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Unexpected Odyssey: Danzig to Tennessee
Unexpected Odyssey: Danzig to Tennessee
Unexpected Odyssey: Danzig to Tennessee
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Unexpected Odyssey: Danzig to Tennessee

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A memoir of a life beginning 5 months after the onset of WW ll, escaping the Russian invasion, living out the war in Frankfurt and immigrating to America. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, being a pizza maker and then eventually graduating from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy as a ship’s engineer. The years at sea evolved in teaching Marine Engineering at Texas A&M University as an Associate Professor, as the first professor hired and helped start the Texas Maritime Academy. Upon completion of the first training cruise of Texas Maritime Academy, and a graduate degree, then went on to being a sales engineering executive, then back to graduate school for a doctorate, and an intervening career as an Executive Chef for 16 years. The story concludes with reuniting with an old friend and moving to Tennessee to become a Senior Clinical substance abuse Counselor and anchoring in retirement.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 18, 2014
ISBN9781311838414
Unexpected Odyssey: Danzig to Tennessee
Author

Klaus V. Luehning

Klaus V. Luehning was born in Zoppot, Free State of Danzig, 5 February 1940. He went through World War ll in Hoechst outside of Frankfurt, Germany, and emigrated to the United States in 1947. A graduate of Brooklyn Technical High School, then The United States Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point with a Bachelor’s degree in Marine Engineering, a Federal License as a Merchant Marine Officer and commission in the United States Navy. He sailed on 14 different ships in various capacities and became First Assistant Engineer, Chief Training Officer and Associate Professor of Marine Engineering at Texas A&M University, and also earned a Master of Science degree. He rose to the position of International Sales & Engineering Specialist for Ingersoll-Rand Company for specialized compression systems in the nuclear, and chemical process industries. Retired from engineering in 1979, he pursued a Doctorate in Counseling Psychology, and had an opportunity to pursue a life long passion becoming an Executive Chef and Certified International Foodservice Executive, and managed and operated a succession of gourmet restaurants. Returning to Counseling he was Senior Clinical Counselor for the Delaware Dept. of Corrections, and moved to Chattanooga, TN where he practiced as Senior Clinical Counselor for Addiction at CADAS in Chattanooga, TN, and continues part time Addiction Counseling work in retirement.

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    Unexpected Odyssey - Klaus V. Luehning

    Unexpected Odyssey:

    Danzig to Tennessee

    Klaus V. Luehning

     Published by Klaus Luehninig at Smashwords

    Copyright 2014 Klaus Luehining

    Editor E.H. Petersen

    Copyright 2014 Klaus V. Luehning

    KVL Press Edition

    Dedicated to…

    …Susan Elizabeth Stein

    Acknowlegements

    This memoir was only possible with the patience and contributions, big and small, from these people that deserve some recognition. Robert Stevens who listened, and listened over many years, as I told him most of the stories while me hearing my own voice, trying to sense truth, veracity, interest, and exploring the depths of memory. My dinner guests over the years, subjected to my selected readings while drifting away in gastronomic delight waiting for dessert. To my life partner, Susan, who managed to put up with my disappearances into my workroom, read the drafts, read and comment on the final proofs, and to assist me in computer expertise I lacked when the text disappeared, and the mysteries of downloading and saving stuff. To Eric H. Petersen, my Editor, who undertook the considerable feats of getting this whipped into shape to be published. And finally to my sister Heike, who despite any misgivings for herself perhaps, encouraged rather than diverted me from this task of preserving part of the family history.

    Frontispiece

    John Fletcher

    The Sea Voyage, a play

    16th Century

    Alb. Better try all hazards,

    Than perish here remediless ; I feel

    New vigor in me, and a spirit that dares

    More than a man, to serve my fair Aminta ;

    These Arms shall be my oars, with which I'll swim ;

    And my zeal to save thy innocent self,

    Like wings, shall bear me up above the brackish waves.

    A bastardization for myself, as a life pursued-

    Better to try all hazards,

    Than perish without any remedies; I feel

    New vigor in me, and a spirit that dares,

    More than a man, to serve my fair destinies;

    These arms shall be my oars, with which I’ll swim

    And my zeal to save my not so innocent self,

    Like wings, shall bear me up above the brackish waves

    O ye powers! (for powers ye are, and great ones too)– which enable mortal man to tell a story worth the hearing–that kindly shew him, where he is to begin it– and where he is to end it–what he is to put into it–and what he is to leave out–how much of it he is to cast into a shade–and whereabouts he is to throw his light!

    Tristram Shandy, 1759, vols. 1-2

    Introduction

    The quote is from the title page of my mother ’s memoirs, passed on to me as a typewritten manuscript of 244 pages. I use it now because my story, like my mother ’s and Tristram Shandy’s, begins before my birth, though I was on the way, as was Tristram, and so, like Tristram I write ab ovo—from the egg. This will be the memoirs of my mother and myself as we remembered the days of living in a one-party political state, the Third Reich, with all of the attendant horrors.

    This story begins in the seaside town of Zoppot, in the Bay of Danzig, a port city, named after its larger quasi-political state, The Free State of Danzig, on the Baltic Sea. The town was a major European health spa and tourist attraction on the seaside, with piers and promenades for guests who went for the holidays, for those who could afford the expense of time and travel. It has the longest pier in Europe at 515 meters, and also a natural spring water containing bromide.

    This quasi-state or country, The Free State of Danzig, had been created after the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919, at the conclusion of World War I; and while it had been part of Poland properly, so many of the inhabitants were of German nationality, and the decision by the treaty nations deemed it to be more German than Poland in its population, so a nominal entity was created, a place that belonged neither to Germany nor Poland, but retained the character and independence of the majority population.

    Mutti, Heike, me, and my father

    The day I was born, as my mother told me, was an extremely cold one. It was February 1940, and as was the custom in Europe a mid-wife attended my arrival, with all of the usual mess and squalling; I was told, as well, that I was a gloriously fat and beautiful baby, and that my mother was very, very proud. My mother and father were citizens of Danzig, as was I, now at my birth. The more significant part of the story and in world history was prior to this.

