We Children from the Ruetschlehen – The History of a Street and Its Children 1928-1952

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First, one has to come upon such an idea! And then, also find the energy and endurance to accomplish the task. Bernhard Pfender did it: he ultimately gathered 85 names. All “Children from the Ruetschlehen,” who at that time, a half century earlier, lived, played, made noise, knew each other – or didn’t know each other - on this street. He managed to get 65 of them to meet in the Fechenheim Boathouse in the fall of 2002: a real first. We apparently had to first reach 50 or 60 years of age in order to gather in this mass and concentration for the first time as “We Children from the Ruetschlehen.”

I was a little apprehensive: such a lot of older people, and all unfamiliar faces, and even the names didn’t help on the spur of the moment! But a wonderfully familiar Fechenheim dialect! Then I sat next to Richard, my best friend from that time, and next to Ilse, his sister, whom I idolized 50 years ago. Old stories emerged – not only from me, but everywhere in the room!

And there the idea was born for this book. If only a part of the countless memories could be recorded! In addition, maybe some old photos! In a little book – for us, our children, our grandchildren. I had interest in this work, and ideas also, on how to tackle it. But I wasn’t retired yet.

And again it was Bernhard Pfender who simply began. He gathered materials, listened to stories, wrote some himself. He sought financial support for his work from the Hessen Culture Ministry: two files of compellingly interesting text, documents and pictures, that are now deposited in the “Library of the Aged” of the Frankfurt Historical Museum.

With the generous financial support of the Nassauische Heimstaette – responsible for the “even” side of the Ruetschlehen street, in other words for the housing development (units #2 through #24) – my sister, Jutta von Freyberg, was able to work the material of both files into this little volume of memories. And I, because of course I had the idea, was allowed to write this foreword. And naturally the gratitude also, that belongs here: first, to Bernhard Pfender, who brought a little life’s work to completion; then to all of “us” for their contributions here; naturally, to the Hessen Culture Ministry and the Frankfurt History Museum, who supported Bernhard’s work; and not least, the Nassauische Heimstaette, without whose financial help Jutta von Freyberg would not have been able to put this little book together.

I hope reading it brings pleasure. And I greet the “Children from the Ruetschlehen”.

Your Thomas von Freyberg, at that time – between 7 and 12 years young – living Am Ruetschlehen #24, 2nd floor right. Page 9

History of the Street

The residential area in the vicinity of the street Am Ruetschlehen came into being in the 1920’s. In an old description of the area, the street first received its name in 1928. On an old area map of 1890, we also find the name Ruecklehen and see: Ruecklehjen and Ruetschlehen marking the same area. Until secularization, the fields of the Ruetschlehen belonged to the monastery at Arnsburg1. Then in 1803, the municipality of Fechenheim2 acquired the Ruetschlehen property.

If it was then named Ritsch-, Rueck- or Ruetschlehen is no longer ascertainable. We have a meaning for “Ruetsch”: ground going slightly downhill. The area is also narrow, like a rockfall. Here we’ll stop with the yarn spinning. Also, “Rueck (back)” could be the original form, the fields being bought “back” from the monastery.

In the year 2003, as this documentation began, we could look back at a 75-year existence.

Drawing of the area streets.

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The existing residential community, under the management of the Nassauische Heimstaette, of the streets Am Ruetschlehen, Jakobsbrunnenstrasse3 and Leo-Gans-Strasse was planned by Ernst May.

Ernst May, born 27 July 1886 in Frankfurt am Main, died 11 September 1970 in Hamburg. Ernst May was the leading German city planner of his time.

For Fechenheim, its population and the time period, the residences were progressive and comfortable. With about 56 square meters (about 603 square feet) of living space and built-in so- called “Frankfurter kitchen”, a bath and toilet, these apartments were very well designed.

The eleven units (called houses) in the block had six apartments each, of which numbers 4 through 12 reserved to be occupied only by Fechenheim families, while the numbers 14 through 24 were freely rented out. Unit #2 with two apartments was one story and reserved for the housemaster and the manager. The houses on the opposite side of the street were one-family row houses designed by Fechenheimer architect Alix.

Pictures of the residential blocks. . Page 11

1 About 25 miles directly north of Frankfurt am Main/Fechenheim, just south of Lich. It was founded in 1171 A.D. In 1972 it was converted into a hotel and a facility for cultural events. Slide show at: http://www.pbase.com/dyphotono1/arnsburg_monastery&view=slideshow includes pictures of the monastery. 2 Fechenheim was an independent town before 1 April 1928, when it was made an official “suburb” of Frankfurt am Main. In 1754, the population had been 527 in 105 households. In 1928, the population was about 12,000. Today, there are 15, 894 inhabitants. 3 Jakobsbrunnenstrasse. Jacob’s Well Street. This is the street where I lived. It adjoined perpendicular to Am Ruetschlehen just one block east of our apartment.

2 The Beginning of Building Activity in the Area Around the Street Am Ruetschlehen

In the 1920’s, in the area of the street Am Ruetschlehen, there was a lot of building activity. First, the block between the Karl-Marx-Strasse (today An der Seehecke), the Wiesenstrasse (today Jakobsbrunnen Strasse), the Saalenbusch and the Project Strasse (today’s street Am Ruetschlehen) was built.

In the municipal building plans of the Prussian land registry in Hanau (2 July 1927) can be seen the first section of the houses to be built there, while those on the right side by the Bodenseestrasse later were to follow, as well as the long-drawn settlement building of the Nassauische Heimstaette.

We have a calculation and final invoice of that time of the building costs from the building firm of the bricklayer Ferdinand Wilhelm Berg and his architect Georg Alix.

Building costs: 11,337.53 Reichsmark4 Heat, fees, etc.: 1,094.96 Reichsmark Total: 12,432.49 Reichsmark

All the residential houses (on the opposite side of the street) stand on the land that was leased from the community under a 99-year lease. These pieces of land have a scale of about 300 to 420 square meters (approximately 3,200 to 4,500 square feet) and are - when compared to today’s row houses – of considerable size. They have at their disposal a generous front yard and a lovely useful and ornamental garden; their backsides surround a playground.

Especially during the war and post-war years, the gardens were of special importance for the daily menu. Not only were fruits and vegetables planted, but also chickens and rabbits were raised. When the residents on the other side of the Ruetschlehen had good luck, we occasionally received something from them. Today the gardens are mainly ornamental, in which most likely a small corner is reserved for kitchen herbs.

Bernhard Pfender, September 2003

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Pictures of the rear of the Ruetschlehen apartments, Ernst May, and a long shot of the homes on both sides of Ruetschlehen looking toward the factory.

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Photocopy of a 1932 rental agreement for 584.40 Reichsmark for one year, at the monthly rate of 48.70 Reichsmark. This was for a 3-room apartment with a kitchen, bathroom with bathtub, a storage area in the cellar and the laundry facility and bleaching ground.

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4 German currency. In the currency reform of 1948, its designation was changed to D-Mark (Deutsche Mark).

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We Children from the Ruetschlehen Tell Stories

Maria and Peter Debes Stories of the War and of Hunger

In 1928, as the Ernst-May-Housing Development Am Ruetschlehen was finished, the Karlauf family (father, mother, two boys and daughter Maria) moved into the three room apartment in unit #22, on the main floor. Maria and her husband, Peter Debes, still live in this apartment today. The rest of the family members have died in the last decade, and their children meanwhile have married and are out of the home.

1. A Looting with Near Disastrous Consequences

During the last war days of 1945, a group of four young people of the ages 16 – 18 years (Peter Debes with three friends plus a girl) were on their way in the direction of the Mainkur5. They pushed a large cart with two large wheels and a bar on both sides to push it. Their goal was the freight train that stood near the train station at the Mainkur on Kilianstedterstrasse, whose cars were full of usable items.

Each one knew that looting was punishable with the death penalty by hanging. In spite of that, they loaded up the cart and started to make their return trip, when two armed soldiers and a non- commissioned officer of the Weapons-SS with machine pistols came out of the nearby woods and approached them. They were taken captive and brought to the military command that was located at the time on the property of the Woerner Machine Factory in Fechenheim.

The soldier on guard told the group that the officer in charge was asleep and that they had to wait until he woke up. Peter Debes and the other young men belonged to the National Militia and they would be tried by a military court, while the young lady would be turned over to an appropriate civil court in Bischofsheim6. To guard the young men, one of the soldiers stayed behind, while the SS man, the other soldier and the young lady with the pushcart headed in the direction of Bischofsheim.

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Meanwhile, the young captured men started conversing with the soldier. One asked him if he was from the area because he looked familiar. He said, “Yes, I am from Offenbach7.” At that Peter Debes said, “Man, why don’t you escape? We will give you some civilian clothes and we will burn your uniform.”

5 This is the area in the northeast corner of Fechenheim, where the Main River makes its bend back to the east. The Main River as it flows by Fechenheim is in the shape of an S. 6 A small town just north of Fechenheim. 7 City just south of Fechenheim across the Main River.

4 With that, the war was over for the soldier. The officer in charge, who was still sleeping, never knew anything about this.

The young men started out again. Before long they saw the young lady who had been with them earlier with the loaded pushcart approach them from the woods. They were astounded because they thought she had been brought before the judge. The young woman explained to them that she had compromised with the soldier and bought her freedom and the cart.

From the loot, Peter Debes got hold of a brand new officer’s coat. Peter Debes wore the slightly altered coat into the middle 1950’s.

2. Big Haul

Peter and Maria Debes told a further tale about danger and risks of acquiring needed goods.

One day, a fully loaded freight train stood on the train track parallel to Orberstrasse, right near the firm Alfred Teves. In the cars were groceries like sugar, flour, canned goods and more, but also shoes, blankets, bedding and all sorts of things. They were surely originally scheduled for the eastern front, but with the war meanwhile ended, why shouldn’t they serve the German civilians now? The U.S. soldiers at first watched the hustle of the people calmly. But how long did they have? It was suggested that they hurry. For that reason, Peter tells, he stuffed anything at all that would be useful into a bag as he, along with others, emptied the freight cars. And so it happened that he came home with a sack full of ladies’ shoes. Worse still, at closer examination, he found that he had only left shoes.

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3. The U.S. Army Intervenes

Near Fechenheim, on the property of the east harbor8, in the Weismuellerstrasse, stood the firm Lemita that stored huge amounts of groceries. The warehouse was guarded by so-called DP’s (displaced persons) in black uniforms and blue helmets.

The fields of the farmers began on one side of the Leo-Gans Strasse. The view was clear all the way to Frankfurt, more specifically: to the east harbor area. Peter Debes and his contemporaries could see how farmers with fully-loaded horse carts drove away from there in all directions. Their curiosity and above all their empty stomachs and their excruciating hunger drove them there. They saw how the guards of the grocery warehouse, mostly of Czechoslovakian origin, shot at the farmers who had begun plundering. There were deaths among the farmers.

The young people reported the event to the U.S. guard soldiers in the Leo-Gans Strasse and they immediately intervened and re-established order with hand grenades.

4. A Dangerous Adventure

8 This was on the Main River slightly southwest of Fechenheim about where the bottom of the S shape begins.

5 In the vicinity of Neu-Isenburg9, there was a weapons depot. It was hidden beneath the roots of cleared trees, somewhere in a firebreak crosswise through the forest, where once a highway was supposed to be built. All sorts of ammunition were hidden there. Whoever knew about it helped himself to it unhesitatingly, as did Peter Debes and his friends. Loaded down with hand grenades and other dangerous ammunition, they came back to Fechenheim.

What did they need the ammunition for? They knew that in the Fechenheimer forest (in the northern part of the town) there was a herd of deer. The boys were hungry with a continuous terrible hunger. Their plan was simple: they would stalk the deer and kill them. They were lucky. The deer stood in a clearing in the middle of the forest, fair game. The comrades reached for the grenades, pulled the rings and threw them in the direction of the deer. However, before the hand grenades were able to strike their targets, the deer were startled and disappeared into the forest.

Also startled were the U.S. soldiers who were standing at their posts in the forest. They answered with wild rifle fire. And once more the group with Peter Debes lucked out: unhurt and unseen they left the deer hunting ground.

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5. Canteen Kitchen for the East European DP’s

Peter Debes was among those who were required to cook for the forced laborers who were quartered in the May-Housing Development at that time. The supplies were extremely low and every supplement was appreciated. One day, the cooks, against their will, received the hind- quarter of a horse. They stuck the horse quarter, as it was, with fur and hoofs into the largest tub and cooked it to serve.

The quality of the food that was cooked for the displaced persons was more than modest for two reasons: first, little food was available, and little good food, and second, the cooks also were in forced labor, not trained for this job. The containers in which the DP’s received their food corresponded to the quality of their food. Chamber pots were found among them.

Now and then there was a ration of sausage, but so small that it was never enough for 3000, maybe at the most only for a handful of people. So the kitchen personnel decided to use it for themselves. A Russian commander watched how the personnel served themselves and took them to task for it. They expected the worst. Then the commander asked Peter Debes how many siblings he had, and he answered, “Five.” The commander gave him an additional ration of sausage.

Peter and Maria Debes, December 2003 Received and recorded by Bernhard Pfender

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Photocopies of documents of the seizure and later release of the unit Am Ruetschlehen #5.

