Grandma

It looks like my 91-year old grandma might be dying. We do not know exactly what it is, but she probably developed an infection in her lungs, so that fluid got into her lungs. This was her situation when she arrived at the hospital on Thursday. Today her heart showed signs of weakness.  My mom and aunt are with her. This is not fair, because she promised to be at my wedding and promises have to be kept!!!!! (Prayers would be appreciated)

Last spring I wrote about her in one of my papers. It deals with her quest to become a teacher in World War 2. I know it is long, but decided to post it to honor her today.

On Becoming a Teacher in World War II- Memories of my grandmother

Growing up my younger brother and I absolutely adored our maternal grandmother, who we lovingly called “grandma- hurting- knee” because of a leg injury she had contracted during her studies to become a teacher and which could not be properly operated on during those hard war years. My grandma lived in the suburbs of Stuttgart. In fact, she had spent her entire life in the area around Stuttgart. She was born in Calw, which is located in the west of Stuttgart, and spent her entire childhood there. As a young child I was fascinated by the stories she told me about swimming in the river Nagold or going down the hills on a sledge for hours after school in winter. I was captivated by the world she seemed to have a grown up in as it sounded like a safe world where rivers where clean enough to swim in and one did not have to do too much homework to keep oneself too busy after school. When my grandmother was 14, the family moved to a huge house in Bad Cannstatt they were assigned to because of her father’s position as senior customs inspector, but at some point during the  years of the Second World War, the US army confiscated the house which left her traumatized until today. Whenever she told me stories about her youth she stared longingly at the picture of this house on her wall.

            Since my grandma lived in the south of Germany, I mostly saw her during the summer 

 months when my family would visit her for a week or whenever she spent a few days at our house. Despite of the stories about her idyllic childhood, I greatly admired her for becoming a teacher as this has been my dream job since I have been a small child. At one point, I must have been around eight or nine; she presented me with a photo. I cannot remember the exact occasion I was presented with it, yet I know that we often talked about school and being a teacher. My grandmother, again, made her years as a teacher sound quite ideal which is also the impression I got from the aforementioned picture. In the black- and- white picture one can see my grandmother sitting in a field of flowers, surrounded by several little girls in dresses. In the background some boys are playing around a nearby tree. It is probably around summer time and the class might be on a field trip or could have just gone on a walk in the area around the school. The children seem about seven or eight years old and are smiling happily into the camera. I always knew that the picture must have been taken sometime during the war since the year 1943 and the place it was taken is scribbled on the back, which lead me to believe that at least for some people, like my grandma and her students, the war was not as hard as it is usually described. One usually only hears about the death camps and the bombs which destroyed entire cities, but my grandmother always also told me about the good things she experienced during the war like the genuine admiration she received from these children.       
            After receiving the picture I put it on my desk and occasionally studied the happy faces. Today, my 90- year- old- grandmother lives in a retirement home near my parents. Whenever I visit her she is very interested in how my studies are going and immediately starts to talk about her time becoming a teacher. Although she usually tells me the same stories over and over again and cannot answer any questions about details I am interested in, her passion is obvious. Thus, after only hearing pieces of the story for years and becoming a teacher myself, I decided to visit my grandmother and present her with the photo to find out more about the circumstances leading up to it.

            After graduating from High School in 1940 my grandmother went to work for a farmer in Bruchsaal for half a year since all young women and men had to serve in the “Reichsarbeitsdienst” (Reich Labor Service) for half a year during the time of the Nazi Regime. Upon arriving, she only knew little about what to expect. In the beginning she worked a lot on the field, yet, her main task quickly became taking care of the family’s four children since the farmer’s wife was sick and often could not leave the bed for weeks. Although the work was tough and she was not used to being in a servant’s position, my grandmother’s desire to become a teacher grew even stronger during her time with the family. Consequently, she enrolled in a shortened two year program to become a primary school teacher in 1941. As her main subject she chose “HHT” (Handarbeit, Hauswerk & Turnen) since she had  inherited the passion for sewing and knitting from her mother and generally enjoyed a very active lifestyle. Yet, she originally had planned to study sports in Munich and had already passed the entrance examination when she hurt her knew while skiing in the winter. From then on she had to limit her athletic activities.

