rider. Most nights, I would take the horses down to our pasture on the south side of our property, and then in the mornings lead them up to the farm where we would put them to work. Additionally, my father gave me the responsibility of taking our mares to visit a nearby stud farm about four or five times a year.
When I was about 15 years old, I began participating in our region’s annual equestrian competition. Riding our horses bareback, we would maneuver a long spear in an attempt to snag a six-inch diameter ring hung about 15 feet above the ground. I never won the contest, but the riding skills I developed later proved very beneficial in the army.
Having an independent nature, I was content to do things by myself and spent many hours reading history, especially about the recent battles of the Great War. While fascinated by the stories of the fighting at places like Verdun and the Dardanelles, as well as by U-Boat operations and naval battles, I never expected to see a war myself.
Intrigued by all sorts of technical devices, I spent much of my teenage years experimenting with lights, electrical motors, and radios. I was absorbed for endless hours determining how various mechanisms operated and conducting my own hands-on experimentation in our family’s barn.
When my family needed a light to help illuminate the central area among the barns so that we could unload our wagons at night, I volunteered for the project. Stringing a wire from the house, I installed a light on the barn and placed the switch next to my father’s bed. In addition to allowing us to work outside after dark, it permitted my father to light up the area with the flip of a switch if he heard any suspicious noises at night. As he himself was not technically inclined, he greatly appreciated my accomplishment.
At this time, my family had to grind our harvested rapeseed by hand in order to obtain canola oil for cooking, and I became determined to figure out something better. Finding an electric motor, I attached it to the wheel of the press. It worked like a charm. My mother was particularly grateful to have such a labor-saving device and used it for years.
Despite my successes, some of my projects did not turn out so well. Quite a few times, I was knocked off my feet when I touched the wrong wire. Gradually, through trial and error, I learned what and what not to do.
My fondest memories of our family life come from the Christmas Eves that we shared together. Wearing a big fur coat, my father would load up the whole family in our large, black horse-drawn Landauer (coach) and drive us to Rohrberg for the special evening church service and the singing of hymns.
Once we returned home, my father and mother would lock the doors to the living room. While my siblings and I impatiently waited outside in the hallway and pounded on the door, they decorated a freshly cut spruce tree with wax candles and set out our unwrapped gifts around it, as was the German custom. Finishing their preparations, they allowed us to enter the room in single file from youngest to oldest. After the excitement of Christmas Eve, we celebrated Christmas Day the following afternoon with a big dinner of goose, potatoes, and other special dishes.
Just before the Easter holiday, the residents of small rural communities in Germany would often construct large 20- or 30-foot-high bonfires from logs and other flammable materials on a hill near their village. On the Saturday night before Easter, the bonfires were lit. As we watched, the horizon would be illuminated with the bright glow from 10 or 15 fires burning in the neighboring villages. It was an unforgettable spectacle.
The following morning, my siblings and I awoke to Easter baskets stuffed with treats and boiled eggs before attending a special worship service at our church. Later that day, my parents held an Easter egg hunt in the garden for us. Afterward, my father would come out to the yard with a boiled egg hidden under his jacket.
Squatting down, he would loosen his jacket and let the egg drop down to the ground under him. My young sisters would squeal with delight at the presence of a real Easter Bunny. Though my father was generally a serious man, he also possessed a sense of humor and enjoyed teasing us in a good-natured way, especially my sisters.
Weddings were always major celebrations in Puggen. Everyone in town would ride flower-festooned horses or drive decorated carriages in a large procession over to the farm of the bride’s family to pick her up for the trip to our small church. Following the marriage ceremony, it was customary for the bride and groom to jointly saw a log into halves, which would serve as the legs for a baby cradle. According to the tradition, this assured the couple a family with many children.
While such happy occasions with our families and community did not cease to take place, life would become much more difficult during the Great Depression.
Chapter 2
UNDER THE NAZI DICTATORSHIP
THE GREAT DEPRESSION: 1928–1932
In 1929, a financial disaster struck the world’s economy that sent international investment and trade spiraling downward. In Germany, where business had already fallen into a recession in 1928, the international collapse accelerated a precipitous economic decline, which led to steadily rising levels of unemployment.
During the years of the Great Depression, my family fared better than many other Germans, but the early 1930s were still difficult years for us. Being a child, I never appreciated the severity of the problem and life seemed to go on pretty much normally for me. I still had enough to eat, slept with a roof over my head, and attended school. The economic hardship was more pronounced in the cities than in farming communities, though my parents experienced daily stress as they struggled to pay our bills and keep the farm on a sound financial footing.
When my family could not pay our creditors on time, officers from the local court would come to our home. These visits were a humiliating experience, particularly for my father. My siblings and I were not allowed in the room as the officers affixed Kuckucks (government repossession stickers) on two or three pieces of our best furniture like wardrobes and desks.
Eventually, my father would manage to sell enough livestock or agricultural produce to permit us to pay off our 300 to 1,000 Marks of debt and eliminate the Kuckuck. However, any improvement was temporary. My father’s fine oak desk received a Kuckuck two or three times as we went in and out of debt.
Even in these difficult circumstances, the six farms in Puggen managed to continue operating and providing work for the local laborers. While many farmers around Germany had to sell off part or all of their land because they could not pay their bills or meet their mortgages, my family fortunately avoided having to resort to such desperate measures.
Still, my father sometimes had to stretch out payment for fertilizers, new farm equipment, and repairs to worn out farm machinery, and had to compensate our hired labor with production from our farm rather than cash. Our farm provided us with adequate food, but there was little spare money, even for basic items like new clothes or the replacement of the soles on our shoes.
Aunt Hedwig, a distant relative who lived with us, would stitch labels from various apparel manufacturers into the clothes she sewed for my siblings and me. It was a very thoughtful effort to fool us into thinking that the clothes were purchased from a store, even if we saw through the deception. We probably would have liked to have more and newer outfits than the refurbished ones we ordinarily wore, but realized that our family could not afford such items.
Though it was hard to find the money for such necessities, my father still occasionally treated himself to small luxuries like a mug of beer or the cigars that he loved. On one occasion, he sent me to purchase a stein of beer for him at Puggen’s pub just down the street from our house. Taking the opportunity to taste beer for the first time, I started sipping from his mug on the five-minute walk back home. By the time it reached my father’s hands, a half an inch or more was somehow missing from the top. Growing angry with me, he snapped, “You spilled it again Wilhelm!” Even children never completely escape the stress when times are hard for a family.
Coming when Germany was less than a decade from the economic struggles during and after the Great War,
