Saturday, November 28, 2020

Ch 4-1 On the Road from Memel

At long last we make our way to that city, heard about so often in reminiscences that it took on near mythical status like Camelot.  As I grew up it was referred to usually fondly with accounts of fun on the farm, references to the upper class family where she worked as a Nanny then later her work as a bookkeeper. Her frame of reference was always an explanation by comparison with her life; relating it to her. I didn't see that pre-war Germany of 40 years ago related in any way to working in corporate America. Same way parents used Depression era examples to instruct their baby boomer children. This is where my mother experienced the exhilaration of life on her own, the excitement of leaving the farm having her own friends and rented room. So often the stories began: “Damals, in Heydekrug…”  It reminded me of “once upon a time…"

I couldn’t find this city on maps available to me in the U.S., just as hard to find on maps of present day Germany which made it seem even more imaginary.  Did anyone else come from this city? I was looking for some sort of confirmation of the stories. The problem lay in that it no longer existed as part of Germany after World War II. It was way off to the north, up in the far fringes near Finland.  1950’s maps ignored the area as it was a Soviet satellite country. These Baltic countries didn’t even warrant names on maps, just showed up in the same color as the USSR.

That it no longer existed as an entity made it more mythical.  A make believe place, one whose existence is entirely dependent on memories of former inhabitants. There are no books about it. The subject of the war and what ensued afterward was considered taboo in Germany. No one goes there and no one comes out. It fell off the earth.  Does a tree falling in the forest make a sound if no one is there?  Does a place exist if people can’t find it on a map?

None of their circle of East Prussian German friends came from there but then all of them came from forgotten places in that province.  At our German deli in Detroit we bought an aromatic cheese that was founded in a city up there – Tilsiter, but that was it. As a result I grew up with a rather confusing German identity: I was German, but not from actual Germany.

To be German in post-War America meant sauerkraut, beer steins, snowy Bavarian villages, Frankenmuth chicken dinners and the Colonel Klink stereotypes.  We rarely ate sauerkraut, chicken dinners were not a mainstay in any German restaurant other than Wienerwald, and steins were Bavarian like those Christmas scenes. This was the accepted image and the way our Germaness was defined in our adopted country, the United States.  They called my sister a Nazi in elementary school, and the slur dogged me throughout my life. The Germany of American troops, the section of the country they occupy still is Bavaria and central Germany.  You talked of Prussians, well, who doesn’t think of spiked helmets and the old Prussian Empire in Berlin. Weren’t the Prussians the ones who fought in the American Revolution? No, those were Hessians.

We didn’t have a real place that people in the U.S. heard of, so it was easier to think in terms of stereotypes and generalities. Americans generally have a pretty understanding of foreign cultures in general, unless they had soldiers there which is then a stilted view. It was simpler to just say “we’re German” and let it go, unless asked for details which I gave only when I sensed someone might actually have a deeper understanding of that eastern area. Too often it ended in a long discussion that showed them to be ignorant of geography and the Allied reapportioning of Germany.   

Worse yet, not only did my parents come from a place that nobody heard of, but I was born in a communist country!  In the 1950’s Cold War era, checking under the bed for Commies, this was generally met with amazement.  Then they asked “well how did you cross the wall”?  Yes, I knew people who thought the Berlin Wall ran the length of the country, even in 1982.  I think they confused it with the Great Wall of China. 

Once we're past Memel city limits the landscape takes on an idyllic, pastoral look.  Cows and horses stand out in the open fields, peacefully grazing without fences to keep them in the field.  We drive along and see a solitary cow here and there and an occasional horse, all standing alone out in the field, grazing, with no fence, no electric wire. 

“Boy they have their livestock well trained” I exclaim.  In America we have to fence them in or they run off!  Here they just stand in one spot and graze. “That’s amazing!  How do they do that?”

Later we saw a person out in the field with a stool and bucket milking a cow.  Amazing! These animals were content to graze unattended in an unfenced field! My mother was also impressed. She’d never seen anything like it.

A day or two later, on one of our drives I notice a chain hanging from the cow’s neck.  They are tethered!  They bolt them to the spot with a chain! Do we feel stupid... they used an anchor of sorts. They were not trained like an obedient dog, they moved them around the field to better graze the field. Certainly did keep the field nicely trimmed.  As people didn’t seem to have more than one or two cows this method worked quite well. You could maybe even consider it ‘greener’ grazing. I’m so glad we didn’t ask anyone about the well trained livestock.

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