabbath started, for a swim and the weekly shower. When we got home we changed into clean clothes, including underwear. Once we started work at Grindeldruck, the company paid for all apprentices to go to the local pool on Fridays. They also provided each of us with 1 litre of milk a day, as we all (bookbinders to a lesser extend) had to handle printing-type, which was primarily lead.

Annual leave for apprentices was four weeks, and we had to take them in one lot, and always during the long summer school holidays. This was great, getting paid while on holidays. Again I went on the church camp (53) but I am not certain where it was that year, probably at one of the large lakes in Holstein.

The following year I planned to do my own thing during the holidays. My feet had become quite itchy and I was dying to see more of Germany – and perhaps the World. I had read some books about the French Foreign Legion, and the French fighting in Indochina was very much in the daily news. The legion itself was much gloryfied and naturally fostered adventurism in a restless young bloke like myself. Having at that time lots of hassles with Mr. Kaeselau at work was not helping, so I planned my holidays as a one-way trip, not returning to Hamburg. 

The plan was as followed: Cycling to Cologne, then follow the Rhein river to Koblenz, the confluence of the Rhein and Mosel, follow the Mosel all the way to Trier, turn east and head for Idar-Oberstein, a town well known for jewellery production. It also had a enlisting office for the foreign legion in Germany. My rough estimate of distance was 700-800 Km one way and I had four weeks for travelling and sightseeing. I stayed in youth-hostels every night, and therefore had to plan each day how far to cycle as not every town had one.

The first day I got as far as Kassel, close on 300 km south of Hamburg, and the weather was typical for northern Germany. Incessant heavy driving rain all day, and it was not warm summer rain either. I carried only some light summer clothes in my saddle bags, but never went without a Pelarine, a kind of poncho for bike riders. It kept me fairly dry, except for head, legs and feet. Finally getting into Kassel, a large city, I still had to locate the youth hostel, which took some time.But I got there eventually, and after a long hot shower and a hearty meal I curled up in a bunk bed, warm in my sleeping bag. The following day I only got as far as Fulda because I climbed the Wasserkuppe to watch gliders taking off and landing. It was fascinating.

Being a Wandervogel (wandering bird) in those days meant you always found companions on the roads, you cycled in company for a while, or a day if you caught up with a pretty girl.The roads were seldom flat, and most girls appreciated it if you rode next to her and pushed her uphill for a few k’s.

I hit the Rhine not far from Bonn and headed south as far as Koblenz, then west up the Mosel river towards Trier, an ancient town from the roman days.The river valley is very narrow and winding with steep mountains on either side. Vineyards all the way to Trier and back, interspersed with old castles in all sorts of repair, or disrepair. Most are open for inspection, and even 50 years ago the owners really charged you for your interest in old ruins.

Halfway to Trier I turned south again, heading for Idar-Oberstein and the Foreign-Legion recruiting office. I filled in all the application forms for joining-up, then had to wait a few days while my case was considered, and then rejected. Too young, only 16, had to wear spectacles and had no passport. End of story, and in hindsight just as well. If I had been accepted I probably wouldn’t be alive now to write these words, the survival rate in North Africa and Indochina was very low indeed.

I travelled on through the Hunsrueck mountains towards Trier where I spent a few days while deciding which way to head back to Hamburg. It was still July and therefore German Grand Prix season at the Nuerburg Ring in the Eifel, a mountain range running along the whole western side of the mosel river. And that is where I headed, the village of Adenau at the foot of the Nuerburg. I stayed at the Youthhostel and to get to the race track I had to push the bike approximately 8 Km uphill, but it was worth the effort. I was able to watch several qualifying races of Mercedes Benz ”Silberpfeile”, perhaps even saw Juan Fangio, who raced that year.

My next stop on my way home was Cologne, where I looked up my uncle Gerhard and his wife Lilly. As I had never met them before I was a bit apprehensive. Uncle Gerhard was my mothers older brother, and compared with my parents he was a man of the world and enjoyed life to the fullest. He earned a very good living as the head traveller for a reputable spirit and liqueur manufacturer in Duesseldorf, and he certainly enjoyed a drink. During the few days I stayed with them Germany played Switzerland for the soccer world championship in Bern, and Germany won.

It was a thrilling match, as I remember it. We watched it in a pub across the road from their flat in the old part of Cologne. Television was only new in Germany in 1954, and not many people could afford a set, that is where the pubs came into the picture. After saying good bye to my lovely auntie and uncle I made my way towards Dortmund, where my Dads brother Gustaf and his family with five kids lived.

Gustaf stayed and married in East Prussia when the rest of the Wegat’s moved to Hamburg in the 1920s. During the war he was stationed at the eastern front and was lucky to escape to the west when Germany capitolated. After Russia invaded Prussia, his family, Aunt Lenchen with their children Guenter, Elsbeth, Gertraut, Klaus and Dieter were evacuated across the baltic to Kiel, where they lived in a refugee camp until approximately 1952, when they were resettled in Dortmund. As I had only the suburb and street-name, but no number, I couldn’t locate them. I didn’t even know what any of them looked like. So, back onto the road, pedalling for home and another year of work.

The following years holidays I spent partly at the church’s summer camp and partly at my aunt Lina’s in Harburg, as I was very close to my cousin Peter. He was three years younger than I. As mentioned earlier, Tante Lina was widowed in the early 40’s, and as she received a very generous pension from the Hugo Stinnes shipping company, she was very reluctant to remarry (and lose her pension). She had met this widower whose wife had perished in a concentration camp. He, Uncle August, was a bricklayer and had built himself a nice brick home in Harburg. They kept chooks and ducks, the odd piglet and a goose for Christmas. In plain language, good food was always plentyful. But that was not the reason why I loved going there for weekends or longer holidays, I just loved tante Lina!

