Ch 8-3 Stories of School and Property

The land is sectioned into large farm collectives, a hallmark of the communist agricultural system. And before anyone could begin to farm, the homes were ravaged first by invading Russian troops and then what ever was left plundered by Lithuanians. They didn’t receive U.S. aid packages after the war’s end and there was no Marshall plan for Eastern Europe. The Russian liberators had no economic recovery for them; their goal was to appropriate anything of value and everything they wanted. Entire factories were shipped back to Russia. Many secondary roads vanished under collective fields. Years of plowing removed all traces of farmhouses and the German culture that once thrived there.

Signage is also pretty sparse. Side roads aren’t marked and this lane where we parked just sort of peters out. I can’t tell whether this gravel road is now actually a country lane or the driveway back to a farmstead nestled at the edge of the woods. Back at the site of the Redetzki farm, we park the car and stand on the road looking out at the fields. We can’t walk into the field because of tall, thick weeds growing at the road edge blocking passage. I listen as my mother talks about that fox that killed their geese then went and laid them by that ditch that cut through the field behind the barn. The fresh geese were to have been sold with the money used for Christmas; now they were dead and useless as income.

This lane was lined with farmsteads all the way back to the corner with Ramutterstr. where the two schools stand. The fields around the houses were small; that’s where they planted the more important crops. Land here was too valuable to waste on inexpensive crops so hayfields were located quite a distance away on cheaper land.

Leaving the car, we walk down the lane as Mom tells more stories. There was a young neighbor boy who always bothered Herta as they walked to school. One day, returning home from school, she finally had her fill of his pestering. She confronted him and gave him a big push into a thorny shrub in the ditch. Plitsch! That cured him. Now here we stand at a bush next to that very ditch. It can’t be that exact same bush, but it looks right and helps the story. Bullies and squabbles among kids on the long walk to school - many things don’t change.

Winters were so hard and school so far away that her good, dear father would hitch up the sled to fetch them home protecting them from bitter, cold winds. It was to far for them to walk. And ever so fierce in the winter! So often I heard her lament of how far she had to walk to school every day. Thinking back to my own childhood, I can still hear her tell me year after year a story of the difficult, long walk, a veritable march of endurance, that was their daily walk to school. 

I peer down the road off to her school sitting at the intersection. Then I look back to the farm site. “Hmmm.  That’s funny.  It doesn’t really look all that far,” I point out.

I walked many streets in Detroit to reach elementary school, then later to junior high which was located exactly one mile away, and then I walked to high school through rain, sleet, snow and adolescence. Once more I stare to the end of this dirt road.

I proclaim loudly, “Mom, you know, I had further to walk to school than you did!”

Disbelief struck her hard. In her memory the distance is oh, so, far - in actual distance and now also in memory years. The distance increases and the memory intensifies. How could something so fervently remembered be wrong? 

She can’t believe it, but is now faced with the actual road and school which seems to belie what she remembers. 

“Get in the car. Check the mileage on the car” she tells me.

Slowly, we drive down the lane to the corner in question. The odometer clicks each tenth of a kilometer. Tick, tick, digit by digit. Aha, here we are at last, at the corner. And the result is…

She doesn’t like the result. We must be doing something wrong. It can’t be right. Back I go, drive the exact same way out to where the farm stood. The odometer is now carefully watched by both of us. Turns out it is only a bit over half a kilometer! Unbelievable! We laugh!

Ah, but she is quick with an explanation: “Little feet have to walk more so it seems longer.”

All those years I felt bad for those poor children who had it so hard. I had it easy with sidewalks and streets and only one mile. I think I imagined there must have been wolves chasing the little children, so dire did it sound. Now I discover that I was the one who endured long walks, and much longer walks! And no sleigh ever came to pick me up. I even think winters were colder in Detroit, Michigan. Perhaps it was better I didn’t know this in my own youth; not knowing for sure, I couldn’t argue about it.

It was probably better that there was no farmhouse to see, that nothing stood from the past. Memories remained intact not to be upset by a hard reality of seeing what things really look like. Judging by what we see along the roads many of the old farms are in extreme need of repair. This country probably fared worse than other communist regimes being so remote. All production was decided by a central authority, not by consumer need, so construction goods weren’t produced.  I know this to be the case firsthand from my East German relatives. 

We go for a closer look at the school buildings. The older of the two has been converted to a residence and is currently occupied. With the reduced population it has more use as a residence than school. The new schoolhouse, where my mother spent most of her schooldays, appears to still be used as a school, but I can’t see any signage to verify this. It looks like the traditional country school of East Prussia – room for the school, living quarters for the teacher, garden area and probably once a stall for horses and a few livestock. The gardens now look a little too formal for school landscaping. There are no people around so no opportunity to ask questions or maybe go inside.

As we stand at the intersection an old woman rides up on a bicycle. She speaks to us but we have no idea what she is saying. Maybe she is telling us to get out of the road. Her gestures and expressions seem friendly, not threatening or hostile. It is disappointing not to be able to converse and ask questions especially as she seems old enough to have lived through the war. Perhaps she had been a resident of one of the missing towns.   

