The red thread that became a blue E-Book

Sigurd Saß

• Herausgeber: novum premium Verlag
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 611

Beschreibung

Sigurd Saß spent the first two years of his life on the American continent, in faraway Brazil, but his parents soon moved with him to Germany. But this was only the beginning of a turbulent life full of exciting experiences and upheavals. After his Berlin apartment was bombed out, he moved to Hameln in Lower Saxony and later abroad to France and Spain. There he goes up and down - through theft, living in caves, surviving without money, to love, meeting Pablo Picasso and other art legends. But just as in Germany, a colorful trip follows through his involvement in the art scene. For the enthusiasm for painting burns from an early age in Sigurd and shows itself privately and professionally as a faithful companion in his development.

Leseprobe

The red thread that became a blue.

Approaches to a self-determined life

in 71 stories.

Sigurd Saß

Content:

FOREWORDS.

Chapter 1.APPROACHS.

Chapter 2.BERLINS.

Chapter 3.OPA PAUL AND OMA MARTHAS.

Chapter 4.DOWN AND OVERS.

Chapter 5.EXILS.

Chapter 6.WILDWOODS.

Chapter 7. NATURE NURSES ITS CHILDRENS.

Chapter 8.SKIN NEAR I - THE TRIALS.

Chapter 9.SKINNOTE II - THE GAMES.

Chapter 10.SKINNOTE III - THE FIRST FALLS.

Chapter 11.BIG WARRIORS, SMALL WARRIORSS.

Chapter 12.REFUGEES IN THEIR OWN COUNTRYS.

Chapter 13. spARTS IS.

Chapter 14.SPATZEN IIS.

Chapter 15.HOW IT WAS WITH THE BEATLESS.

Chapter 16.THE FOREST S.

Chapter 17. THE BOOKSS.

Chapter 18. SIGURD'S DEFLOWERINGS.

Chapter 19.THE NEW ROOM FOR MANEUVER - NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE S.

Chapter 20. THE INFLUENCE OF THE PACKS.

Chapter 21. TWO POLES: EARTH AND SPIRITS.

Chapter 22. ART - THE FIRST SPARK S.

Chapter 23. CONVENTIONS - NEST OR LIMITATION?S.

Chapter 24. ART - THE SECOND SPARKS.

Chapter 25. MUNICH - DEPARTURE TO A FOREIGN LANDS.

Chapter 26. BERLIN, BERLIN - AN OLD FAMILIAR, NEWLY EXPERIENCED.

Chapter 27. THE 1968ERS HAVE NOT FALLED FROM THE SKYS.

Chapter 28. SABINES.

Chapter 29. PARIS I - JOBBING FOR THE TRIP S.

Chapter 30. PARIS II - APPROACH WITH OBSTACLESS.

Chapter 31. PARIS III - IN THE EYE OF THE METROPOLISS.

Chapter 32. PARIS IV - A CELEBRATION OF LIFES.

Chapter 33. HERMITAGE IN BERLIN-SCHÖNEBERGS.

Chapter 34. GERMAN TRAGEDY -

GHOST HOUR FRIEDRICHSTRASSES.

Chapter 35. IN THE DEUX CHEVAUX TO LYONS.

Chapter 36ODYSSEYS ON THE RHONES.

Chapter 37.

FOREWORD

The 'red thread', because the view is directed to events that seem to have an inner connection. Events of a biography that is mainly set in Germany, and until today.

Why the 'blue thread' comes into play, I can't say exactly. It came in of its own accord. Blue is the color of the sky, of unlimited expanse, of lightness, of the intangible and of freedom, which is not there by itself in the context of a biography, but is the result of a liberation. Perhaps the blue thread is simply the immaterial essence of the red or its transformation to formless blue.

Writing this book had been on my mind for a long time. Until now, however, there was no idea - neither for the form nor for the concentration. But suddenly both were there. The form (like the solution of a Gordian knot) was the division into chapters, like a collection of short stories with an inner connection. Stylistically, different styles of language are interwoven, a kind of reflection of the living use of language. The artificial plays a subordinate role and alternates with everyday language.

I thank the many people whom I was allowed to meet in a friendly way. I thank the companions who have accompanied me and helped me to gain knowledge about myself. And I thank my children, from whom I have learned a lot and who have melted many an ice crust in me. I especially thank Dorothee, who has given me a delightful and at times painful honesty in accepting the ebb and flow of the river of life.

Sigurd Saß

Mallorca, 26.02.2016 / Röpersberg Ratzeburg, 03.11.2016 / Grassel 20.04.2017 - 2019 / Mallorca and Grassel 2022

Chapter 1

APPROACH

There was this boy.

Run, run, run,

comes to mind with him.

My God, what have I walked all my life: Paris totally - without end -, almost never used the metro, from Germany through Alsace, then down the Doubs and the Rhone to the Spanish border, Port Bou, Pyrenees, Barcelona with the first hot chocolate in which the spoon was ...

But back to the boy.

He walked like a sailor when he disembarked in Hamburg after a three-week voyage. Was he rather guided or even carried?

He was only two. For a life that had just struggled from crawling to walking upright, three weeks on the ship had been a formative new cosmos.

You had to walk and stand with your legs wide apart so that the swaying didn't knock you over.

Grandfather had his amusement when he received the little Brazil-born with his wobbly straddle gait.

"Like an old sailor - look at him - great - and then with his diaper package between his legs."

He could not hide his Berlin dialect despite the reception trip to Hamburg.

So that was the new world.

Something is cut off, Sigurd felt in his small chest.

The adventure on the Schunkel floor was over.

It was so abrupt that he now had to be careful again not to be thrown off balance on the rigid ground. Tentatively, as if testing black ice, he felt the unfamiliar ground with his little feet. With his eyes, he searched for familiar stopping points. But the asphalt did not offer any. The first staggering steps on the new continent took a lot of courage.

Run, run, run.

Exercises for a new world.

Much more was abrupt. The sky appeared as gray as the light. The air felt cool. On the ground he could not let his butt fall softly - as usual. It was hard, dusty and stony.