Getting to her house took almost 2 hours by pushbike, as it was more than 20Km’s, all the way through the city to the harbour, across the Elbe by tunnel and through 2 more suburbs to Harburg. When I visited in summer we usually went swimming at an open air bath in a local lake at walking distance from auntie Lina’s place, and in winter we went “rodeln”, which means sliding down snow-covered hills on a sled, great fun, and quite skilful, as you had to steer with your feet or bare hands to avoid hitting trees or other obstacles.

We also never missed visiting our auntie Dolly on our bikes. She and uncle Fritz loved us visiting as they had no grandchildren living near them. Uncle Fritz was retired and his shed was like Alladin’s cave to us, full of tools and interesting small machines which he used to repair or build things. If I remember correctly, grandfather clocks were his specialty, and he always had one or two dismantled and in pieces.

At one visit, I remember, he was carving the inscription on the wooden cross for his mothers (our grandmother) grave. She had died in 1943, but her sons never got around to have a cross carved for her grave during the war.

To get to their house we had to cross Harburg’s main cemetary, and it was rather spooky. The cemetary was very old, with lots of large old trees and bushes. A much used narrow and winding footpath was the only way through in the direction we had to take. It was called the Schlucht, or the gorge, and even in daylight it was dark, damp and spooky.

Onkel Karl lived only a few hundred meters from Onkel Fritz, and whenever we went visiting with our parents for some family do we had to go through the “Schlucht” on our way to or from the tram. Even as we grew older it was still spooky and in a way scary, especially on moonlit nights when the shadows moved and clouds raced across the sky and obliterated the moon. The hooting of an owl made your blood curdle and we huddled close to our father.

In 1984, on my first trip back to Germany, nostalgia made me walk the same old path through the cemetery to Onkel Fritz’s old place and it felt as if the clock had been stopped for 30 odd years, the same eerie feeling. That same day I also wanted to visit my cousin Peter’s grave, but could not find it. I came back on another day with Tante Lina. Peter had died in 1963 in a car accident while on weekend leave from the army. Tante Lina suffered greatly. She had lost two husbands and her only child, but not her soft heart or her compassion for others. In the last years of her life she suffered from severe dementia. She passed away in January 2002, aged 96.

Uncle Karl and his wife, Auntie Hertha lived only a hundred meters from Fritz and Dolly. They had one son, Onkel Karl’s stepson Erich, who was probably 7-8 years older than I, and therefore too old to play with us. In fact, Erich never had any time for us. He had a beautiful model steam engine, but we could only admire it from a distance. Whenever we visited he hid it on top of a high wardrobe, out of our reach.

But Onkel Karl himself loved his nephews and he always had time to play with us, or get himself into trouble over us. He loved a drink and always made us kids have a sip from his glass, whether it was beer, wine or schnapps. My parents of course always had a few words to say, but Karls standard answer was… loosen up…

Onkel Karl was fortunate to own and drive a car already before the war. It was an old Adler. When the war started most private cars were confiscated by the Nazis, unless you were a doctor or party official. Onkel Karl was neither, but he was determined not to hand his precious car over. So he dismantled it and stored parts all over the place, buried in his garage and in Onkel Fritz’s bombshelter (I remember seeing them there in the late 1940’s). When officials knocked on his door to collect his car he told them that he had wrecked it in an accident some time before and had only saved the motor and wheels. For some reason they believed his story and he got away with it.

In the early fifties he reassembled the car and he was much envied for it. Not many people could afford to run a car in those years. I remember one year, it would have been either my mother’s or father’s birthday, Onkel Karl and Tante Hertha came in their Adler and they brought Tante Lina and my cousin Peter with them. My parents, being Seventh Day Adventists did not drink and did not approve of others drinking. Therefore no grog was kept in our house, not even for family celebrations. Very sad, but if Onkel Karl wanted to drink to his brothers health he had to bring his own grog. This is exactly what he was going to do, get his own from the nearst pub and he wanted us boys to go along for the ride. Well, the pub we went to was some distance from home. By now Onkel Karl had developed a thirst and he had a beer or two and ordered shandies for us three boys. We were old enough for a beer, he claimed. and we only agreed with him.

Eventually we got back to our house, all being a bit under the weather. My father and Tante Lina were both furious about the state we boys were in, and also about the length of time it took to get the “unnecessary” alcohol. That was always the beginning of my fathers preaching, the drink, and how it always led to other vices, like playing cards, other forms of gambling, and of course womanising! But Onkel Karl was too goodnatured and easygoing to get upset about his brother’s rantings, and consequently we never had any serious arguments in the family.

My apprenticeship took its boring course, and I could hardly wait for the summer of 1955, and of course the annual holidays. The church camp that year was to be held near Cuxhaven, at the mouth of the river Elbe. I remembered the area from a school-camp some years earlier, and was really looking forward to three weeks of sun, water and sand.

I went with my two best mates Lothar Gruenberg and Dieter Wegener, both belonging to church, and Lothar also being a bookbinder and colleague at work. We all travelled to camp by train. We had brought our own tent, and consequently we were not allowed to pitch it in the general camp area where the large church tents were erected. As we were considered visitors we had to pay for our meals on a daily basis, but we also did not have to abide the camp rules. That suited us just fine, and on many evenings we walked 3-4 k’s into the nearest village, Sahlenburg, to have a beer and listen to the jukebox at the local pub.