From the foreword:
The Pfalz, as most Germans call it, was once a part of Bavaria, but came into its own as a state early in the 20th century. This heavily forested, hilly area, bordered on the east by Germany’s famous wine region, is special to the native Pfälzer. It became so as well to British and American bombers heading for targets along the Rhein river in war. These included Mainz, Ludwigshafen, Mannheim, Worms, Speyer and Neustadt along the river, and on south toward very industrial Kaiserslautern.(Pfalz is pronounced like 'False.' A native citizen is a Pfälzer, pronounced 'fell-sir.')
I’m blessed with a clear memory of my youth, for which I credit the absence of television and other such diversions while growing up. Even listening to the radio and recordings didn’t enter my life until the age of seven, and then sparingly. Daily entertainments revolved around simple play with friends in a sheltered environment, school studies, and a constant flow of stories told within the family. All of it is indelibly etched in my memory.
From the prologue:
Adam Herbst was the youngest son of one of my mother’s uncles. While Adam was first cousin to Mama, he was just ten years older than me and, over the years, I was often treated as more of a younger sister. An incident on the occasion of his confirmation celebration at the end of eighth grade set the later course of our encounters on a humorous note. I stuck my tongue out at the camera taking the mandatory formal family photo. I have a rather long tongue, so there was no doubt in the photo about my five-year-old behavior. The image made Mama mad, but Adam thought it hilarious, teasing me about it for years to come.
(The following is a reference to my Opa Peter known far and wide as “Seppel” after his father before him, though neither man was so named at birth. After Peter‘s death my Papa became “Seppel.”)
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Peter Klein died on April 14, 1932. He was sixty-six years old. I was only two, but heard often about his funeral in later years, especially from Mama. “The burial procession was so long,” she said, “the end of it was still in the village when the casket reached the cemetery high on the hill.” Sometimes, when she was in a bitter mood, she would add that the scene was also one of shame. “So many of those black-clad people owed Seppel their respect, but also a lot of money.”
Photo found at the beginning of the "Marnheim Years":
No doubt,this has to be the first picture taken of me. I was
perhaps one and a half years old. As for the quality of the photo,
I can imagine that it was taken by one of the neighbors using
a primitive box camera. So it goes!
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From Chapter One:
The personalities of my father and mother were so strikingly different; anyone might wonder what had brought them together. I’ve come to believe that in the beginning, Papa’s attraction to Mama was ninety-percent physical. He was a hard-working optimist (from Bolanden); bowled over by a petite Marnheim girl with an ivory complexion and the most beautiful hair he’d ever seen.
From Chapter One:
Every winter it was the same. People around the house became accustomed to seeing me with a patch over one eye or the other. One morning, a customer came into Onkel Heinrich’s workshop while I watched him stuff kapok into a mattress. The stranger saw me with the black eye patch, and expressed his sympathy that I had lost an eye. Onkel immediately quipped, “Ach, don’t feel sorry for the girl. We’ll start to worry when she has two eye patches.” Then he roared with laughter. That kind of humor always eluded me. (We lived above the workshop and I visited daily.)
From Chapter Two:
The Christmas when I was four, our parents took Erich and I to Kirchheimbolanden to see the decorated shops. It was a five-kilometer walk,and that’s just how we got there, often trudging through heavy snow cover. It should be noted that when I was a very small child, such winter trips outside the village saw me bundled up and pulled on a sled to our destination. Erich never let me forget my pampered treatment. For a couple of youngsters from a village where few homes had electricity, it was a wonderment to see a place so aglow with light. In the town center of Kirchheim was a huge Christmas tree covered with white lights from top to bottom. Tall as any of the buildings that surrounded it, the tree alone was worth the walk from Marnheim.
The twenty-sixth of December is called the Second Christmas Day in Germany, and is also a holiday. It’s a day usually spent with members of the extended family. For us, that might mean a quick visit to Mama’s relatives at Heyerhof nearby. We would likely also encounter Tante Giloy a the estate, in which case, we wouldn’t want to linger. Though Papa was always nice to her, I’m sure he knew that the woman believed Mama had married below her Herbst station. My father’s nature allowed him to accept her attitude with a grain of salt and good humor. We all looked forward to a warmer welcome from the Bolanden family. As soon as it was polite, we would be on our way to visit Papa’s mother, sisters and brothers. I loved visiting Oma Klein. She had more than a dozen grand-children, but always treated me as if I was the only one. She was small, energetic, and good-natured — traits passed on to Papa in abundance.
From Chapter Three:
1935 and 1936 were filled with events that would shape my family’s future. Adolf Hitler’s position of power was firm, and the trickle-down effects, which seemed mostly positive at the time, became more evident every day through-out Germany. Mama and Papa were beginning to believe that the promise of National Socialism meant economic salvation — plain and simple. Common folk like my parents wanted only to feel good again about themselves and Germany’s future.