9 About 8 miles southwest of Fechenheim.

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Claere Wesselmann born Pfender School Discharge, Compulsory Service – and the End of the War

My school years at the Willmann School10 ended in 1941. I was now 14 years old and had to do the so-called compulsory year of service. I worked with a family of six: parents, two boys and two girls. The mother was extremely strict and behaved extremely unjustly toward me. I was happy that my father took me out of there after a short time.

After this short episode, we found a new family for me in the district of Riederwald11. The Ditzel family consisted of father, mother, three girls and the grandparents. They ran a bakery. I felt comfortable here, and the compulsory year was quickly over. Then, at the beginning of 1942, I was able to begin my training. At the firm Pfueller in the Goethestrasse I was trained to be a small-shop keeper; after two years I passed the final examination.

Now the complicated question: service in the military or obligatory service? I had no chance to escape both, so I chose the compulsory service. It was not simple to arrange, but I was successful. I was accepted in the firm Adolf Messer in the Haunauer Landstrasse and worked there during the decisive war years 1944/45.

During air raids, which came ever more frequently, it was wise to find shelter in a secure bunker12. Our path led us across the Hanauer Landstrasse and across the tracks of the railroad in the district Riederwald, where the bunker was located. The alarm system was not functioning properly at the time, so that the bombing squad of the allies caught up with us before we reached our bunker. Often we had to seek refuge under the railroad cars as the low-flying aircraft with their on-board guns shot at us, hitting the railroad cars left and right. It was a terrible and fearful situation, but it was better than if I had to do duty as a “Blitz Maedchen” or anti-aircraft assistant.

Presumably it was one of the heaviest air attacks that the allied bomb squads flew in the night hours of every day in March 1944 on Frankfurt. Again the sirens warned us to go to the bunker, as they had often in the previous weeks.

10 This school building was located at Jakobsbrunnenstrasse 1, at the east end of the street. 11 A short distance west of Fechenheim. 12 Shelter built specifically to protect people from air-raid attacks. It had thick walls and a few narrow windows. There were only two bunkers in Fechenheim – one in the northern part and another in the central part. The central one was the one to which we always went. When the alarm sounded too late and the time was insufficient to get to the bunker, all the residents in the unit had to go in candle light to a room in the cellar where the small windows were covered to hide any light from showing outside. Then the candles were put out and the big iron door was closed and bolted. We listened to the bombs whistling, then exploding and saw the flashes of light. Not until the all- clear alarm sounded and we came out into the daylight could we see what damage had been done. Once we came out to find a bomb had dug a big hole right by this cellar window but had not exploded. We had to evacuate until the squad de-activated it. I think it was around Christmas time and we had to spend it somewhere else. Another time, the only time my father was home on leave from the army, we came out and saw Frankfurt on fire to the west. He said, “If they continue bombing, they will shoot the moon down.” The city of Frankfurt was severely bombed in the war. About 5,500 residents were killed during the raids, and the once famous medieval city center, by that time the largest in Germany, was destroyed.

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My mother had gone ahead with my two younger brothers, when I heard on one of the radio stations that continuously reported the news where air raid attacks were occurring. While I listened to the report, our house at Am Ruetschlehen #18 was suddenly shaken from the ground up. I had the feeling it was lifted out of its foundation, so strong was the explosion. I was alone; fear and panic overtook me.

Then the sirens howled the end of the attack and I could view the extent of the destruction. It was both terrible and tragic: our neighbor, Mr. Frey, had died under the rubble of his house. He had lived in #21, a duplex, half of which stood on Am Ruetschlehen and half in Am Saalenbusch. This half was totally destroyed to the firewall, so that I could see directly into the rooms of the Frey house.

With this picture in front of my eyes, I hurried to the bunker and told my family of the terrible experience. The sad news of the death of Mr. Frey was passed on in whispers, until Mrs. Frey became aware of the whispering. She asked, "Has something happened that I shouldn't know about?"

One of the older men told her the news of her husband's death - he was the second husband that she lost. I saw how she was shaking with a crying fit.

The air attacks of the allies increased in force and intensity until 1945. It was foreseeable that the terrible war with its bombing inferno would come to an end. But no one dared to say it out loud.

Meanwhile, I turned 18 years old. One day, I stood by the window in our apartment and looked out at the street. There I saw how our neighbor, the local deputy leader Weber, came out of unit #16 with his family. In full SA13 uniform, in breeches-trousers and boots, the "gold pheasant" (the local disparaging vernacular name for these figures), fearing the worst, speedily left Fechenheim, in order to avoid the expected criminal prosecution. In that moment, it was revealed to me: I saw in perfect clarity how the Nazis had deceived our young generation and our trust. My eyes were suddenly opened and I reacted with a nervous breakdown.

They were torturous years for youth that knew no other words than war, people, sacrifice, fuehrer, victory and death.

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Bernhard Pfender Memories of My Childhood in the Street Am Ruetschlehen

It was the year 1938 when my parents moved with us children from Cologne on the Rhein to

13 Sturmabtleilung: armed and uniformed branch of the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers’ Party).

8 Frankfurt am Main. My father Paul, my mother Auguste, my sister Claere, eleven years old, and I, Bernhard, called Berni, four months old. Father found employment as a bookkeeper in the copper works in Heddernheim14, and our family moved into its new home on the third floor of unit #14 in the street Am Ruetschlehen. Here at the window my mother showed me a zeppelin flying away from us, which I watched with awe. At that time it was a sensation.

Later we had the opportunity to move into the first floor apartment in unit #18. This apartment had a terrace, which was a definite improvement for us children. Our mother lived until 1989 in this apartment. She lived her last years in a care center, where she died at age 92.

On 1 September 1939, with the attack of German troops on Poland, World War II began - with devastating results for the people in Germany and Europe.

On 15 January 1941, great happiness came to the Pfender house: my mother Auguste brought a healthy son into the world who would be known as Horst. Sadly, my father was drafted that same month, in spite of the fact that his employer complained that his services were necessary (to his business). After serving in Erfurt, Weimar, and Sondershausen, he was moved to Prague, where he was put into a prisoner of war camp. He was considered as missing until 1952, when we received the news from a paramedic of the former army that our father had died in Lemberg15 in 1946 and had been buried in a mass gave.

The last mail we had received came from Prague in the last days of the war. Father had sent us a little package for Christmas with little gifts and included a letter in which he wrote about the hopelessness of the senseless war and about the pending breakdown of which he was convinced. He also had a feeling that he would not see us again, and this he expressed clearly in his letter.

Even during the last years of the war, our mother managed to make Christmas time meaningful and lovely for us, even though material things were very scarce.

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There were great shortages and one had to have great organizing talent to festively celebrate Christmas. By that time, advent calendars were no longer available. Our sister Claere knew how to take care of that. She created one for each of us in which she glued a piece of paper on top of another one after marking little windows with a knife in the top one. In the windows, she drew little pictures and, lastly, she decorated them with silver glitter that she was able to get at her workplace in the firm Pfueller.

At advent time, my mother fostered an atmosphere of anticipation, when she gathered us in the kitchen in the late afternoon as it started to get dark. In the kitchen it was cozily warm, for in this time of coal shortage the living room was only heated on Saturdays or Sundays. And while our mother read to us from a book of fairy tales, we were busy roasting apples and bread on the stovetop.

14 In the northwest part of Frankfurt am Main. 15 In Poland.

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The fairy tales that our mother chose were sad, so that at the end we all cried. At the same time, we felt that others had a much sadder life than we had and that in all we still had it pretty good. After that we sang a Christmas song together and ate our roasted apples and bread with great enjoyment.

The Christmas traditions that we had brought with us from Catholic Cologne were different from those of the predominantly Lutheran Fechenheim. For us, Christmas Eve was a normal day on which we prepared ourselves for the arrival of the Christ child during the night. Nevertheless, we walked around all day with cheeks red from the excitement and had a hard time falling asleep, while the adults went to the midnight mass. Before this, though, we had the evening meal together, which consisted of potato salad and warm sausage or - if available – hard-boiled eggs.

On the first Christmas feast day, we got up very early; the ringing of a bell announced that the Christ child had been there. In our nightshirts, we plunged into the decorated room. Before we were allowed to plunder the modest gift table we had to sing a Christmas song. For each of us, there was a Christmas plate filled with cookies, nuts and dark red apples. Clothing and toys were always among the gifts. They usually were from the previous years and after the Christmas feast were put away again: they were mostly war toys like soldiers, tanks and canons; there also was a farm and a castle.

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Next, the coffee table was decked with everything with which the pantry was stocked. The feast- day roast consisted of a … rabbit that we had received from Mr. Geiss weeks earlier. In his large garden, Mr. Geiss raised goats, rabbits and chickens. In order to be able to feed his animals, he came to our house every day to get potato peels and vegetable and salad leftovers, for which we received a nice rabbit each Christmas.

The acquisition of a Christmas tree at that time was not always easy. One time some young men in my older sister’s circle of friends (she was seventeen years old at this time) cut a Christmas tree on a dark and foggy night in the forest and laid it on our terrace. The next morning we saw the gift: certainly the tree had grown nicely, but the branches and needles were rusty red. It had died during the summer but in the dark this was not visible. Somehow we still got a green Christmas tree16.

When it was laundry day, the whole house smelled like soapsuds and for three long days we had to eat vegetables, pea or lintel soup – and in the really bad times often only a potato-water soup. We children did not like laundry day, which actually lasted three days and repeated itself every

16 Our Christmas trees had real white candles on them in special candleholders that clipped onto the branches. Obviously, they could only be lit when we were in the room. The tree branches weren’t dense like the Douglas fir trees here. They had space between them, so the candles had space to burn without catching the tree on fire. I don’t remember any other decorations on the tree. There were also four candles on the advent wreath that hung from the light over the eating table in the living room.

10 six weeks17.

In all the units of the Ruetschlehen, there were six apartments that had their laundry days every sixth week in the laundry kitchen. For my family it lasted three days. There were no washing machines or dryers, mangles and the like. Doing laundry was hard work and left its mark.

My mother had a helping hand, a laundry lady named Mrs. Staaf. She was a lovable, industrious and stout lady with strong arms that looked like thick bulging sausages. The whole washing ordeal began with the laundry being cooked in a large copper kettle18 that stood on a wood fire. Then it was worked with a masher, rinsed and pounded on a wooden block. After it drained, it was arduously wrung out and then, in the summer time, laid on the grass to bleach. The laundry was spread out and regularly wet down with a watering can and afterwards hung on the clothesline to dry. In winter the laundry was hung in the attic. Thereafter came the ironing – with an iron made of solid iron that had to be repeatedly heated in the oven or on top of the stove. Our laundry lady, Mrs. Staaf, was at this time very poor.

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Her husband was a communist and because of his convictions was dragged away by the Nazis. Her income was very small, so that she had to earn her bread with this heavy work. The war’s end brought the Staaf family back to a normal life. When Mrs. Staaf saw us children, she always had a smile and some nice words for us. I like to think back on this always-friendly lady in spite of her tragedy.

The war neared its end. The allies were bombing the German cities more often. Today I still hear the steadily repeated wail of the sirens in my ears. There was a so-called early warning-alarm, a short time later the main-alarm, and when everything was over, the end-alarm.

If we didn’t want to stay in the air raid cellar in the unit, we had to hurry when the alarm sounded to the air raid shelter that was much safer but about 2 kilometers19 distant. This bunker was always overly full of people, so that the time we spent in there is terrible in my memory. As the bomb attacks became more intense, the early warning was hardly sounded anymore, but immediately the main-alarm. It was by then high time to reach the bunker, because the allied bomb squadron was already very near at the sound of the alarm.

In the last weeks of the war20, we moved in with a family we befriended near the bunker so that

17 In order to make our few clothes last for the six weeks, we had to wear the same dress (me) or pants and shirt (my brother) to school for a whole week. On coming home each day, we had to change into play clothes. Naturally, we had to wear them for a week, too. 18 Mother also used this huge copper kettle to cook cut-up sugar beets that we gleaned in the fields nearby. The mixture was dark brown and bubbled fiercely, like a witch’s brew. When thickened, it was poured into jars and spread on bread like jam. My brother says, “I also remember cooking the sugar beet juice in the kettle in the cellar but I have no idea what they called that stuff. It was sweet but really didn't taste very good.” 19 One and a quarter miles. 20 My mother and I were staying in Markoebel with her oldest sister Anna’s family at that time to escape the heavy bombing in Frankfurt/Fechenheim. For safety, the government had transferred school-age children, my brother included, to small villages. My brother was in Meerholz, about 25 miles east of Fechenheim, living with an older

11 we could reach the shelter more quickly by the shortest way. Toward the end, we couldn’t leave the bunker at all, for the Americans were already on the other side of the Main and were shooting towards Fechenheim. Several grenades hit the city hall and the tower of the Melanchton Lutheran Church21 – and also the bunker.

Before we could at last go out, we had to endure a further torture: The Nazis burned all their documents and destroyed highly controversial evidence of their atrocities during that terrible time. Now it became unbearably hot in the bunker, so that some developed serious health problems.

Families with children and older people were accommodated in the basement; the emergency station under the leadership of Dr. Hain was also located there. We often watched as the heavily wounded were brought from the ruins of the bombings. They were smeared with blood and dust and dirt. It was a terrible sight that I will never forget.

At last we were able to leave the bunker. Our first wish was to find out if our apartment was still unscathed. We wanted to hang white cloths or flags as a sign of surrender and the desire for peace out of our windows.

