Thursday, May 29, 2003
Four People
Yesterday was an unprecedented one in my time here in Germany. I met four women in one day. Not "met" in a provocative sense, but "met" in the sense of having discussions with people I did not previously know.
The first was a young woman named Denise. I was touching up an illustration that I was doing and she interrupted me to "ooh" and "ahhh" over it. Denise is a fairly tall blonde and blue eyed girl that works at the restaurant that I was sitting in at the time. I would not characterize her as being aggressively intellectual, and not just due to her age (20). But she did have a few stories worth retelling. Her father is from Poland and in fact her older brother was born there. But she was born in Berlin. Between her lamenting the eenui of that precarious post-adolescent, pre-adulthood stage where EVERYTHING is boring or brilliant with little fitting between, she told me some interesting things. For instance, even though she was born in Germany, when people discover that her father is Polish, then by extension SHE is Polish. In German eyes this is equivalent to being a second class citizen.
Some things never change.
After leaving the restaurant I went to the local art store (Listmann's) and while browsing I saw a older woman looking intently at some padded envelopes. She turned to me and said something in German. I spouted my standard, "...I'm sorry, I did not understand what you said..." line, and she immediately replied in a strong British accent, "...you will shortly." She composed herself for a moment and then explained that she couldn't find the price of the envelopes. I showed her were the prices had been penciled onto each of the envelopes and she was grateful.
We talked for an inordinately long time considering we were standing in a art store, but in that time she told me some amazing things. Her name is Monica Bick and she was born in 1940 and she was one of the ">Lebensborn. "Lebensborn?", I asked, "what is that?" She went on to tell me that she had been born in Wroclaw (at the time, it was called Breslau), Poland and she was told by here adoptive parents that she was in an orphanage there. As it turns out, she had been kidnapped from her birth parents (or made into an orphan) because of her Germanic features. She discovered where she was born in Poland, but all other official records were burned in May of 1945 as the Third Reicht imploded. Amazing, shocking and surreal. You may also want to read this account from a woman that worked in post-war Germany to repatriate the stolen children. We continued discussing the merits of various brands of calligraphic pens. Seems embarrasingly inconsequential in comparison.
That evening, while doing some night photos of some of Mainz's architecture, I met Steffi Keller and Silke Bernhart. There were drinking a bottle of wine beside the "Children's Fountain" and we talked about many subjects for an hour. Silke will be attending Charles University in Prague for a half year as part of her university eduction in Communication. She had her first self-taught lesson in Czech that same day and was a little daunted by the Slavic grammatic structure, which I can attest is nearly impossible to make sense of if you speak one of the Germanic or modern Latin languages.
They too lamented the most boring city in Germany - Frankfurt - as being an embarrassment. This too I must agree with. Last summer a friend visited from Spain and while he was here I told him we would go to Frankfurt in the evening to see a film and look at the night life. Note, this was a Saturday night. A beautiful Saturday night in the middle of summer. When we left the cinema at 11:00 the city was a ghost town. It was empty! For a city of 3.7 million, it was a shock. The restaurants were shutting down, the discos were quiet and the people... well, there WERE no people. My friend asked me what had happened and I had no idea.
So Silke and Steffi look forward to going to Prague (Silke for schook, Steffi to visit) in September.
Yesterday was an unprecedented one in my time here in Germany. I met four women in one day. Not "met" in a provocative sense, but "met" in the sense of having discussions with people I did not previously know.
The first was a young woman named Denise. I was touching up an illustration that I was doing and she interrupted me to "ooh" and "ahhh" over it. Denise is a fairly tall blonde and blue eyed girl that works at the restaurant that I was sitting in at the time. I would not characterize her as being aggressively intellectual, and not just due to her age (20). But she did have a few stories worth retelling. Her father is from Poland and in fact her older brother was born there. But she was born in Berlin. Between her lamenting the eenui of that precarious post-adolescent, pre-adulthood stage where EVERYTHING is boring or brilliant with little fitting between, she told me some interesting things. For instance, even though she was born in Germany, when people discover that her father is Polish, then by extension SHE is Polish. In German eyes this is equivalent to being a second class citizen.
Some things never change.
After leaving the restaurant I went to the local art store (Listmann's) and while browsing I saw a older woman looking intently at some padded envelopes. She turned to me and said something in German. I spouted my standard, "...I'm sorry, I did not understand what you said..." line, and she immediately replied in a strong British accent, "...you will shortly." She composed herself for a moment and then explained that she couldn't find the price of the envelopes. I showed her were the prices had been penciled onto each of the envelopes and she was grateful.
We talked for an inordinately long time considering we were standing in a art store, but in that time she told me some amazing things. Her name is Monica Bick and she was born in 1940 and she was one of the ">Lebensborn. "Lebensborn?", I asked, "what is that?" She went on to tell me that she had been born in Wroclaw (at the time, it was called Breslau), Poland and she was told by here adoptive parents that she was in an orphanage there. As it turns out, she had been kidnapped from her birth parents (or made into an orphan) because of her Germanic features. She discovered where she was born in Poland, but all other official records were burned in May of 1945 as the Third Reicht imploded. Amazing, shocking and surreal. You may also want to read this account from a woman that worked in post-war Germany to repatriate the stolen children. We continued discussing the merits of various brands of calligraphic pens. Seems embarrasingly inconsequential in comparison.
That evening, while doing some night photos of some of Mainz's architecture, I met Steffi Keller and Silke Bernhart. There were drinking a bottle of wine beside the "Children's Fountain" and we talked about many subjects for an hour. Silke will be attending Charles University in Prague for a half year as part of her university eduction in Communication. She had her first self-taught lesson in Czech that same day and was a little daunted by the Slavic grammatic structure, which I can attest is nearly impossible to make sense of if you speak one of the Germanic or modern Latin languages.
They too lamented the most boring city in Germany - Frankfurt - as being an embarrassment. This too I must agree with. Last summer a friend visited from Spain and while he was here I told him we would go to Frankfurt in the evening to see a film and look at the night life. Note, this was a Saturday night. A beautiful Saturday night in the middle of summer. When we left the cinema at 11:00 the city was a ghost town. It was empty! For a city of 3.7 million, it was a shock. The restaurants were shutting down, the discos were quiet and the people... well, there WERE no people. My friend asked me what had happened and I had no idea.
So Silke and Steffi look forward to going to Prague (Silke for schook, Steffi to visit) in September.