            During the first year my grandmother lived in a room at the school she shared with a friend. In the second year she was assigned two rooms in a house of a veterinarian who was forced to rent his vacant rooms to students. Together with her friend, my grandmother enjoyed a living room heated by fire and a very cold bedroom where she read novels during many nights with a torch. Since she took cooking lessons at school, it was her and her classmates’ task to cook for the whole school which gave her the opportunity to sneak portions of the already rationed food. In addition, her swimming skills were also encouraged since her class went to a swimming pool in Stuttgart every Saturday. Again, my grandmother recalls being quite good at it since her own grandmother had taken her to a pool regularly during her childhood where she was able to learn how to swim at age ten, which was uncommon back then. During her studies she additionally was very active in the “Bund Deutscher Mädel” (League of German Girls) where she taught lessons and organized activities. Yet, at the two occasions she saw Hitler in person she remembers being  shocked by his gestures and the way he spoke.
            Her favourite stories to tell me about this time are those of her two main examinations towards the end of the two year program. Since teachers at this time had to be able to teach all subjects, my grandmother had to teach a lesson about the different skin layers for which she managed to get huge wall charts which were hard to get hand on at this time. In the second exam she had to talk about the Hitler’s Balkans expedition. The evening before she simply drew the whole map of the region on the board and erased it. Yet, one could still slightly see it so all she had to do the next day was repaint it. Her examiners were impressed.         
            Afterwards, at age 22, she was a fully trained teacher and was given a position at a small primary school in Wäschenbeuren where the aforesaid picture was taken. Upon arriving at the station, she had to walk 12 kilometres with her suitcase and backpack as many tracks were destroyed by the bombs and the station nearest to the little town was not reachable. After the memorable hike she was to meet the school’s principal to get assigned a room. The room was fully furnished and when she left Wäschenbeuren her father kept paying for the room and her parents fled to it when Stuttgart was evacuated. Since many male teachers were gone, she had to teach all subjects in her first grade. Before she arrived in the morning, another woman would heat the oven in her classroom so she and the about forty girls and boys never had to freeze. As she had expected my grandmother enjoyed working with the children who she describes as well- behaved. She proudly recalls that she never hit them although this kind of punishment was still common practice then. In the mornings some of them would await her in front of the house she was living in. One would carry her bag while the others would take her hand and lead her to school. This was all she had ever wanted. At the weekends she usually travelled to Bad Cannstatt to see her parents and brother.           
            After only half a year, in early autumn, my grandmother was ordered to accept a different position in Wüstenrot. At this time it was quite common for teachers, especially the young unmarried ones, to be sent around the region as more and more male teachers had to swap the classroom with a dugout. In Wüstenrot she was close friends with a doctor’s family. In the summers she went to the swimming pool with the wife and her daughters and once she went to the circus with them. After the show a handsome artist, who previously had performed on the trapeze, asked her to go out with him. Yet, she declined because she was hoping for a different guy who sadly died in the war. For lunch the teachers were sent to the different restaurants in the town which by now were closed for the public. It was the restaurant owners’ obligation to feed the local teachers. My grandmother enjoyed these gatherings so much that she and some of her colleagues started a table tennis club which met in the afternoons. Thus, although the times were tough and my grandmother often could not enjoy many of the luxuries she was accustomed to, she remembers living a good life. As a woman she did not have to serve in the war and for most of the time the war was far away. Only towards the end, when the area around Stuttgart was badly attacked and her parents’ house was turned into an army accommodation, things got critical. For most of the time she would still go the opera, spend time with her friends and go skiing in the mountains. Yet, the war certainly affected her since one became more and more afraid for each other’s life as the war progressed. With the telephone not working and mail being undependable, my great- grandmother sometimes got so worried for her daughter’s life that she convinced her husband to travel the almost 50 kilometres from Bad Cannstatt to Wüstenrot by train and bike in the dark to check on her. He had to travel at night since one could easily be killed by bombs during the day. He usually arrived around 11 o' clock in the evening and father and daughter would talk through the night until he left in the early hours of the morning. With the end of the war my grandmother relates an image of strangely fat American soldiers arriving on their tanks in the streets of Wüstenrot.
            In 1946 my grandmother was again relocated. This time to Ludwigsburg where she soon met my grandfather who was a teacher at the same school. At this time she was staying with her parents in Bad Cannstatt, who now lived in a different home. After school, my grandfather would walk her to the station and they got to know each other quite well. When they married in 1948 my grandmother was forced to quit teaching since both spouses could not be civil servants. Yet, one got a compensation payment which helped the couple to buy a house in Ludwigsburg. From now on my grandmother was a housewife, but still used her skills in knitting and sewing to make dresses for her girls when there was not enough money to buy new ones. Yet, between 1970 and 1980 she was able to work again as a handicraft teacher in Ludwigsburg.