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Picture of the bunker

The Ruetschlehen was mostly spared from the bomb damage, but in the neighboring streets air mines had dug huge craters and many residences lay in heaps. In our unit at Am Ruetschlehen #18, a … bomb fell through the roof and all the floors to the first floor and remained unexploded in the ceiling. It was defused on the lawn behind our house. For us children, it was a highly interesting adventure.

On a wonderfully beautiful Sunday in the year 1945, I stood on the corner of Baumertstrasse/Pfortenstrasse and watched as the U.S. Army troops, coming from the north, headed toward city hall. The troops were led by an open Jeep with a machine gun, in which a high-ranked officer sat.

For me, this little Jeep broke the spell. I felt that the war was over, and a heavy weight lifted from me. I was only eight years old, but I felt that on this day a better life was beginning.

couple who had no children. He went to school right next door to their house in an old converted palace. When the American soldiers crossed the Rhein River, his instructor announced this news to the boys and told them to try to find their families. My brother walked alone for about 10 miles to find us in Markoebel. We were all in Markoebel when the U.S. soldiers marched through and took over the area. For a description of the day the U.S. soldiers came to Markoebel, see my web site: http://ursula.foster.cc 21 The Lutheran Church in the center of Fechenheim where my brother and I were baptized as babies. My mother’s sister Gretel (Margaretha) was my godmother. I believe my uncle August was my brother’s godfather. All my ancestors born in Fechenheim were also baptized in this church. I don’t remember going to church there but I do remember sometimes dressing up to go to church.

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As the soldiers passed by us, I saw for the first time, to my surprise, a Negro22. Up until this time I only knew Sarotti-Mohr23 and the “10 Little Negroes” – and now I was seeing a living, adult black.

In the ensuing time, the occupation forces of the U.S. Army invited the people to deliver all weapons to the Fechenheim city hall. Our mother gave over a bent sword, a collector’s item of my father. It was grotesque and – in today’s view – strange to us children but highly interesting.

The Americans did many house searches24. They also came to our emergency apartment in Baumertstrasse. The officer, who was accompanied by two GI’s, saw a picture of my older sister Claere, who was a pretty young woman, hanging on the wall. The officer asked my mother who that young woman was. My mother gave him the requested information, but let him know that it was really none of his business. The officer, a handsome young soldier, spoke in perfect high German with my mother and showed her a picture of his mother standing in front of a house somewhere in America, and explained that his mother was from Duesseldorf and had instructed him: “Bring a wife with you from Old Germany!” Our mother, a determined Rheinlander, never at a loss for words, said to him, “No you don’t. My daughter stays here!” In America, there surely was a wife for him. He smiled and left our residence, but not without taking a swastika armband, various badges and party emblems.

But peace did not come immediately into our lives. The U.S. Army decided that the freed forced laborers should be quartered in our apartments in the Ruetschlehen25.

When the U.S. Army took over Frankfurt am Main completely on 29 March 1945, they opened the camp of the mostly eastern European forced laborers and freed the survivors. According to the Yalta Conference, the western powers should immediately send back all citizens of the Soviet Union, even against their wills. These poor people seemed to feel that their futures in the USSR were uncertain. And, in fact, many were arrested as collaborators on their return. Sending them back was not accomplished from one day to the next. For that reason, they were first to be housed in our apartments.

For us who lived in the Ruetschlehen that meant that on 8 April we had to clear out our houses

22 In Markoebel we also had the experience of seeing our first Negro as the soldiers came marching through the town to take it over. 23 In 1918, a cartoon-type black person (Mohr) holding a tray of chocolates became the logo of the German chocolate brand Sarotti. In 2004, the tray was eliminated because of political correctness. 24 During one of the searches, my mother and brother were arrested. The crime was that my brother and a friend had found an American gas can that must have fallen off a Jeep. My brother brought it home. It had about 4 inches of gasoline in it. When word came about the house-to-house search, my mother hid the can in the rubble in the partially-bombed room in our 3rd floor emergency apartment on the Baumert Strasse, where we lived while the DP’s lived in our regular apartmen). The MP’s found the can. I walked to the city hall/military police station with them but was told to go back home. I was afraid that I might never see my mother and brother again. They were taken to Frankfurt over night for interrogation. They were stripped to their underclothes, questioned and released to go home. Because there was no transportation available, they had to walk all the way back from somewhere in Frankfurt to our emergency apartment in Fechenheim. A woman in the apartment house took care of me until their return. 25 They were also placed in our apartments on Jakobsbrunnen Strasse.

13 within a few hours.

I remember this day well. I had been playing on a pile of ruins and got a cut on the right hand.

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My sister, Claere, put an emergency bandage on it and went with me to the doctor. The waiting room of our family physician Dr. Hain26 was overflowing. My wound bled a lot and we had to wait a long time until we were called in.

It was a very warm, sunny April day. Claere was standing by the open window looking towards the Bodelschwinghstrasse and noticed strange activity, people hurrying here and there. A woman from the Ruetschlehen, who approached on her bicycle, called to my sister, “Don’t you know what is happening? We have to clear out our apartments for the Russians by 6 p.m.!” My sister left me to my own fate and ran home to get everything arranged. A civil worker with a white armband and a bell walked through the streets to announce the news. The work of clearing our apartment fell on my mother and Claere. We brothers were still too small. But the friendships that my sister had made through the youth organization of the Nazis had outlasted the war and in no time Claere had organized a moving party. It was more difficult to find emergency accommodations. With the help of Helmut Sittler, we found two rooms with sort of a forecourt and also kitchen on the estate of butcher Puth in Baumertstrasse at the corner of Pfortenstrasse in the house next door above the sausage kitchen where normally journeymen butchers had their quarters. We were able to store the majority of our furniture at the café Woern and part of it in the destroyed dance hall of the inn “Zum Kaiser Friedrich” in Baumertstrasse. We lived there for about six months until the evacuation of the Russians in September/October of the year 1945.

The apartments emptied by the Germans were supplied with two-story beds and straw sacks.

During this time there were many conflicts on both sides. There were muggings and looting by the Russians of items of value, mostly for liquor and groceries. They sometimes tried to get the last cow from the barns of the farmers and were sometimes successful. The German people increasingly organized to defend themselves so that the U.S. Army had to intervene.

One incident that especially got the attention of the Germans was the organization of a May Fest on the square in front of the Willmann School. The Russians had previously plundered the chemical and drug depositories in the vicinity to assure the availability of alcohol. The celebration developed into an alcohol orgy in which many poisoned themselves with methyl alcohol. There were even some deaths.

The Americans began the transfer of the Russians out of Fechenheim in September/October 1945.

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At last we came back to our apartments, which were found in unspeakably dirty condition. Then

26 This was our doctor, too.

14 began the great clean-up, in which the residents were aided by a penal group of former girls of the BDM (Bund Deutschen Maedschen27) and boys of the HJ (Hitler Jugend28). We threw the bunk beds on the lawn behind the apartments together with the straw sacks and burned them. We cleaned the totally soiled toilet bowls and bathtubs of the filth, garbage and human excrement, turned over the fight against vermin to the pest controller and at last undertook the renovation of the living quarters. Paint, varnish and wallpaper could only at that time be obtained through connections. We could trade valuables and paint the walls with a texture roller and dyed glue color (?).29

The time immediately after the war left its mark with hunger and misery, the aftermath of the terrible war. Aside from the allocations, such as peanut butter, for instance, which the Americans issued us, we had only what was on food ration cards, if it was available. Long lines were common and only those who were near the beginning of the lines had the fortune of getting anything. People went into the country to trade their valuables for food with the farmers. Begging was humiliating and degrading, but hunger left them no choice.

The black market bloomed and the police was powerless against it. The leading currency was the American cigarettes. Almost everything was traded: silver spoons for sewing thread, cameras for butter, etc. Yes, even my mother, in her need, traded our father’s very expensive camera for a pound of butter.

The Americans meanwhile had set up their headquarters in the I.G. Farben30 multi-story building and confiscated the living quarters in the immediate neighborhood. They surrounded the area with a barbed-wire fence and declared the area off limits. The soldiers of the American army lived from that time in this area.

Our sister, Claere, found a position in the household of one of these American families in the home of Mrs. Hooky. Her husband, a U.S. sergeant, and she were wonderful people and were very good to my sister. Now and then they helped us out so that our life was a little less hard in those times.

But our family never received “care packages”, of which much was spoken31.

One time, at Christmas, we children were invited by friends of Mrs. Hooky, who gave us

27 Nazi organization for girls ages 14-18. 28 Nazi organization for boys ages 14 and older. My brother was in the Deutsches Jungvolk for boys ages 10-14. He can’t remember any activities during the two years he would have been a member. We have a picture of him in his uniform. 29 I remember the roller. It created a repetitive design on the wall over a plain background in our living room. I think the color was an aqua blue. 30 A division of the German chemical and pharmaceutical company Casella Farbwerke whose headquarters was in Frankfurt am Main. 31 I don’t’ remember anything about care packages either. The only things I remember getting were three very thin notebooks to use in school for writing assignments. One of them has printing on the cover, saying that it was from the American Red Cross. I still have these with my fourth-grade German writings in them. When we came to the U.S., I took one to school with me, thinking I had to provide my own supplies. My first attempts at spelling English words are in there, written in pencil. When my mother was dating my future stepfather, he sometimes brought some groceries. I loved the taste of the chocolate milk shakes in a can.

15 presents which I can still happily remember today.

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At the noon meal we ate Schnitzel (which the Americans called steak) with peas, carrot salad and chocolate ice cream for dessert. Afterwards, they showed us home movies of Mickey Mouse. Then there was more to eat: cocoa, baked goods and cake. Last of all came the Christmas presents. We young boys received an ocean steamer that could be wound up, sweets and fruit from the south. We felt as if we were on another planet because we hadn’t experienced anything like this during the war years. The steamers swam in our bathtub for a long time afterward.

Once a month, our mother traveled with me and Horst to our father city, Cologne. In the usually fully occupied, yes over-filled trains, we had to travel from the American zone through the French zone into the English zone. Each time it was like a border crossing with passport and baggage control.

We always brought our Cologne relatives some goods that we had received from the Americans – a little chocolate, bonbons and other things. Our mother came to be lovingly called the “aunt from America”.

The lean war- and post-war years left almost all Germans with results of the deprivation. In 1946, with many other children, Christel Speisaecker and I were sent to a children’s home of the workers’ welfare with the lovely name of “Rimdidim” in Odenwald for rest and relaxation. There we were properly nourished with pasta dishes and other such things. As pleasant as it was to be able to eat as much as we wanted, sometimes the punishment for not following the rules was unpleasant.

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I remember well an extremely harsh punishment that would not be understood today at all.

At the noon meal, one of the girls was unable to eat the huge portion of food and she dumped the rest behind the heating unit. At lunchtimes, she was forced to stand in the middle of the dining room and watch us eat.

A boy, I don’t remember why, was punished by not being allowed to speak to anyone. This boy was my neighbor during the morning teeth brushing and washing. Because he forgot his toothpaste, he borrowed some from me, after which I also was not allowed to speak with any child. With this type of punishment, the recent past seemed very near.

On the theme of play and punishment, another thought lies buried deep in my memory:

Behind the Nassauische Heimstaette development from the Leo-Gans Strasse, the fields of the farmers spread out, so that the view to Frankfurt was wide open. During every season we disappeared there to play in the huge haystacks and in the gleaned fields. In the fall, we went

16 there for kite flying32 and in winter for ice-skating33, when the areas with water were frozen over34.

For playing, there were endless possibilities: a deserted weapons depot, barracks and some interesting war equipment, such as a large rotating search light. There was the Wissegraben35 that belongs to the Casella property today, right next to the “Kerschelhaufen”36. There was a broad meadow37 that sloped into a little brook. To the right and left of this were allotted gardens that supplied the owners in the worst of times with fruits and vegetables. For us children, it was the ideal adventurous play area. All materials were available for us to build huts or caves - we only needed to organize. Once, we began a project for which we gathered bean- and tomato poles from the gardens, and we built a wonderful hut in which we wanted to camp. But it never came to that.

The gardeners found their poles missing and immediately notified the police. They captured us as we returned to our hut. They took us to the station and informed our parents. Before they came to get us, the police really intimidated us, so that our legs were shaking with fear.

I don’t know today whether our parents had to pay a fine. At any rate, at home we received a hearty lecture. After that, our desire to build huts and caves faded.