Sigurd missed the familiar square of the nursery on the fresh grass of the tijouka. From deep inside, a feeling of happiness flooded him when he thought of how a ripe lemon had plopped next to him. His gaze, turned upward, had sought where it might have come from. There in the canopy above the little stable hung whole flocks. And when one of these fragrant yellow bombs had landed at his feet, it had always been like a gift from heaven to play with, muddle and snack on.

Above all, he missed the thousand kaleidoscopic figures that the sun had cast through the canopy onto the lawn. What joy it had always given him to search for them. Mysterious beings - they could never be grasped, even if he thought they were already caught.

Two childhood years of formative experience:

Life - a joyful play in warmth and light, embedded in a green variety of colors and shapes. Lemon, orange trees and banana bushes. Bamboo trembled in the wind. Palm trees, oleander, mimosa, canna da India, bougainvillia and many more spread their fragrances. On the ground, the blades of grass glowed in green, yellow and ocher. In between, rocky stones squatted like familiar sprites. They waved greetings to their big brother 'Gavea', the rocky massif on the horizon of Rio de Janeiro.

The lawn was crisscrossed with sandy paths. Boami' had marked them in tireless running zeal like wild game. The shepherdess belonged like the 2 years older brother and the nanny to the ensemble of the wall-enclosed garden. They were careful that no snake approached the little stable. Sigurd had always received the bitch with whooping joy when she had come for a cuddle.

Buildings had played only a minor role in this tropical natural kingdom. They were sporadically visited shelter zones for the night or against the midday heat or in the rainy season.

Besides the thousand dancing figures from the interplay of light and shadow, the familiar sweet aromatic smells predominated - mmmhhh - the intense scent of mango blossoms drifted through Sigurd's memory. And then the friendly yet mysterious sounds. The chirping of the crickets fell silent only at the time of the greatest midday heat. Now and then the cry of a wild parrot pierced the silence. The hummingbirds at the blossoms of the trumpet flowers - if Sigurd listened very quietly and attentively, he could perceive their wing beat.

Sigurd had especially enjoyed the splashing of his father's garden irrigation system. He had been able to watch from his little shed how Dad had built it. The thick bamboo poles for the water supply through the garden had already conjured up great sounds when they were unloaded. First an orchestra of clattering drums. Later, deep, hollow bass notes had mixed with bright, fluting whistling noises when the wind had brushed past them. And when Papa had split the bamboo trunks, it had always been a crackling, hissing and buzzing sound. A concert that had often elicited a lusty, joyful sound from Sigurd.

Sometimes the rustling of the leaves in the garden had announced that a breeze had fallen from the nearby mountains or swept up from the sea along with salty tastes. That had always been a gratefully received moment of coolness.

The interacting fabric of experiences all around, it was like the interlocking fibers of a great nest, familiar and yet always good for discovery.

Now these abrupt changes.

First, the ship as a floating mammoth swing. Instead of plants, there were only stairs and doors, large and small rooms without greenery and without windows. Always Sigurd had to be careful not to be stepped on. The multitude of legs and shoes was sometimes tighter than a bamboo thicket. When he wasn't on Dad's or Mom's arm, he had them right in front of his nose: those big, small, thick, thin, uniformed, smelly, perfumed feet. The same routines in the swaying motion on the ocean every day for three weeks.

Once there had been a day's break in Lisbon before continuing. Now, finally, the hard, solid ground of the port of Hamburg. It was like an attack on the swaying child's leg-soft gait of the freshly embarked Brazilian-German life.

Run, run, run.

To the new world.

The grandfather stood there with his arms outstretched.

Should Sigurd dare to cover the last meters with wobbly legs? Grandfather's laughter promised a safe refuge. So off we went.

Grandpa Paul and Grandma Martha were already familiar to the children through a visit to Brazil and through their parents' conversations. A close bond had also grown through the many often eagerly awaited mailings from the old Berlin home. Each time, the letters were opened and read aloud like a ritual in the family circle.

The children had always been eagerly awaiting Grandpa Paul's stories. He always had something funny to tell. Soon Sigurd and Harald could easily distinguish the letters from Mother's parents from the much more serious tone of Grandma Hulda.

Now it was the arms of fun-loving Grandpa Paul that welcomed him into the new foreign world. A small step for mankind, a big one for the legs and the emotional life of a 2-year-old.

Chapter 2

BERLIN

When the parents moved into the Berlin apartment, the social routines they had learned earlier had returned. For the children, they represented an unfamiliar domesticating framework.

There was this boy.

His enthusiastic urge to discover, which had provoked many an "Oh" and "Ah" from parents and visitors in Tijouka, experienced an unexpected full stop.

Father came to it once, when he conjured in devout inspiration from self-produced brown diaper plasticine an over-child-sized wall painting. Sigurd was so entranced by the mysterious snakes that snaked out of the brown mush through his fingers onto the wallpaper that father's reaction went through his little body like a shock. Because contrary to expectation, his actions were punished with shouting and punishment. Without understanding, he could only cower like Boami, the Brazilian bitch, had done in an unexpected thundershower.

Sigurd felt similarly when he examined the stuffed bear. He had made an exciting discovery. Inside, the bear was filled with sawdust. A bit disappointed at first, he found out that it was definitely a great material to play with. Like the breadcrumbs in Hansel and Gretel, it could be used as a path marker. Like Hansel in the fairy tale, he strayed through the maze of the Berlin apartment: past the two bathrooms, down the servants' stairs to the courtyard, through the two hallways, past the historic maid's chamber, through 3 of the 5 rooms, to the entry parlor and the kitchen. Most interesting was the path around the large grand piano in the living room, because there were also opportunities for hiding under it. Concentrated and absorbed, he made his tracks throughout the apartment, like Boami made her sandy paths on the tijouka lawn. But even this invention did not meet with the approval of "Ah" and "Oh". There was scolding and a slap on the butt.

He was particularly troubled by the change in his father's everyday behavior.

