In this post I should begin with when I returned to Germany at the end of September 1988. That’s when I started a Master’s program at Die Freie Universität in then West Berlin. But for some reason I sense the need to talk about two grandmothers.
I made the decision to head back to Germany around April 1988. In June I ended my lease on my apartment in Ardmore, a suburb outside of Philadelphia, then shut down my modest, one-man-band business of selling office telecommunications equipment, and moved back with my mother and stepfather across town. Enjoy the summer. Save some money. Bone up on my German.
And do a bunch of odd-jobs at my grandmother’s place in Jenkintown, a twenty-minute car ride away. My grandmother, first name Martha, Grammom to us, was eighty-eight years old then. Born in Cincinnati. 1900. To a family of seven children. She was the youngest. Irish Catholic. Both sides. Grogan, her father’s last name. And McBride. Her mother’s.
She would marry a man by the name of Otto Hentz, who was born and raised just across the Ohio River in Covington, Kentucky. Hentz. Otto. German. Both sides. More about my grandfather in posts to come.
Grammom was widowed at age thirty-seven. And automobile accident. My grandfather lay in a hospital bed with a crushed chest. No seatbelts back then. Head-on collision. A few days later he would die. Seven children. The oldest eight. My mother, Laura, born 1930, age seven. And five more. The youngest, my Aunt Alma and my godmother, not yet one year old. And Grammom was pregnant. November 1937. Height of the depression. Seven small children, pregnant, widowed.
I either drove or rode my dumbass bike over to Grammom’s, just about every day. Cut the lawn. Pruned the bushes. Moved things around. Painted a few rooms. And the big project was sanding down and painting the large, wrap-around porch of the house. Queen Anne style architecture. Build sometime between 1880 and 1910. Three floors. I loved that house. The first floor was rented out. Grammom had the second that third floors. With first floor I mean the ground floor, Erdgeschoss for my German readers.
I didn’t have any kind of schedule. I’d show up when I showed up. Usually a brief phone call before. I’d work three or four hours. Then sit down and visit with Grammom. Lunch. Talk. Me asking questions. She responding in her thoughtful way. Not wordy. Not flowery. No elaborate story-telling. Instead, answering my questions. Always thoughtful. More about Grammom in later posts.
In this post I want to draw a contrast. Between two grandmothers. I’m not sure what triggered this idea. Most likely because I just watched a video on YouTube. Sent to me by an American in the U.S., whose colleagues had sent it to him, after he had asked what it’s like to work with Germans.
The video, made by an American in Berlin, a comedian, making fun of the Germans, was full of clichés. I had stumbled across the video a few years ago, and was embarrassed for the guy who had made it. Is this the depth of understanding he has gained about the German people? Or is he purposely drawing on clichés to capture some views, some likes, some comments, with the hope of generating 10, 50, maybe 100 Euros in YouTube revenues?
That, combined with remembering my jumping off point to Berlin was that summer I spent with my mother mother and stepfather, and doing stuff for Grammom in Jenkintown. My father had passed away in November of 1974. Heart failure. He was forty-four years old.
So, here’s the contrast. Grandmothers. I would use this often when explaining intercultural differences between Germans and Americans. Topic decision-making. Subtopic risk.
Grammom. Born 1900. In the United States. Cincinnati, Ohio. Price Hill. Back then well-to-do. Youngest of seven children. Irish. Roman Catholic. The boys went to Xavier High School. Jesuit. The girls went to private schools. My grandmother would then become a nurse. Her area of focus, nutrition. She would marry a bit late for her generation. Her first child, Jim, was born in 1929.
Grammom growing up. Large family. Financially secure. Solid education. Then marriage, children, husband successful. Then his untimely death. Economic depression. She and the children got through it. Again, more on that in later posts. I want to jump to the contrast.
I was married. For fourteen years. My ex-wife is German. We met in West Berlin. I’m jumping ahead a bit in my story. I state my reasons above. She was raised both by her mother and her grandmother. Grossmutter in German. Oma. Oma Anni, as we called her.
I became very close to Oma Anni. Dozens and dozens and dozens of long conversations. In German. With my familiarty with German post-war history. So many questions. So many details. So many anecdotes. I loved her very much. Not easy her life. More in later posts.
She was born in 1922, but let’s pretend that she was born in 1900. To maintain the comparison. Decision-making. Risk. And let’s not make it about Oma Anni in particular, but about the generation in Germany born in 1900.