    Zoppot was 15 kilometers west of the port city of Danzig, which was to play a crucial part of world history. In the months prior, and on the 1st of September 1939, in the Bay of Danzig, lay the German battleship the Schleswig-Holstein, a re-built World War I ship that had been refitted with new armor and new guns and other improvements to make her suitable for the more advanced forms of war at this time. Complemented with a full crew and captained by an Admiral, she was on a special mission for Adolf Hitler who was in Berlin, to begin the invasion of Poland. At 4:45 a.m. on the first day of September German Luftwaffe J-87s bombers began dropping bombs on targets in Poland. Five minutes later the Kriegsmarine ordered a naval bombardment of the Westerplatte, a military staging area for Poland. This was the beginning of World War II.

    SMS Schleswig-Holstein

    The city and state of Danzig had maintained the High German culture and High German language, and from the beginning of Adolph Hitler ’s rise to power, and beginning in 1936, the Nazi party had grown to control the political thinking of the population. This had always been an historical port city important to the Hanseatic League, and it was the entry to form the point of invasion for the German Nationalists. With the alliance between Russia and Germany just made prior to the invasion Poland was in the crosshairs of two invading nations.

    The story of my mother and father meeting and marrying will come later. Simply, he was the conductor of the symphony orchestra, and also a classical pianist of the first rank, who could have had a career as a classical performer on that instrument. He had been a teacher of music in the school where he met my mother. And so both met while he was a young man, and she a high school student, and upon her graduation, and a decent interval, as propriety demanded, they married.

    My father had been conscripted earlier by the Wehrmacht, and because of his obvious intellectual capacity, and being good with his hands, was made into a teletype operator. Not much mention was made of my father, who as time went on through the rest of my life, I would find out was not particularly interested in the baby and child rearing thing, and not too long after I was born he was consumed with the life in the army rather than following his chosen profession, with strict adherence to the refinements of classical music. He appeared at times from his military duties, and as a family we went to the beach and did all those kinds of things, but I have no memory of any of that of course being too young. However, there are persistent glimpses of him a little bit later on and there are some photographs, some of which I had not seen till after my mother ’s death. Earlier, my father was elected to take me to the Town Hall to have me registered and to have a birth certificate issued to formally announce my presence. In the ensuing bureaucratic fumbling, and my father ’s flustered state, the name that had been agreed upon, Volker Klaus Luehning, came out as Klaus Volker Luehning. My parents and grand parents, and friends consistently called me Volker, but the rest of that story of my name much later.

    I have a couple of persistent memories, one of which involved my father coming home from duty and being in the apartment in his uniform. My memories have me flitting from room to room and focused on the dining room, with table, chairs, white linens, and my toy box. French doors to the balcony and the side door to the kitchen, completes the scraps of visual recount. My mother somehow came across some live eels and they and my mother were fighting for individual survival in the kitchen, while my mother hacked away at them to put them into the pot with onions, bay leaf and vinegar to make Blauer Aal, that is Blue Eel. Blue eel was and still is a local favorite, where the vinegar causes some enzyme to turn the eel blue, and then eaten with considerable gusto. I still like eel. And, that is about it; my father went back to duty and then returned a couple of times in business suits. One of his visits, however, did result in the conception of my sister, Heike.

    My sister Heike was born, 11 January 1942, and she was by contrast not a very pretty baby, scrawny may be apt, and she was fussy, well that is too kind, actually she was crying in annoying and aggravating ways that eventually gave her a reputation throughout the environs, so that, if you heard a baby crying, the populace would say without prompt, …must be Heike. There are additional scraps of memory, one or two scenes on the beach as children, naked, since tots were, very naturally, allowed nude until they started school. Also rattan beach chairs everywhere, used somehow to change clothes on the beach. Then about 1943, late, my father disappeared, and came to find out much later that he had been captured by the Russians and disappeared from our lives. The life in Zoppot was not too bad early but quickly descended into privation for everyone, where all transportable goods, food and other provisions were confiscated and moved to the Vaterland for the Army and other services. Ration cards, barter, hoarding, lying, and innovation all became survival skills, and my mother appeared to be quite good at it all, having two young children to feed and keep safe on a Private’s income plus savings. How my mother managed is still a mystery to me, she gave up only bits and snatches of the struggle until she wrote her Memoir, to follow, including the Sugar Incident.

    My mother and a friend in the apartment house somehow came across a 50 Kilo sack of granulated sugar, a black market exercise engineered by another family friend by the name of Otto Kerner, a distiller of liqueurs by trade. They kept the sugar in a locked hall room on an upper floor of the building. This was in Zoppot, where my mother was summoned to Danzig by the SS for an interview, which took place in an empty theatre on stage. The stage had a plain table, couple of chairs and a shaved head bull-necked SS Officer as the interrogator. My mother once referred to him as coming from central casting, and looking like a much younger Erich Stroheim, he of silent and early talkie movies. He questioned my mother about a lost amount of sugar and had she heard and or seen any of it. Startled to be sure, she said what could he be talking about; there hadn’t been any sugar around for over a year. He made a pass at my mother, who then and through her life was a very good-looking woman of generous breasts and hips and slim waist, tall and self-assured in her identity. My mother explained, that she was a mother of two starving children at home in Zoppot and that she needed to get back to feed them, given how little there was to give them, and if he had children he would know the demands children make, etc., etc. He let her go without further incident, and my mother learned an acute lesson in keeping quiet, even amongst friends. You just never knew. She never found out how or by whom she was fingered, however, the culprit may have been Tante Lucie, who was a world class gossip, living in the same house.