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But we didn’t only play in the fields. After the harvests, we went with pails and hoes to “stoppeln”, as we called it, to gather the rest of the potatoes38. We also searched through the “Kerschelhaufen” 39 on which the Americans, who possessed the Cassella, dumped their kitchen

32 We made our own kites out of sticks, newspaper, glue and string. We younger kids made them out of a rectangular piece of paper folded in about an inch on each edge, then attached a string on one end and a tail on the other and then ran like crazy to make it fly. Obviously, it didn’t go very high. We made our own pinwheels, the kind that we stuck onto a stick, when the wind was sufficient to twirl them. We also made wind wheels that we put on the ground. They were made by cutting a circle, maybe about 6 inches in diameter, from a piece of thin cardboard, then drawing another circle on that one, an inch smaller. In the innermost small circle, we drew several straight lines diagonally across. Then we cut on the straight lines to the inner circle. We bent each resulting triangle alternately, one to the left, one to the right. Then we set it on the ground and the wind would take it away with us chasing after it. 33 I don’t think I ever had any ice skates, but I do remember sledding out there in the fields on a hill. It was great fun until somebody else slammed into me as I was pulling my sled back up the hill. While I was walking home, crying and holding my hand over my eye, someone asked me what was wrong. I showed him my eye and he said I better hurry home, sounding very concerned. Mother put a bandage over it and I think my face got black and blue. 34 There was a place right by the huge gas tank, diagonally across the street from our apartment, where the standing water over some tar froze over and made a wonderful ice skating rink. A convenient hole in the brick wall right at the corner made it easy for us to get in to slide (in our shoes) on the ice. Woe to those who accidentally broke through some thin ice and got their shoes stuck in the tar! 35 Fechenheim dialect for the word Wiesengraben, which meant meadow ditch. 36 Fechenheim dialect for the dump. 37 This was a wonderful place to play. The grass was tall and scattered with all kinds of wildflowers, including blue iris. I especially loved the blue bachelor buttons. 38 I remember gleaning in the fields, filling a bucket with potatoes. 39 I played on this dump and found interesting things but I don’t recall looking for or finding food. Bright-colored poppies grew on the huge pile.

17 waste, for useful food and coal that occasionally was in the cold ash from the gas-work of the Cassella40. To get a hold of food and other goods needed daily was a special art.

I remember well my first communion, which I celebrated in Westphalian Innigerloh in Muensterland at the home of my godfather. My uncle came from a farming family and worked on external duty for a grinding-machine factory in Offenbach. In his travels through the country, he organized an exchange: food of all kinds for grinding and the like.

This good set-up he used for my communion feast. Behind a closed door, in his garage, where once an auto had stood, he fattened a pig. It was slaughtered “black”41, which was forbidden at that time. Together with the food he had gathered, my uncle arranged a splendid communion for that time.

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My mother and my godmother came from Frankfurt to Cologne, and later when they told of this event, it always sounded like a tale out of the land of milk and honey.

In 1948, the Americans initiated a German currency reform and so on 20 June 1948, in all three western zones, the D(eutsche)-Mark was introduced. Each person received 40 D-Mark and each 100 Reichsmark were exchanged for 6.50 D-Mark. At the same time, rationing was abolished. Immediately, the shop windows filled with wares that we had had to do without for a long time. After the currency reform, an economic miracle occurred. We children were clueless as to what was happening in the adult world. For us it was just important that with our little bit of pocket money we could now buy sweets everywhere. Especially beloved were the Kiosks in Frankfurt, called “Wasserhaeuschen” (water houses), where there were bonbons, licorice, fizzy tablets, lemonade and above all Coca Cola. Sundays we went to one of the two theaters in Fechenheim for the kiddy show for 50 pennies.

In the year 1952, the time passing terribly fast, I entered training as a carpenter in neighboring Offenbach. During this time it was very difficult to find a training position in an occupation that one wanted to learn. The employment agency had sent officials to Fechenheim that held interviews at the city hall with the graduating students. Many of my classmates found a profession that had little or nothing to do with their original wish. To reach my training place in Offenbach, I had to either take the ferry over the Main or go over the make-shift repaired Carl- Ulrich Bridge42. One time, when it was a very cold winter, the Main River was frozen over. The bridge had to be closed and the ferry traffic discontinued. My mother wanted to excuse my

40 I once stole coal in that factory area when we needed it at home. It was scary sneaking up to the pile, stashing some into a bag and running away without being caught. 41 Apparently, slaughtering a pig without government permission was not allowed, so it had be done secretly. 42 We used this ferry to go to Offenbach to visit my father’s parents after the war. They had moved over there after their third-floor apartment had been destroyed by a bomb in an air-raid. When my grandparents came out of the bunker and discovered the disaster, my grandmother was devastated and didn’t want to live any more. That’s when they decided to move to Offenbach, across the Main River to the south. The small ferry was right next to the bridge that had been destroyed. I don’t remember if it was even big enough for a car or only for passengers and bicycles. It had a rope attached to a guideline that was attached to poles on each side of the river. The ferry owner guided it with a pole that reached to the river bottom.

18 absence with my instructor because I could not get to work. But he remained determined, “If your son doesn’t show up here in the next hour, then he doesn’t ever need to come again.”

So I got on my bicycle and drove over the railroad bridge in East Frankfurt to the other side of the Main and through Sachsenhausen along the Main to Offenbach.

My training years were anything but simple. I worked 48 hours and more per week, including Saturdays, Silvester43 and Christmas Eve. I learned a lot in those three years. I was also head of my class in the industrial vocational school and my journeyman project was a music cabinet that was displayed in an exhibition. The benefits and pay were inadequate.

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I had to give some of my meager pay to my mother every week at home. Once a week, yet I managed one small meal. So, mostly on Fridays, I went with friends to the co-called “Knallhuette” consumed a half chicken with French fries for 2.50 D-Mark. Sometimes we also went to the “Gefluegelhof”, on whose property the tenement houses are today, and ordered a Schnitzel with fried potatoes and salad for 2.80 D-Mark. A little beer cost 35 pennies and apple wine 30 pennies, while non-alcoholic drinks even at that time were already expensive. This was our only enjoyment during a time of modest circumstances.

We had no savings, bought everything on credit: clothing, furniture, bicycle, motorcycle and vacation trips – and much later also cars.

These are memories that one will never forget – memories of a time that seems unreal today.

Margaret Subtil Children Am Ruetschlehen

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My parents and my siblings – my sister Elly, my brother Peter and I – lived during the war at Baumertstrasse #20 in Fechenheim. There we spent a wonderful, carefree childhood, had a large yard, lots of toys and many playmates, until a catastrophic bombing attack at the beginning of March 1945 brought our peaceful world to rubble and ashes. After that, we camped in the cellar of the house of the former Inn Doering in the Haunauer Landstrasse 500. At that time the Hanauer was only a village street next to cornfields leading into town.

My father put together a little blue bicycle from a former freight car that stood on the train tracks diagonally across from us that could no longer be used. I learned to ride on this little bicycle and rode everywhere44, especially along the former Cassellastrasse, past the gas tank to the

43 New Year’s Eve 44 I never had a bicycle of my own. I learned to ride my mother’s bicycle, standing up, when I was about 6 or 7. The seat hit me on my upper back. I didn’t ride very far away, just up and down our block. Since we didn’t own a car, bicycles were our only mode of transportation to go shopping or visit relatives. To take me along, mother strapped a

19 apartments of Jakobsbrunnenstrasse and Am Ruetschlehen.

I was six years old. It was very interesting for me to listen to the Russian forced laborers who sat in the open windows, legs dangling and playing on the balalaika and singing. My mother had, of course, forbidden me to ride there, but my curiosity got the best of me and when I felt safe, I took off. On my return, I always had to listen to a punishing lecture or get my face slapped. Because the Russians watched and stole everything of worth - bicycles, clocks, baby carriages.

Then the Russians also got assigned to the apartments in the Ruetschlehen by the American occupation forces. We had an allotment garden near today’s Garden Nursery Alt. We went with our mother past the apartments and saw terrible events, pictures that today nearly six decades later are still before my eyes:

All the residents of the Ruetschlehen had to empty their apartments within two hours45 and were only allowed to take with them the most necessary belongings. On the opposite sidewalk it appeared as today at a flea market. There stood tables, chairs, and clothes and bedding, everything that could be dragged out of the apartments. A dreadful agitation and fear reigned among the people. Then came the Russians who took away these belongings and carried them back into the houses.

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One didn’t dare defend oneself, but some unspeakable scenes took place.

The Russians lived in the apartments several weeks, washed the stolen potatoes in the toilets and left behind lice and fleas. The pest controllers had to come and de-louse the houses from attics to cellars46.

My parents were assigned to the apartments on the Ruetschlehen #14, lower floor right, in which a Nazi had previously lived. I still have the rental agreement with the Nassauische Heimstaette. On Goethe’s birthday on 28 August 1945, we moved in with our few possessions on a wagon. We sat on the bare red wooden floor and ate fleischwurst and Kaiser rolls (from where?).

Then we received coupons for beds, closets, a table and chairs. Slowly, life became normal again. In the fall of 1945, I began school.

small rattan chair with leg guides and footrests, to her steering wheel, so that I faced her. For older children, a variation of this chair was strapped onto the luggage carrier on the bicycles. 45 Mother told about this event. Somehow she managed to get our things out of the apartment with the help of friends. She apparently was able to find a place to store our things. But the bedroom wardrobe (closets are not built into homes in Germany) got taken to her parents’ house in Oberkalbach. We went to live temporarily in a partially bombed 3-story house on Baumertstrasse. This was the same house that my parents had lived in when they first married. My brother was born while they lived there. On the day the U.S. soldiers came into Oberkalbach, they shot into the houses. One of the shots went into the side of the wardrobe and through all the clothes that hung in it, including those of my father that were supposed to be made over into clothes for my brother after the war. 46 Mother said a dead newborn baby, wrapped in newspaper, was found in the basement of our unit during the clean- up. We have a spoon that we found that we think belonged to the Russians.

20 Am Ruetschlehen was a nice development. People with children lived there and one felt comfortable. We children got to know each other and played on the street with each other: Hickelkreis 47 and ball tag. There wasn’t any car traffic yet in those days. In the back, we could play on the playground to our hearts’ content.

On the Am Saalenbusch there were still several ruins, for instance the house of the Klee family. For us children climbing around on the rubble was exciting and not without danger. I only owned one pair of shoes, a skirt, etc. to wear. Often I came home with a tear in my skirt and that brought me a slap in the face from my mother.

It was very nice, ideal, in hindsight. Since then, a different time has evolved, even on the Ruetschlehen, where I have lived meanwhile for almost six decades.

September 2003

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Pictures of children on their first school day with their traditional cone-shaped bags of goodies (Zuckertuete = bag of sweets).

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Renate Salg born Schmidt Ice Cold Experience

It was on a cold winter day in December 1949 when I was just nine years old. Since I didn’t have any siblings, I happily played with the children from our street. On the previous night, it had snowed a lot and a thick sheet of ice lay on the street. In the afternoon, about eight children met in front of unit #14. With effort and persistence we created an ice rink. With enthusiasm we approached and then slid over the meters-long path again and again.

My parents, in those days, expected me to arrive home by dusk, that is, at the latest when the streetlights turned on. We were so involved in our play, that the time and hour were forgotten. Suddenly, a large, dark figure loomed over me – my father!

That’s the first time that I noticed that it was already dark and I had forgotten everything around me. In front of my friends I had to listen to a verbal blast. His face was fiery red with rage. Then my father grabbed me by the arm and hauled me home. At every entrance, from #14 to #2 where we lived, I received a hefty slap in the face.

In order to have enough time to contemplate my disobedience and to recover from my beating, I received an additional three days of house arrest – and that was the worst for me.

I have never forgotten this incident, and from that day on I tried hard always to be reliable and punctual.

47 I think this game was similar to hopscotch.

21

August 2003

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Renate Esser born Roeder Expulsion from the Living Paradise

During my first years of life, from 1941 until 1945, I lived with my parents Maria and Wilhelm Roeder in Fechenheim on the street Am Ruetschlehen.

Sadly, I do not have any personal memories of this time. The only thing that I can remember well is the lovely playground between the yards and very near our residence. We lived on the first floor of the corner house Am Ruetschlehen/Bodenseestrasse, until the Americans marched in. It was in the spring of 1945, as they confiscated this house and set up a sort of headquarters. My father was at that time a soldier on the western front. Within a few hours, mother and I had to leave our residence. A relative who spoke good English intervened with the Americans so that we could at least take a few personal things and the youth bed with us. Later, we were allowed to get a few more pieces of furniture. We never got back the radio, which my parents had buried under the supply of coal. The Americans naturally found and used it. We were not able to return to our lovely home, because the son of the owner of the place, Mr. Heinrich Kraft, returned from Austria and moved back into it after the turmoil of the war.

September 2003

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Guenter Kloos Adventure with Punishing Repercussions and a Forgiving End

On a summer day in the year 1951, a blue envelope lay in our mailbox between the rare mail of the time. It was as blue as today’s notifications of fines are, and even in those days such an envelope did not indicate anything good. And truly, it contained a summons. Together with a parent, I should come to the criminal police station in Frankfurt. It was about a hearing in connection with a criminal offense.

During a quick information exchange on the street, I learned that the blue letters had also been received by the Subtil, Pfender, Sachs and Pierson families. The letters were not totally unexpected. We affected children knew exactly why we were summoned and what had happened. About two weeks earlier, we had played in the meadow ditch behind the gas tank of the Cassella48 company to wear ourselves out on the property of the dried river-bed with willows

48 The chemical dye factory that was established in 1870 in Fechenheim. Somehow it was also associated with I.G. Farben. This factory brought an increase in population, which was 1,400 in 1870. By 1914, there were 9,500 residents. In this same year (1914), the factory employed 3,000 people. When we lived in the Jakobsbrunnenstrasse, we lived directly across the street from the southern border of this factory. The factory covered many acres. To walk around its borders, surrounded by a brick wall, would take over an hour. My mother

22 on its banks. Until – yes, until we spied the newly built hay and straw stacks on the adjoining field of the farmer Reichert. Those were naturally the best slides that we could wish for. We got so engrossed in the sliding, that we didn’t pay attention to the fact that the perfect stacks were increasingly falling apart, and the farmer came with his laborers to chase us away. At the last second, most of us were able to get away, but Ernst Sachs and another boy were trapped and caught and taken to the farm and questioned as to the names of the other sinners. But both boys didn’t want to reveal the names of the others. Then Mrs. Reichert beat them with hefty blows and helped their memories, until all the names, except Heini Roell, were given. The Reichert family then reported us to the police and demanded compensation. That was the reason for our summons.