I’m cautious about going up to the homes of Lithuanians due to issues in connection with land ownership in the post Communist era. In East Germany, West Germans come back to lay claim to their properties lost after World War II. Who ever thought they had a chance in hell of ever going back to these homes, let alone try to seize their long lost property?  Many of these pre-War occupants aren’t interested in actually moving back into the old family homestead - they have their own homes and property in the west. But greed and the chance to turn a profit motivates them; they want to make quick money by selling it back to the people currently living in the house. This is also happening in the Baltic region. When a German comes knocking on your door, it may be to case the place then file a claim of ownership. Our interest is in refreshing memories and closing gaps, not getting details for repossession. 

Generally, Europeans are not as friendly with strangers as are Americans. We disclose a lot of information to strangers, even the government, to the media, and to people we meet on a trip going so far as to invite them to visit. Europeans don’t disclose anything. I’ve partied with British people a whole evening without their asking me a single personal question. 

Traveling with my East German cousin’s son Stefan on his first trip after reunification, I found it odd that he didn’t speak to Germans we met on our trip thru America. When asked why, he replied they probably would notice his East German dialect then wouldn’t talk to him. On the other hand, Americans we met were eager to try out their meager German on him, while other Germans gave him the cold shoulder. Same thing happened when his parents came to visit. My cousin Horst told me he didn’t talk to Germans tourists because it wasn’t any of his business. But he marveled at how I would just go up and talk to all sorts of people in a variety of places. I do it all the time to the amazement of friends; I enjoy the interactions and learn a lot.

Regarding land ownership, how do you actually determine who owns the land? War creates such turmoil and upheavals. For centuries ownership changed hands, on a national level and personal scale. How far back do we go to establish rights of ownership? How much time passes before claims are no longer valid? In the 21^st century the changes will not result as much from wars caused migrations but be much more insidious. We’ll use economics, the internet and globalization to change the borders, make places more like each other, change languages into a global English, create tightly related financial markets, and drive out uneconomic home industries.

Who knows, maybe in a few years there will be a Korean car factory where once was Grabuppen. Then we can stop at the McDonalds before we try to find that electric pole in the field. As we eat our burger might we notice that the wind no longer blows over the heather of the Kallningken cemetery remains?

In the 1974 I got a visa for the GDR and hoped to travel to my own birthplace, Neumark in Sachsen by the Czech border. The only photos I’d seen of my birth house were taken in 1968 by a family friend. He traveled back to see his East German relatives left behind when he fled in the early 1960’s. In the photos the house looks so big – two stories, covered with the drab grey stucco typical in most German cities. The front stoop was the entrance to my father’s housewares store.  We lived in an upstairs apartment. I think I was told we faced the courtyard around the back. No idea what the rooms inside looked like. No memories of the house for me as I was too young. My godmother, Marianne Popp still lived down the street a bit. Neumark was simply a way station in the history of our displaced family, somewhere my family had to live after the war. I couldn’t visit on the 1974 trip as my visa restricted me to Buttstädt. Neumark had to wait for another visit with a different visa.

 

Ch 8-2 First an Engagement Then the Wedding

The Klemm family had the tavern and a prosperous farm ensuring them a good position in the community. But come hunting season their two sons (my father and his older brother Alfred) were used by the nobility as beaters to rouse the game birds out of the bush. It all sounds a bit Victorian-like, but this was Germany in the late 1920’s prior to Hitler coming to power. Onkle Alfred ended up with a bit of buckshot in the ass from a slightly out of aim, or likely drunk, hunter. They were country boys; they were not allowed to hunt, a privilege reserved solely for the aristocracy. It hasn’t changed much in present day Germany. Instead of aristocrats it’s wealthy industrialists, politicians and foreign dignitaries. They no longer use peasants for beaters; they use the game warden to drive deer to their nice stands. The game warden also has to check the stands so they don't get too drunk and fall out.

Redetzki's Celebrate 

In the summer of 1943 there was an engagement celebration at the Redetzki house. There are 2 photos of the celebration. The doorway is barely visible as the family presses in for a photo.  A chestnut tree is next to the house. Kaulitzki, the Burgermeister, attended the engagement celebration. They even hired a woman to do the cooking, Frau Alborzies, who lived down the road. Erna Schmakat, a work colleague, also came for the fete. My father plays with a little blonde girl; she is the out-of-wedlock daughter of a maid over at Brandt’s house. Peculiar is how much this child looks very much like me at that age. It’s uncanny, as if I’m seeing myself with my father standing there in uniform holding my hand, but it’s not me.

1943 Engagement

In another photo the young couple sits on Dad's motorcycle. The white stucco house is in the background, a fence and one window visible. These many years later this random photo captures the sense of the joy felt at that moment. Mom made the dress she wears of material Dad sent her from Riga, in Latvia, when his unit was there. He used to send packages home to his sister from places the troops went. Once he met my mother his sister knew he was serious about this girl when she no longer received fabric and chocolates from his various posts. She told my mother this on a visit to Groß Sodehnen. I try to picture him shopping and picking out fabric for the women in his life. It’s odd when I think how I always had to buy his gifts to her for birthday, anniversary and Christmas. He never wanted to go along and his standard gift suggestion was nightgown. It is a bit extraordinary to think of him shopping, as a soldier, but first a young man. It seems bizarre to think of soldiers moving through foreign countries and they would go shopping; so they are just moving thru, not at war and stores are open I’m sure they didn’t do much shopping once they were moving through Russia to Stalingrad.

