During my days at the shipyard, I sometimes watched demolition crews across the harbor preparing to raze the giant concrete bunkers that had been built to protect German U-boats from Allied bombing raids. When they finally detonated the charges, the concrete roof was lifted up by the explosion, but only crashed back down into place.
Only after several attempts did the demolition effort succeed. It was natural to feel a certain pride in the quality of German workmanship, but I now realized that we needed to harness our energies and skills to more peaceful and productive pursuits in the future.
Meanwhile, Anneliese had taken an apartment located just across the street from her father’s nursery, where she was now working on an informal basis. Her apartment was also only a few blocks away from my own apartment, which made it easy for us to spend our free time together.
One afternoon, Anneliese and I paid a visit to Planten und Blomen, a pleasant park in the center of Hamburg. As we strolled through it, we witnessed a scene that left us shocked and embarrassed. Behind nearly every second bush, British occupation troops could be seen making out with German girls. Some couples were kissing; some had one partner laying on top of the other. It was a crude spectacle. We would never have dreamed of conducting ourselves that way in public.
That fall, a rumor began to circulate through the city that appeared to place our plans to marry in jeopardy yet again. According to the word on the street, the British occupation authorities planned to issue an order on January 1, 1946 that would strictly prohibit all marriages between Germans for the following three years in order to reduce Germany’s population. When the rumor persisted, Anneliese and I began to think that there must be some truth to it.
Concerned that we might have to wait years, we decided to advance our marriage plans to December 22, 1945. We set aside our more extensive plans for a big wedding, but I did manage to hire a covered carriage with two white horses to convey us to the church for the very small ceremony in the morning.
Afterward, the carriage took us to an intimate reception with Anneliese’s family and my brother Hermann in Aunt Frieda’s apartment, where I had just rented a room. While my sister Marlene had not been able to extend her recent visit to Hamburg in order to attend the wedding, she presented us a pork roast from our family’s farm to celebrate the occasion before crossing back to Puggen in the Soviet Zone.
Given my limited financial means and the devastation of postwar Germany, my effort to arrange a suitable honeymoon proved difficult. Much of Hamburg was flattened into rubble after the war, but one hotel still stood among the ruins in the center of the city, on the Monkeberg Strasse, not far from the main train station. When my telephone call received no answer, I headed down to the hotel and asked the manager if I could reserve a room for us.
Initially informed that no rooms were available, I explained that we were getting married and needed a place to stay on our honeymoon. “Oh, that’s different,” the hotel manager replied. For two nights after our wedding, my new bride and I thus enjoyed a luxury suite with all the amenities, starting with a long bath in hot water that was still unavailable where we lived. It was a happy start to our life together.
STRUGGLING TO SURVIVE
December 1945–August 1949
As soon as the Allied powers in the western part of the country gave the Germans the authority to begin rebuilding their economy and industry, conditions started to improve. Although life gradually became better, the overall economic situation in Germany remained bleak in the years following the war. Even the rationing begun during the war continued for a year or two under Allied occupation. This limited the quantities that we could purchase of various products in short supply, such as food and clothing, as well as access to housing and transportation.
Following our wedding, Anneliese moved into my room in Aunt Frieda’s apartment. Fortunately, the Winterhude suburb of Hamburg where Aunt Frieda lived and ran her delicatessen was one of the few parts of the city that had not been completely bombed out.
Even renting a room from her, our financial circumstances were exceptionally tight. After our marriage, Anneliese stopped working in her father’s nursery. While we could have benefited from the extra income, married women rarely worked outside the home at that time. In any case, there were few jobs available.
As her husband, it was now my responsibility to provide for Anneliese. Despite our constant efforts to economize, my small income severely limited the amount of food we could afford. While our diet was supplemented by produce from Mr. Berndt’s nursery, our persistent hunger made me resort to other options.
One weekend, I took a train from Hamburg 100 miles south to the small town of Gifhorn, located near the farm of a distant relation. Reaching his home, I pleaded for my relative to sell me a few potatoes. Though grudgingly agreeing to my request, he made it clear that he did not welcome my visit. Like many farmers, he lacked much sympathy for those who came out from the cities looking for food.
That night I arrived home to my wife and Aunt Frieda with a sack full of potatoes, exhausted and humiliated. This terrible situation was far worse than anything my family endured during the Great Depression. After an additional journey to Gifhorn, it was clear by the fall of 1946 that we needed to find another way to meet our need for food.
Though my sister Marlene had risked several trips across the Iron Curtain to bring us food parcels from Puggen, it had been over two years since I had last visited with my family there. Naturally, I was anxious to see them, but crossing the border into the Russian-occupied zone was a perilous venture that Anneliese and I had previously avoided. Our hunger now left us no choice.
In spite of the danger that lay ahead, Anneliese fell asleep on my shoulder as our train rolled down the track on the 75-mile trip from Hamburg to the crossing point at Bergen an der Dumme. After it pulled into the station late that September afternoon, we made a short walk down the Bahnhofstrasse to the border, where we waited.
Nightengales were singing around us as Anneliese and I joined a number of other people crossing at dusk. Though barbed wire and mines had not yet been placed along the frontier, the Red Army heavily patrolled a two- to three-mile-wide security sector in which only local residents were permitted. About halfway across this frontier zone, a voice cried out, “Stoi!” (Stop!) in Russian, immediately sending a cold chill through me.
The two Soviet soldiers who approached us couldn’t speak German, but one of them gestured to Anneliese that she could proceed into the Russian zone, while motioning me with his hand to come with them. Since the troops were armed with submachine guns, it was pointless for me to resist or attempt to run. Trying to maintain my calm, I told Anneliese to leave me before they changed their minds.
After a moment’s hesitation, she headed into the forest, casting a frightened look back toward me with tears in her eyes. One of the border guards then shoved me with his submachine gun and we marched off. Just after dark, we came to a large stone farmhouse about a mile or so from where I had been captured. After I had been deposited in the living room, the farmhouse grew quiet.
As a former Wehrmacht officer, it was certain that I would be sent back to the Soviet Union as a POW if they checked the name on my documents against their records from the war. Earlier that year, the Russians had placed one of my distant cousins under arrest. A medical student at a German university in the Soviet zone, he had been sent to Siberia for two years with no explanation. If they treated him this way, I could only imagine how they might treat a former German officer.
After three or four minutes passed silently, I tested the door and discovered it had been left unlocked. Swinging it outward, I then circled behind it to hide. When no one came to check on me in the moment that followed, I decided to gamble on a dash into the night. Hearing my escape, angry shouts erupted from my Russian captors.
As I bolted into the pitch-black woods, the troops began blindly spraying bullets from their submachine guns, lashing the brush and pine trees around me. Long accustomed to the sound of gunfire, I never considered halting. Instinctively moving into a crouched posture to minimize myself as a target, I continued to sprint ahead, seeking to put as much distance as possible as between me and the farmhouse.
Afraid that Soviet patrols in the area had been alerted, I raced breathlessly through the woods in the direction of the village of Hohendolsleben, about three or four miles away, hoping that Anneliese had headed to my
