Growing Up, part 11

A German Youth

Grown up in Germany in the 1960s and 1970s

   From a research point of view it is actually very interesting how the different children coped with the facts of constantly fighting individuals as the result of a two stubborn parents who never did fully comprehend the consequences on their children. 
   My father simply lived his own world; as a provider he has done what he should do - to earn money. He was so full of himself that he was not even interested to remember the birthdays of each of his children. One morning my mother reminded him that today it was his son's birthday. He grabbed his wallet, gave me a 5 German Mark coin like he occasionally tipped someone helping him unloading goods from his truck and said, seemingly embarrassed,  'Happy birthday!'         
   My elder sister started to party at a very early age. After finishing the secondary school she learned and work in the same transport company as my father and the elder half-sister. As she had some income she bought her first 2nd hand car and made friends with US soldiers some 70km from home. She dared to bring them home occasionally. While my mother liked the friends she called my sister with very bad names, and, as with my step sister, had occasionally physical fights over trivial matters.
   I stayed mostly in my room, read my books and struggled in school. Generally I did o.k. until the 7th grade (around 14 years of age), from the 8th grade I really had to invest more time on my school books just to pass some tests and get some acceptable grades. My weakness was clearly Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, while the languages and my forth chosen major, Biology, was going acceptable. 
   For one semester the director of the school was our German teacher. He liked to give us us a subject on an essay and let us write for 40 minutes on it while he followed his own interests. As I liked reading I took these essays very seriously and let my imagination run wild. One day he returned me my notebook and said "Correcting your last essay I got interested in reading your other essays again. I've noticed that because of your small handwriting I believed that your contents were more than I've previously recognized. So I've decided to give you higher grades to all of your essays."
   In 8th grade our German teacher let us write an essay about 'evening'. We could freely choose between the form of a composition or a piece of poetry. My classmates started writing immediately while I was just sitting and started to think. Everyone would choose a composition which is much easier to write but would take the hard work of at least one A4 page. A poem would only take 16 lines, and no-one would choose it anyway. It was winter a that time and as I looked out of the school window there was a new snow covering everything. I went to Judo lessons every Thursday evening after training and as I walked through the city street to the bus station it was snowing. So I just wrote this feeling walking the dark streets when I've noticed the snow falling from heaven. I don't remember the whole poem but it finished with ..."falling snowflakes like crystals." I was the first to return in the paper and could leave because it was the last lesson of the day. To my surprise I not only got the highest grade of everyone but every classmate got one copy from my poem 'as an example' after the teacher read it out loud in class!

 A skinny teenager

   It was, looking at the age, a time when I was growing up from boyhood to became a young man. Mostly left alone I did not have anyone to turn to and had to figure out too many things by myself. Some of my classmates already started to experience girl- or boyfriends, I was more a bystander. I was the guy who was all the time the last you think of, or, as Sylvester Stallone said in one of his Rocky movies:" You are invited to a party but it really does not matter if you go or not because no-one will care anyway."
   I've met the nice girl beside the ice skating hall but the situation in my family and the failure of my own parents scared the hell out of me to commit myself into a relationships. So it did not last long because somehow I thought that it would be irresponsible to drag someone cute and innocent into my own confusing, sad and violent environment. At least until I would be independent, having an own income and would be in charge of my own life...
   As my stepsister bought a stereo she gave me her old tape recorder with a radio. I listened constantly to it and occasionally sampled some English songs from the radio on tapes. I've liked many different direction of music only classical music let me fall asleep. Disco was modern but there was a also counterculture like Rock in its different forms (Hard Rock, Heavy Metal), Punk was arriving and even Rock n' Roll made its comeback. The end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s was musically the most interesting era in my opinion. On some school excursions I took my sampled tapes with me and the bus driver was willing to put them in his machine and let my classmates listen to my tapes. In the absence of any studio and only created by a 2nd hand tape recorder they seemed all right, many classmates praised me for my music taste.
   In sports we all played soccer or European football. Because I was never a real sprinter I was chosen to be goalkeeper. I could 'read' the game, could anticipate the direction of the ball and sense when to leave the goal in cases of a high ball or in a one-on-one situation. We even made it into the semi-finals of the school tournament. We could make it into the finals but because the two 'stars' had an argument they rather played for themselves than as a team.

(to be continued)     

Growing Up, part 6

A German Youth

Grown up in Germany in the 1960s and 1970s

   Mentioning Judo in connection with martial arts let someone imagine that there are a bunch of kids running around learning how to beat up each other but originally it's quite the contrary. Its more about self control than aggressiveness, its more about the mind than the body and more about the art than the martial. Or, to stay with a Japanese example, its more about a solemn tea ceremony than violent Sake drinking games.
   A quiet student is a very easy target for bullies. Once in the early morning one bully asked me to stop and we started to argue. He became physical and after a short struggled he fixed me with a headlock while we were still standing. I fought with myself if I should use my skills for several seconds and decided that it would be better to do so just to have my peace in the future. 
   I grabbed his shoulder, stepped on my the right and with a turn of my waist I let him fall over my left stretched out leg. Because of this unexpected movement he let my neck loose. I jumped on him and, like in training, my right arm went around his neck to fix his upper body on the floor while my left arm controlled his right arm (this technique is called 'Kesa-gatame' in Japanese). Not only his friends became suddenly quiet but also all other students on their way to school stood still for a moment. The school bell rang, we got up, I took his hand and, because I felt this way, said "sorry!". 
   It might sound strange that a son of a violent alcoholic and even more violent mother excuses to a bully but this might be explained by my 'soft' character. It's not like that you think that life is bad or there are many bad things are thrown in my way so I "have to do something". I am more a person who does to judge the person but asking "why does a person do or become like this". For example, we all agree that a bully is bad person. But I would ask "why did he become a bully?" I could imagine his family is broken too, that he got bullied by himself, that he had to show off in front of his so-called friends etc. So, I felt a kind of empathy; that's why I apologized to him even I was the clear 'winner'.
   Because of my parent's constant fights and my retreat into books I was very natural in German, one of the major subjects in primary school. Everyone touching the German language not only get some ideas about the complicated grammar but also about the spelling and particularly the rules when words are written in upper and lower cases. For me being tested by dictations or challenged by essays were tasks I've enjoyed tremendously.