There is a later photo of my mother and father on a bench in a park next to the Sudermann Memorial in Heydekrug. There she is, stretched long on the bench, with her head on her shoulder. As always, she is dressed very chic in a black and white stripped sweater. He is in full uniform. They gaze at each other with the eyes of those in love, fully enjoying the moment.

In all the photos I now notice how very fashion conscious mother was. As I think back on it, she really was always well dressed even in later years. It is just that mainly I saw her most often working in the house and garden dressed casually. Not until the 70’s is there a photo of her in pants – not counting a mid 50’s photo where she wears capris (a pair given her by Americans and remade to fit).  I look closely at the old photos and see platform shoes and two-toned shoes, items she purchased when visiting a cousin in Konigsberg or on a day trip to Memel, the two nearest big cities. As an adult I now appreciate just how fashionable she was. For years those people looked old-fashioned which was equated with ‘not stylish’; how could old stuff be stylish.

For the first time I realize this is a woman who takes pride in how she looks. As an immigrant in America that meant remaking clothes people gave her when there wasn’t money to buy anything. It elicited tart remarks from some American relations about those Germans getting new clothes (the implication being we paid their passage and look what they do).  Also she sewed all the clothing for her daughters, as that was the only way they could have new dresses Christmas and Easter. She earned money doing laundry for tenants in the apartment building we lived in. Nights she stayed up late to fashion herself a new garment for a special occasion while we watched television; my father had to keep calling her to come to bed. We missed telling her she looked nice nor did we realize how important it was to her to look good. 

Then all of a sudden, when she was in her 60’s she told us “I hate sewing and I don’t want to sew any more.”  She actually started buying her clothes and even went so far as to splurge on a Coach purse – I was amazed. But she looked great.

They married in early spring the year after their engagement. Somehow they managed to find a camera and even some film and took photos of their wedding. It was April 5, 1944. The photos are small, black and white with wavy edges. We see the couple, she in a wedding dress, he in uniform. There they stand on the dirt in front of that barn, where the year before they posed with the horse and their friends. Visible is the stucco wall of the house and a bit of roof edge. The stucco needs repair as large sections have fallen off. It was the end of the war, materials were scare. The trees in the background are bare and stark looking as it is early spring.  

Not long ago Ruth sent us a old photo of herself, Oma and Opa and some of their neighbors. Ruth still

Alborzies Anniversary

has contact with some of her school friends from back then, including one of the very few Germans that stayed in Heydekrug through the war’s aftermath to the current day. There in the group is Greta Alborzies with her very long pigtails. Behind her stands Frau Schull. Interesting story about Frau Schull - it was bad enough that she beat her own children but she also beat the Polish girl who worked for her. She beat her severely. Well, when the Russians came, the Polish girl had a good talk with them. Perhaps she knew Russian, or maybe they could speak Polish. They were told of the awful beatings she received at the hands of Frau Schull. The Russians beat Frau Schull to death.

Looking behind the Redetzki house, just before the stream, I see where they placed the electrical pole. It was a big event for them in 1939. Imagine workman coming in to place these tall poles across the fields and then stringing a wire between them to bring electricity. It was a milestone not easily forgotten and the placing of this pole provided an unexpected opportunity later for her family.The line weaves an erratic path across these fields maybe following old field boundaries. Those can’t possibly be the original posts? How could they have survived bombs and artillery of the invasion and all the ensuing chaos?

That electric post played an important role in the Redetzki family destiny. They befreinded one of the workers on the project who stayed in their house. His name was Troelsch and he came from Sachsen province near the Czechoslovakian border. His family back home faced food shortages so he appreciated the gifts of food Redetzkis made to him. People sensed the war might turn and things get harder. They were well aware of East Prussia's dangerous location in relation to Russia. Troelsch told them if they needed to leave they should look him up in Neumark. And six years later they did just that.

Ch 8-1Trakehner Horses and Farm Life

Upon meeting my father, my mother’s first question was whether he was a farmer. This was important as she vowed to get off the farm and never return, so much did she hate the never-ending work. His family owned a farm with a tavern and used non-family, paid workers. In that day and place their farm was considered a large operation. 

An early suitor of hers, Herbert Rosenberg, lived on that farm in Ramutten which we found by accident, just down the road at the border with Lithuania. His family had a sizeable farm and he had an eye for the young Edith Waltraut Redetzki. But every time he came to call on her all she could smell was the stink of horses on him!  His hands were very big and he wore clumpy mittens that smelled. They made his hands seem huge! Oh there is no way she could bear to even be anywhere near him; this was not the life she envisioned for herself.

At the local dances the rule was if a young woman refused a dance she had to leave. They wanted everyone dancing, couldn’t save yourself for a favorite. At one dance she was so afraid that a young man she didn’t like, maybe Herbert, was going to ask her to dance that she kept going to the bathroom every time he made a move toward her. She spent most of the evening in the bathroom.

East Prussia was the largest horse breeding area for all of Germany. In 1922 the province had nearly 500,000 horses, down from a high of 510,000 in 1912; lost a lot to the first world war.  Opa raised horses, the Trakehner breed. One market day both Mama and Papa went into town. The girls were instructed to take care of farm work and feed the horses. Edith, of course, was terrified of the horses – and horses sense that. There was one horse in particular that seemed to have an eye out for her. When she came round he’d flatten his ears a sign to my mother he was just waiting to get her. One horse already got her a couple years before, right across the nose, a scar visible to this day. She considered the risk of getting kicked by the surly horses and weighed it against the trouble she would get from Mama. No matter, she decided not to feed them that day and got her revenge, at least for that one day.