We all went with guilty consciences to the police and admitted our sins. Ernst’s mother, Mrs. Sachs, however, in a countermove, inquired with the police about an agreement with the farmers. She was considering a countercharge because of bodily harm done to her son. Because of this, the case of the foolish boyish mischief was dismissed.

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Between 1951 and 1953, we children were not only magnetically attracted to the meadow ditch with its little brook behind the Cassella gas tank49, but also liked to play in the forests and fields in the surrounding area. The “hole” was a particularly interesting adventure playground. The hole appeared in the 1920’s as the streetcar barrier between the end station and the Cassella entrance was built up. For 30 years, in this deep valley, a biotype of wild-growing willows, poplars, birches, hazelnuts, etc., developed that was a natural refuge for hares, rabbits, grass snakes, frogs, turtles and many birds.

Because the hunter is in the genes of boys, our biggest longing was to arm ourselves. We did this with self-made bows and arrows, blowing tubes and slingshots. To create these weapons required great skill, for they developed themselves in the course of time from simple hazelnut bows, from reed pipe stalks, as arrows and a tip of rifle shot casing and feather stabilizers. The slingshots were of the simple variety, out of a wood fork with elastic and a piece of leather to hold the missile, as well as noble slingshots of heat-bent barbed wire with a four-sided eraser, thumb protector and leather for the missile. For ammunition, we used everything from stone chips and pebbles to steel balls. Especially desired were the steel balls, because when we shot at a concrete wall, such as the ruined Schiller School50, it gave off the same humming sound that we heard in Wild West movies.

and father met while they were both working at this factory about 1930. Sometimes there would be a foul odor in the air, probably caused by the chemicals. We called the factory “die Schemisch” or “ I.G.”. 49 Diagonally across the street to the northwest of our apartment. It was a gigantic black iron cylindrical tank, as wide as a house and as tall as a two-story building when it was full. As it got emptier, its height slowly reduced. Then it was refilled and was very high again. 50 This school, which my brother attended, was about a 5-minute walk from our house. My brother attended it. On the way to the bunker, we had to pass by this school. One night in 1942, during an air-raid, when the bombs were already falling as we were running to the bunker, my mother decided to take us into this school, which could be used as an emergency shelter but was not constructed to be a shelter. As the family (my aunt Gretel was with us too) was going up the steps into the school, I cried because I didn’t want to go in. I guess I put up such a fuss that my mother

23

One day, we came on the idea to have a contest for distance shooting with these steel balls. From Bodenseestrasse we shot over the house-line of the opposite street side in the direction of Am Saalenbusch. We could see the 12 mm steel balls climbing steeply and disappearing in the distance. Because we couldn’t see where they landed, we couldn’t declare a winner. About a week later, Mrs. Mayer, whose house stood between Am Saalenbusch in the middle between Ruetschlehen and Seehecke, asked if I had ever seen such a steel ball as she had found in her glass cabinet. Naturally, I recognized our missile and a shock went through all my limbs, but I steadfastly denied all. Lucky, I assumed, nothing had been damaged, because she didn’t speak of any broken glass.

When I informed my playmates of this incident, we all realized that we had exceeded our bet by shooting far beyond the goal and we never did anything like that again.

December 2003

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Pictures of neighborhood children.

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Renate Luetke born Bergk Girlhood Years on This Street

I also was a child from the Ruetschlehen – although only from about 1945 to 1949. Even so, I have stored various impressions like instant snapshots. I like to remember most of them. To those less pleasant belong those memories of the beginning. During the last days of the war a bomb destroyed the house of my parents on Roederbergweg. They found a new residence for us at Am Ruetschlehen #10. Like most children of that day, I was unaware of the complete far- reaching consequences of the time. I only knew that I hated the hike from the trolley station at Riederhoefe (the trolley only went that far then) to our new domicile. But I got used to it and in time I felt at home there. I enjoyed the playing on the street and on the heaps of rubble so much, that my mother always said: “For the winter it would be best if I could conserve the street in a canning jar!”

The street as a playground was so fascinating that I often forgot to arrive home punctually. One day, when I was late again, my parents wouldn’t open the door for me. Again and again I hammered on the door – no reaction. It was an endless wait until they finally opened the door. That was obviously a good lesson for me, for as an adult I am always on time and hate to arrive late.

Naturally, Hickelkreis belongs to the many games that I loved. I was thrilled when I found a piece of tile among the ruins of the destroyed houses. It was smooth enough that I could push it decided to continue on to the bunker. In the morning, on our way home, we came by the school. It had been hit and was completely destroyed. I believe this was the worst destruction of any bombing in Fechenheim.

24 with my foot from one box to another. To my first sporting activity belongs the learning of riding a bicycle. Something that today’s children can barely imagine: There was only a single car parked along the street. This car drew me with a magical power. Instead of riding straight, I slammed into its fender. I can’t remember any damage or lecture, except that my knees were scraped up for the first time. But that was less traumatic for me than for my parents.

To my horror, they “made me happy” in September 1946 with a little brother, Helmut, who I immediately had to tend and take for walks. He was an everlasting noose and created serious limitations to my freedom. That is why I am still thankful today for Renate Schmidt, who often rang the bell and said, “Can I take Helmut for a walk?” I felt like hugging her and wonder today if she still remembers this?

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Among the children that I can remember today are Peter and Margot Subtil, who lived in the neighboring unit #14.

A shameful memory concerns a boy named Gerhard (?), with whom I didn’t get along very well. I found that he constantly made me mad, which is why I pushed him one day along with his lunch bag into the …hedge. His mother complained to the director of the school where we both attended. Thereafter, she summoned my mother in order to make it clear to her what an undisciplined child I was. Luckily, my mother held the view that one who is attacked should defend oneself. I hope Gerhard has forgiven me.

One family on the Ruetschlehen was particularly important to me and to my parents: the Stahls. They lived in #24 and were friends of my parents, even during the years when we again lived in our reconstructed house in Roederbergweg. We were often at the Stahls’ as guests and I worshipped the daughter Johanna, who was older than I, and therefore was so very grown up. Can she still remember as well? Aunt Maria, her mother, is so clear in my memory because she gave me, in connection with my confirmation, six silver coffee spoons that became the foundation of my silver collection that I still love to use after 50 years.

There is much more to report. But I want to narrow this down to a happy event. I started school on 15 October 1946 and I got acquainted with a girl at Jakobsbrunnenstrasse #20, with whom I got along very well: Ingrid Eschmann51. We lost track of each other because I spent my last school year (1950 – 1951) at the East District School on Linnestrasse. Meanwhile, we had moved back into our rebuilt house on Roederbergweg 41. But it was only a temporary parting, because providence determined that we find each other again in the first class at the Herder

51 I don’t remember Ingrid Eschmann (the wife of the compiler of this book), even though she lived on my street a few units east of ours. There were 15 heads of household named Eschmann living in Fechenheim in 1914. In the 1940’s, there was an Eschmann family – father, mother and a son and daughter – living in our unit on the third floor right. The son, Karl-Heinz was about 2 years older than I and his sister, Hannelore, was a little older than he. I recall being invited up to their apartment to play. I loved his big wooden rocking horse. My mother bought hand-me- down clothes of their daughter for me. I liked them except for one that made me itch the moment I put it on. Another Eschmann family lived in the unit next to us. Whenever they had an argument, we pressed our ears against the kitchen wall, which was adjacent to their kitchen, to eavesdrop on it 

25 School52. Since then, our friendship has never waned, but rather has deepened over all these years. Is there anything nicer than a friendship that lasts from childhood into old age?

And as if that weren’t luck enough: Ingrid Eschmann later married a child of the Ruetschlehen named Bernhard Pfender. And how could it be otherwise, her domicile has for many years been Ruetschlehen #23. And meanwhile, Bernie became a good friend of mine and he deserves a big thank-you for his initiative: “Children from the Ruetschlehen – Memories!”

December 2003

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Willi Merget Playfull Years

I lived in the Ruetschlehen until the 1950’s and 60’s. I was a passionate sportsman and was already in occupational training. Because of that, I spent little free time in the Ruetschlehen.

As far as I can remember my early childhood years, they were pleasantly playful in spite of the adverse times. My uncle, the enterprising Franz Gutermuth, remained childless and spent much time with me. It was a wonderful thing to take trips in his car, an Opel P4. In later years, I followed my uncle Franz in his successful business.

We and the Gutermuths have not lived in the Ruetschlehen for a long time. The elders have died and I devote myself to the handball vets, the bowlers and the annual meetings at my house on the Pfortenstrasse.

January 2004

Pictures of Willi as a child

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Elfriede Maier born Schuller Our Play Street

The years of childhood remain in my memory. It is said that human thoughts of the time of one’s childhood become less clear with age and the short-term memory diminishes. Luckily, at the age of 60 years this is not yet happening, for I still can recall so many years in my long-term memory. But I have to rummage around for these memories until they come to the forefront. Readers of these memories should be lenient if some facts are not complete or they remember them better. With that I want to say: what I write, I do not claim to be perfect, but it is more a small attempt to remember a childhood that was good in spite of the meager circumstances.

52 Located in Frankfurt

26 I was born in 1944 during the Second World War. My own childhood memories on the Ruetschlehen begin about four years later, in the year 1948.

It was a quiet street, no great vehicle traffic, a true play-paradise for us children. The only car owner in our street was Mr. Siebel. He and his family ran a grocery store in a one-family row house at the other end of the street. There was a garage in the back yard where fresh milk was sold. Daily, I walked with a little portable aluminum can to this place to get a little rationed milk to carry home, in exchange for a grocery card. I was glad if no dog approached me on the way. One time I dropped the milk because I feared a barking dog. This didn’t earn me any praise when I arrived at home. From that day on, the aluminum can had an unmistakable dent.

There was a second grocery store in the Ruetschlehen, called the Konsum Filiale, and also don’t forget the Sachs bakery. Here expensive breads and little yeast pastries were baked, the taste of which I still have on my tongue today. Right on the corner of Ruetschlehen/Bodenseestrasse, there was another larger bakery well-known for Wenzel’s farmers bread. When I had been given a little change, I laid it on the counter for expensive raspberry candies in a large candy jar. I would have loved to buy a whole bag full of the raspberry candies, but usually I only had enough for five or at most ten pieces. Packaged in a light brown three-cornered pointed paper bag, I carried my sweets home, there to thoughtfully enjoy them.

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The built-up part of the Bodenseestrasse ended after the Wenzel Bakery53 and the small-garden area began. Many residents of Ruetschlehen had a little allotted garden there and planted vegetables to supplement the meager menus in the time after the war. Those who didn’t have a garden liked to buy their vegetables from the vegetable man, Bohlender. He delivered fresh vegetables with a three-wheeled delivery cart directly to the front of the house. He rang a bell and called: “Bohlender is here. White cabbage, savoy cabbage, carrots, potatoes, lettuce.” Those who bought from him were well served and didn’t have to walk to Alt Fechenheim.

The Ruetschlehen gave me and the children of the neighborhood the chance to play marbles. On the sidewalk54, one could dig lovely holes into which to shoot marbles. The colored glass marbles were very popular and to capture them was the goal of the game. I only had modestly colorful marbles. After a few weeks of playing, they looked very worn, had nicks and had lost their color, so it was important to win better glass marbles.

If we were lucky, the ice man came on his bicycle on hot days. He had a bell with which he lured his customers and called: “Ice, ice, Delladotti-ice”. Quickly we ran home to beg for ice money. The Delladotti ice was then licked, wedged between two square-cornered wafers. Wafer bags or ice bags were unknown at that time. The popular ice mixture was a sort of ice milk, marbled light brown and white, chocolate and vanilla mixed, I can’t exactly say anymore.

53 We shopped there for our bread. Mother and her next-door friend, Annie Rosplescz, were walking one day during the war when money was scarce, when they smelled the wonderful odor of the bakery and decided to stop in to buy something to eat. Rummaging in their pockets, they were able to combine the few pennies they found to buy a Kaiser roll to share. 54 Not paved, just dirt and gravel.

27 The iceman didn’t come by very frequently. For that reason, we ran after the iceman of the Eis- Guenther business of Enkheim. This iceman delivered large blocks of ice to cool the iceboxes of the time. He came with a horse-drawn carriage, opened his wagon and hauled the ice blocks out with a large hook, placed it on his strong shoulders and carried them into the house to the ice-box owners. When pulling them out of the wagon, there were luckily usually a few pieces that fell, that we children liked to suck on. The horses sometimes left behind on the street some brown smelly horse apples. They didn’t lie long on the street, because they were highly prized by the small gardeners as fertilizer for their gardens. Whoever was quickest to come with the shovel and pail got the cost-free fertilizer.

In the cooler months of the year, the Ruetschlehen was a quiet playfield for ballgames.