There were signs that not everyone shared the new optimism. One evening in early 1935Papa informed us that he’d learned the Stern Clothing store in Kirchheim was going out of business. The Sterns had been given a short time to sell out by the authorities. Papa was still driving a delivery truck for a flour mill in Kirchheim owned by the Decker family. Though he always kept a sharp eye for bargains, news of the Sterns didn’t set right with him. The Sterns were Jewish, as was his boss Isaak Decker. How soon would it be before Herr Decker was forced out? And would a new Nazi owner keep Papa on?
(As expected the Nazis sent the Deckers on their way. Papa had to travel about now on a bicycle looking for work.)
In my pre-school years, I often tagged along on Papa’s bicycle outings. He attached a wooden platform on the cross bar for me to sit on while he pedaled. Like the visit to the villa, our trips together weren’t always for happy reasons. Now unemployed, he had to report to the government finance office in Kirchheim once a week to collect a small amount of money used to buy staples like sugar, cooking oil, and bread, but between our garden and previously stored food, starvation wasn’t a threat. Unemployment was the big problem in our area, so we often waited in a long, slow line that extended out into the street. Papa knew so many people, and if he wasn’t chatting with them, the two of us never lacked for subject matter.
In 1936, the Third Reich began to affect my family life in other ways. Erich, at the age of ten, began his mandatory service in Hitler Youth. He was so proud to finally be old enough to wear the uniform — brown shirt, black kerchief with leather knot, and a black leather shoulder strap. Twice a week, he attended meetings at the school, where leaders taught the ideology of the Reich through pep talks and songs. Marching songs replaced older folk songs in public. Even in little Marnheim there seemed to be lots of marching to the new music designed to instill love for the Fatherland and absolute loyalty to the Führer. Both boys and girls in Hitler Jugend, as we called it, frequently marched down my street singing lustily of our new pride. I would soon be leaning out of our window singing along, having quickly memorized many of the songs. I also dreamed of the day when I would be old enough to be in Hitler Jugend. “Ein frischer Wind kam durch die Gegend!” This was a phrase heard often in this time of rapid change. Everyone around us felt like there really was ‘a new wind blowing through our country.’
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Getting drunk for the first and last time: Jean, Mama’s first cousin and an itinerant barber, was a bitter man. A hunchback, he peddled his bicycle out from Heyerhof to customers far and wide, including stops in Marnheim. Since one of these was Onkel Heinrich in the shop downstairs, I got to see Jean often. It was his habit to make my uncle’s haircut the last one of the day, as he worked his way home. Since the two were friends as well as relatives, the arrangement allowed for a bit of relaxing with a glass or two of wine. On one of these evenings, I made the mistake of going downstairs when they were sitting at a work table drinking wine. Jean acted much friendlier, almost jolly. My uncle was his usual happy self, inviting me to visit. Curiosity got the better of me, and I asked what they were drinking. When I was told wine, I must have thought it strange. They were filling big water glasses, and I knew that you drank wine from wine glasses. Poor as we were Mama and Papa used fancy wine glasses, and I told the two so. Being all of six years old, I was beginning to exert my opinions more freely.
“Here,” Onkel Heinrich said. “Take a drink and see for yourself!”
I did — a big swallow. It was my first really good sampling of the famous liquid of the Rheinland-Pfalz, and I liked it. Pestering for more, even the normally dour Jean decided to share until my initial good feeling turned to sour dizziness. It was time to leave and I started back up the stairs to Mama. From this point in the story I must rely on my brother’s details of the aftermath. He was there to witness it, and I have no personal memory of events. No doubt he may have improved on the tale with much retelling over the years, but knowing Mama, it sounds mostly true. Hearing a noise on the stairs, Mama opened the door and saw me trying to negotiate the steps on my hands and knees, whimpering. Quickly helping me up the stairs, she immediately recognized my state and sat me down in the kitchen. As there was always barley coffee on the stove, she made me drink some — probably hoping it would sober me. Putting me in Erich’s care, she headed for her brother’s workshop below. My brother said he had never seen Mama in such a rage. The laughter in the shop ended abruptly as she ripped into both brother and cousin for making her daughter drunk. Erich said he could hear both of them pleading with Mama not to do anything reckless, and promising never to give Annchen any more wine. He didn’t know what the ‘reckless’ thing was that had Heinrich and Jean pleading, but it sure made him curious. Finally, my brother couldn’t resist tiptoeing down the steps to see what Mama was doing to scare the two men. Peeking around the corner he saw that she had picked up a leather strap that Onkel had been working on, and was slamming it repeatedly down on the work table like a whip.
Both Onkel Heinrich and cousin Jean were up against the wall, cowering like two trapped rats. It was all too unreal, Erich would say, with each retelling of the story. Onkel Heinrich was much taller and stronger than our mother, yet he crouched as low as Jean in the face of her fury.