It wasn’t that way with all the farmers. Some of the near neighbors had only one daughter or their children were too young to work. Having only girls may have made it harder for the Redetzki’s, but had there been a boy child, it would not have noticeably lessened the work load for the girls. School was six days a week and the terror inflicted by the school teacher was only a slight improvement over home and the drudgery of work. Summer vacation didn’t exist. If you weren’t in school there were farm tasks specific to the season that you had to do – haying, planting, harvest. This was an agricultural economy and life revolved around the seasons.

Herta enjoyed her life on the farm. Her difficulty was if she had to get off the farm. She was supposed to learn to be a cook so that she could get a job in someone’s home, but she didn’t want to leave home and work elsewhere. Not an ambitious person she was content to do her work and take things one day at a time. She enjoyed her life as it was. The farm suited her and she got along with the animals. 

My father's family had a different set up and was much better situated. His village was located on the far eastern border of East Prussia, In Kreis Stallupönen, directly on the border with Lithuania. This area was more densely populated than the region around Heydekrug. There was also more abundance due to a stable economy and politics. Memelland was a protectorate and region continually in dispute. Klemms had a better environment in which to sell goods. And Klemms also ran a tavern. Well respected in the community the Meihöfer side was descended from the Protestand Salzburger settlers evicted from Austria in 1740.

There is a picture passed down through the family of the Klemm tavern in Groß Sodehnen circa 1916. It’s likely they got the photo at one of the gatherings of the East Prussia group that meets regularly in West Germany. A war memorial was erected right in front of the tavern.  All sorts of dignitaries in uniforms with spiked helmets and top hats standing there looking very pleased; the ladies are dressed in their finest. It looks to be a special event, perhaps dedication of the war memorial. 1916 seems an odd date for a memorial as the war was still under way. The first big Russian invasion was in 1917. Could they have put it up after that? But the people don’t look like war vanquished, they look victorious. Maybe this is connected with one of the other countless wars fought in Europe. 

Other than being told it is the tavern in Groß Sodehnen, we don’t know anything about the photo. I look carefully trying to see if anyone resembles my father. Could any of these be his parents?  Or perhaps his grandparents? I wonder as to the identity of the dashing fellow decked out in uniform wearing an old fashioned spiked German military helmet.  But really, it could be any memorial in any German town. I don’t have any information about Klemm ancestors in the military.

After the Russian invasion and ensuing destruction it was popular to print postcards of the devastated East Prussian cities; they show up on eBay. In what connection did people send these postcards?  I know they didn’t have vacationers in these areas. Were they sent to remind others of the hardships you faced? Did people enjoy these scenes like we enjoy a beach sunset? Of course, while updating loved ones, you’d want to show them the most recent local atrocities done by the enemy. Lest anyone forget…but forget everyone did.

Meihöfer - Groß Warningken 1910?

We have no photos of my father’s family prior to 1938 – none of his own father who died in 1931 in a farm accident, and only one of his mother and her family in Groß Warningken that dates to about 1910.  At least we think we can identify his mother in this family photo. There is the matriarch Karoline Urbschat (who looks so much older than her age), the joyfully grinning patriarch Friedrich Karl Meihofer, the 6 Meihoefer girls, a son Hans and his wife, and two blonde granddaughters in front of their house in Groß Warningken. They are all dressed in black, high collars for the women. Very stern looks on all their faces, with the exception of Friedrich. If this photo is 1910 seems the war memorial photo might be earlier by at least one decade.

Germany in the 30’s was a class society and differences between farm and city were great. It was a society of bureaucratic officials, the ‘von’ Prussian nobles with their large estates known as a “Gut”, shopkeepers vs. farmers, educated vs. illiterate, high or Platt dialect defining your origins, Germans versus Lithuanians and Poles at the bottom of the pecking order. The Klemm family had the tavern and a prosperous farm ensuring them a good position in the community. But come hunting season their two sons (my father and brother Alfred) were used by the nobility as beaters to rouse the game birds out of the bush. It all sounds a bit Victorian-like, but this was Germany in the late 1920’s prior to Hitler coming to power. Onkle Alfred, Dad’s older brother, ended up with a bit of buckshot in the ass from a slightly out of aim, or likely drunk, hunter. They were country boys; they were not allowed to hunt. Hunting was a privilege reserved solely for the aristocracy. It hasn’t changed all that much in present day Germany. Instead of aristocracy it’s wealthy industrialists, politicians and foreign dignitaries. They no longer use peasants for beaters; they use the game warden to drive the deer to their nice stands. The game warden also has to check in case they get too drunk and fall out of their stand.

Ch 7-3 Life in Grabuppen

The only time the family was really close together was wintertime. The rest of the year there were always chores to keep them busy. In winter they spent time huddled round the tiled stove. 

The 'gute Stube', good parlour, was at the front and had the tiled stove with a bench seat right in front. The three girls would sit in a row trying to be quiet and good. Soon, for no reason the girls got a fit of giggles - which quickly went back and forth between the three. Then suddenly the one on the end closest to Mama, usually Herta, would get a quick slap to the head! "Quiet", Mama yelled. This of course caused them to laugh even more, angering Mama even more. It was a cycle of childish exuberance pitted against a bitter, humorless middle-aged woman.