Ok, let’s look at what their experience looked like. Born in 1900. Germans. Germany.
1900. Kaiserreich. Imperial Germany. Kaiser Wilhelm II. Germany is large, populous, militarily strong, economically strong. Industrialization had come late to Germany. Many years behind the British. The German people know how to play serious catch-up ball. Catch up and surpass.
Late also, in becoming a unified state. 1871. After the Franco-Prussian War. Bismarck, the Prussians, and Wilhelm’s father, had pushed, badgered, blackmailed, battled the other German states into it. A German Reich. A unified Germany. Frankly, in many ways untypical and unnatural for the German people. We could say for the German peoples. That, however, is a topic for another day.
A girl born in 1900, for example in Bonn, where I live, into a solid family, father an attorney or civil servant or university professor or a medical physician or a local banker, would have led a very stable life. Single-family home or a large in-town apartment. A maid or two. Good schooling. Vacations in the summer. Well-dressed. Well-fed. Well-educated. Music lessons. Solid German Bürgertum. Rhinelanders. Roman Catholic. Three boys. Two girls.
Life was very good. Not unlike in Cincinnati. Then the shots rang out in Sarajevo. August 1, 1914. The Great War breaks out. Not long afterwards the oldest brother is called up. End of 1918. France. He falls. The Hurrahs! of those heady 1914 summer months. Bitter.
She is only fourteen. She adored her older brother. The second brother is a bit more fortunate. A leg blown off. Back on Bonn. A broken young man. First crutches, then prosthesis. The younger sister tries to console him. How? And the third brother? He survives. But severely shell-shocked. It would take years for him to recover psychologically. But only partially. Never fully.
Not untypical for many German families, these tragedies. Then the winter of 1918-19. Blockade. A story not often told in the history books. The Western Allies blocked fuel and food and more from getting into Germany. That winter was bitter cold. Record low temps. Thousands froze to death or died of hunger or both. The family got through. They were stable financially.
Germany in 1919 was on the brink of civil war. The Kaiser had abdicated. All sorts of paramilitary groups were roaming the streets of the major cities. Unrest everywhere. And a new republic was struggling to gets its footing. With just about every group doing its best to undermine it. Weimar Germany.
Add to the political instability then the hyperinflation a few years later. Family savings vanished within days. The radicals became even more radical. The forces of stability even more destabilized. I almost forgot to mention the crushing terms of the Versailles Treaty. Territory in the East and in the West carved out, lost. Tens of thousands of displaced families. And military occupation with the British and the French west of the Rhine.
By the way, the United States Congress rejected the Versailles Treaty. The American people had recognized it for what it was: draconian, unfair, unjust, self-serving. And, there are a lot of Americans of German heritage. More than from any other single nationality. The British set up the colonies. Held the positions of power. The Germans, however, were the anchor, the foundation: craftsmen, farmers, business owners, engineers and inventors.
Then the final blow. Just as things were beginning to settle down. Gustav Stresemann. A series of successful treaties. Renogotiated terms regarding reparations. Bang! October 1929. Wall Street. Crash. The Great Depression. The radicals get their second chance. And exploit it.
January 1933. Adolf Hitler becomes Reichschancellor. Do I need to provide the details? Just a few reminders. Banning of political parties. Of the unions. Of a free press. Jewish Germans are repressed systematically, piece by piece. The first camps. Communists. Certain Social Democrats. Homosexuals. Then rearmament. The writing is on the wall.
Our little girl, born in 1900, is in 1935, married, has four children of her own. Two boys. Ages thirteen and twelve. Two girls, ages nine and seven. Not wealthy. Stable. Solid. A large apartment in the Bonner Südstadt. Most certainly not National Socialists. Instead, Zentrum. Konrad Adenauer. Rhineland Catholics. They keep their heads down. As best they could. Four children. Protect them. Wait out the storm.
The topic is decision-making. The subtopic risk. Let me fast foward. Staccato. National Socialist Germany. Rearmament. 1935 occupying forces pushed out of the Rhineland. Hurrah! Anschluss with Austria 1938. Invasion of Czechoslovakia 1938. Poland 1939. Lowlands and France 1940. Victory after victory. Gröfaz – größter Feldherr aller Zeiten – great military leader in human history. Hard to argue with that. France in six weeks.