    My maternal grandmother was Bertha Madler, born into a large family of four girls headed by Herr Madler, my Great Grandfather in Silesia. Herr Madler was an imposing man with acute business skills and a philosophy of life and accomplishment that was far ahead of his time. A man of considerable appetites, he was part of a number of love affairs that survived the telling, even down to me. He insisted that all the daughters learn a skill that would provide a living, and not one, that was usually relegated to women at the time in the late 1800s. So, Bertha and her sisters learned stenography to start and the other girls also learned skills that would be relevant to a changing society and the demands of industry. By and by, Herr Madler contracted with the Singer Sewing Machine Company and became the first manufacturer ’s representative for the product in Germany. He lived in Southern Germany in the State of Silesia.

    Bertha became infatuated with the machine and eventually became skilled enough to completely dismantle, replace parts, and reassemble the sewing machine on her own. She was sent out on her own, and became a mobile Singer Service Representative doing home visits and repairs. The continuation of the story now I will turn over to my mother who wrote a memoir, and since I was not involved, I will let her tell you in her own words. The incompleteness of my memories up to now, are due to young age and only spotty reporting by my mother. I presume she did this to keep from both of us children, the horrors and privations that were her responsibility, and not ours. In her last years before she died, surprisingly and for me unbelievably, she told me more and more of the background and her fears and her defiance against the stupidity and arrogance of the people she just wanted to get along with. She maintained her distance, even from us children in the years to come, afraid to be visited with more grief, horror, and displacement, away from a sense of place and purpose. In an effort to provide some background and history, let me give you, the reader the benefit of her memoirs that she wrote in 1988 and set the stage for my formative years and her support. Some of the background may be duplicated but, from her point of view, rather than mine. Her memoirs are italicized. My memories are in plain, not italic, text.

    Chapter 1

    Luehning Family Origins and Danzig

    Mutti

    The circumstances of my birth did not quite rival those of Tristram Shandy, but a comparison is not too far-fetched. There is a lot to be told of what went on before, during and after this event.

    World War I, World War II, I wonder how many lives have taken different turns, how many destinies have been altered in ways never dreamt of before. The year was 1916, the second year of World War I. My father was presumed to be fighting somewhere in France; I never met him nor he me. Not that he was killed, but he never returned after the end of the war; he simply abandoned my mother and only learned of my existence years later when he had been located after a search for legal reasons. He was a journalist, an editor of the Danziger Neueste Nachrichten, the largest newspaper there. How he came to the small town in Silesia where my mother lived, I do not know. But it seemed to have been a whirlwind courtship, and my mother, the oldest of four girls, was sent off to Danzig with him without too many tears.

    But these she soon shed herself. Mother was very homesick in the strange town and for the first time alone without her large family and friends. Quite a man about town, my father was out most evenings, leaving his mopey, teary-eyed bride to fuss with her dowry and write letters home. Soon after the outbreak of the war, he was drafted into the German Army and returned on only one furlough, just long enough to plant the seed of my existence in my mother’s womb. Mother was dismayed, not to say disgusted, when she found out about her condition. She wrote to her best and, as it turned out, lifelong friend to come to Zoppot/Danzig to share her large apartment and her loneliness. Tante Marianne, as I would call her, was also without her soldier husband.

    She was delighted to receive an invitation to come to Zoppot, which was an elegant, lively spa, about 20 minutes by train from the City of Danzig, located directly on the Baltic Sea. She soon arrived with her two small children and a housekeeper in tow. The two friends were quite different, but their characteristics complemented each other, and I have never known them to even have a misunderstanding. Tante Marianne was small, fine-boned, and exquisitely shaped. She had large brown eyes, a short upper lip over two rows of beautiful teeth, and very beautiful hands, all of which she used to utmost advantage. Tante Marianne was extraordinarily clever, brilliant in fact. Her first husband was the illegitimate son of a Russian ballerina and a Grand Duke. He met Tante Marianne when she was fifteen years old, the only child of a widowed mother, and not well off. He fell in love with her and sent her to his mother who in turn took great interest in the pretty, intelligent girl and sent her to a private, first-rate boarding school for three years.

    Tante Marianne never ceased acquiring knowledge. Every morning at least three or four newspapers were scattered about her bed, and the night table was always stacked with books on subjects ranging from antique china to Schopenhauer, from historic to current events. She became my godmother, my guardian, my mentor. Her example many times helped me to shore up my energies to stiffen my spine, and generally to look and strive up and up. She was also an engaging storyteller. With her lively, ever-changing face, the brown eyes sparkling with amusement, gleaming teeth, and the lovely hands that accompanied her tales, she was the center of attention. One tale she loved to tell with great dramatics was the event of my birth. The last time I heard her tell it, she was nearly 80 years old, her enthusiasm undiminished. (Her daughter finally put an end to it, fearing for her blood pressure.)

    My mother was quite different in all respects: tall, of comfortable proportion, very fashionable at the time, and, of an astounding sanguine disposition, (which I was lucky enough to inherit in some measure). She hardly ever made a decision, but let events carry her along, adjusting to circumstances with equanimity. She read a lot, especially the best sellers of her time; she loved to knit, drink strong coffee and smoke. That is how I remember her most: Sitting at a table, smoking and knitting, with a book propped up on a reading stand, a coffee cup on the side, and turning the pages of the book with her knitting needles. But Mother had charm and a wonderful wit. Her clever and amusing remarks surprised many a person who had not expected such alacrity hidden under such a complacent exterior. She was a great listener. Throughout her life, all kinds of people came to her to pour out their joys, troubles, frustrations, secret loves, important and tedious happenings. Mother listened, offered sympathy but never advice, and she never gossiped. She would have made a wonderful psychiatrist; instead she was a very competent stenographer.