He had furnished one room of the spacious apartment as a 'master's room'. Behind the massive desk, Dad was barricaded like behind a wooden palisade defense.

The wall at his back aroused Sigurd's curiosity. It was draped with utensils that he knew from Brazil. He wanted to take them in his hands right away and play with them.

But, "They're just for looking at, you're not allowed to touch them."

With this verdict, they sank into the ocean of the inaccessible for the children!

It was the same ocean from which in the future at Christmas the steam-powered

Railroad was brought out and reserved only for the touch of the father.

But in the early days in Berlin, the ocean was still young for both the children and the parents. Even in the unfamiliar cohabitation with a family in a limited space, one first had to define one's position by waymarks. Somewhat differently from Hansel and Gretel, Father derived these waymarks from his own Prussian patriotic family tradition. The French-born, social-democratic tradition of the parents-in-law was attractive, but still foreign.

The question remains, why are the waymarks of an adult taken more important than those of a child? Is it the struggle of the mind against the impulse from the soul?

After all, the mementos of the time in the tropics were a beginning of self-determined, freedom-tasting self-definition in the new environment. At that time, it was not yet foreseeable how quickly even the 'wall paintings' and decorations of the men's room (not only those of the son) could lose their value.

Sigurd followed the growth of the wall decoration in touched sympathy. Dad's white pith helmet from Rio was impaled there, as was one of those fascinating, iridescent blue, hand-sized butterflies from the Tijouka's garden. Sigurd's arm-extended comment, "Catching a butterfly," Dad again acknowledged with a shake of his head.

Similar to a presentation of hunting trophies, there were on the wall: two crossed machetes, curare arrows and bows of Native Americans, black and white photos with rimmed frames of encounters with Brazilian Germans and natives. Souvenirs from the mule journeys through the Brazilian jungle before the time of mother's pregnancies.

A colorful oil painting of the imposing view of the Gavea also awakened Sigurd's memory of the view from the Tijouka. But it seemed like a lifeless taxidermied animal compared to the abundance of scent, sound, light and color experienced there in the tropical garden.

The mini-museum was a manifest sign that this time belonged to the past. Preserve in the collection of memories.

Only for secret satisfaction or for special visitors was the intimate demonstration of a phase of life that had been shelved opened like a treasure showcase.

For both father and son, it was an incisive mark on the path of life. Just as the file 'Brazil' was closed as a time full of happiness, serenity and lightness, a new file was opened - especially for the son and his brother - the file 'Fear'.

Attachments from the era of ease, such as carelessly letting go of 'small business,' were vehemently punished. Exciting exceptions were the family gatherings with grandparents, when memories were evoked with pictures and reports. Mother then often told how easy it had been to care for small children in Brazil:

"During the day, the children hardly needed diapers. Everything took place outside. In the heat, a little shirt (T-shirt) was enough. And in the garden they could puff wherever they wanted."

"There, you didn't always have to get dressed, undressed, dressed - like here in Germany. What you saved there. You didn't always have to change rompers, change diapers, put on and take off warm clothes, change diapers - you had to do half as much laundry, and if you did, it was dry in no time.

It's a good thing they're out of the woods now."

Of course, the diaper had been responsible for the worst in Brazil, too. In Berlin, he now began to get used to the potty. If sitting on the potty was already an ordeal for the boy who liked to run, his two- to three-year-old ganglia had stored direct access to the course of nature for the 'little business'.

To pee, the way of the Berlin apartment was often much too long. Then it happened that the file 'Brazil' opened a little bit and tempted with the usual freedom. The corner behind the sewing machine in the former girl's room seemed to Sigurd to be a suitable place - at least it was not in full view. Away from the mainstream of the apartment, it seemed to offer itself, like the large stone behind the Canna da India in the Tijouka's garden, as a place of his relief.

What a fuss there was! Scolding and beating.

As if the world is collapsing.

Domestication in Germany was still in imperially trained, Prussian hands, even despite a temporary phase of a republic.

The lids of the new files were not made of pliable bamboo, they seemed to be made of steel as hard as a gun.

For what?

Proper peeing was a cornerstone of order and cleanliness.

This is where the foundation was laid!

For the boy, however, also the basis for 10 years of bedwetting.

The worst thing in the coming years were the liberation dreams. When waking up didn't work despite the most painful urge, a merciful dream came to his aid to relieve the tormented soul. Then Sigurd was allowed to confidently 'strike off the water' at the large stone behind the canna next to the lemon tree.

Unfortunately, this idea of his brain was only something that came before reality. That looked quite different.

Still at the liberating pee he noticed awakening, how the warm stream poured along the legs into the bed. This did not dry until the morning and could not be hidden. Hours still to get up - some night: a small Guantanamo.

Thank God it was mostly mother who woke him up. She knew how to hide the 'mishap' from his father and not to make a fuss about it.

It had its advantage that she had a French grandmother. Just as then also mother's mother had not let it take to live her unadjusted habits. To take every morning with curlers, robe and 'slippers' in the pub downstairs in the house to the newspaper his milk coffee, was not quite normal even in the Malplaquetstraße of the French quarter in Wedding.

But with this French rite, a little of the native serenity had been saved for Prussian-correct Berlin.

As soon as the hot coffee flowed through your body, you knew the world wasn't ending yet, despite the horror-laden newspaper news.

And mother knew that even from a little pee in bed she did not.

It was different with the father, who came from a different family tradition. Did the survival genes grown under authorities, such as princes, emperors and German state officials, come to life in him under the doctrine of the Hitler government? The rules for a species-appropriate peeing had a decisive symbolic value for successful domestication in these genes.

The taboos surrounding the body's own drainage tap awakened Sigurd's curiosity as well as his fear.

At some point, despite its spaciousness, the apartment was too small for the children's urge to move. Somehow the taste of free-spirited activity was in the Brazilian-inoculated blood.