The oldest son is called up. Age eighteen. A few years later the second son. June 1, 1941 attack on Soviet Russia. 1943. The younger son dies in the Battle of Stalingrad. Hand-to-hand combat. The older is luckier. Makes it out of North Africa. Makes it up through Italy. Doesn’t get sent to the Eastern Front. Battle of the Bulge. Winter 1944-45. Gets captured by the Americans. Very fortunate.
October 18, 1944. Bonn, a sleepy little university town on the Rhine, is bombed. Heavily. The home of the family is hit. Most of it destroyed. Luck. They were staying with family in the country, not far from Coblenz.
I want to fast forward. The war is lost. Germany is devasted. As is most of Europe. The mother, father, son, and two girls survived. Many families lost two sons. Some three or even more. The immediate post-war years were a severe struggle. They get through. West Germany is formed. East Germany is formed. The Marshall Plan. Nato. Germans in the west protected.
Then the economic miracle in West Germany. The stability is real. For many Wohlstand, affluence, comparatively. However, war is ever-looming. Cold. The Cold War. Nato. Warsaw Pact. 1953 uprising in East Gemany. Budapest 1956. Then Prague 1968. Tactical nuclear weapons. SS-20s in the East. Pershings in the West. If war breaks out, the two Germanies become parking lots, wastelands, for decades, perhaps centuries.
Cooler heads prevail. The Soviet Union is failing. Gorbi opens things up. No other choice. Then, suddenly, for many not suprisingly, the 9th of November 1989. The East German government concedes, opens up the borders, including the checkpoints in Berlin.
Our little girl, born in 1900, watches the events on the television. One of her grandchildren lives and works in West Berlin. He calls her on the phone: “Oma, die Mauer ist weg!” Grandmother, the wall is no more.
That little girl from Bonn would live a few more years. Kaiserreich. First World War. Beloved brother lost. The other broken. Blockade. Versailles. Occupation. Hyperinflation. Then Adolf. Another war. Devastation. A grandson gone. Bombed out. Scratch and claw their way back. Then, finally. Up on their feet. Yet, a divided country, constant threat of a third war, one which would obliterate. Then the opening. Breathe free. Relax. Grateful. Thankful. A Roman Catholic. Her faith had carried her. She is eight-nine years old.
As had my Grammom’s faith carried her and her eight children. Never easy. Certainly insecurity. My mother once to me: very young, hiding behind a door, winter, very cold, her mother pleading with the man who delivered coal, to extend credit, small children, get them through the winter.
But never devastating. One child would become a Sister of Mercy, a Roman Catholic nun. Another, the youngest, who would never know his father, a Jesuit priest and Professor of Theology at Georgetown University. Eight children. Every evening. Around the kitchen table. Between dinner and homework. The rosary. As a family.
Decision-Making. Risk. Two countries. Two peoples. Two histories. The one. Lessons painful, searing, crushing, almost soul-crushing. Decisions have consequences. Think them through, gauge them, very carefully. The focus on risk.
The other. Yes, pain. Yes, crushings. However. Protected by two vast oceans. Two neighbors. Neither a threat of any kind. Almost endless land and resources. A system of self-government and commerce enabling tremendous forward movement. Not without risk a life in the United States. At any time in its history. But very wide margins of error. The focus on opportunity.
Decision-Making. Risk. The one people is very careful. The other people less so, often far less so. There are reasons why. The two grandmothers — Oma Anni and Grammom — could explain those reasons to you. They did to me. But, they’re not here. They’re in a place, greater than any place, any of us could ever imagine. A place I hope to be one day. Reunited with my two Omas, my two Grammoms.
P.S. To my fellow American, the comedian in Berlin, back four years ago, a few words: The German people have their way of solving problems. And that way is based on, rooted in, shaped by, what they have experienced as a people. By decisions they made. By decisions they did not make.
And please, my dear fellow-American, keep in mind that today’s Germany is the third-largest economy on the planet, with only a bit more than only eighty million inhabitants, almost land-locked geographically, with limited natural resources, and located on a continent with a centuries-old history of strife and war. So, the next time you want to poke fun at the Germans, at how they solve problems, you might want to do your homework first. About the German people. About their history. About how they make decisions. About how they identify, define, analyze, and assess risk. A century of upheaval. Third-largest economy.”