    Grandfather, an absolutely remarkable man, made all his daughters learn this technique as soon as it was invented; they were the first in town to learn to ride a bicycle and operate a sewing machine, and I suppose today they would have learned computer programming. The newspaper my father had worked on asked Mother if she would be interested in taking down in shorthand the daily war reports, which were telephoned from Berlin to Danzig. She was delighted to use her skill and to receive some compensation, but more than that, to have a press card with the advantage of free entree to the many amusements Danzig and Zoppot had to offer. Especially with Tante Marianne as companion, the two ladies chaperoning each other participated in a great many entertainments, a silver twirling stick, used to force out the bubbles in a glass of champagne, was kept as a memento of this gay interval between bad times. The pregnancy was corseted away as much as possible and as long as possible. In the meantime I was floating happily in my watery bubble, taking nutrition from the boiled turnips, which was about all Mother had to eat. In fact, I was called the turnip kid for quite a while after I had made my entry into the world. This I started to do late evening of August 7, slowly burrowing my way through the available channels and causing Mother considerable pain.

    The maid was sent to fetch a carriage for the trip to the hospital, nine kilometers away. It took quite a long time to find a vehicle; it was wartime and the height of the season in fashionable Zoppot. Mother managed the two flights of stairs, ascended into the horse and buggy, lasted for a short time while the wagon rolled over the cobblestones, then cried out loudly and there I was. The afterbirth followed soon, and I lay in a morass of blood and mush. Mother made a feeble attempt to dunk my head into the mess, but Tante Marianne lifted it so I could breathe.

    Mother’s gesture may seem inconceivable, but having given birth twice while fully conscious, I can understand it.

    While I did not experience the same urge, for my circumstances were quite different, I vividly recall the revulsion I felt when something slimy slid out of my vulva, a primal reaction to being just an animal for a witness to this spectacle (able-bodied men were scarce during time of war); they were resourceful enough to find a plank and blanket to place Mother and me on this makeshift stretcher and then carry us up the two flights of stairs to her apartment. The housekeeper was sent to get a doctor. In came Sanitaetsrat Dr. Wagner, a calcified, old gentleman who was already resentful for having been called in the middle of the night, for by that time it was about 1:00 a.m., and now had to mount two flights of stairs. At this point a bizarre scene was enacted. The doctor refused to cut the navel cord; he insisted that this was the job and duty of a midwife. Tante Marianne pleaded with him, Mother was moaning, and the weeping maid sat in the corner of the room, wringing her hands, making the sign of the cross and saying Hail Mary’s. In desperation, Tante Marianne grabbed my father’s long, paper-cutting editorial scissors and threatened to do the cutting herself. Old Dr. Wagner remained unmoved at the sight of one woman bleeding steadily and another one, close to hysterics, wielding a dangerous weapon. There was nothing to be gained by further negotiations; the maid was useless, so Tante Marianne ran out into the street to fetch the midwife herself.

    It so happened that the nightclub across the street had just let out its star performer, a very popular, dapper gentleman, complete with straw hat, monocle, boutonniere and bamboo cane. My aunt, petite, pretty, resolute and obviously distraught, stopped him and said, This is a matter of life and death. My friend is dying in childbirth; you must get a midwife. The nightclub star dropped his monocle, but he was still able to recognize genuine distress and corralled the bar bouncer to show him the way. A short time later, Mrs. Kummerer, the midwife, arrived and cut me loose at last, wrapped me in some cloth, and deposited me on the kitchen table.

    She and the doctor tended to Mother and for a while I was forgotten. It speaks for the solid constitution of mother and daughter and since that day, neither one of us was ever seriously ill. However, when the newborn was finally looked at, she (or I) had developed yellow jaundice. The next day a vicar was hailed to administer an emergency baptism. The name Ilse had just become fashionable, and it was suggested. This is not a Catholic name, said the vicar; I cannot give a name like that to a girl who expects to be accepted by the holy society of the Catholic Church. It is heathenish! An argument ensued, but no agreement could be reached between Mother, the vicar, and my aunt. Meanwhile I was becoming yellower and more wrinkled by the minute. Finally, in desperation, Tante Marianne said, Who is holier and more Catholic than the Virgin Mary? Let’s add on ‘Maria’ to the heathen name. And so I was baptized Ilsemaria, feeling duped, though, the vicar got even. He exclaimed, I have never seen an uglier baby in my life. A yellow, wrinkled monkey and with an impossible, unholy name to boot.

    The ladies sent the Star performer a basket of flowers with thanks on the occasion of his last performance, and for a while followed his career. Zoppot was a Rest and Recreation spot for German officers or furlough or who were slightly wounded and who found the mild salt water of the Baltic, the therapeutic bathing facilities, the sanatoriums, ideally suited for their recuperation, while the healthy men found entertainment on the beaches, in nightclubs and in the gambling casino. All of the natives rented out rooms during the season. Mother, who was left with a large apartment, was no exception. She rented a room to a young, handsome officer who had been superficially wounded on the Western Front, in France, and who had been sent to Zoppot for a short sick leave. Mother and he fell in love. Though their affair was a brief one, it was serious. Hans Mingat wrote to Mother after he had returned to his unit in the field, keeping their sentiments alive, thereby providing a much needed moral support to the young wife, left with an infant, who seemed to have been abandoned by her husband. Hans Mingat was taken prisoner during the last days of the war, November 1918; He spent the next three years in an English prison camp and did not return until 1921, but then straight to Zoppot and Mother.

    The war ended; Mother’s husband, my father, did not return. Mother made frequent trips with me back to her hometown. I do not know how many times we went from Zoppot to Frankenstein in Silesia. I was the first grandchild born into the family, and from the very beginning I was loved by my grandparents, uncles, aunts, cooks, maids, and whoever, and I in turn loved them. Frankenstein became my second home, and later in life my refuge and place of solace. In fact, this deep affection for people and place has lasted until today.

    Our travels became more and more difficult. The Treaty of Versailles decreed that the newly created State of Poland should have access to the Baltic Sea. A slice of West Prussia was cut out for this purpose, creating the Polish Corridor, a hallway leading from the coal mines of Upper Silesia into the newly built harbor of Gdynia on the Baltic. This left Danzig a tiny conclave between Poland and East Prussia. What to do with it? The solution was found or inspired by the Middle Ages when Danzig had been a Free City as a member of the mighty German Hansa Bund. So the Free State of Danzig was created, comprising the city itself and some of the surrounding territories. This solution may have been convenient for the gentlemen around the conference table at Versailles, but for us burghers it was a source of unending complications.