Fortunately, Roscherstraße in the Charlottenburg district had so little traffic that it could be used for playing. Cautiously, Harald and Sigurd felt their way into their new surroundings. There was the stairwell with the elevator - already this was an attraction in the up and down between the apartment and the street. In front of the house, a lantern enticed them to climb and hide, if they weren't too fat. Curiously, the children of the neighboring houses and from across the street took aim at the two newcomers. Their entrance examination consisted of testing how far they were suited to play along. Soon the space in front of the front door and in the backyard was animated by their joint actions: hide and seek, climbing up the lantern and the brickwork, playing with hoops, ball and pinball and above all:

run, run, run.

While doing so - playing in the yard - one day Sigurd made a monstrous discovery.

It was while peeing together in the bushes. He was standing next to the cobbler boy from across the street, and that's when he discovered it:

David Sonnenstern had no foreskin on the pillerman.

Real:

DAVID SONNENSTERN HAD NO FORESKIN ON THE PILLERMAN.

The little cobbler boy across the street was just as curious and intimate that they showed each other their pillerman while giggling. In David's case, it looked pink in front, a bit like a wound.

I wonder if that didn't hurt him.

The discovery kept little Sigurd busy for weeks.

Whether the presence or absence of the foreskin could have something to do with holding back the pee? Maybe it was a mistake of nature and not his fault that his bed was wet after many a night.

These deliberations dragged on for years, longer than the friendship with the cobbler boy himself.

Just as his foreskin was gone, David Sonnenstern was gone one day - and with it the cobbler's store and his entire family.

This was another signal, after the loss of Brazilian ease, to put a big question mark behind the now German environment.

There was already a whole collection of such question marks.

The existential shock affected all areas.

So also on the diet:

THE CHILDREN REFUSED TO EAT!

There were bananas, but the children did not like them. Not like the almost mushy ripe ones in the Tijouka. There were oranges. But if you could only get hold of their juicy fullness in Brazil as lozenges, here they were hard, dry and tasteless. It was the same with all fruits. The children lacked freshness, sweetness and ripeness. Even the lemons that had fallen into the stall had tasted sweet. Here they were only horribly sour.

And what was rice with black beans without farofa?

"Manioc flour for this is simply impossible to find in Berlin",

Mother revealed with regret.

From week to week, the nurseries showed themselves more clearly.

That set off a cascade:

A. The kindergarten informed the health department.

B. The health department cited the father.

C. The doctor spoke of malnutrition.

D. He prescribed the sun-accustomed offspring high altitude sun and

E. a strict crackdown by parents.

The physician owed his post to his loyalty to the guiding principles of the 'Führer'. In his view, child rearing was defined by the ideals "fast as greyhounds" and "hard as Krupp steel".

The fact that ribs could also be seen in greyhounds was not up for debate.

It was a time without debates.

It was a time when even the claim of debate could be tantamount to a death sentence.

Well, tired of life the father was not, and moreover he did not like to be accused of malnutrition of his son. So the following setting (staged as if for a movie) resulted for the future meals:

Little Sigurd was sitting at the large dining table in a small child's chair with trembling legs.

In front of him was a plate with porridge, slider and child's spoon.

In front of it, a kitchen alarm clock ticked boredly but relentlessly, set for half an hour. This mark signaled the guillotine point of Father's tolerance. Like a metronome for music rehearsals, the jerky advance of the hand was hammered into the child's ear by hard beats.

Behind the boy on his little chair in waiting position lay the cane - a legitimate threat and punishment instrument for croup-steeled educational goals. The father'shandon the cane made it clear that with the expiration of the set time hisactionswere not to be doubted.

What a shock compared to that ease with which the bananas left behind in Rio had always slipped over the tongue. Sigurd felt as if his cheerfulness from the Tijouka had been eaten by the great dreaded snake and he fell, fell, fell into its dark, monstrous, abysmal belly.

A little educational film about how the Prussian-learned discipline of the father slid over into the ideas of the 'New Age' with little resistance.

Was it just the Third Reich?

Why, despite all the humanist sentiments to which the parents laid claim, had this particular phrase from ancient Greece been chosen?

"The man who is not beaten cannot be educated!"

("Ho méh daréis anthrópos oú paidéuetéi.")

It is thanks to German 'classicism' that the Greek sentence, originally stylized as hexameter, was 'pressed' into this form in German as well:

"Thenícht geschlág'neMénschkannníchterzógenwérden."

Oh Germany, your virtues!

Accordingly, this film sequence was probably not only due to the self-running domino effect from the starting point of the protruding nurseries / the kindergarten / the public health officer / to the father's stock-threatening educational gesture - it was probably also due to the deeply anchored conviction of doing something good for the child.

Where is the connection to human 'self-awareness' when love is wrapped in thorny bushes like this?

Chapter 3

GRANDPA PAUL AND GRANDMA MARTHA

Thank God there was the other side.

In accordance with the law of compensation, there were also the small islands of liberation: a small Tijouka in Berlin.

Not that there was anything like a tropical-vegetative abundance at Mother's parents' house - after all, they also lived in one of those Wilhelminian Berlin city apartments on the third floor. But something was similar to the Tijouka's garden - it was something atmospheric. Everything had time to breathe. Much could develop as it wished - or as circumstances allowed. There was a French serenity that was equal to the Brazilian one.

"Come on, my little beeper. Not hungry today? Look, such a nice millet cob, it must tempt you."

"Otherwise, the others will eat you alive. Oh, so you want to get on the shoulder. No, no, on the head, that's not possible."

The very fact that there were budgies in the kitchen brought back Brazilian memories. They could fly around freely between the stove, kitchen table and cupboards. The children stood tensely in front of the window. There on the window sill was a space-filling tin box full of sand. Up between the window jamb, strung on a perch, the parakeets chirped. They were obviously aware that they only had to drop their droppings from there into the sandbox.

"Their poop looks like little worms. And they don't even poop on the stove or in the cooking pot?"

"Oh, no, that's their usual place. Where they are at home, they always sit in large colonies in one place and beak the whole day long.

"In Brazil we saw that too, they were just bigger and sitting in the trees."