Their house was just one-story with no cellar. As was the custom, floors were hardwood which needed to be scrubbed regularly until they were white. When only six years of age Edith had to scrub the kitchen floor on her own while Mama was gone. A brush, water and small hands working the to get the floor white. When Mama came back from her trips the children would be queried "Is the work done?" If they responded "Ja, Mutti" then more work was found. Eventually they learned it didn't pay to be efficient. Work was never done and they were never rewarded. Mama Else had no compassion. Their role was to ease Mama's work and reduce the need for outside help. My mother vowed that her own children would never suffer the same fate. Sometimes we were required to dry the dishes, but never had to clean house, do laundry or cook. Our kitchen floor sometimes needed a scrubbing but we never did it.

Looking on the map we find old familiar farms. She reminisces about the families as we stand on the dirt road. After crossing the creek the first house would have been that of Schwamberg. Then comes the Redetzki farm; it sat well back from the road down at the end of a track. Behind the farm the stream curved around and cut through their field. Next came Alborgies and Kowalski. Harner was back further off the road. On the cross street lived Ginsel, Schnell and Dickschas. Then there was the house where two Jungfer lived - German for spinster. The woods lay beyond this road, but to find blueberries you had to head north. Mushrooms were found directly across the lane.

Their father did have a sense of humor recalled by all the Redetzki sisters; it makes me wonder whatever did he see in Else to take her as his bride. On winter nights he would gather the girls to his side, all of them sitting on the stove bench. And he would sing them sailor songs from his time with the Kriegsmarine "Ach, Liebchen Du stinkst von Tar..." (Oh dearest you stink of tar). Mama would be outraged at his singing such horrible songs to her little girls.

"Papa sei ruhig!" she would scold him to be quiet. The song left lovely warm memories of Papa. They were a counterpoint to the hardships from Mama. She would knit, darn, or sew and always scold. If they were lucky she slept. They never again saw their father after January 1945.

Later when the girls were older they spent the winter making clothes. If you wanted it you had to make it yourself. There was no money to buy underwear or any clothing. Nine years of age was already considered old enough to take responsibility to make your wardrobe. They knit and crocheted socks, undergarments, sweaters. These were not home economic projects but necessities. If you didn't make it right you would unravel it and start again. Or you would take old pieces you no longer wore and unravel them to make something new. Nothing was wasted.

And the wool! Oh it was the old fashioned kind- stiff, scratchy, picky. This was not like the lovely soft angora blends the trendy yarn shops now sell. And the old stuff smelled! To this day my mother won't wear wool as it brings back memories of the itching and scratching of homemade wool garments. It probably made them hardier, better able to endure.

A typical meal was Klunkersuppe. This was a milk soup mush. Everything was made with milk since they had plenty of it. The cows had to be milked whether or not the milk could be sold. When they went off to school for the day they got a sandwich to eat. Then in the evening they would eat some type of sausage on bread. That was the normal diet. No wonder people got excited at the prospect of a funeral or wedding where food would be plenty.

To even say life on the farm was hard is an understatement. As I sit in my heated home, music playing on the stereo, nothing to do but walk the dog, car sitting in the garage and telephone handy. Oh yes, immediate access to the world via internet. It is hard to imagine their life. There was never any lounging on the couch. Potato fields needed to be worked, vegetables harvested, animals tended, floors scrubbed. When it was unbearably hot outside the girls would sneak in the house for a lie down just to rest and cool for a bit. Ruth, being the youngest, escaped much of the labor. And then there was Lieschen, handicapped, who lived with their grandmother where she didn't have to do chores.

School, farm work and caring for siblings - this was their lives. If tasks weren't completed, if laughter intervened, if an animal did mischief or the unpredictability of life happened, it resulted in physical punishment. Smack! A swift slap to the face, a permanent blow to the psyche.

When in their early teens the girls had to help spread manure on the fields. This was really hard, heavy work. Horse drawn wagons dropped the dropped in the fields. The children got pitchforks to fling the manure evenly across the field. It could take a day or more to complete. They also had to work cutting and gathering hay. Rake the piles then lift it up onto the wagons.

"Mama, my arms hurt. I can't rake anymore!" they cried.

"My arms hurt too", Mama replied. "Keep working."

To this day my mother claims she is supposed to be left-handed. Whether she is somewhat dyslexic or just not able to express her left side is unclear (but don't leave it to her to figure out the top of a pattern on fabric). When she was growing up schools forced everyone to use their right hand. Trying to be a lefty was not tolerated but punished. Even when raking rye in the field my mother didn't hold the line with the right-handed rakers. Instead she kept trying to do a left sided rake.

"You rake like a crab" her mother yelled. Any time she tried to write with her left hand a quick slap across the hands reinforced use of her right hand. There was only one way to do things - the correct way!

Poppies grew wild in the fields. From cultivated poppies the seeds were harvested and used for pastries. Mohnkuchen, poppy seed cake, is still my favorite; it was baked for special occasions when I was growing up. A simple yeast dough, rolled out, then spread with the ground poppy seed mixture. Then you roll it up, let the dough rise some more before baking.