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The boys played soccer; we girls preferred dodge ball. Sometimes there was a mixture of sexes at dodge ball in which the girls were at a disadvantage and were gotten out right away. The boys had the advantage. Then the girls backed off and went back to playing Hickelkreis. Colorful pictures were drawn with chalk on the sidewalks and one could show off one’s skill at hopping on two legs or one. Also, rope jumping was almost exclusively girls’ play. With long laundry ropes, we could turn the rope by twos and many children had to jump carefully over the rope. Whoever got caught on the rope while jumping had to step out or relieve the rope turner. Roller- skating55 was also done during the cooler time of the year. No one disturbed us on the street, since practically no cars came there56. Of that, one can only dream today. We could move and wear ourselves out without danger in the street and without expensive toys. We had a wonderful and rich childhood.

August 2003

Picture of children in costume 1937 at Shrovetide.

Page 50 Renate Schneeweis born Frommhold 159,56 Meters of Happiness for Children

During the war, my parents were evacuated to Alzey, and that is the reason I was born in Alzey. When I was one year old, my parents moved with me and my nine-year-old sister to Fechenheim onto the Ruetschlehen. Our three-room apartment was on the first floor. We had a porch (at that time it was called a balcony) with access to the lawns at the back of our apartments. These lawns were used to dry the laundry, for carpet beating, etc. They were an ideal location for us children.

55 We didn’t have roller skates like today. They were metal and had clamps that attached to our regular shoes with the turn of a special key and a strap to pull across the ankle to buckle up. 56One day I was outside playing with my friends when an American Jeep was coming toward our corner. I was nine years old. One of my playmates dared me to step out into the street in front of the car. I took the dare, stepped into the street with my arms outstretched and didn’t move as the Jeep approached. It stopped, the American officer got out and took me over his knee and spanked me. Embarrassed and sore, I ran in to my mother. I didn’t get any sympathy, of course. The spanking had hurt even more than normal because I was still recuperating from the chicken pox and had sensitive sores on my backside.

28 In the summers, we played on the balconies and cooked on doll stoves that existed in our imaginations and sometimes actually were real. We cooked rose hips and leaves, or almost anything of that nature for our dolls.

A dear neighbor, grandfather … (I have forgotten the name) raised caged rabbits on his balcony57, that amazingly laid colored eggs for me at Easter. Tomatoes, turnips and tobacco grew in the plot in front of the balcony. Later, the tobacco leaves hung for drying on the laundry lines. One time an eel that a neighbor had caught in the Main hung from one of the laundry-line poles for skinning.

During the summer, large pieces of white laundry lay on the lawns. They were sprayed with watering cans and then dried, so that they would stay very white. That’s where the term bleach meadow came from. During the bleaching, children were not gladly seen there. And we played enthusiastically on the rug-beating bars.

At the beginning of the 1950’s, the Nassauische Heimstaette, owners of the development, built a wonderful playground58. It lay protected inside the triangular property of the Ruetschlehen, Jakobsbrunnenstrasse and Leo-Gans Strasse. There was only one entrance to the playground from the Leo-Gans Strasse and it was visible from all residences from the rear. No child could get lost there. To call children to dinner they simply called or whistled.

Now we had real poles for gymnastics, two see-saws, two sand boxes, all underneath tall shady chestnut trees and supplied with benches. On mild summer evenings, we collected vast numbers of large European beetles59 and we were allowed to stay outside until it got dark. A large meadow was also a part of the playground, where we played from morning until night during school vacations.

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We played a sort of Mau Mau with the cut-out covers of cigarette packages. Almost everyone had a smoker in the family, and sometimes one could talk the father into buying some exotic looking brand with a cover of rare worth. We played marbles, Germany Declares War Against … (none of the parents thought anything of the name of this game), read and exchanged the already available Mickey Mouse and other magazines. Then with the economic miracle came

57 We had rabbits in cages on our balcony, too. We raised them for food. I recall a rabbit being skinned, probably by my brother. We also had chickens in a little hut in our allotted garden. Once, when I watched my brother chop its head off, the chicken continued to flail around without its head until it dropped dead. 58 This playground was actually already there before we left in 1949. However, it was in poor condition then. I only remember a sand box and a see-saw. It was surrounded by hedges and trees. Barefoot, I climbed one of the trees. Coming down, I stepped on some glass at the base of it. The cut in the arch of my was about an inch long and bled quite a bit. Our apartment was close by. Someone carried me home and my mother put me on the kitchen table, face down, and cleaned out the wound and bandaged it. I can still see the scar on the arch of my foot. We neighborhood kids also played inside the thick hedges. 59 Maikaefer in German. They came out at twilight. We collected them in glass jars and watched them crawling over each other. They had prickly legs that kind of scratched our skin when we caught them. Once my father, always the funny guy, played a trick on my mother and put some in her bed. She screamed with terror when she found them there.

29 hula-hoops and badminton. In fall and winter, the lives of the children in the Ruetschlehen and also the children of the neighboring streets were spent on the little traveled streets in front of their houses. Who in those days had a car! We played dodge ball, Hickelkreis, Ox on the Hill, etc.

There was a good infrastructure on our street: two bakeries, two grocery stores, and a milk handler. We were sent with the can to get milk and then tested the centrifugal force when we twirled the milk can over our heads in a circle60. Sometimes this went wrong and then there was anger at home. Sometimes we got a hold of a 5-penny-piece with which we bought a piece of candy or a fresh roll This was a delicacy, and if one had enough imagination, tasted like chocolate.

A bombed ruin in the neighborhood street Am Saalenbusch was a gruesome, adventurous playground for us. In the partly surviving basement, we played hide and seek or sometimes secretly built a fire over which we cooked ourselves a little soup in tin cans – out of a bullion cube donated by Ernst, the son of the baker, unknown to his parents.

This is how we, the children of my age (+/-) spent a happy childhood entirely without any formal entertainment. I can still reconstruct our self-created play.

My nine-year-older sister and her companions lived through different, harder times, but among them was a tighter cohesion and greater solidarity.

September 2003

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Pictures of neighborhood children

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Thomas von Freyberg The Freyberg Gang of Ruetschlehen #24

This expression – the Freyberg Gang – has remained in my thoughts; and there it is tightly connected with the years during which we (my parents and five siblings) lived at Ruetschlehen #24. As familiar as this name Freyberg Gang is, so foreign and disconcerting it is to me, to form the meaning of it. Were we truly, the five of us, a gang? Was there a time at which we saw ourselves as a gang, a tight-knit group of siblings clinging together? Or did others see us like that, those of the same age, the adults in that residential area, the patients of our father? As much as I remember this title, as closely as it is connected to our apartment at Ruetschlehen #24, great is my struggle to recall this Freyberg Gang. I see no photos of these years and none from other years before or after, in which we five siblings appear together, appear as a gang, as a sworn-in

60 I remember doing that daredevil exercise. I don’t think I ever spilled any milk. At some point, I also remember a lady coming by in front of the apartments with big cans of milk on a hand-pushed cart. She would fill our little one- liter cans with the rationed milk.

30 group. But I can’t rule out that the Freyberg Gang existed and maybe is found in the basement rooms of early memories. Who knows what is stored there from former times and can be recalled. I am a little curious what I might discover there.

I undertook this work a little while ago. The children of the Ruetschlehen met again. That was at the beginning of 2002 for the first time. Two of us–and I wonder as much about this as about the Freyberg Gang - searched for months, name by name, and at last brought to daylight the children of the Ruetschlehen: more than sixty of us who lived on the Ruetschlehen between 1945 and 1955; today between 50 and 65 years old – thereabouts. Was it a reunion? Yes, certainly. There I met Richard, my “best friend” during those years, meeting again after 50 years. I also met his younger and smaller sister Ilse, whom I liked very much at that time and the date of whose birthday I still remembered. It was in August, a week after mine and exactly on the same day that the yearly carnival61 in Fechenheim, the Kirmes, the celebration of the original dedication of the church, took place. In this respect and as it concerns those from house #24, it was a reunion. But other than that? We children of the Ruetschlehen –

Page 54 did they really exist way back a half century ago? Somehow they did; but as a large group gathered in one room we had never been together like this first meeting and reunion. These children of the Ruetschlehen had created the memory, more directly: the pleasure of the old, to remember.

After the first meeting, I decided to rummage through my memories of each year and to look at what is still accessible. Now I have time for a few days, on vacation in Spain where we have a little vacation house. I have no help at my disposal, no old photos and no possibility to quickly check with one of my siblings about a memory. I feel like a geologist beginning to dig with my bare hands – full of curiosity as to what might come out of this.

I build myself a scaffold, a scaffold of time. I know a couple of time periods. I will open my memories between them.

On 6 June 1945, our mother arrived with us four children in Fechenheim. This time is certain, for it was always “on the day before Jutta’s first birthday” and Jutta was born on 7 June 1944. She turned one year old on the day after our escape from the Erzgebirge (mining hills).

I search for the next specific time post. It is 18 November 1947, Garbriela’s birthday, our “youngest”. Between those two dates lie two-and-one-half years. I try to organize them a little. The move from one place to another helps some. As we arrived at the end of our flight in

61 It took place just down the street from the city hall in a big open square where the movie theater was located. My favorite rides, maybe the only ones we could afford, were the huge chair-swing merry-go-round and the boat swing (Schiffschauekel).

31 Fechenheim, we found first a place to stay with Jutta’s godmother62. A name comes to my mind; Aunt Margot. I am not certain. Strangely enough, a last name comes to match the first name: Margot Eberspach. She lived in the Starkenburgerstrasse in one of the last houses on that part of the street that leads to the ferry to Offenbach. I see a large two-story house before me, like an old villa, on the left side of the street, looking south in the direction of the Main and Offenbach. A very wide lawn and garden lay between the house and the street. And I am irritated that nothing ties together with any memories of Aunt Margot. Was she truly Jutta’s godmother? For some compelling reason, contact must have been broken; broken, I assume, without knowing the reason. Something must have occurred there, for the godparents of children in our family were very important, each one of us having five godparents – but Aunt Margot? Was there fighting and conflict, serious differences between her and the parents? Was the invasion of this refugee family too much for her?

Our next accommodations were also in the Starkenburgerstrasse, a couple of houses closer in the direction of the Fechenheim city hall,

Page 55 in a little house in the back. Below it was a workshop. I see a small wooden step in the yard. This led into the rooms or was it only one room, above the workshop? The walls were of wood. The whole thing was more like a shed. I remember one dark room with a pungent dense smoke from a round, black oven and bitter cold. That was the winter 1945/46. Here, into this emergency accommodation, my father came from a prisoner of war camp. And if I have placed this memory in the right time, this was in the spring of 1946, maybe even at the beginning of the summer of the same year. Pictures surface of how he suddenly stood at the door, a strange man with a gaunt face and a beard, who maintained that he was our father.

Picture of the Hoffmann family 1946.

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My father was a doctor, neither a party member nor in the NS Doctor Bund; and in Fechenheim there was the lack of a doctor, a practice stood empty, that of Dr. Hoffmann at Konstanzerstrasse 1. He was a known active Nazi – as many of his colleagues, most of them in the Frankfurter General Medical Council – and was at this time point still in the de-nazification facility of the allies for political re-education. The large “villa” across the street from the Willmann School became our third residence in Fechenheim. Father worked in the practice of Dr. Hoffmann. We lived on the first floor; Mrs. Hoffmann and her grown son lived on the second floor above us. When we moved in there? I have no trace of a memory, but assume it was in the first half of the year 1946. At this time it was still 15 months until the birth of our youngest, in November 1947. At her baptism we were still in the Konstanzerstrasse.

62 At baptism, both Catholic and Lutheran, a baby was assigned godparents to watch over its religious teaching if the parents died. They usually were also involved with the children in other ways, especially with gifts at birthdays and holidays.

32 When exactly did we move into the Ruetschlehen? Not in the middle of winter – and after Gabriele’s baptism; maybe in the spring of 1948, but maybe in the early summer. For some reason I move that occasion, thinking it over, to the early fall, because I do not remember the move very well. It was not a hot day, but also not a cool spring day. I decide on fall 1948 without really knowing why.

Now there is another time post missing, the move away from the Ruetschlehen into the residence at Old Fecheheim 35. At Easter, after the 4th class at the Willmann School, I was changed to the Helmholtz High School in Bornheim63. At that time we still lived on the Ruetschlehen. The entrance exam was one week long, day after day, and I see myself – having returned from the school – moving around on stilts in the laundry kitchen in the cellar – reporting my exam progress to my mother whom I could barely see in the foggy steam from the hot water. On Easter 1954, I was confirmed and we already lived on Old Fechenheim for a period of time. How long? I am very uncertain. The close friendship of both “blood brothers”, that of me and Richard Gerth, diminished as our paths to school parted. Richard, I believe, went to the Brothers Grimm School64 and I to the Helmholtz School 65. Both schools were quite near each other – up in Bornheim. And I remember the irritation over the quick, yet insidious, estrangement between us. I had no concept at that time of social distinction, that it would get between our sworn blood- brotherhood. But we didn’t live much longer on the Ruetschlehen. I will consult the photo albums at home – for now I think the move was the fall of 1952 when we left the Ruetschlehen behind us.

