Growing Up, part 4

A German Youth

Grown up in Germany in the 1960s and 1970s

I was born the 1960s which were one of the ‘best’ years in recent German history. The reason for this ‘Economic Miracle’ or Wirtschaftswunder was the reconstruction and development from the devastated West Germany into a solid country with a modern economy. The big but open ‘secret’ of this success was the adapted social market economy, “combining a free market capitalist economy system with social policies which establish both fair competition with the market and a welfare state” (wikepedia). 
   If I would single out one German ‘achievement’ to be proud of it would be this social market economy. The ideas can be traced back to Karl Marx (1818-1883) who published Capital, Critique of Political Economy (German: Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie) in 1867. The roots of the West German economy started when the Chancellor of the German empire, Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), implemented the 'Sickness Insurance Law' for every German citizen in 1883 (!), the very same year when Marx died! 
   What a contrast between two men living in two different times: von Bismarck saw in 1883 the need for the government to "to provide sickness insurance" for the German workers while Donald Trump in 2017 sees the American worker as a profit center with plans to cut the expenses and turn them over to private insurance companies! 
   My father grew up in the countryside of Bavaria close to the Czech border. After the war there was not much work there so his sister encouraged him to move to Reutlingen to become a much needed trucker. At that time the area around this city was blessed with smaller and larger enterprises seeing a chance to earn their part in the recovery of West Germany.

Me and my father in the Bavarian countryside

   As mentioned my parents were legitimized to get a cheap apartment through the co-operative or non-profit housing association (Gemeinnützige Wohnungsgesellschaft) which was created to help and support low income and multi-child families. 

   Generally the idea to help needy families is great. But in our case the ‘low income’ community was created right in the middle of an area of proud house owners; in the front of our apartment were traditional houses while further behind the government developed a new area for private house owners. These owners were not very fond of the non-profit housing residents with their social issues and their noisy kids running around.

   Sometimes we played European football on the sloping grass in front of our house. Very seldom we kicked the ball over the fence into the neighbor’s garden. Once, the elderly lady refused to handle us our ball. I rang the door bell and, living on the 1st floor, my mother opened only the window to ask me what happened. After I explained her that the neighbor did not want to handle us the ball “to teach us a lesson” nothing could stop my 1.6 m short but 70 km heavy mother. She literally ran to the elder lady, a tirade of words exploded out of her and after a clear warning “not the do it again” we had the ball in our hands within a few seconds.

   In my family there was only one choice of school: not far away from home. In primary school we had to walk for about 20 minutes (one way) including a railroad crossing. At that time there was a level-crossing attendant who lowered the gates still by hand after a warning signal. Later the government built two pedestrian bridge and a bridge for the railroad tracks just to save his one job.

   I remember my mother, in true Nazi-fashion, just showed me at the age of 6 the way to school only once (!), how to cross the roads and the railroad tracks - that was it, only one time!

   My mother was very clear about the school time table of each of her children. She knew exactly when we had off and calculated the time we have to arrive at home. If we were too late she took this as an offense against herself and would not let you go. I’d rather cut off my time with classmates or neighbors walking the same way home and even ran sometimes just not to offend her. I would rather have peace for the day, never mind the sweating from running home...

(to be continued)