When she was growing up the kids thought that poppy seed made you stupid. They would yell their insult of "Mohn macht dum!' (poppy seeds make you stupid). They didn't know about drugs but were sort of on the right track. It provided them a simple explanation as to why one neighbor had so many stupid kids; they ate too many poppy seeds. How else could all their children get so dumb? It was a simpler time.

 

Ch 7-2 Remains of Grabuppen

As we travel through the countryside we strain to look for farmsteads that should signal our arrival in Grabuppen. We are not seeing any farms at all. I notice the telephones poles whose tops have big bushy clumps.  They are stork’s nests!  How great to see this!  It is exciting, even if there aren’t any actual storks.

Suddenly, Mom exclaims: “Oh my gosh, that’s Rosenberg’s farm!” 

I stop the car right in front of the farm.  This is where a suitor from her past lived, Herbert Rosenberg. He was ever so intgerested in her, always hanging around trying to win her favor. Oh if he could just take her to a dance, take her to anything ‘cause he liked her. But every time he came to call all she could smell was the stink of horses. His hands were very big and he wore clumpy gloves that smelled besides making his hands look huge. She could not bear to be near him no matter how big his family farm; it was not the life she envisioned for herself.

Turns out we are at the old border, the edge of her world. They stayed clear of this place which marked the German/Lithuanian divide. Suddenly, it was as if it was 1939 - we could not go any further on this road. It was only a memory but was like an an imaginary wall from the past, an invisible barrier. I balk at driving the car any further. This isn't a real border since we are in the country of Lithuania. The road beyond the curve takes on an ominous look. It is silly, but just a bit ahead of us the land looks different: no traffic, no cars, no pedestrians, just quiet.  Now if we’re in Ramutten it means we’ve gone way past the house and tavern of Onkle and Tante Brandt, the cemetery, and the entire villages of Groß Grabuppen, Kallningken, and Didzeln!  I turn the car around and we head back down the road, more slowly this time, back to the schools and away from dangerous borders from her past. There we finally find the narrow lane leading to Groß Grabuppen, site of the Redetzki farm.

Now we assess the tremendous changes to this landscape. We are aware of all that is missing. The farms are gone. Not a trace left. We get out of the car and look out into open fields, open to the distant woods at the end of our field of vision. There are no sounds - not even birds - no people no past. Where once was Gnieballen, Kallningken, Didzelm, Szagnten and Groß Grabuppen - houses, farmyards, children, animals, birth, death, love and life - now there is nothing. The wind blows. Fields lay wide and clear. We stand trying to listen for sounds of the past.

We did have a clue that the location where we stood was right. The old and new schools sit at the intersection with Ramutterstrasse. She attended this school so has one actual physical connection to her past. At least there is one building from her past.  A newly build house with gleaming white stucco is across the street from the schools at the corner. It has the odd effect of lending a familiarity to the scene as the style looks a bit like an American Dutch Colonial house. 

The schools are the only evidence there had once was more, a population with children to fill two schools.  I have a 1934 photo of the schoolchildren gathered on the steps of the school 1934. Herta and Ruth are in the front rows. Inside the building at the edge of a window stands my mother with the older kids. In the middle of the group is a stern looking schoolmaster and schoolmistress. The times were very hard as it was a worldwide Depression in the 1930's. German populations, however, was already suffering from horrible inflation in the 1920’s that followed their devastating punishment after World War I. 

Ditch and Creek

With the school buildings Mom landmarks and a point of reference.  Mom turns to orient herself on the road. The old ditch they crossed every day to school is still there.  “Familie Maibaum had their farm over there”, she points.  And there, in the field, where the ditch veers off to the left, there is the electricity pole that stood in the middle of their farmyard back in 1939 when electricity came to the village. Later proved a significant event for Redetzkis in unanticipated ways.

Nothing left of the family farm, not even a sign of any building having ever been here. There are a couple of photos in the family album taken at the farm.  They are significant as I try to piece together what their house looked like. The walls were white stucco topped by a thatched roof. In front was a garden fenced in to keep out animals wandering the farmyard.  Windows flank either side of the center doorway.

Mom, in one of the photos wears a lovely fitted suit, dark nylons with her hair draped stylishly over her shoulder. Dad is next to her in his uniform; he was a German soldier. I especially like the photo of my father's horse Sperber (Sparrow), a Trakehner, the famous breed of East Prussia. In spite of her great fear of horses he put her in the saddle - ah, what you do for love! They pose in front of a barn, stucco, timbered gable end and a thatched roof.

Soon after Julius and Else Redetzki were married in 1921 they moved to the Brumpreisch family farm in Gnieballen. They had a small store in Barsdehen before they moved to Gnieballen, not far from Gr. Grabuppen.

Life on the farm was hard. It was the Depression. Farmers couldn't sell their butter so instead their father used it to grease the wagon wheels. Couldn't afford to buy grease and couldn't sell butter. You made do with what was available.

In 1931 they purchased the Grabuppen farm from Else's mother, Annikke Brumpreisch who remarried. The old couple retired on a nearby small farm. This was the custom for old people to move passing on the bigger farm to a younger generation. Papa worked until 1932 as a machinist at the Elektricitatswerke in Memel, which is why they hired help for the farm. The money he earned was better that what he'd make staying on the farm. In 1932 unemployment was high and work opportunities slim. Julius was told to decide whether he wanted to be a farmer or a machinist, but he couldn't have two jobs. Mama wouldn't move to the city in hard times; she said you can't eat stones, better to stay on the farm. So he gave up his job. Later she came to regret this decision, or just said she did once she realized city people lived better, in her opinion. It could have given her a nicer lifestyle. Likely she would have been unhappy with that too.