 school excursion

   As I've progressed in elementary school I was shocked to learn that the reading skills of my father were very limited. Once I've visited him in his trucking company while he was reading the BILD newspaper, the cheapest, simplest and most dishonest daily paper in whole Germany. When I've asked him a questions why he reads this paper he brutally honest answered me "because I can't read others!" My mother could only help me with my homework until the 3rd grade then I had to ask my elder sister, classmates or friends...
   For a child it is very important to be taken seriously and to be supported, both I did not receive from my parents. But somehow I understood and accepted it, not blaming them. Even as a loner I've tried to do my best, others might see it as a failure.
   My first bicycle was one way to get away from the cage of my own home. I not only rode to school but also took rides further than the neighborhood. I've got an idea how to enjoy the wind, the speed and the freedom to choose which way to ride; any way just to stay away from home. At that time I've started to get interest in mechanical things, like how  bike shifters and gears work, how to make your bike comfortable etc. But I could not change an inner tire, this was the job of my father. 
   Once my father was not at home so my mother tried to fix my flat. In her rough way she took a pair of handy scissors to lift the tire from the rim, put in the new inner tube and fiddled the tire back onto the rim; all with the help of these scissors. But it did not work, as soon as I pumped the air into the tire immediately left with a 'pfffffffff'. So my mother gave me some money (!), I took of the front wheel and rode my sister's bike to a local bike shop. The elderly mechanic pulled out the inner tube, put on his spectacles, pumped up the tube and held it in a bucket of rainwater. After pumping and checking several time he counted 7 holes! With a worrying look he asked me: "What have you done?" I've answered honestly: "I did not take the scissors to exchange the tube!" With a smile he put in a new inner tube.

(to be continued)

Growing Up, part 5

A German Youth

Grown up in Germany in the 1960s and 1970s

   Primary school was a big change but an even bigger challenge for me. It was a time away from home, the first steps into an independent life. This means that many ‘daily’ challenges like finding friends, arranging your stuff and material, homework etc. depend solely on the student. But unfortunately I was very bad prepared for these things.

   Not only my mother’s education of children was, except for suppressing, controlling and scolding, nonexistent but she also did not participate in the school life at all. I was like that she did her part like getting us prepared for school, supplying breakfast was her obligation and after we left for school it was her leisure time. Returning from school we had to do the homework which was not her responsibility but ours. She never asked any questions or had only interest in the grades at the end of each semester. My father was even colder towards his children-we hardly talked about anything not to mention school or education in general.

   I was not a slow learner; I was with in the first 5-6 students in a class of 24-27 students. My weakness was that I did not have any confidence at all and this triggered many other difficulties like being shy, passive and defensive. While others actively participated in class I was sitting attentive but did not take much part. When the teacher called my name I could answer the question but could not articulate them in front of others.

   Writing tests was a quite different subject. I’ve got a paper or a theme and just wrote for 40 minutes what came to my mind and that was it. Me and the subject and a paper – this was my way of learning.

   Each semester the teacher invited the parents to a parent-teacher conference two times. On these evenings the teacher informs the parents about their class in general and about the student individually. My mother never showed up. Later as an adult I’ve asked her why she did not attend any parent-teacher conference during my many years studying in various schools she seriously replied “because I felt shame about my children!” I never drank, never smoked, never took drugs, never ran away, never beat someone, did never steal etc.…Until today, in my 50s, I do not know and understand what I did to let my mother feel this way.

   For me it was not easy to connect to other people much less to find friend. I had one neighbor who was about the same age who sometimes showed some interest in my life.  He was the first one who invited me to his birthday party, his mother was very friendly to me. Sometimes we played the good cop and bad guy on bikes where we were chasing each others on Bonanza bikes, a rage at that time. We even liked the same girl living on the 2^nd floor... When his parents had a chance to move out from the social housing into the city this was a great personal loss for me.

My 3 speed 'Bonanza' bike ready for school

   While he was still living in our community his mother sent him once a week to learn the Japanese martial art Judo in the local Police Sports Club (Polizeisportverein). A club in Germany is a non-profit association for the benefit of the society. So my mother registered me there too. The fee was very low, as I remember she paid annually (!) German Mark 26 (=Euro 13.00 = USD 16.00). Another chapter and very different world in my life opened when I stepped into the gym.

   The first time I attended the trial training I did not have a judo uniform, just wore some sport outfit. Once I like it, my mother invested in the proper uniform which was not a small investment at that time. From this moment on I felt as a true Judoka, the proper name of a male student of this form of martial arts.

a Judoka

(to be continued)

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)