"Well, you see - with us, the pole is their boehm. That's where they feel comfortable. This is the traditional place for them and for their business.

The children watched them as they made their rounds through the kitchen from the window. Sometimes also through the entire apartment, if they had caught an open door. Sigurd and Harald enjoyed it most when they came to cuddle with them on their shoulders, chirping something in their ears or nibbling on their earlobes.

Yet another guest at the grandparents found the enthusiastic interest of the children.

Grandpa told me that he had found the squirrel injured in the forest during one of his bicycle rides along the Spree River.

"It was so miserably zujerichtet - probably by een dog?!

Ick just could not let it lie. Grandma first gave it a nice bath with warm water."

"It has koom nor jerührt. He let everything happen to him. Then we treated the one leg with a splint and bandaged it. In the pharmacy they gave us an ointment, which is actually for horses. That has jeholfen. After a few days it began to eat nuts. Then I built him another bottle, from which he gets water at any time. It's great that he can jump and run like that again."

He had made himself comfortable in the pantry right next to the kitchen. His favorite place was a large canvas bag next to the door, in which corks were collected. The grandparents and the children were so amused when they discovered that the squirrel had already chewed almost all the corks into cork flour. And what fun it was when it scurried into the kitchen and escaped from the children again and again when they caught it. Like the sun spots on the grass of the Tijouka.

"Grandpa, where's Mäxchen?"

This is how the children had christened the squirrel.

"Well, up there on the curtain rod, take a closer look. A blind man with a cane can see it."

Grandpa Paul also had fun watching the squirrel fool the children. It scampered in wild chase up and down the curtains to the height of the kitchen ceiling, where it was safe from the children's grasp.

"Soon we'll have to say goodbye to him," Grandpa Paul had announced one day as sad news, "but dat we do together."

"You come along, grandma comes along - and then we take some nice food for Mäxchen and of course for ourselves. At the canoe club we'll have a picnic together, and then we can watch if Mäxchen still remembers the forest and how he disappears between the trees."

The children's objections were plausibly rebutted:

"You want to play with other children, and Mäxchen will be happy to meet other squirrels and to romp up and down the trees with them. I wonder what he has to tell, as much as he has experienced with you."

Yes, with Grandpa Paul, even the painful things, like goodbyes, became a bearable affair.

"Because he has an eye for the big picture," as the older brother instructed Sigurd.

The grandfather had that simply because of his varied experience.

In a biography with world war, world economic crisis, apprenticeship, self-employment, loss of all savings, unemployment and unshakable Berlin humor had accumulated a lot.

There was a down-to-earth foundation of his Berlin family of origin. It was not called 'Kleinschmidt' by chance, as he explained meaningfully to the children.

Grandpa derived that from 'blacksmith'. For generations, they had maintained a horse farm on the outskirts of Berlin with a horseshoe forge, horse changing and accommodation for stagecoaches. Their guests, dispatch riders and tradesmen, found lodging and meals in the associated inn. Thus, the family had a good livelihood based on hard work. This had also worked for little Paul until the modern age with railroads, automobiles, streetcars and subways caused this livelihood to dry up.

Bike racer was then Grandpa Paul's dream job as a young man. He proudly showed the children the many glittering medals and trophies he had won (in the beginning with penny-farthing races). What could be more natural than to later keep his head above water with a bicycle store? However, times were not always favorable for leisure spending. So he switched to being an insurance salesman.

There were times when he could only keep his family alive by winning prizes at the Berlin fairs. At home, he practiced throwing ping-pong balls into glasses or catapulting rings around bottles until he succeeded in winning prizes at the fair. In those days, the prizes were in kind. So he sometimes came home with a bucket of butter or sometimes with a goose.

"It was a time when you had to have jute ideas for survival and improvisation," he said.

Only a woman like Grandma Martha with her French composure and good connections to West Prussia suited such a man. A few good gifts from the sisterly estate there were often enough the existential lifeline.

This thread, however, belongs to another story - a love story. It is about a deserted officer of the Napoleonic troops and his love for a landowner's daughter in West Prussia around 1800. The name 'Gastalier' was Germanized. The descendants of the 'Gastals' spread from the West Prussian ancestral estate to Berlin.

Here, with the naturalized Huguenots, there was a small piece of French-familiar way of life. Grandma Martha was therefore a born 'Gastal'. And mother told that she had often spent her vacations as a child with her uncle on the West Prussian ancestral estate.

The love story belonging to this origin must unfortunately be left to the reader's imagination. The red thread calls for a different path.

Grandpa Paul had been through thick and thin, as the saying goes, and so was he: "One with whom you could go through thick and thin and with whom you could steal horses."

And great stories he could tell about his bike races.

Sigurd and Harald liked the story with the flock of sheep best. And as it is with children, he had to tell it again and again:

"So I'm coming down the hill on my penny-farthing. And after the next bend - I think, that can't be true, what do I see there? The whole street full of sheep. There was no way through. Braking was also out of the question. The things weren't that fast back then. The brake only acted on the tire of the front penny-farthing. You could forget about coming to a stop quickly.

So what to do? Good advice was expensive.

But it's great how quickly our brain reacts. Ick saw me in the spirit already headlong plunge into the flock of sheep and could imagine how many broken bones det erjibt. Then I remembered that a doctor once told me that the most harmless fracture is a broken collarbone.

So I immediately thought. How do I get it done, that everything else remains intact?

Left of the road, just before the herd, was a wooden fence. I was well trained. We trained every day acrobatic tricks for riding a penny-farthing bike, which is how we earned our money back then.

So I ride towards the fence, use the penny-farthing to push off and roll over the wooden fence with my shoulder.

The penny-farthing drove on, overturned and then came to rest between the sheep. Was janz beautiful dented the jute piece. But I was in one piece. Imagine that, nothing had I me jetan except said key fracture. I had caught me.

The best thing was that the doctor was right. After three weeks it was healed again, as if nothing had happened. So the doctor saved my life with his sentence. A few sheep certainly had bruises, but they are well padded with their wool."