Ch 7-1 Finding Grabuppen

There once was Groß Grabuppen. It’s just a short bike ride north of Heydekrug. Hitler renamed the cities in order to make them more Germanic. All those name endings like  –ponen, -liken, -ingken had a distinct aura of non-Germanic influences, maybe even Lithuanian. Hitler was Austrian with a very idealized concept of Germany.. Some might even be mistaken as Lithuanian!  Remember Hitler came from Austria with an idealized image of Germany. German lineage should be tied to places with German names. He tried to undo the past, remake history according to his image. Places were renamed to elicit German imagery. German names for a German people. It was an attempt to modify the past, remake history to fit an image.

So in 1939 Groß Grabuppen became Heidewald, heather woods.  It does sound nicer, rolls off the tongue in a gentler manner but it lacks character and uniqueness. It could be anyplace in Germany and certainly not a place where pagans reigned into the 15^th century. 

Lieutuva or Litauen. Heydekrug or Silute. In addition to trying to follow the German names I have to keep track of spelling differences. There is such a garble of three languages and different spellings as I try to decipher a landscape bearing the stamp of several cultures over the last 200 years. Sometimes it is ß, other times regular double ss; to umlaut or not to umlaut. Even family names are changed.  Annika, my great grandmother, became Anna.  Meyerhoefer became Meihoefer.

At least the village of Grabupai exists on the current map and in reality. There are the two old school buildings, a house and a factory that now stand at the crossroads with the Ramutterstrasse. All the other villages related to my ancestors now are found only on old maps, like my 1938 maps I carry where I can see what used to be. These maps show every village, house, trail, cemetery and numerous symbols I can’t decipher (there is no key for the map).  It is a snapshot of the world my mother knew, one more densely populated than what lay before us.

Mom is still familiar with the roads since they didn’t change at all. She instructs, “Turn left here, then head out on this road, till we get to the Ramutterstr.” And so on. Easy. Has so little changed since 1945? Well the Italians still use the Via Appia.  Here the lack of change is likely the result of low population growth and a depressed economy. 

I think back to crossing into the old East Germany after ‘The Change’ in 1992. Prior to 1992, access points into the German Democratic Republic were few and very restricted. Crossing points were heavily guarded openings in a border consisting of barbed wire, guard towers and minefields. In 1992 I wanted to experience the freedom of crossing where ever I wanted so I drove my rental car into the old GDR via the Harz region. Once out of old West Germany the road turned into a narrow cobblestone lane with trees lining the edge of the road. It hardly seemed wide enough for two-way traffic and didn't seem used at all. With a start I realized this road probably had not been open to vehicle traffic since WWII!  For forty years the roads ended at the border with West Germany. I encountered no other cars until I reached the first city. It was eerie, almost like I was the last person alive, all alone in the landscape. A Twilight Zone moment. 

When we head out of Heydekrug to Gr. Grabuppen we come upon a newly constructed section of road that confuses Mom. It redirects traffic around the city of Heydekrug – perhaps  an actual bypass? Clearly city planners at one time expected a great throng of travelers who needed to circumvent the city center. There is no other vehicle on this stretch of roadway; could it be because the bypass doesn’t actually connect anything? Seems they only completed a one mile of road which cuts through a lovely section of woods. For a few minutes it put us in the middle of a bunch of trees with no landmarks visible.

The only navigation issue my mother has is the speed with which the car moves in relation to bicycle or foot travel. Mom is used to moving around this countryside by bike. People didn't have time or money to go anywhere so just a train ride was a big event. Horse and buggy was the main transport for goods. On a postcard of the old marketplace in Heydekrug I assume it is a scene  from the early 1900's based on all the horse drawn wagons, peasant women in long black dresses and white babushkas. On closer examination I see women in short dresses – this is a scene from the 1930’s!  Not a single car in sight.  How odd life without automobiles seems, a life like the present day Amish. I reflect on how your mode of transport regulates the pace of your life.

As we leave the city the fields pass by quickly, too quickly, past empty acres that stretch off to the horizon. There is a tree in sight to block the view. A car shrinks the distances; larger landmarks are needed to gauge you progress in relation to the landscape. When visiting Iceland and traveling by bus I had the strange sensation that we weren't moving; there was nothing in the landscape to pass. Without any villages or buildings it is somewhat the same here.

I imagined I would find a landscape filled with towering birch trees. When we drove through northern Michigan woods my mother and father made comparisons with the birches of ‘home’.  “Oh I love birches,” was the statement she made without fail. It was probably not so much the actual birches as the memories they brought back that they loved – youth, a time where life was full of promise. But now that I’m here I find the birches small, skinny looking trees. Where are the famous dark woods of song ?  Is this all there is? How can you wax poetically about these scrawny things?  Or am I spoiled by everything being bigger in America? 

This flat, open landscape is comforting. There is simplicity to the tree lined roads, a sparseness of houses, forests off in the distance. Sort of like Kansas but even flatter and no tornados. The fields seem unused with no sign of crops even though it is fall and harvesting time; absent are any herds of livestock grazing in the pastures. Yet I feel an affinity for this setting, something like my feeling for the openness of the American prairies. I like a wide horizon. Forest and mountains are oppressive, brooding, and ominous. Is it part of my genetic makeup? Is there something genetic tying us to the landscape of ancestors? 

