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 …
This thumbnail profile of my father appears in Protestantische Profile im Ruhrgebiet: 500 Lebensbilder aus 5 Jahrhunderten (Protestant Profiles in the Ruhr Region: 500 profiles from 5 centuries), edited byMichael Basse, Traugott Jähnichen and Harald Schroeter-Wittke, Hartmut Spenner publishers, Kamen (Germany) 2009, pp. 592-593. The author is Hartmut Ludwig, a church historian and Doctor of …
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 …
I was born in Essen. My father was born in Kiel but raised in Essen. His mother was born in Essen. His father worked as an office supervisor for Krupp in Essen. My mother, who was from Berlin, married my father in Essen. My mother and I lived in Essen until sometime in mid-1943. My …