    Our nationality was that of ‘Free State of Danzig,’ and so read our passports; the currency was named Gulden, another medieval throwback/and although the Poles had their own post office in Danzig, we had our own postage stamps. The Poles controlled and collected Customs, and as further privilege, they were given a small island in the midst of Danzig harbor, the Westerplatte, which they turned into a munitions dump. (It later became famous as the first dive-bomber target by the German Luftwaffe at the very beginning of World War II.) Danzig, with its natural harbor and strategic position at the crossroads of Scandinavia and Eastern and Southern Europe, had been a prosperous city for centuries. Unlike Germany, which had been split into innumerable principalities, each ruled by major and minor nobilities until Bismarck united them into the German Reich, Danzig was always ruled by its merchant burghers, patrician families who showed their wealth by their magnificent homes and the public buildings that they erected with pride and astoundingly good taste. Danzig’s Backstein Gothic architecture was famous throughout Europe, and although more than 90 percent of it was destroyed during World War II, it was rebuilt in part by the Poles, in collaboration with German architects and craftsmen.

    To travel to and from Germany in those days, one had to traverse the Polish Corridor. This was rich agricultural country farmed by German landowners who did not take kindly to being told that they were Polish now, and for a number of years there were incidents, violence, and even atrocities on both sides. Poland, which as a nation had not existed since 1815, now tried to create its own economy and was eager to market its newly manufactured goods, despite the fact that they were expensive and, in the beginning, shoddy. To boost sales, they imposed a heavy duty on all goods, other than their own imported into Danzig. Travelers from Danzig, when leaving the Free State and entering the Polish Corridor, went through passport, visa and baggage control and repeated the process when they left the Corridor and entered Germany. The procedure was reversed on the return, when the train was often stalled for hours while Polish custom officials searched for smuggled merchandise. In the first years after 1918, the compartments of the trains traversing the Corridor were literally locked from the outside, as much to prevent violence as smuggling.

    I could not have been more than four years old, but I vividly remember an incident when Mother was singled out by Customs at the German/Polish border and led into a wooden shack. She was bodily searched for contraband while I waited outside on the station platform; it was dark, rainy and cold. Polish soldiers were patrolling up and down with not only rifles over their shoulders, but bayonets fixed which glistened in the feeble light of the few lamps swinging in the wind. At length, I heard Mother calling me; she could not close the laces of her corset. I climbed on the low bench, the only piece of furniture in the hut, and pulled with all my strength on the corset strings so that Mother could fit into her tailored clothes again. The Custom officials were pounding on the door that we should hurry, for the train was leaving. Having found nothing of interest, they had lost patience with their own procedure.

    Twenty years later, I also was bodily searched at the border, but at that time by German custom officials who suspected I was smuggling money out of the country contrary to Hitler’s orders. In those early years after the war, we all smuggled as much as possible from Germany to Danzig—food, clothes, even toothpaste. The border towns had small cafes with large toilet facilities, where we could shed the old clothes we had worn at the beginning of our trip and adorn ourselves with the newly purchased merchandise, to the frustration of the Polish custom officers who could not very well strip us naked. Mother bought our first Telefunken radio somewhere in Germany, and, falsely garbed in widow’s veils, smuggled the box on her lap concealed by the flowing tulles. It still played 40 years later.

    Childhood, school years, these were no different from those of thousands of other young girls. Zoppot was a lovely place in which to grow up. It lived its own small- town life during nine months of the year, swelling during the summer season into a worldly metropolis. A fast living, monied crowd from Berlin and Warsaw peopled the gambling casino, nightclubs, hotels, racetracks, tennis courts and beaches. Families with children, escaping from the inland heat, frolicked in the sea; elegant ladies and gentlemen promenaded on the boardwalk; and old German gentry sat in cafes and confided that they had been invited to the villa of the German Crown Prince for tea. International cruise ships stopped at Zoppot and unloaded their passengers to gamble, swim/and strip the stores of any amber trinket displayed.

    For the more serious and culturally minded, there were performances of Richard Wagner’s operas in the Open Air Theater. The theater was a large round in the middle of the mixed needle and leaf forest, which began just about where the last villas of some of the locals ended. It had excellent acoustics and was a highly professional establishment. All the great Wagner singers of the time performed there. I have heard Kirsten Flagstad, Lotte Lehman, Gertrud Bindernagel, Lawrence, Melchior, Emanuel Liszt, Max Lorenz, Gotthelf Pistor and many more. The stage was superbly suited for Wagner; it did not need many props—the hills, the rocks, the trees were all provided by nature. The performances started late after darkness had fallen, and the moon and the stars added to the romantic atmosphere. I heard countless performances over the years, getting free standing room tickets from Onkel Hans, whose hobby it was to sing as volunteer in the chorus, be it as pilgrim in Tannhauser, or as tailor in the Meistersingers’ parade of the medieval Nuernberg guilds. Standing room meant lying on a blanket under the trees with a libretto and a flashlight, not doing much watching, but listening to the wonderful music on sound waves which carried the lowest pianissimo completely and distinctly.

    I mentioned Onkel Hans. If you have not guessed, he was the officer who returned from England in 1921 and subsequently lived with my mother without any legal or other arrangement for ten years until he married her. He was an enigmatic paradox (a bombastic description, but quite accurate). Choleric by temperament, he was a pedant by nature, a devout Catholic, intolerant, unreasonable, and a hypocrite. He was also loyal, generous, very much his own individual, a sound scholar, a good teacher, and blessed or cursed with a stentorian voice.