It was important for the children to have such an ally. Someone who exemplified that life could also be seen differently than through the strict eyes of the father.

And with whom you could pour out your heart as a child when your parents were invited somewhere and Grandpa Paul was in charge.

Not only that then, for once, all taboos could be broken, such as jumping from the closet into the parental beds, where grandpa then welcomed the children with laughter and tickling.

He also stood by with the net stretched out when Sigurd's little soul received such a strong blow that it could not stand the gust of wind and was torn from the rope.

That's how it was around Christmas time, when Sigurd had just turned 4.

First stubbornly, then with liberating tears, he told Grandpa Paul:

"Santa Claus is evil. A big evil giant with a rod. He hit me and everyone laughed. I'm not going to kindergarten anymore. Never, never, never will I go there again."

It took a long time before Grandpa Paul was finally able to puzzle the whole story together into a picture.

Sometime in October, the left eye of an eye-opening doll had fallen victim to Sigurd's urge to explore. Intense and fascinated, he had tried to get to the bottom of the mystery. Without looking behind it, it was impossible to figure out how the doll managed to open and close its eyes. Only a surgical inspection could help. Of course, this left traces, as with any surgical procedure.

The stupid thing was - the doll was the pride and joy of Karin, a fellow player in the kindergarten. Karin was very sad. She didn't like a doll with only one eye. The whole morning melted into tears and Sigurd's dismay.

The kindergarten teacher was very angry. After a scolding, her solution was: Sigurd takes the doll home and has it repaired through the parents.

So far, so good.

Unfortunately, something came up. When he arrived home, Sigurd was so afraid of parental punishment that he put the doll on the windowsill in the stairwell.

After that, the doll was gone and forgotten.

The problem seemed to have dissipated.

Maybe she had been eaten by the big snake in the tijouka.

Until St. Nicholas Day came.

All the children sat in a circle in the kindergarten.

The tall strange man with a hood, beard, rod and sack walked around in it. Each of the frightened children made a little speech and received something from the sack - gingerbread, licorice, a small toy and so on.

It's quite different with Sigurd.

This hooded giant was already not very familiar to him - but contrary to his expectations, this time this bag man did not reach into his bag, but for the rod, puffed himself up to gigantic size in front of him, brought up the story with the doll in a rumbling loud bass voice and then threatened him with the rod.

Now this more symbolic gesture did not leave any physical pain. For the boy, the insult was rather that he was the only one not to be rewarded. Instead, he had to serve as a victim of schadenfreude for the other children and the kindergarten teachers. And this in front of the entire group. And this at the end of the year, when everything was wrapped in Christmas carols and sacred stories about charity and harmony.

How did that fit in with being peed on so much?

That was too much even for Sigurd's collection of question marks.

That was soul-destroying terror!

The background was: The parents had found the doll.

Informed by the kindergarten, they had the eye repaired.

Without talking to Sigurd about it, they had fallen for the idea of this 'think piece' together with the kindergarten teachers.

Obviously, there was no awareness of the need to forge cautiously, even when aiming for 'Krupp steel'.

Simply hitting it leaves only shards.

It cost the blacksmith's son Grandpa Paul all imaginable consolations and disentanglement attempts to make plausible in this thorny undergrowth the droplet of love that could be meant in it on the part of the parents.

He did not succeed - but his assistance did the boy good.

Unfortunately, this island of mutual cohesion did not last. The last years of the war tore everything apart. Shit Hitler era!

Chapter 4

UNDER AND OVER

More and more, the familiar everyday life was pierced by alienating signs. This was also noticeable on the children's level.

First David Sonnenstern had disappeared with his amazing pill man. All the children of the street stood in front of the abandoned cobbler's store and wondered about the broken glass.

Then the annual festivities in the courtyard of the Charlottenburg garrison church became fewer. What an exciting event that had always been, when the brown-uniformed Wehrmacht had invited there several times a year for pony rides, can tossing, cotton candy and pea soup. Now it only took place once a year.

Father was drafted into the military. Every now and then a field post letter arrived at home.

The almost daily walk to feed the ducks at Lietzensee was declared a danger. The children were amazed when the lake was suddenly covered with a camouflage net.

"This is to help orient the 'enemy bombers,'" Mom explained.

Duck feeding under the net became an arduous game. First, the children had to find an access to the water with their mother. Then they tried to lure the ducks as secretly as possible with the prepared pieces of bread and to brighten up their life in their prison with tasty morsels. Finally, hard boot steps betrayed the patrolling guards. Despite orders to be considerate of mothers with children, they had to put a stop to it.

The war, which the 'German Reich' wanted to export, was repulsed as captivity on its own population.

Then came the bombs. With them came the sirens.

Almost every night the deafening signal: FLYER ALARM!

Sigurd hated to be torn so abruptly from sleep - wake up, pack things, from the 3rd floor with mother, brother, bag and baggage sleepily into the cellar. There was a room there, declared as an air-raid shelter. All the families of the house sat crammed together amidst the sweat of fear, snoring, children's whining, moaning and the sayings of Berlin gallows humor. In the background, they could hear the rumble of the bombs hitting outside.

Huddled at the mother a few hours of sleep.

"Mom, where's Dad?"

"Mom, when can we go back to bed?"

"Mom, do you have anything to drink with you?"

"Mom, what if the bomb falls on us?"

"Mom, my left leg itches."

Then all-clear.

Out onto the road. Red, orange and sparking the horizon. In the eyes of the children, it was a spectacular spectacle.

In front of it, the silhouette of the still intact, spared rows of houses stood out like a protective wall of dark ghostly figures. Fortunately, his own house was among them.

But night after night, the impacts came closer.

The action air-raid shelter with siren, wake up, elevator or staircase up, staircase down, now even took place several times a night, finally also during the day. Permanent stress at an age where for the children actually maturity is required.