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With that – however uncertain and with reservation – every shift is well established, during which a Freyberg Gang may have existed at Ruetschlehen #24. It was from fall 1948 until fall 1952 (from my 9th to my 13th year).

We came illegally into the residence at Ruetschlehen #24. My parents actually had to pay a fine. Living space at that time was strongly regulated, especially in the apartments of the social developments. Our residence belonged to the blocks of apartments of the Nassauische Heimstaette. I can still remember this name but don’t know from which time period. There were three attached blocks. Ours stretched the whole length of the Ruetschlehen, the even units #2 through #24. At the right corner at #2, the Jakobsbrunnenstrasse, another block, was attached, larger and one story taller with covered entrances. At the end of this block, which was also the end of the Jakobsbrunnenstrasse, a third block joined at a sharp angle, not exactly parallel to the Ruetschlehen. This was lower and smaller than our houses, two-story, and only half as long as the Ruetschlehen. That was the Leo-Gans Strasse, the western border of Fechenheim at that time.

On the uneven side of the Ruetschlehen were the better houses with better people. They were one- or two-family houses with front yards on the street and most with gardens in the back. The “better” people were also laborers or employees of the Cassella; shift workers who had to sleep by day but couldn’t because of the heathen racket of us children on the street. Today, I can still

63 A section of Frankfurt a short distance west of Fechenheim. 64 High school in Frankfurt, city-part Bornheim, that still exists there today. 65 Another high school in Frankfurt, city-part Bornheim, that still exists today.

33 hear the angry screaming wives who tried unsuccessfully to drive us away to protect the sleep of their husbands.

As stated, we came without authorization of the housing office and the building society, in other words, illegally. That was exciting for us children, even though we didn’t really understand what was involved. I’m assuming that my father heard about the empty residence from one of his patients. He had probably waited a long time for this opportunity. Here it was – and everything had to go really fast. Still in my memory hovers a barely understandable atmosphere of decided haste, forbidden secrecy and disconcerting defiance. For we had to get out! Out of Konstanzerstrasse 1, out of the villa of Dr. Hoffmann.

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Two pictures of the official playground.

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Certainly this refugee family was an unreasonable demand – and at the beginning even worse, a nearly constant threat. The unknown doctor nested himself into the practice, with his large family into the downstairs living quarters. And the master of the house is not there, imprisoned in a de- nazification facility, which sounds to the German ear more like a concentration camp. Who knows what is happening to him there and if he will ever get out of there! But then he returned - the Cold War had started and re-education ceased. Inclusion of West Germany in the western camp was the political talk of the day.

My vague memory tells me that, at the beginning, both doctors used the practice together: one day my father, the next day Dr. Hoffmann. An impossible and unsustainable situation that ended in mutual strain – apparently with energetic support from old NS connections in the Doctor Council and from the residence council. My father obtained his own practice rooms in Gruendenseestrasse. That was the first step. The “illegal” move, that may not have been quite so illegal, was the second. With this came probably the only case of colleague cooperation between father and Dr. Hoffmann.

We moved. It was later in the afternoon. In the spring, perhaps? Or maybe in late summer or in the fall of 1948? There was a tall, two-wheeled cart with two long handles for pulling and two bent metal stands underneath in the front of the big load area. That is how the cart could stand. The wood was green-gray, both wheels as tall as a man. The vegetable cart of Bohlender’s fruit- and vegetable-store on Alt Fechenheim, a couple of houses from the Catholic Church, comes to mind. With it a loud bell with a piercing clear tone, that was shaken in a fast rhythm and at a steady pace. In the following silence, the strong voice: “Bohlender is here! White cabbage, savoy cabbage, lettuce, carrots, potatoes – 10 pounds for one Mark!” All in the pitch of the bell, all ending with the last syllables of “one Mark” at a pitch one third lower. A communication from the earlier after-war time unforgotten in content and tone of voice. It is certainly possible that Bohlender’s vegetable cart served us during our move to the Ruetschlehen; for the Bohlenders were patients of my father for many years.

34 It wasn’t far away: up the Konstanzerstrasse, right in front of the Fechenheim swimming hall and then up the Saalenbusch to the Ruetschlehen. There another left to the last house on the right side. Our things came to the second floor of #24 into the apartment on the right side. It couldn’t have been much furniture that made the move.

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It could be that we had to do the trip two or three times. A picture appears: I see myself walking next to the huge wheel of the vegetable cart, fascinatingly watching the wheel hub. A blob of black grease moved with the turn of the wheel, making a little tongue every time reaching from the top to bottom, but never broke off and fell to the ground as I anticipated. And I still hear the crunching grinding of the iron wheel rims on the grainy asphalt street. It appears to me – after 55 years’ distance – that I needed that hypnotic effect from that wheel hub, from the slowly turning wagon grease and from the crunching of the wheels on the asphalt, in order to pacify the atmosphere of the unauthorized, the secret, the forbidden.

When we are finally in with all our things – then we are safe; then THEY can’t throw us out! That was somehow clear to me, even though I didn’t have the least clue of who THEY were. But this I understood: after our last trip, Dr. Hoffmann began to tear out the boards, the Parkett flooring, in every room, in which we had lived. There was no turning back! Hate and hostility helped us to our new residence at Ruetschlehen #24 – I’ve decided. We lived here for four years. Two adults and we five children.

I can remember an odd nanny – where did she actually live? Also in this small three-room apartment? My maybe–oldest picture in the new apartment appears in my memory: our children’s room was a scarce four meters wide, a scarce four meters long. The window overlooked the Ruetschlehen. To the right above the window, maybe 30 centimeters distant from the window wall, there was a makeshift-repaired, clearly visible hole in the ceiling. Below, about one meter into the room, the wooden floorboards were scorched black; a deep charred hole. An incendiary bomb, we were told, crashed through the outer wall and the ceiling. The quick-witted house manager threw it out of the window with a coal shovel. I often have thought about that, whether in that circumstance I would have cold-bloodedly and quick-wittedly done the same.

That, then, was the oldest picture of our apartment on the Ruetschlehen. While the hole in the ceiling was soon repaired and became unnoticeable, the charred burn-spot on the floor of this room still told the tale.

We were a family of seven and the apartment was approximately 70 square meters66. But I can’t remember feeling cramped.

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I will attempt to reconstruct the floor plan – and a wish appears, after a half century, to visit this apartment again and compare it to my memories.

66 A little more than 753 square feet.

35 From the hallway outside of the apartment door I walk into the - usually dark – foyer. Immediately to the right is the parents’ bedroom. There is a large old double bed of heavy dark wood. The foot-end was a half high footboard with a wide top. I see myself lying on the bed stretched out and on my back and with both outstretched arms trying to hold my balance. That was a favorite activity when on weekends I was allowed in the parents’ bedroom to wake up my father for breakfast. Two little nightstands to the right and left at the head end – that’s all the space there was. Or was there also a bedroom wardrobe by the wall by the hallway? Left of the foyer, one went in to the toilet and bath, a smaller room. To the right of the door there was a tall heater for the bath; this was heated on Saturdays with coals. Then the bathtub and in the back the toilet bowl, next to that the tall round laundry basket. Sitting on the toilet, I could see the mysterious writing on the hot water heater: Kaldewei – and a picture appears, that of the oven company: a rabbit head with one ear bent down.

A second door went off to the left of the foyer. This led into the small kitchen. On the right hand were the kitchen cabinet and the workspace. In one of the drawers lay my mother’s little wallet for the shopping. A place of temptation. To the left and across under the window were more workspaces, the stove and the sink. Directly next to the window was a door to the living room. One came into that at the end of the foyer. Left in the living room, in front of the big window at the back, stood the corner bench and our eating table. I see an old, always a little greasy, oilcloth tablecloth. We children were not required to use good table manners. Spilled food was quickly licked up, or – if there were guests – placed back on the plate with the spoon. There was very little to eat. After each mid-day meal, one of us, and I think in most cases it was I, murmured, “ I’m still hungry”- more or less clearly. I can’t remember my mother ever reacting to this complaint.

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Picture of the Freyberger Gang with their mother and two friends.

That’s simply how life was in those days. There were only specific days in the year - birthday and Christmas meals - that openly promised and proclaimed that no one would leave the table hungry.

From the living room, one went into the children’s room. Coming from the foyer, it was directly to the right. Two bunk beds, right and left on the wall, with one end at the window, from which one could look down on the Ruetschlehen. Hagen and I slept in the right bunk bed, in the left slept Mechthild and Jutta. Jumping from one bed to the other over the empty space was hard. It was forbidden and for that reason we loved to do it. We had to jump shallow because the ceiling was not high. We had to jump far, maybe one and one-half meters67. One wasn’t allowed to crash because between the two bunk beds was the youth-bed in which my youngest sister Gabriele slept.

A very impressionable memory comes back. One time, it must have been about dawn, I fell out of my bed while sleeping, but I woke up during the fall and lightning-quick I stopped myself – landing on all fours I landed on Gabriele’s bed without even disturbing her.

67 About 33 to 40 inches.

36

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Well, a heroic tale maybe. What might be hidden behind it?

Was there really a Freyberg Gang? I have a suspicion, but it is a construction, not a memory. There must have been a Freyberg Gang, but maybe it was never more than a marvelously useful expression – for us children on the Ruteschlehen. “That was the Freyberg Gang” – with that, countless crimes could be blamed, not only against others, but also against us Freybergs. Moreover and even better, this could bring adults to silence and helplessness. One can’t bother Mr. Doctor with such annoying little things! The jump over the garden fence into the tulips to retrieve a ball, the wonderfully loudly exploding tin cans armed with carbide and spit, the snowballs mixed with little gravel rocks thrown in the evenings at lighted window panes, the disturbing bell ringing at dusk. Who disappears laughing loudly along the Ruetschlehen? That was the Freyberg Gang! Only occasionally did an adult venture to complain to our parents. Not only was it not wise to strain the nerves of the doctor; maybe also, because everyone on the street knew or guessed how useful and … this accusation was.

And we, the Freyberg Gang itself? I can’t recall that we suffered from it. Rather the opposite. Every wrong and unjustifiable accusation that reached the ears of our parents, proved our innocence in other cases as well. So another memory belongs to the Freyberg Gang: that of a wonderful defense formula that we Freybergs learned quickly to use. “When you are accused of wrongdoing by the adults in the street,” so my father once advised, when we were absolutely innocent and in the right, “then don’t let yourselves be drawn into a discussion, don’t get fresh, simply say so politely and with certainty.” This formula sounded to me like, ”Please speak to my father!” This we did – and must have impressed the adults as arrogant and shameless. And we soon learned that this denial formula had magic power. It also functioned, and especially functioned where the accusations were not so wrong and unjustified. So we children of Ruetschlehen often benefited from the formation of a Freyberg Gang. So in hindsight, there may have been such a gang.

The street belonged to us children. We certainly got on the nerves of the adults. There was no room in the apartments for children.

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One slept there, ate there, did homework there, but life was really lived in the street. And life at its extreme was wonderful, ear-deafening noise. I hear our iron roller skates. They were screwed onto the bottom of our shoes and had metal wheels. When we raced through the streets with them, there was a war racket. Images of screaming women come through. They ripped their windows open and yelled for quiet for their men who were shift-workers and had to sleep during the days and naturally couldn’t with all that noise. Then we moved, maybe a couple of houses farther up. Probably this small war between the adults and us was a daily event – and yet I have few memories of differences between the adults and us children. I suspect that the adults then – compared with today – had surprisingly great patience with us children. Maybe, since they all had their own children, because they all sent their children out to the street, in order to get a little

37 peace, because children on the street were taken for granted, because no one could imagine quiet children.

For instance the roller skates, murderously loud pieces of equipment. Skating was done in hordes that swelled up, came nearer and became louder and louder, comparable to a squad of tanks, mixed with screaming in the fields. Three or four bicycles – a grapevine of roller skaters attached – determined the speed; decorated with beer mats, fastened with clothes pins on the wheel spokes banged away like machine guns. We could have waked the dead with them.

Not quite so loud were the metal rings that we chased through the streets, scrapped bicycle rims without hubs or spokes that were driven forward with sticks. I still have the feeling in my right hand: a thick stick, maybe 30 centimeters68 long, had to be held vertically and drive the rim forward69. We could have races, make bets, drive it into twists – and along with that make a wonderfully devilish racket.

And the ball games on the street. Always dodge ball, naturally with lots of yelling and collective effort, to hear over the screaming, scolding women in the windows – at least so long, until they came out of their doors threatening and red-faced with anger. The threat came mostly from “over there”, the side of the street with the uneven house numbers and the “better” people. Their front yards were, after all, the preferred sacrifice for unsuccessful ball throws. Then it was necessary to lightning-quick jump over the fence, grab the ball, throw it back into the street and get oneself to safety before the raging adult could hit him. Now and then a ball was confiscated and then there was only one possibility of getting it back,

Page 65 an extremely unpleasant possibility: ring politely, excuse oneself and submissively plead, if it would please be possible to get the ball back. Often this degrading process had to be repeated the following day and almost always included a holy sermon, to play somewhere else in the future. Was there a bribe among us children? Who will retrieve the lost ball, who will take the blame on himself – and the risk of also getting in trouble with one’s parents? Were marbles offered to the one who offered himself? Did the Freyberg Gang profit commercially because of the status of “Mr. Doctor”? I don’t remember but I have a sure, though somewhat vague, suspicion.