    At first, nobody thought much about his and Mother’s arrangement. In Zoppot everybody rented rooms during the season, and it was not unusual for ladies to have a male summer guest. But their togetherness continued. Mother’s guest stayed on; he worked on his doctorate and taught at a local teachers’ college. He occupied his own two rooms; I slept with Mother and called the boarder Onkel Hans. After their marriage, I stopped saying Onkel, but never addressed him in any other way but you.

    Hans Mingat’s field was the history of religion, Catholicism in particular. This was the root of the trouble. As a devout and fierce believer in his religion, he lived in perpetual sin with my still-married-to-another mother. His devotion to her on the one hand and to his faith on the other led to an internal conflict, which erupted frequently in terrible tantrums. The frustration he must have felt was genuine enough, but the subjects he chose on which to vent his anger were mostly petty and often ridiculous. A salt cellar not in the right place, an innocent statement he did not agree with, a small item which needed to be bought, could lead to choleric tirades which could last for hours. Mother let these more or less wash over her; she would insert a well-pointed barb once in a while for him to change the subject, and otherwise resigned herself to listening for another hour. They made peace, of course, never looked elsewhere for a different companion, and stayed together to the last. But I was not part of that process and remained a sullen and resentful witness. I sided with Mother and loathed Onkel Hans. If it was something then of a game that the grown-ups played, at least in their younger years, it left a mark on me, who witnessed the harrowing scenes, but did not participate in the sweet, healing process of peacemaking. When even Mother had enough of the yelling, she packed a bag and took the train to Berlin to stay with Tante Marianne for a week. Onkel Hans was desolate without his sounding board, and when Mother returned, peace reigned for a while.

    Tante Marianne, meanwhile, had lived through her own trauma. Both her children died in a scarlet fever epidemic. Being alone, her husband fighting in the German army on the Russian front, she fell in love with a physician she had consulted about her sufferings, and subsequently married him after a divorce from her returning soldier. They remained friends though, and I knew both Onkel Henning, the second husband, and Onkel Fjedor, the first one. With Mother and Tante Marianne, the two most influential women in my life, both in their marital situations victims of the war, taking advantage of it, being taken advantage of, will you be surprised if I later emulated their behavior and more, developed a permanent kind of cavalier attitude toward marriage.

    In turn, when the relationship between Onkel Hans and me became too strained, I was sent to Frankenstein to grandparents and aunts for a cooling-off period. There I blossomed and sparkled and bathed in the atmosphere of love and pity with which my doting relatives surrounded me. Mother, half out of being in love, half out of indolence, made no move to change the status quo. After all, Onkel Hans, who in the meantime had become a professor with tenure, provided for us three.

    Mother had a knack for acquiring and keeping servants. Through good and bad times, there was always somebody utterly devoted to her who peeled the potatoes and washed the floors and windows. By seemingly doing nothing, she ran a smooth, orderly household and set a fine table. In contrast, the finances at home were disastrous. Neither she nor Onkel Hans had any business sense or knew how to handle money. After their marriage things improved, but until then, they always ran out of funds before the next ones came in. They borrowed from less well-off people and many a time our housemaid had to help with the rent. It left me with a lifelong horror of having debts.

    Their money was spent on having a good time and what that entails. Without the legality of marriage, the loose arrangement of living together seemed to infect or affect any fiscal responsibility. Onkel Hans was generous with me. Private school, dancing lessons, handmade wooden skis when langlauf(cross-country) became fashionable, membership in the local tennis club; all that which was expected from a man in his position to bestow on a daughter and more. But here again, his unreasonableness erupted with predictable frequency. Although he had given these luxuries generously and willingly, the resentment he perhaps felt came to the fore whenever I needed a small item, something inexpensive as a new writing pad, a pen, or the like. Then he would fly into one of his terrible rages; dark red in the face he would scream accusations, hurl insults and reiterate the abuse he had received at the hands of his mother and in the Catholic seminary where he spent some of his study years. I have heard the same words so many times that I could recite all of them today.

    It seemed that in this fashion his body rid itself of all that could have harmed it. Onkel Hans was never sick a day in his life, and he died 10 days after his 90th birthday. He left a legacy of anecdotes, having been a generous host and charming guest, handsome, well-groomed and vain. He was a welcome visitor, vociferous when it came to politics, but gallant and suave to the ladies and an excellent after dinner speaker. After Mother died, he took to serious drinking and carousing with equally loose companions. He carried on more like a dissolute student than a serious professor. If his conduct in later years became nearly scandalous, so were the circumstances in which he lived with Mother for ten years simply as boarder. But they managed to rise above all such absurdities, and it took some strenuous efforts on the part of Tante Marianne to goad them into making the necessary efforts to locate my father in Germany and for Mother to finally obtain a divorce. I was 14 years old when Onkel Hans and she were married. The only time I knew Mother to feel terribly embarrassed was when she had to go to the principal of my school, a strait-laced old maid if there ever was one, and tell her that her name had changed and that my 0nkel was not her brother but her old lover and new husband. I stopped saying Onkel Hans and never addressed him in any other way but you. Many years later, when feelings had calmed down, I spoke of him as mein Vater, although not to his face. However, for the sake of this narrative, I shall refer to him from now on as Vater which I hope will not be too confusing for the reader.

    Still, when there is talk about the two of them, Mother and Vater, among our family and acquaintances, it is with a smile, and it is not unusual that we roll with laughter. For instance, no matter how much yelling there had been during the day, peace had to be made every evening, even though the altercation might be continued the next day, because every night at 11 o’clock or later, Mother and Vater went for a walk. No matter the weather. Rain, storm, snow or worse, out they went.

    In Zoppot, of course, there was the long Seesteg, or boardwalk, which went far out into the sea, the longest in Europe, long enough for medium size ships to dock there. Through the years, Vater saved a few would-be suicides who had lost all their money in the casino and were contemplating jumping into the water in the dark of the night, to drown both their losses and themselves. He gave them enough money to telephone or telegraph home for carfare or bail money. Quite a few times he got his money back with a thank-you note. They continued this nightly ritual in Frankfurt and in Hoechst, where they finally moved to, even if their walks were not in as attractive surroundings as in lovely Zoppot.

