Daniela would drop me off in the Mehlem section of Bonn where the U.S. Embassy was located. Or, in the warmer months, I would ride my dumbass bike from Oberwinter to work. Along the Rhine. A bike path. Scenic. Flat. Lots of fresh air. Eighteen kilometers. A little over ten miles. Less than an hour of pedaling. Another option was to hop on a D-Zug. Fifteen minutes. Straight shot.
The job was easy. Moving the library from the American community in the Plittersdorf section of Bonn into the embassy. Organization. Logistics. Packing. Moving. Nice people in the embassy. The cafeteria food was good, too. And the pay wasn’t bad. I can’t remember how much. But back then, in 1982, the currency exchange was very positive for the dollar.
Daniela was the high school-aged daughter of the German family I lived with in Oberwinter. She was in the twelfth grade. She needed help with English. I needed a place to live. They had a basement apartment with its own bathroom. A large room of about forty-five square meters, several widows. And a separate entrance, which I never used. Bed. Couch. A few chairs. Desk. I was integrated into the family.
Family. Mother. Father. Daniela. The older daughter, Bettina, lived in Rome, in training as a Bühnenbildnerin, a set/stage designer. I can’t remember how Mrs. Kelley came across Daniela’s mother, but one day in early January she and I took a drive to Oberwinter. It was cordial. Daniela’s mother said that they would be happy to have me.
Let me see, the mother would have been about sixty or so years of age. Born and raised in West Prussia in an adeligen Familie, a family of minor nobility, forced to migrate to the west, however, at the end of the Second World War. The victorious powers had redrawn the map. East and West Prussia went to Poland. Russian moved further west and took territory from Poland.
The father, born in 1916, was a few years older than his wife. He was born and raised in Schlesien, in Silesia, north of Breslau. His father was a Landwirt, which is a kind of upscale farmer, big chunk of land, with the locals working it.
That father would starve to death a few years after the war ended in 1945. He couldn’t get out of Poland. His land taken from him. Most likely had no means of supporting himself. Was advanced in age. The locals most likely didn’t care for or about him. Food was tight for everyone on the continent in the early months after May 1945.
A tall man for his generation, Daniela’s father was just over six foot tall. Slender. Always well-dressed. And always with his walking stick, his cane. Due to his war injuries. His one leg. Battered. Not fully functional. Kursk. The greatest of all tank battles. The Germans versus the Russians. Wehrmacht versus the Red Army. I’ll come to that in another post.
After he had gotten his Abitur, graduated from a Gymnasium, the upper high school in the German educational system, he spent the summer months cycling around Europe with a few of his buddies. And then he was off to Dresden, to become a military officer. That would have been around 1934-35. Just a few years later he would participate in the invasions of the Czechososlovakia and the Netherlands. Spähtrupp. Reconnaissance patrol. Very high risk.
I was integrated into the family in the sense that in the mornings after showering, shaving and dressing I would head upstairs into the kitchen for breakfast, then off to work. Evenings I would be at the dinner table with them, help clear off the table, and help with the dishes. I helped with yardwork, too.
English lessons? I don’t recall ever doing more than one or two hours of English with Daniela. Nor do I remember either of the parents asking me why not. At one point Daniela’s mother asked me to pay rent. Three hundred Deutschmarks per month. Not a problem. Inexpensive considering that it got me both room and board. I did, however, always speak English with Daniela. I suppose that was of some help.
What was new to me about life with a German family?
For one, the heat got turned way down in the nights during the winter. As an American it had never occurred to me just how inexpensive energy is in the U.S. During the winter months I was there (January, February, the first half of March), it got cold in the night.
I had a down blanket. Never had one before. I would slip into bed, pull over the sheet, then a thick blanket, and on top of that the down blanket. Still cool. I never slept well during those ten weeks or so. And why?
Because I was unfamiliar with down blankets. I did not know that the down blanket is the first layer, so that it can retain body heat. I simply did not know. Nor did it occur to me to ask anyone. And why would I ask anyone? Blankets are blankets, right? Nor did it occur to anyone to tell me. And why would they? Blankets are blankets, right? I didn’t sleep well.
When I took showers I would get myself wet, turn off the water, use shampoo and soap, then turn the water back on again and rinse myself off. I never did that in the U.S. Not sure why I began doing it in Germany. It seemed to make sense. Water conservation.
I’m struggling right now to think of other things German that suprised me or seemed strange. It’s January 2026. I’ve been here in Germany since the Fall of 1988, with two phases in Philadelphia of a total of twenty-six months. Peeling back the onion, going back in my memory, is not always easy.
Oh, wait, there was Udo. He was Daniela’s boyfriend. A soldier. Bundeswehr. West German Armed Forces. Udo was in officer’s training. Dumb-looking mustache. Motorcycle. Dangerous. I interacted with him only a few times. Once, standing out on the street and chatting with him, Udo looked at me sternly, asking in German something like:
“John, wenn es mal losgehen sollte, werden die Amis kämpfen? Können wir uns auf sie verlassen?” My translation: “John, if war breaks out, with the Americans fight for us? Can we rely on them?”
Not a suprising question, I suppose, from a young West German officer. Or, for that matter, from any West German. But a surprising question for a twenty-three year old American guy. Frankly, I had never done any particular thinking about those kinds of Cold War questions. I was looking to learn some German, get to know Germany, perhaps do some traveling.
How the hell was I supposed to respond to his question? Not only to the substance of the question, but also to the tone in which he posed it. Stern. Almost aggressive. I do recall vividly, however, at the end of that interaction Udo say in a huff: “Ihr Amerikaner mit Eurem Scheißpragmatismus.” Literally, “you Americans with your (bull)shit-pragmatism.”
And why do I recall that so vividly forty-five years later? For two reasons. First, his vehemence, like: “Wait, really, Udo? We hardly know each other. And you’re asking me about the United States and Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In case of an attack by Warsaw Pact forces Crossing into West Germany. Asking me. A guy just out of college. Living in a basement apartment. In Oberwinter. Just south of Bonn. Moving books from one location to another?”
The second, and more sticking, more memorable, reason was his statement about Scheißpragmatismus. This could have been my first, let’s call it, intercultural cognitive dissonance. Put more simply: confusion.
How and when and where and why could pragmatism be anything other than possitive. Scheiße is shit. Pragmatismus. Pragmatism. Folks, that concept really just does not compute in my head. Not then. Not now. And at no time in between.
This, however, is not the place for a discourse from me on philosophical questions. Even though it would be highly interesting. First, I want to wrap up this post, and head out for my Sunday morning swim in the Frankenbad here in Bonn. Second, and more importantly, I did not always do well in the two or three philosophy courses I took in college. I’m not qualified.
This is the key intercultural point, however, and I have encountered it dozens and dozens and dozens of times over my three decades studying, living and working in Germany: apparently there are cultures, peoples, nations, national-cultures, who do not necessarily, or not always necessarily, think that pragmatism is such a great thing.
Again, a very strange concept. To me. An American. Back then. At the age of twenty-three. And today. At the age of soon-to-be sixty-seven. Scheißpragmatismus! “Really, Udo?” That name. Udo. A dumbass name.