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.