Aug 28
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 …
Jul 30
(Continued from About my Father (2)) The ink was hardly dry on Albrecht’s BK ordination certificate when the official church got wind of it and took steps to prevent a repetition. In a letter dated May 7, 1941, while Albrecht’s regiment was nearing the Soviet border, the then president of the Konsistoriat in Düsseldorf, the …
Jul 21
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 …
Jul 12
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 …