Even visits to grandparents became complicated adventurous races from shelter to shelter. Holding their mother's hand, the children hurried through the streets of Berlin. They passed smashed windows of Jewish stores and still smoking debris from the last bombings. Squeezed into the breaks between curfews, they were lucky if they found a nearby bunker when the siren alarm sounded. Sometimes they were dragged by helping hands into a house cellar, sometimes one of the pompous entrances of Wilhelminian splendorous buildings had to serve as a refuge. Moreover, there was the risk of making the way before dusk. From 8 p.m. on, there was a curfew. No more lights were allowed on the streets and in the apartments to mislead 'enemy planes'.

Finally, the order came to evacuate. Berlin was evacuated. Women and children in particular had to seek refuge with relatives outside Berlin.

Grandma Hulda had a brother in Adorf in the Voigtland. There with uncle Martin and his wife Erna the mother came with the two boys under accommodation.

There was a lull of just under a year before the shell impacts and the machine-gun salvos of the low-flying aircraft also reached the peaceful countryside on the edge of the Ore Mountains.

Shortly after the move came the news of the bombing of the Berlin apartment. The colors of the Gavea had dissolved in the sea of flames from the phosphorus bomb. The blue-green butterfly from father's mini-museum fluttered into space together with the clouds of smoke, searching for its soul lost in Brazil.

It was not only the souls of the dead that were lost in this inferno. Even the thought of the souls was lost. Being was reduced to naked survival.

There were two impulses that remained encapsulated for the future like fraternal twin seeds from this time of bare survival. On the one hand, an obsessive greed to grab and increase every attainable material existence. On the other, the realization of how little lasting value is contained in any form of material existence. An irreconcilable pathological schizophrenia was waiting to develop into a germ in the next post-war generations.

But where would the teachers come from to point them in the right direction?

Chapter 5

EXIL

Quietly trickles the snow,

still and rigid lies the lake.

It is cold in Adorf im Voigtland.

2 meters of piled up powdery precipitation.

"Do you freeze like that?"

"Don't you have the warm brick that Mom wrapped in the towel?"

"Yes, it does - but it always slips. Warm on top, the feet freeze."

"Why don't you come to bed with me?"

"Ow yeah, we're warmer together."

"Remember? In Berlin, the room was always warm, even at night."

"But there were the bombs and the sirens."

"Yes, you can sleep better here once you're warm."

"It's a good thing the comforter is so cozy."

"Yes, good thing Aunt Erna had some left for us."

"Uncle Martin is pretty strict."

"Adults are just like that."

"Grandpa Paul is not like that, and he's an adult, too."

"Uncle Martin is just a teacher."

"I saw he has a cane, too."

"Tomorrow morning we can go back to breathing holes in the ice at the window."

"And melt snow stars."

"Are you that hungry?"

"Yeah - I still have chocolate pudding under the bed."

"I already ate that one."

"Why is that, it was mine. We wanted to wait until he became chocolate."

"Yes, but it takes so long. Mine didn't set at all. And so I thought, before yours goes bad ..."

"You're stupid."

"But I was so 'n hungry."

"I'll tell mom."

"Then I'll say you hid the plate under the bed."

"You did yourself."

"I think Mrs. Wieputschek is still awake."

"Wanna take a look?"

"Yes, but quietly so Uncle Martin doesn't hear us."

Tapp, tapp, tapp two pairs of children's bare feet ran across the wooden hallway from the staircase.

Mrs. Wieputschek lived alone in the attic apartment next to the children's bedroom. In contrast to the children's bedroom, she had a stove. Her apartment also included a bedroom, a room with a sink and a small kitchen. It was a half-converted attic. The toilet was halfway down the stairs below. In winter it was as cold as the children's bedroom. At least all the rooms had attic windows.

There was this boy.

Mrs. Wieputschek knew the soft tentative knock.

She let the children in. She knew that this was not what Uncle Martin had in mind. After all, she was only a housemate tolerated as a rent payer. An inferior compared to an elementary school teacher.

The children didn't care. They liked the lonely woman who always had a warm place for them and something very special to which the children now clung with wide eyes.

An affectionate agreement flitted across Mrs. Wieputschek's face.

The children were hungry and there were always at least a dozen strings of apple rings hanging above Mrs. Wieputschek's stove. Winter stock. Dried fruit. The heat of the oven had to be exploited.

Besides satisfying the grossest hunger, Mrs. Wieputschek's apple rings were the most delicious sweets the children could think of.

Chocolate or baking ingredients have not been around for a long time.

Butter and even flour were rationed, available only on food stamps.

Mother - inventive as she was - had conjured up marzipan balls by kneading mashed potatoes with a little syrup and almond flavoring. After an adventurous trip across the border, she had been able to 'hoard' this in the nearby Czech town of Eger.

The forest shines like Christmas,

rejoice, 's Christkind comes soon.

Mrs. Wieputschek enjoyed her evening solitude - the children enjoyed the half-dried apple rings, the warmth of her oven, and especially the warmth of Mrs. Wieputschek's heart.

A small, clandestine parallel world in the normal everyday life of Martin, Erna and their relatives, who are otherwise one floor below.

Life, in whatever form, seeks its channels.

Father was at war. Mother had her hands and diapers full with an additional infant. Unplanned and only 3 days home leave from father was the addition to the family.

Any kind of support was missing. No Brazilian sun or warmth / no helpful grandparents / nannies certainly not / Aunt Erna and Uncle Martin felt more like patrons doing a useful service to the fatherland.

The two children, just of school age, had no sense of infant care yet. They had enough to do with themselves, were still in need of care themselves - but they pushed into life with all vehemence.

Mother had little control over what the children were up to.

Even the orientation framework school had fallen away since the building served as a military hospital for wounded soldiers.

Chapter 6

WILDWOOD

In the meantime, the martial climate also determined the children's everyday life. Sigurd and Harald collected margarine pictures of fighter pilots and tank types that could be handled and traded like card games. The street had become a children's bazaar.

Shell fragments in bizarre shapes were collectibles like exotic gems.

In the evenings, the children roamed around exploring with their military flashlights. Father had given them them on a short vacation. A precious commodity in a time when toys were scarce. The lamps captivated Harald and Sigurd so much that they tapped into their full potential.