    I stayed in one school from the first day to the last, with many of the same teachers, mostly old maids. The few gentlemen among them could be placed into the same category, and many of my classmates remained the same also. We flirted with the boys from the gymnasium, swam, skated, skied and danced together. When we went to a dance, a graduation ball or such, four or five of us girls would go together, with a chaperone of course. Mother loved to be one, she liked to stay up anyway and I was popular enough to be asked to dance every dance, so she basked in my popularity and enjoyed the frolicking of the young crowd.

    I formed a more serious relationship with a boy named Rupprecht, it consisted of our going for long, long walks, talking, confiding, discussing and, at the most, exchanging sweet and tender kisses. Such was the innocence of that period that we could be in each other’s company almost daily and for hours and nothing happened but long, ardent, sweet and innocent kisses. Nobody I knew had the desire or urge to go any farther, but of course this reticence was easier in those days. There was no enlightenment on the subject of sex, and no stimulation from magazines, films or any of the other media. As it turned out, my abysmal ignorance of male behavior later got me into a lot of trouble, but I don’t regret it as much as I cherish the memories of our innocent bliss.

    I mention Rupprecht Scheunemann because of one incident, and must also name another boy in our clique, Ulrich Baecker, who taught me how to play tennis and who later on played a significant part in all our lives. I was also a friend of Rupprecht’s sister and was often invited into their parents’ home. Rupprecht’s father was a supreme court judge in Danzig, and was deeply suspicious of the growing Nazism in Germany and the insidious infiltration of its missionaries into Danzig. Rupprecht shared his feelings, in contrast with many other father-son relationships I knew of at the time, where violent family quarrels were the order of the day because of different political views.

    Rupprecht went to the university in Goettingen, his father’s alma mater, to study medicine. We exchanged some letters, but our teenage romance was over; only a friendship remained. He became a children’s doctor and was killed soon after the beginning of the war in Belgirni. I still sometimes think with nostalgia of the enchanted hours I spent leaning with my head against his shoulder and breathing the familiar smell of his suits, a mixture of cigarette smoke and heather. His mother handwove all suit materials for her husband and son,which gave them a texture and odor all their own.

    The incident I spoke of, a moment only, happened one summer Sunday. My parents being away on one of their junkets, I had been invited to Rupprecht’s home for luncheon. I was tanned and wore a new blue and white flowered dress; at 15 years of age, how else can you look but young and appealing? I had felt the father’s eyes on me several times during the meal. Afterwards he asked me to come with him to look at his rosebushes and, in the garden, he touched the bare skin of my arm. Rupprecht’s mother came down the path and saw his gesture. She looked at me with a wistful smile, never to be forgotten, which, instead of creating awkwardness had it been of a different nature, formed a bond between us, an understanding of the inescapability of flesh aging and the eternal longing of the human spirit for youth. These few seconds taught me more about human nature than long texts and lectures could have done. I could not have formulated my feelings at the time, but it seemed that I grasped the necessity or even obligation that are necessary in the relationships between men and women, and especially between husband and wife, a sort of motherly indulgence that is usually reserved for one’s children, a magnanimity of heart and spirit. I applied it later, but unfortunately in the wrong place to the wrong person.

    Chapter 2

    HEINZ

    While Rupprecht was fading out of my life, the man who would be my husband appeared on the scene. Heinz Luehning was 24 years old and I was 16. He was asked by the Danzig school board to do some substitute lecturing at our lyceum while our female music professor had a nervous breakdown and was sent to a sanatorium for her health. We were told that she had a heart attack, but we knew of course that her affair with a local dentist had ended and her heart was affected more by a romance gone sour than by physical illness.

    Heinz had just arrived in Danzig, fresh from universities in Berlin and Leipzig. It didn’t take long for him to make an impact on the musical scene. He was asked to write the music critiques for a Danzig newspaper, won a competition to conduct the largest choir, some 120 men and women; and lectured at a teachers’ college. At the time he was still undecided to stay in the teaching profession or to choose a conducting career, but subsequent events decided this for him. Our stern lady principal was aghast to let a young gentleman, an artiste to boot, into our midst, but she was assured that Mr. Luehning was eminently proper and his behavior without fault. This turned out to be the truth, except for one casualty—I.

    The sensation he caused in our female bastion is hard to describe. There he was, tall, slim, elegant, dark, and handsome. He played the piano, he sang, he conducted and led our less than mediocre choir to unknown artistic heights, and he broke every heart in the school. Some of the younger girls became hysterical and burst into tears at the very sight of him; his simply walking back from the auditorium to the teachers’ lounge was a major event, plotted by his adoring female pupils as to when, where and how, much like a media spectacle of today. He noticed me not by any outstanding physical attributes, but by my literary skills. I was the acknowledged scribe in school, or expert in the printed word, having read anything and everything as an only and lonely child will do. Some of my essays were circulated among the teachers, and it just so happened that one of these came into Heinz’ hands. He asked that I should be pointed out to him, and having located me in the class of sophomores, he directed more glances my way than were necessary during his lectures. I noticed, but pretended not to; too proud to join in the general adulation, or too wily? I don’t know. I was smitten by his long legs, but did not give the matter any serious consideration, because of his age, profession, and the taboo on any teacher/pupil relationship. Heinz was at our school from Christmas to Easter, once a week for a few hours, not a lot of time to develop even a flirt. Indeed, we never exchanged a word, except on the last day we happened to meet on a stairway. He said, Perhaps we will see each other again, and I curtly replied, Then you will have to come to Zoppot.

    Little things make for large happenings. Our school custodian celebrated an anniversary that day and had invited the teaching staff to punch and cookies. Heinz joined the party, and after imbibing some glasses of the heady concoction, went home and wrote me a very formal letter (come to think of it, he had to have ascertained my home address) asking for a date. The year was 1934; we married in 1939. Heinz has not changed until today; even now he needs a glass of wine or two to be inspired enough to come out of his protective cocoon, where he hides so as not to be touched, not to be soiled, not to be hurt in his artistic sensibilities. When asked to describe him, I had and have a stereotyped answer: He is a commanding force in front of an orchestra and a huge choir, but he cannot tell a waiter that his soup is cold.

