aunt’s home there. Exhausted, it was a huge relief when my wife met me at the door. We clung to each other for a long time, aware that I had once again dodged a terrible fate.
Despite my escape, there remained a real threat that German Communists in the village would discover me and inform the Russians of my presence. This danger was magnified by the fact that the family was under political suspicion due to my uncle’s involvement in the Nazi Party, even though he himself was already confined in a British camp.
Early the next morning, the local Communist officials made an unexpected visit to the house on a random inspection for contraband items. Racing upstairs to the attic, I concealed myself under a large pile of old clothes, while Anneliese remained downstairs with my aunt. As the search and questioning persisted, my anxiety mounted that they might come up to the attic. Even when the officials finally departed a half hour later, I knew that it was still not safe and that I was placing my aunt at grave risk.
The next day, Anneliese and I cautiously traveled the 15 or so miles from Hohendolsleben to the relative safety of my family’s home in Puggen, where we could more easily stay hidden from local informers. A couple of days later, we warily recrossed the border with two backpacks crammed with all kinds of food, fortunately encountering no further incidents. Given the risk of capture and imprisonment, I would only make one further journey to our farm.
Even with the underlying concern that our presence would draw the attention of the Communist authorities, Anneliese and I fell into the routines of farm life with surprising ease during our second visit to Puggen late in the fall of 1946. After spending most of the day with my father and sisters passing the harvested bundles of grain through a leased threshing machine, my father suggested that we quit and finish up the following day. Since it was still just late afternoon and only about an hour of threshing remained, I convinced him that we should go ahead and complete the job.
Soon afterward, the tractor engine driving the threshing machine began to shoot out sparks that ignited the highly combustible straw nearby. In spite of our vigorous efforts to quench the fire, the whole barn was soon engulfed by flames. Though we succeeded in preventing the blaze from spreading to the other buildings, it nonetheless proved to be the worst disaster that we ever experienced on our farm. Because I had urged my father to finish the job, I naturally felt responsible, but there was nothing I could do.
In the spring of 1947, after convincing me that she would be safe traveling alone, Anneliese made the border crossing to Puggen to retrieve another backpack of food for us. Her willingness to face the hazards involved reflected both daring as well as a little naivete. While her first solo journey across proved uneventful, her second trip soon afterward ran into trouble.
Following her return, Anneliese recounted to me how she had almost stumbled into a Red Army patrol the previous night near the border. Fortunately, the troops did not see her and she was able to hide in a nearby farmer’s barn. In the morning, the farmer had come out to feed his cows and discovered her. Despite the risk to himself, he allowed her to leave without revealing her presence to the Communist authorities.
After hearing the story of her close call, I refused to allow her to attempt any further expeditions across the Iron Curtain. When I consider the danger now, it is difficult for me to understand how I could have consented to place my wife in such jeopardy even once. Indeed, my willingness to countenance the risk to her safety is the best illustration of the desperation we felt during those years.
In April 1947, I finally entered the electrical engineering program at the Federal Engineering College in Hamburg. Although I had been permitted to work and receive wages as a journeyman electrician for several months before entering school, I only officially passed the qualifying exam to become a journeyman in July. While a journeyman’s income was more than adequate to support my family, I realized even before beginning my college studies that I could not work even part-time as an electrician if I planned to be a full-time student.
After attending the first semester of college in Hamburg, I spent the remaining four semesters at a different college in Wolfenbuttel, just outside the city of Braunschweig. With me now unemployed and Anneliese unable to find work, I was forced to request a loan of 1, 000 Marks from my Uncle Stork, who owned an Opel auto dealership in Luneburg. Even with these funds, our overall living conditions in Wolfenbuttel were slightly worse than they had been back in Hamburg, where we had at least received occasional produce from Herr Berndt’s nursery.
Though we greatly appreciated Marlene’s delivery of a couple of packages of food from Puggen, her efforts did not fundamentally improve the food situation for Anneliese and me. Sometimes, I was driven to take desperate measures. On two occasions I pawned our wedding rings that the jeweler had crafted while I was in Dresden. On another occasion when there was no money, I snuck into a farm field about a quarter of a mile from our apartment to pick beans. It was stealing, but I was determined to do what was necessary to feed us.
While my family in Puggen still had enough to eat, they faced increasing tribulations as the Communist government intensified its control over farms. To prevent the consumption of animals without official permission, officials began visiting farms regularly to conduct counts of the livestock. During one of these inspections, my sister Christa snuck two small lambs into her bedroom, only barely managing to muffle the noise of their bleating.
My family also experienced more targeted harassment from the Communist government. Though the official pressure (or intimidation) partly resulted from our family’s failure to fulfill the unrealistically high quota of crop production a couple of times, it also stemmed from my father’s willingness to speak publicly against the Communist Party in Puggen.
In the postwar years, my father regularly made annual visits to see my uncle and other family in Hagen. While he was away on one of these visits in late 1948, our local Lutheran Church pastor, Herr Schmerschneider, visited my mother and warned her that my father would likely be arrested upon his return from the west. When my father learned of this threat, he made the difficult decision to remain in Hagen at my uncle’s home. The ensuing separation from my mother and sisters would last for years.
Meanwhile, after initially transferring from a POW camp in the United States to one in England, my brother Otto finally returned to Germany in May 1948, three years after the end of the war. On his arrival, he stayed with Anneliese and me for a couple of weeks in Wolfenbuttel, where I attempted to convince him to bring his longtime girlfriend to live in the western zone after their marriage. Instead, he chose to live with her in the eastern zone where she could remain close to her family. He later regretted their decision when they became permanently stuck there. Both episodes with my family members reflected the heartrending personal consequences of Germany’s political division.
During my last year of college in Wolfenbuttel, Anneliese became pregnant. When we were out for a stroll one evening during her eighth month, she accidentally tripped and fell to the ground, landing on her belly. Afraid to let her walk home, I found a small child’s wagon and carted her back to our apartment. Anneliese’s fall left her with a large bruise on her stomach, but fortunately did not lead to any medical complications. In June 1949, she gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Harald.
The hardships that Anneliese and I shared together only seemed to reinforce the bond between us. Despite the challenges in our marriage, the late 1940s was a surprisingly contented time for us, simply because we were at last together after the many painful years of separation and uncertainty during the war.
Chapter 19
A NEW LIFE ABROAD
1949–Present
LEAVING OUR HOMELAND
After I graduated with my long-sought electrical engineering degree (Diplom Ingenieur-Fach) in August 1949, I immediately accepted a position with H.F.C. Muller in Hamburg, a subsidiary of Phillips Electronics. My new job involved selling and servicing X-Ray machines and other medical equipment.
Based in Wolfenbuttel, I constantly traveled by train around a region stretching from the Harz Mountains to the North Sea, calling on dentists, doctors and hospitals. When one of the doctors asked to test our equipment by