Once I took part in a ‘past life regression’ that called up an uncomfortable image of the dark woods. It caused me to become very anxious in the dark brooding landscape. Was this the root of my subconscious fear of the forest?  Could it be why generations of my ancestors tilled fields in open country?  On the other hand, if that were so then you’d think I would also have inherited a deep seated fear of invading armies and war. Fortunately, I haven’t had to test that idea so can’t say for sure.

East Prussia was one of the German states with the least amount of forested land. Only Schleswig-Holstein up north on the Danish border had less. This was the agricultural bread basket for Germany. This is where Germans got their horses, hogs, grain crops to feed the entire nation. Rich fields fed the dairy cows and put milk production at the highest in the country.  The section of Prussia in the east was a solid rural culture and the wealth truly came from their farms.

Memelland also differs in the pattern of farmland settlement from not only Germany but the rest of East Prussia.  I spent hours studying 1930 topographic maps identifying church parishes and village locations trying to find the cities of my ancestors. Obvious on the maps of Memelland is a pattern of houses scattered across the countryside. Typically houses are clustered in a village, and the farmers go out to fields surrounding the village.  In Memelland the houses sit with the farms away from the city, the same way farms are settled in America, but not nearly as much acreage. My mother recounts how surprised she was the first time she went to visit the Klemm family in Groß Sodehnen.  There the houses were clustered together in the village with no fields next to the house.  She found it odd.

Ch 6-4 Renting Graves

On my travels through Europe I’d wonder that any cemeteries were left at all.  Troops marching back and forth, pillaging and plundering, bombs smashing the landscape, mass graves, plagues. Is there a piece of land untouched by violence?  Or, on the other hand, think of all the hundreds of thousands of people that died in Europe. Where are they?

In post war Germany a cemetery plot is rented for 25 years. If the lease is not renewed remains are removed and the plot resold. Family is entitled to keep any monument (have been used on personal patios, just flip it to the blank side, maybe). Australia refers to it as renewable tenure. Mom found this out to her great surprise and dismay on a trip to East Germany in the late 1990’s when she went to visit the family graves in Neumark, Sachsen, my birthplace. She was accompanied by her good friend Marianne Popp, my godmother, to the cemetery with flowers. For years Mom sent money for grave maintenance and flowers. She reached the cemetery fresh flowers in hand and walked to the graves. In 1965 she visited for her father's funeral. Papa Redetzki's grave should be right next to that of Lieschen, the oldest child. And her mother Else's ashes were sent from West Germany in 1972 to be interred with them. My mother became confused as she couldn't find the graves. Where were the gravestones? She stood there, flowers in hand, looking around, not understanding.  How could you lose graves?

Finally Marianne spoke up, “They took away the graves and the stones.” 

It was all gone. The headstones, the coffins, the bones were gone.  Mama, Papa and Lieschen.  25 years were up, ding, contract over, plots resold! New people are buried in the site.  No names of relations appeared on cemetery records so they didn’t know how to get a hold of her, the next relative, to give her notice. In a town as small as Neumark they certainly would have known the connection with Marianne. So they just bury over them after digging things up a bit. I’m still confused that in a town as small as Neumark no one made the connection to Frau Popp placing the flowers. A gravestone photo is the only remembrance. 

Turns out this is also the practice now in West Germany. Is there a word specific to describing when a grave site has been dug up and reused, sort of recycled? The exception to this practice are historic graves, such as those of Berthold Brecht and Pastor Dietrich Bonöffer in East Berlin.

How did they come up with the timeframe of 25 years – one generation, enough time to get over it, the average time in between wars?  Pragmatic Germans probably did some sort of study and rationalized it. Their thought is that land is valuable and you just can’t have one dead body taking up space indefinitely. What do they actually do with the grave contents? Sounds like they just sort of make a little bit of room. Strange to think about being laid on top of a stranger for eternity, or at least 25 years. 

In today’s Germany most dead are cremated.  And there is a waiting time for this service.  It’s created a strange industry for eastern European crematoriums to which German bodies are shipped. Odd turn of events considering what was done in Germany to so many others from those countries. The wait may be some two weeks to get the remains back.  Sounds a bit gruesome, all these corpses being shipped around Europe to be burned; have to wonder about the ashes received back.

I have few family grave plots to visit. No place to contemplate ancestors, the past and reflect on my own mortality as part of a continuing line of descendents.  I do now have the gravesites of my parents in central Michigan, a 3 hour drive. With their deaths it is my own mortality  brought into sharp focus. But do I want to be buried there?  While the cemetery is a nice rural township plot the area has no relevance for me. Do I want to spend all eternity some place I never lived?  Is it enough to be among family?  Or should my remains be used for the planting of a tree to flower and fruit?

Grandmother, grandfather, aunt, have had their gravesites removed. Others didn’t even get a grave – paternal grandmother and aunt – just shot along a road escaping East Prussia.  Others had their cemeteries used for building materials. Simply gone and forgotten as are all but perhaps the famous.

The Second World War scattered our bones across the western hemisphere. These are the upheavals resulting from war an migration. Ashes stored in closets; people killed in the turmoil of war getting no burial. The countless soldiers killed, civilian casualties, never found.