    We had our first date. Mother gave me a few coins to take the train to Oliva, the next suburb, so Heinz and I could meet in an out-of-the-way place, so as not to be seen together and, equally important, not to be discovered by Vater. It was a memorable first meeting. We walked for four hours, talking, getting acquainted. He asked my religious faith, and when I said Catholic, he stopped short. It seemed he had already made up his mind to become very serious, and my Catholicism could be an important deterrent. When we parted on the railway platform, I taking the train back to Zoppot and he in the other direction to Danzig. He said, We should have really had a cup of coffee somewhere, and I, a little surly, Indeed. After four hours walking and talking I was tired, thirsty, and thought that because of the matter of faith this would be the end of the whole affair. But not so, an unusual courtship ensued. We continued to meet in out-of-the-way places, Mother supplying the coins for fare and, as Ringelnatz said, fuer Tram und mal Muessen. And so we progressed as far as winding up in some cafe, having a cup of coffee, a piece of cake, and a cigarette for each, the cigarettes being served on a plate by a waitress.

    For months I waited patiently, and finally impatiently, to be kissed, but that was a long time in coming. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask, Don’t you want to kiss me? when he began to talk of his student days in Leipzig, when his landlady’s daughter had had the audacity to come into his room for this same or even more immoral purposes. Obviously, I never posed the question. Meanwhile, Heinz was preparing a concert, and he asked me to meet him after one rehearsal. I was early and waited outside the hall, when I overheard someone inside interrupting the playing and singing in a very loud voice and exhorting the assembly even above the full sound of orchestra and choir. I finally realized that it was Heinz, who, in his element, was in full command of his conductorship and swung his baton with the authority of a dictator. This first time that I saw and heard Heinz making music, made a deep impression on me; I think I fell in love with him at that moment. I realized that there was more to Heinz Luehning than a shy, nice, but somewhat boring young man. In time I learned that the tender mimosa-like shoot of his character was twined around a stem of steel, his will.

    After a few more months of clandestine meetings, there was no postponing meeting Vater, who as an amateur musician could be logically invited as a special guest to a concert followed by a dinner-dance. Their meeting went well. Heinz danced every dance with me, while several members of the female part of his choir were seen sobbing into their handkerchiefs behind doors and in hallways. From then on our courtship took on a different aspect, namely Heinz spent every free moment in our home. I did my homework, he played at cards with my parents, we listened to the radio when classical music was broadcast, and increasingly, we listened to the ‘long harangues of Hitler’ s speeches.

    I will speak of the development of Nazism from my point of view later on, but let me finish the saga of Heinz and me. I graduated and found that the college in Danzig had no suitable program to offer for the study of Library Science that I had chosen. This was only one of the reasons Vater applied for a transfer to Germany. Another one was his marital status which ironically had become more of an embarrassment after his marriage to Mother than it had been before. But most of all, it was his political views which he made abundantly clear, not only in private but in public. As a Catholic and by his very nature he regarded Hitler as the devil himself. He became so violent about the housepainter, the upstart, the hellish pied-piper, that in 1935 it was suggested that he leave the university and disappear somewhere into Germany where he was not known and to keep his views to himself. However, his reputation preceded him, his career was finished being shunted from school to school, and he was lucky enough to receive a pension after an early retirement. Mother and he established their residence in Frankfurt/ Hoechst and loved their new habitat from the beginning. I was reluctant to go with them. It was decided that I could remain for a year in Danzig, take courses at the University and look forward to becoming engaged to Heinz. Mother took great pains to find the most respectable Pensione for me.

    The one she chose was quite high class, but not quite so respectable after all. The owner was an elegant lesbian, a fact that I dimly perceived after many months, and my neighbor was a young opera singer who had come from Germany to sing the title part in Aida. She practiced one particular cadenza on end and was having an affair with the tenor. When her husband unexpectedly arrived, he was ushered into my room while things were untangled next door. The husband was a writer, and by chance I had read one of his articles in a magazine, and I had mentioned it. The subterfuge worked very well; we talked about literature, and he was flattered to find an admirer close to home, so to speak.

    The singer and her tenor were kindly disposed toward me. I received some free tickets, and for a costume ball at the university where Heinz lectured they painted me with stage makeup to give my home-made, semi-Chinese costume some authenticity. They succeeded so well that Heinz refused to be seen with me. No matter; once the band had left, Heinz would sit at the piano anyway and play for hours while we die-hards danced. At so many official and private parties, if Heinz could find a grand piano that was tuned, it was his pleasure to play. His career continued to gain in importance, and finally we became engaged. My parents came from Frankfurt to Danzig for the occasion, and there was talk about an early marriage.

    Heinz’ mother, his sisters, were all agreeable and there did not seem to be any obstacles. Mother started to accumulate the necessities for an elaborate dowry. I don’t even know if it was still the universal custom at that period to endow daughters with crystal, china, silver, embroidered initialed linens, silk down coverlets, furniture, rugs and many what-nots, but that is how we did it. And now again, it happened, one of those unexpected, strange things, where the Danzig phenomenon twisted destinies into a different direction. Since the sizable dowry had to be shipped from Frankfurt to Danzig, it was in fact passing through Polish customs as an export and as such was levied with a hefty duty. If, however, I was registered in Germany for two years as a resident, then all items would be labeled dowry and could be shipped to Danzig duty-free. I was 19, Vater refused to pay the high cost of duty, so I moved to Frankfurt/Hoechst to establish the two-year residency. It speaks for the non-urgency of Heinz’s and my relationship that we accepted this arrangement without resistance. In his one-woman devotion, Heinz traveled back and forth to see me, not doing much more than playing cards

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