Chapter Four:
With my seventh birthday, I was enrolled in school. The first day, Mama accompanied me to be sure the teacher placed me up front in the class. Her fear was showing through again, this time about my ‘poor eyesight.’ Since I was taller than most of the other kids, her concern bothered me — I didn’t want to be so conspicuous in front. As we moved along in a line to meet the teacher, I noticed that a mother in front of us made the same request for her daughter that Mama had in mind for me. I heard the teacher, a man, ask the girl to look across the room at a picture and tell him what it was “Flowers in a pot?” she replied.
“Fine,” he said. “You’ll do okay in the back. Next.”
After Mama had her say, I argued that I really had no problem seeing.
“Well then, child,” he said. “What do you see on that wall over there?”
“Flowers in a pot,” I answered.
It didn’t work. Mama insisted that I be placed up front, and that was that.
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In late spring, for the Pfingsten (Whitsuntide) religious holiday, Germans make a special commune with nature. I first participated when I was four years old. I know that because of a photo taken of the 1934 outing. My parents, Erich and I, and a group of neighbors are shown resting on a grassy embankment that ran along the narrow road half way to the top of our Donnersberg (Thunder Mountain).
The Donnersberg is 687 meters, or 2,273 feet high — the highest elevation in the Pfalz. It’s always had a great significance in the lives of our people. One of our Pfälzer writers, Heinrich Weis, once wrote that the mountain reminded him of a god, who in the form of a huge bull, came to rest among the forested hills. Happy there, he stayed and allowed the trees to cover him as well. While small as mountains go, it does obstruct and disperse severe weather coming from the west, but I don’t know if the name comes from that or Celtic mythology.
Tramping up the mountain each year as a young girl, such things meant little to me. In time I would learn that the Donnersberg had many legends, some that came down through the centuries from Celtic tribes that made the top a fortified home. Much later, Napoleon Bonaparte would be so impressed by the mountain on one of his campaigns into Germany, he designated the region Departement du Mont-Tonnerre. For the moment, however, local history had no place in the excitement of reaching our destination.
We young ones always separated from our elders upon reaching the peak, to make the more arduous climb to the top of the watchtower. Called the “Ludwigsturm” after one of our old Kaisers, it was higher than any of the tallest trees.
Entering through a door at the base, we’d start up a spiral stone staircase. Except for the occasional small square opening in the outside wall, it was quite dark. Even young legs began to ache before bright daylight greets the climber stepping out on a large platform, enclosed by a meter-high stone wall. The view from the top of Ludwigsturm is breathtaking. Erich took pleasure in showing off his knowledge by pointing out distant big cities like Kaiserslautern far to
the south, Mainz in the north, and Worms on the eastern horizon. In between, was the panorama of rolling fields of every hue, deep wooded valleys, and villages spotted here and there. To the west and southwest, the landscape was almost entirely rugged forest, as far as my eyes could see.
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(Jumping a head to 1938 I was 8 years old and our lives in two small rooms above my uncle's workshop came to an end by moving to our own home in the larger town of Kirchheimbolanden. The date was easy to remember for we rolled into Kibo exactly one week after hundreds of synagogues across Germany were destroyed on what became known as "Kristall Nacht". That included the synagogue three blocks from our new home. This was the first time I became even slightly aware that Jews are hated by the Nazi government. At 8 years none of it made sense.)
The weather on that long ago Saturday night was dreary, cold, and rainy, with the usual late autumn fog. None of it dampened our enthusiasm as we all worked to load Papa’s new truck. Some of the neighbor men helped with the heavier furniture, though we didn’t have all that much in the two rooms. It was mostly personal belongings such as clothes, dishes and kitchen utensils, lots of canned and preserved foods, and even the firewood and coal. Darkness came
early on that evening, and oil lamps and flashlights were brought out to help guide the way as we went back and forth from house to truck.
Even an eight-year-old girl was expected to do her share. With so many helping hands, the loading was done quickly. While my father checked to make sure it was all tied securely onto the truck, Erich and I went with Mama for one last look around our old two rooms. I don’t know if she was taking a look for nostalgic reasons, but it was I who saw what everyone had overlooked. There on the wall in the bedroom were two large pictures. All of my young life I had stared at and loved those pictures. One had an angel carrying a baby toward a village below, and written across the bottom were the words Von Gott (From God). The second picture was similar — two angels taking a small child toward heaven. The legend on it said Zu Gott (To God). I always knew they were special to Mama because of Raul. Erich reached up, handed ‘Von Gott’ to me, and took down the other. As I turned to carry my picture down to the truck, Erich grabbed it back, saying, “Nay, you’re too small to carry such a large picture.” It was just like him to exaggerate and be bossy. I tried to get the picture back, but he wouldn’t let go. So, I tried what had always worked in the past — I aimed a swift kick at his shins. He put ‘Von Gott’ in front of my target, with shattering results.
