Postwar Germany, according to the writer Manfred Jurgensen, who grew up there, was “a period which often posed much more danger than the war itself. Severe deprivation, starvation and death were everywhere. This generation grew up without any real parental guidance and direction, and living through the years where all norms of society were virtually …
(Continued from About My Father (1)) Those “trials by fire” were not far off. After a year of study in Basel, in 1938 Albrecht returned to Germany. He spent approximately a month in Berlin, finishing his theological studies. In early summer of 1938 Albrecht spent almost a month traveling in the UK, visiting London and …
Growing up as a bomb baby in Germany, as I did, it was common not to have a living father. About 2.5 million German children lost their fathers in World War II. Source. In my case, my father lost his life two months before I was born, so we never knew one another. From my …
The Nicolaus family name has some mythical roots. My mother’s mother Lydia, her mind clouded by advancing dementia, maintained that it came from the Tsar, who on his travels had got the daughter of a German merchant pregnant, etc. A myth I like much better is that we’re descended from the original Bishop Nicolaus of …
On V-E Day (May 8 1945) I was three and a half years old. Since the Allied bombing had stopped, my mother pulled up stakes in Fürstenhagen and in the fall of that year we moved to Frankfurt/Main. To this day I am quite comfortable in small spaces. Very likely this stems from our first …
