16, based in Luneburg. Meanwhile, as part of the national effort to support the army at the front, my mother helped ready Christmas packages to send to troops. Upon receipt of a parcel prepared by my mother, my father wrote a letter back, initiating a correspondence that would eventually lead to their marriage.
In late 1917, my father suffered a foot wound that led to his discharge from the military. Though the injury forced him to wear a special shoe for the rest of his life, he soon recovered enough to return to work, taking up a position managing a large farm of a couple of thousand acres in Dromfeld, located near Gottingen in central Germany. My father also recommended that his employer hire my mother to run the household, which of course gave him an opportunity to get to know her better as well.
While my parents’ situation was somewhat unique, it was then a common practice for young German females who grew up on smaller farms to leave home to work at a larger farm for a couple of years. Beyond improving the skills necessary to run a household of their own, it also gave young women a chance to meet eligible males outside of their community.
Arriving to work at the farm in Dromfeld, my mother met my father for the first time in person. While their relationship was a natural partnership, they also fell in love. Within about six months, they became engaged.
Following their marriage in October 1919, they came to live on the Schulz/Matthies farm in Puggen. Because my mother’s elder brother had died from an illness while serving as a soldier in Russia during the Great War, she was in line to inherit the farm as the oldest living heir. With my father’s experience as a professional farm manager, my grandfather immediately allowed him to begin running the farm.
Because my father was raised on a sizeable farm and then managed even larger ones, he found it somewhat difficult to adjust to running the much smaller farm in Puggen. Although it was common for small farm owners in Germany to perform the hands-on labor alongside the hired help, he was not accustomed to doing this type of manual work, despite being a physically large man.
Adapting to this new role was a challenge for him, but he was a good organizer and had the freedom to run the farm as he saw fit without interference. Usually, he and my grandfather agreed on decisions relating to the farm and maintained a good relationship. In his dealings with the neighbors, my father sought to help out whenever he could, though he could be a difficult man to get along with and preferred to operate independently whenever possible.
Because my birth on June 17, 1920 came just eight and a half months after my parents married, my father’s family kidded him lightheartedly about my early arrival. As their first child, I received the same name as my father, Wilhelm Lubbecke. Following my birth, my parents had a son, Joachim, and a daughter, Elisabeth, but they both died at a young age from illness.
My twin brothers Otto and Hans were born five years after me, followed by my brother Hermann in 1928. My sister Marlene was born in 1930, almost exactly ten years after me. With the birth of my sister Christa in 1934, my parents did not plan to have any further children.
It was therefore a surprise when my mother became pregnant with my youngest sister, Margarete, in 1937. I felt embarrassed and angry. I was seventeen years old and already dating. Even after my parents made me her godfather, it was hard for me to accept that my mother could still be having children.
In our family, my six siblings and I were closer to our mother, who was very loving and affectionate with all of us. Unlike my father, she possessed a deep faith in God and set aside a daily devotional time for Bible-reading and prayer. Her outgoing personality made her the friend of everyone in the village where we grew up. In every task she pursued, my mother was determined and diligent to ensure that it was properly done. For every task she accomplished, she was humble and uncomplaining about her labors. While she was a nurturing parent and played the largest role in shaping our values, both of our parents taught us to stand on our own feet and take care of ourselves.
WORKING THE FARM
Fond memories of my family’s life in Puggen fill my mind, but life on a farm was not easy. Chores frequently occupied my time after school. During busy periods on the farm, my days off school often revolved around work, broken by a series of meals from six in the morning until eight in the evening.
Lacking trucks, tractors, or indeed any form of automotive vehicle, we did everything with manpower and our eight horses. During normal operations, we had two or three hired employees to assist us in the fields and in taking care of our livestock. In the fall, my father would hire more help or obtain assistance from our neighbors in order to provide the five to ten additional workers needed to harvest our crops of wheat, barley, rye, potatoes, and sugar beets.
While we had to dig the sugar beets out of the ground by hand and swing scythes to harvest the barley, rye, and wheat around the edges of our fields, we employed the forerunner of the combine to harvest most of the crop. Pulled along by horses, the combine cut the grain and spit out bundles. Following along behind it, we stacked about 15 or 20 bundles into upright piles about every 20 feet or so.
Feeding the fifteen or so hungry people gathered around our dining room table at mealtimes during the harvest also meant a lot of work inside the kitchen. Everything we cooked came straight from our fields or gardens. About twice a month the house was filled with the smell of bread baking in our clay-brick oven. After heating the large wood-fired oven for about half a day, my mother would shove in a dozen big lumps of dough, usually made from rye. Despite weighing about six to eight pounds each, these loaves never lasted very long with so many hungry workers around the farm.
Although most of our livestock were raised to be sold, some were retained for our own use. To this end, my family butchered a portion of our cattle once a year and several of our 100 to 200 pigs three or four times a year. Due to the lack of refrigeration, we had to preserve the majority of the meat by making it into sausage and bacon or by curing it.
In the meadows surrounding our village, we grazed our 15 to 20 cows. Some of our cow pastures had fences, but in other unfenced fields the cattle required monitoring to prevent them from wandering onto a neighbor’s property. When I reached the age of ten, my father began tasking me with the boring but simple job of keeping an eye on them. Though I took no pleasure in watching the cows, it was better than the monthly cleaning of the manure from their barns.
On one occasion, just after harvesting one of these unfenced pastures, we let the cows out to graze and I took up my post at the edge of the field. Lying back on a cushion of two-foot-high grass under a cool breeze, it was easy for me to pass the time staring up at the drifting clouds. This would last until five o’clock, when a three-engine Junkers passenger aircraft appeared up in the sky on its regularly scheduled flight, signaling the end of my day.
On this particular afternoon, my daydreaming in the grass turned into napping. As I snoozed, the unattended cows crossed into our neighbor’s pasture, a serious offense in a farming community. When my father learned of my negligence, he scolded me severely, “How could you let that happen? Now I must go talk to the neighbor.” Being a ten-year-old was no excuse.
In addition to our gardens, fields, and meadows, my family also possessed a couple of large apple orchards. Following school or during school vacations, I would climb up in the trees to pick apples. Munching the fruit and singing songs as I worked, life seemed pretty good to me. Only later did I realize the constant stress my parents endured in trying to operate our farm as a successful business.
CHURCH AND SCHOOL
While many Germans were Catholic, our family lived in a Lutheran region of the country. In my youth, religion was, however, more of an obligation than a source of spiritual fulfillment for me. Although my faith and involvement in church were not nearly as significant in my youth as they became later, they still played a more important role in my life than they did in the lives of most Germans.
My father’s family was not very religious, but my mother and her parents were involved in the Lutheran Church and possessed a strong Christian faith that shaped our spiritual upbringing. Although infrequently reading or