So especially the evenings became an exciting experience.

"Let me sleep already. Stop fiddling with the flashlight."

The little one could often annoy the big one.

"Oh, come on, join us. It only works in the dark. We can still sleep."

"But only if we learn Morse code together. I have the list here."

"List, list in the box -

came a bad man and pissed

on the Morse code,

but it was not too late,

Harald was still able to save them,

and we learn it in the beds."

"Cut the nonsense or I won't participate."

Then I'll just go to Mrs. Schmidt,

ah, it's not there at all,

good - we're learning now, hurray!"

The children had already explored some of the flashlights. Different colors could be set with the filter flaps. They had given them meanings according to their needs. Red meant alarm, watch out, danger. Green meant a clear field, or 'green light'.

Now they were trying out the white light and the possibility of the switch as a basis for sparking with Morse code.

It was a tedious task that often stretched Sigurd's patience.

Harald kept trying to redirect his play instinct to learning together.

"Well, you know, in Morse there's only long and short. Turn on, count to three is long, turn on/off is short."

"I already know.

Long, long, long - it gives me the creeps.

Short, short, short - I'll leave a fart there."

"Quiet, if you don't join me, I'm going to sleep."

"I'm already calm."

"Well, we've already been to the words. You already know your ABCs from school. In Morse code, you have to radio each letter individually."

"I already know."

"Shut up! Just listen. Each letter has different light signals, long and short. But it's hard to remember them. That's why there's a trick. You learn each letter in the form of a word. That's what the list is for."

Sigurd chuckled to himself. At 'list', 'pissed' came to his mind again.

"We had already started doing that. Do you remember which word stands for the letterA?"

"Sure thing, A TOM."

"And then how isAradioed?"

"1x short, 1x long."

"Great, you remembered that well. If there's an O in the syllable, it always means long, all the others short. And do you remember which word stands for the next letter, for theB?"

"BOH NEN STAN GE."

"Great - and what Morse code does that make?"

"1 x long, 3 x short."

"Look, I'll do it."

With the flashlight he radioed from his bed to the bed of the brother the B. Obviously the principle did not make any difficulties for him. Syllable with O stood in each case for long Morse, all others for short. Thus, using the list, they were able to memorize Morse code for the entire alphabet.

A tom: ° ---

Boh nen stan ge: --- °°°

Co burg Go tha: --- ° --- °

etc.

With the help of the flashlights, the evenings had become an entertaining program of games and learning.

The children sank into the list like into a treasure on an island accessible only to them. The silly man who pissed had long since disappeared behind the daily or nightly increase in learning. They had discovered a secret language that belonged only to them.

Without words, they could communicate with each other over long distances without anyone else understanding them.

In this way, they were also able to outwit the guard at the freight station and sneak up on the freight cars. On the station grounds, where the anti-aircraft gun was also located, the children had discovered an open freight car. With their hearts pounding, they crept up to it. A veritable treasure trove opened up to them. They were able to steal rifle cartridges and even hand grenades for their 'collection'. Like a precious treasure, this collection found a hiding place in their playgrounds under the jacked-up barns.

A special rarity in the competition with the other 'street kids' for the most attractive ammunition collection was the achievement of two sticks of dynamite. They had 'found' them on the country road to Bad Elster. There the avenue trees had been notched in preparation to serve as anti-tank barriers. The notches were filled with sticks of dynamite. In case of an enemy tank advance they were to be blown up. The fallen trees were then to block the road.

It never came to that, because the American tanks simply drove towards the city in the riverbed of the Elster. So it seemed only legitimate that the sticks of dynamite had become an object of value in the children's treasure.

There were also other, less dangerous games. With patience and skill, the brothers managed to catch sticklebacks in the stream and small miniature crayfish. With all their attention, Sigurd and Harald lay bent over the bank among wild catmint, rushes, grass and liverworts. In the play of currents and eddies, they watched for the slightest deviations that could betray a fish or a crab. Then it was time to be nimble. Proudly they showed off their prey. Every day they ran impatiently to the barn under which they kept the sticklebacks hidden in the jar of water. They had their hands full feeding the fish with small earthworms and mini crabs.

School holidays due to military hospital occupation of the building, hot, dry summers full of buzzing cicadas, grasshoppers, butterflies, lizards, plus the meetings with the other children under the caves of the field barns and a mother far too busy to control, what could be better for an adventurous child's life.

They slipped past some dangers and learned to survive in the process.

At the small lake above the barns, from which in winter the ice was cut out in blocks for the cooling of the brewery, they decided to build a raft in the summer.

The children were skillful in their work. First they tried out which materials could float. Wood was too difficult for their little hands to work with. Rushes were best suited. They grew right next to the lake anyway. After the children discovered that the wadded marrow inside the stalks had good buoyancy and also didn't soak up water, they were the material of choice. First, they set about harvesting the rush stalks. To weave long braids from them, they had thought of a trick. The first loop was placed around the foot. Then, from the foot to the hands, with the help of the movable arms, there was room to weave in more and more rushes. This allowed them to make a collection of braids about 1 meter long. Then they tied them together to form a mat. Straining, they finally launched the rush raft into the water. The swimming ability was limited, but a complete success. The children did get wet paddling across the lake on it, but they did not sink. A reliable swimming mat. It allowed bathing and being carried. In the hot summer temperatures, this was great fun and useful. So they could make their first swimming attempts without any guidance. They were proud and happy.

Climbing trees and building branch houses was a matter of course anyway. Sigurd and Harald had gotten some ropes from the 'hollow' (that's what the nearby garbage dump was called). With their help, they became the leaders of a whole horde of climbing 'child monkeys'. The other children, after finding out their birthplace, teased them by yelling "UAAB, UAAB" - abbreviation for 'jungle monkey from Brazil'.

With the help of the ropes and their climbing fun, they were able to turn the demeaning word into a positive role model for the less skilled.

Chapter 7

NATURE FEEDS HER CHILDREN