Ch 4-2 Finding Heydekrug

1846 map Heidekrug

We finally reach the city she once called home. Roughly translated from the old German, Heydekrug can mean either heather land or inn.  Or it could be a derivation of a word for pagan – Heiden.  I’m going for the pagan idea. Lithuanians call it Silute. 

The city sits on the edge of the Memel River where the land changes from marshy to sandy.  On first impression it appears a pretty typical, central European city. The buildings and streets don’t offer any clues to its founding in 1511. I notice it lacks a traditional central marketplace. Later I discover the old marketplace on the edge of the old city, no longer in use. 

Buildings lining the main street are post office, grocery stores, local history museum, and a church. Don’t see any clothing stores, bakeries or houseware shops, standard in most German cities. It is all very well kept, as is much of what we have seen so far. 

Under German administration since 1815 Heydekrug was the seat of the county, called Kreis. Population now stands at 22,000 compared to 1925 when it was just over 4,000, but there was more population in the many surrounding small villages. None of the structures are older than one hundred years so young by European standards. So much was destroyed by a succession of wars and invaders – Teutonic Knights, Napoleon, various Kaisers, Czar Nicholas, Hitler, Stalin – all directing troops across this land as if it were a military playground.  This area's misfortune is to be positioned at a particularly volatile location between Germany and Russia. Lots of troops and settlers, back and forth, over the centuries.

The city is quite built up, stores on the side streets off the main thoroughfare. A very tall apartment building is visible to the south. Sunshine, blue sky and the world looks bright as shoppers bustle about. I honestly expected a bit of postwar Europe with some ruins, bricks and stucco falling off the buildings like old communist East Germany, but that’s not what I find. And Mom expected a 1945 war torn landscape.  In the ten years since the fall of the Communist empire, things changed quickly, probably more than in the previous forty years.  

On my first visit to the newly open eastern Germany, one year after the wall came down, the fresh, bright look to what had been run down was the most noticeable change. Previously the only color was a uniform, drab color I call Socialist grey.  It made life feel grey and dingy.  Another difference were bright accents in the landscaping: advertising! Didn't have that before. It wasn’t that inhabitants didn’t want their homes and businesses to look good – they just couldn’t purchase supplies to fix things up.  It took my East German Uncle years to construct a new entry foyer to their house. They had to wait for supplies to trickle in to stores then line up soon as word got out. While driving round the countryside they kept eyes open to check for supplies laying around that they could steal. Stolen goods were also useful to barter for other needed items. That was life in the workers’ paradise, the German Democratic Republic. If you showed the slightest discontent with the situation you were labeled a capitalist or maybe even a fascist – not sure which was worse.

We drive around by car, another sign of the times. Like America tourists with a lot of distance to cover, we’re used to viewing scenery from a car window, as if watching television.  Heydekrug is just a bit too big and spread out for us to walk the distances comfortably, most of it being new residential sprawl. The city was laid out along the main road which makes for a long city. We’ll get out of the car eventually, but the changes of the past 50 years seem minor in that it's very familiar to my mother. She finds her way around familiar landmarks like she is heading out on a lunch break from the grain cooperative where she worked. Mom does seem excited to see it all again, a good sign. I was apprehensive about what we’d find and how her reaction.

We drive into Heydekrug following the stream of traffic down the main street. Lots of shoppers crowd the sidewalks. People are dressed up and look very fit – probably because they do all this walking. Wonder how much this street scene changed in the last 10 years.

Is that a liveliness in their step as they walk down the street? They are not schlepping about humorless as in days where people avoided eye contact as in East Germany.  It is a lightness of being, if only reflecting hope for the future and the illusion of now having some control over one’s life.