I remember one play that involved a lot of shouting and screeching, a typical after-war game, I think. Conquer Countries – they were then separated, couldn’t participate in battle and war. What were the rules? One stood in the middle and called, while throwing the ball vertically up, the name of a country. Japan, America, Russia, Poland, France, England, Denmark, Sweden. Each one of us was one of these countries and the one called out had to catch the ball and then loudly yell “Stop!” All the others had to run away as fast as possible, but at the word “Stop” had to immediately stand still. Then the ball was thrown – and “countries conquered”.

68 About 12 inches. 69 To steer it, you changed the stick from one side to the other of the rim as it turned, forcing the rim in the right direction.

38 And naturally, Hickelkreis. That only worked well with smaller groups. Especially loved were the flat fragments of tile roof shingles. With these, a large “T” was drawn in each of six squares on the street. I can remember the difficult effort of jumping on one foot and the hesitant kicking to drive the fragment from one square to the next – not too little, not too far, or else one was “out” and had to start again at the square with the number one. Hickelkreis was more of a girls’ game, required more skill than strength and frequently they were superior to us boys. I believe I didn’t like playing it.

There was another such girls’ game. Naturally we boys played along, but with reserve and loudly stated devaluation when only girls were “in” and had the winner among them: the great rope jumping. The most important and valuable piece of play equipment here was the strongest possible laundry rope. Naturally, it was one that was knotted together from separate pieces. But the knots were useful, giving the jump rope the necessary weight for the uniform turning. With five or six meter70 lengths, quite a few of us children could “jump in” and then the object was not to touch the rope with feet or legs or any body part . I was pretty good at it.

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I think I could still do it today, that lightly bent jumping in a regular rhythm. After every second jump, the rope had to fly under the shoes. And here surface in my memory the first lovely pictures of girls. Jumping girls, with long blond braids, flying dresses or skirts and the gray or dark blue many-times mended and dreadfully itchy long stockings – held up by Leibchen71. This beaming perseverance at jumping by some of the girls: they leaped for pure joy and pleasure of flying rather than winning. We boys were better at top-spinning72. The top-spinning cords were … with knots. That made it more difficult to bring the top up to speed, but gave it much more momentum when hitting it just right – just above the ground with the last third of the cord.

We weren’t a huge horde of children on the street, but everywhere children played in groups. Only in a big game of tag – and I can recall hide and seek also. All three blocks became included in that. Many children were involved, many that we hardly knew. I don’t know what the occasion was, maybe a child’s birthday? But it was a rare time, when we felt ourselves on strange and uncertain ground, as we hid ourselves in the covered doorways of Jakobsbrunnenstrasse.

I am certain the Children from the Ruetschlehen didn’t exist. Also not in the yearly “war” at carnival time. My memories of that are vague and diffused, bound with strong feelings of excitement, belligerency and hidden fear. The Children from the Ruetschlehen were not an organized fighting group. Everything was very confusing. Not only in my reflection of the past. We streamed together, coming out of all streets and corners. Mostly boys – maybe exclusively? We carried weapons and armed ourselves on the way to the meadow ditch with sticks, stones, bows and arrows, long lances. Ropes with nooses to capture enemies. The front line was the meadow ditch. The enemy came from the north, the ones from Bergen-Enkheim. Maybe the boys

70 About 16 to 20 feet. 71 Sort of a cut off undershirt with garters hanging down to attach to the stockings with buttons. 72 It was a lot of fun with a whole bunch of kids out there in the street all whipping their tops to keep them spinning the longest.

39 from north Fechenheim also belonged to them, those behind the Hanauer Landstrasse, to the enemy troop. Somehow we fought. We ganged together, attacked smaller groups of the other side, tried to capture them and drag them over the meadow ditch. And we dragged ourselves back to our own side if the enemy was too strong. We battled, ran, and, above all, there was horrible yelling and screaming.

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Photos of the Sachs brothers on their bicycles by the Gutermuth car.

I surely did not belong to the heroes, but held myself back at a safe distance from the greatest fighting. At no time did I have a good view of who was fighting whom, according to what rules or in whose territory. Horror stories circulated about captives and about enemies bound to willow trees, of torture at the stake of those captured, yes – and that was the most worrisome tale – of eyes shot out. That kept me preoccupied and fearful.

Naturally, there were also quiet games. To these belonged marbles, in which little colored balls had to be knocked to a hole in the ground with a crooked index finger – and the winner in the end won all the balls in the hole. It was a game typical in spring. And I see ourselves with bulging bags, filled marble bags, strutting around on the street. Everywhere there was dirt compacted from walking, there were these holes dug out. And I wrack my brain, searching for the fitting places for this game. Was it the sidewalk of the Ruetschlehen? Were there not trees on both sides? Hawthorne trees

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that bloomed beautifully in the spring? Was there not a smoothly trodden earth between the sidewalk and the street where our marble lanes and holes could be laid out? The common marbles of clay and in pale colors between yellow, brown, red and blue were our favorites. But at some time we changed to the first glass marbles with mysterious colorful swirls and patterns in the center. They were the most prized. Their trading worth against the common clay marble was enormous. This is how riches came into being among us children, unequal distribution, and jealousy. Suddenly, the old clay marbles had no worth and their whole desirability was lost. They appeared ugly and dull to us – and with their devaluation the appeal for the old marble game was also lost.

Yes, trodden dirt in front of the houses and between the sidewalk and the street where we played all the other post war games with great passion: knife throwing and “take away the enemy’s land”. A quiet game for two. A small square of about 40 by 40 centimeters73 was scratched into the flat dirt. Then the first one threw his knife. It had to stay stuck in the ground. The puncture of the blade determined the direction of the straight line with which the field was divided. It was an endless game, in which it was impossible to have a winner. It was really about the knife throwing and the back and forth of land wins and land losses.

73 About 16 X 16 inches.

40 There was also money throwing. That became serious and came to something. It could be played in twos but also in larger groups. One had to have money, pennies, but could also be played with nickels or dimes. There were two phases. In the first one, the players stood behind a line about three or four meters distant from the side of a house and took turns throwing a coin as close as possible toward the wall. Whoever’s coin lay closest to the wall could take all the money. But before he could pocket it, a little juggling act had to take place with the coins: the money was laid in the open palm. A little swing, and while the coins hung in the air, the hand was turned, lightning-quick. The money landed on the back of the hand, was once more tossed high and then, as they fell, were snapped up with the hand coming from above. If many were playing, a large number of coins were involved, and much practice and skill was necessary to catch most of them. I can still do the swing – and after a short practice usually caught ten coins. And the picture of a small weasel-like boy surfaces in my memory. He always won, threw the closest, and always caught the coins. For him it was all about the money – I think; something about that was unpleasant; made me uncomfortable. But maybe it was only the anger and the rage over the lost money.

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There were no real or dramatic groups, not in the little Freyberg Band and not in the larger group of the children of the Ruetschlehen. Seldom did we five play together on the street. At this age, the borders between boys and girls were too important and the age differences did the rest. I sense that there were small unstable playgroups and also some childhood friendships. Hagen, my brother, had Dieter Assmann. I was a little jealous and envious, for Dieter’s family lived in one of these one-family houses that were set back and surrounded by a yard on the Bodenseestrasse. From Ruetschlehen #24, it was the second or third house on the left side of the street. Right behind the house of Dieter’s family there was a small path to one of the small playgrounds in our quarter. There was a sandbox and a see-saw. To me, Dieter was “big” – he was a little older than my brother. What Dieter and my brother played, I couldn’t figure out. I was seldom with them. My friend was Richard Gerth, at that time my “blood brother”.

The Gerths lived in our unit, on the third floor left. I don’t have a very clear picture of his parents. I believe they were quiet parents. The mother small, always busy; the father big, silent. And both friendly to us. Maybe we were a little shy, but we definitely weren’t afraid of them. That meant a lot in those days. Richard’s father had a hobby, loved nature, took his son with him to the east harbor to watch the rare silver seagulls; or with him to the bird sanctuary observation point in Fechenheim. Wasn’t the director Mr. Pfeiffer? There was something intimate and close between father and son, which I didn’t have in my family. That’s why I envied Richard. We both swore a blood brotherhood – and I wouldn’t doubt that we sealed the oath like our big heroes Old Shatterhand and Winnetou74 with a couple of drops of blood. For a long period in this phase of the years on the Ruetschlehen were indivisible and fell into each others’ arms when we met after finishing our homework. We cried somewhat overdone and theatrically: “Blood Brother”, or laughed with silliness: “Blutsbludel”75, and then went together toward the fields and the meadow

74 Old Shatterhand is a fictional character in sixteen western novels by German writer Karl May (1842-1912). He is the German American friend and blood brother of Winnetou, the fictional chief of the Mescalero tribe of the Apache. 75 A silly distortion of the term Blutsbruder.

41 ditch. We carried with us a beanpole with a red flag. And there, where today the industrial properties are located, somewhere in the vicinity of Neckermann76, the meadow ditch stretches from east to west: a small, straight riverbed, seldom with water, but with old willow stumps at the edges. There the mouse buzzards lay in wait and we sneaked up on them, creeping on all fours like our heroes of the Wild West. With great patience we snaked ourselves along, but in truth we never really got very close. And we hunted the savage. Armed with bow and arrow and

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tomahawk, we stalked through the tall grass or laid in wait on a freshly built molehill, to pierce, to beat at the first sign of earth movement. Luckily, we were never successful and we were spared the experience of mole murder.

I only experienced once the misery of luck at hunting. Luckily, Richard was not with me. With my slingshot I shot down a little garden red-tail from a tomato pole. Horrified, I walked toward the hit and lifted the poor little bird from the ground. It was still alive, revived very slowly, then sat on my hand and heard my pleading apologies before it flew away.

Oh yes, a lovely shining memory of my father has surfaced. My tomahawk! I used it rarely. Its head was of light alloy and its blade was round. Neither successful throwing or serious blows or splitting with it were possible. But I loved it – for a time. I had it to thank for a truly unlikely, absolutely unthinkable and extremely lovely injustice of my father. He, who was as righteous and strong as God himself, overstepped for me his own rule. We were at the Fechenheimer carnival, held yearly at the end of August. Each of us children had received a Mark. More was out of the question and the greatest concentration was required not to waste this valuable Mark senselessly, to make the right choice. After walking through the carnival ground once and getting a preview of the lovely things, the first decision was made: We had to ride the Schiffschaukel77 and that ate two10-penny pieces. On the way back, my eyes and my heart got hung up on one stand, more exactly: on a thrilling, beautiful tomahawk that lay there in the first row. One Mark and 40 pennies! This dream was unattainable, and I detached myself – with great effort – from the enticing tormenting sight of this weapon with magical power that would have changed me immediately into my hero Winnetou. At the third round of the carnival, nothing else appealed to me and the 80 pennies in my pocket seemed senseless to me. I stood again in front of my tomahawk.

Then the miracle occurred. My father was standing behind me and bent over me. “Would you spend all the rest of your money for it?” I didn’t understand. Didn’t he see that my money wouldn’t be enough, even if I hadn’t spent the two dimes for the ship swing? I must have stuttered something helplessly, for father asked the question again, “Would you be ready to give up all the rest?” And now I realized what he was saying, even though I was far from understanding my father. The “yes” must have come from the bottom of my heart. “Then give it to me,” said father. He added the failing amount

76 A large German department store built after we left Germany, located between Fechenheim and Frankfurt where the fields used to be. 77 My favorite ride at the yearly carnival. It was a large swing. But in place of a swing seat, it had a replica of a small ship. Two people, one on each end, pumped to make it swing as high as possible.

42

Page 71 and bought me the tomahawk. My father died very young, about six years later in a car accident. And this is the nicest memory I have of him.

Picture of the Freyberg family.

Richard and I had bicycles – old ones and not much to look at, but still our pride and joy – and we both rode often into the Bergen-Enkheimer reed marsh. There Richard showed me what he had learned from his father: where the turtles lay in the sun, where the deer hid themselves during the day, where the grass snakes went to hunt frogs. Once we caught a very large grass snake. With my leather belt we strapped it to the luggage carrier on my bicycle and proudly rode home with the still-alive but very lethargic hunting spoils. We were heroes as we unstrapped the snake and let it “walk” on the street. But since the snake just lay there, the interest of the other children on the Ruetschlehen waned – and we both had a problem. Now what? And then Richard’s father came. He didn’t get loud, also not really angry. But he shamed us both deeply. The grass snake was almost ready to shed its skin, he told us. One could see that in the milk- white color of its eyes. That’s the only reason we were able to catch the poor thing. It was helpless and needed its rest. Then there wasn’t much left of us dragon slayers. We took the snake back and laid it in the reeds exactly where we had found it.

I was much impressed with the trouble Richard took to enlighten me. We were again on our way to the meadow ditch. He must tell me something,

Page 72 he said, but it was a secret and I must not tell it to anyone else. If I knew, what it is with men and women. Well, I didn’t know what it was I was supposed to know or want to know. Richard found out from someone older, but it was true. One could count on it. In Offenbach, there was a house with lots of little rooms in which there are ladies. And they are naked. And the men pay money and are then allowed to go in, too.

Somehow, I just didn’t quite understand. But I didn’t want to ask. I remember that I had a strong feeling, a confused feeling, that what Richard was telling me was something extremely strange and absolutely unnatural. I can remember only my comment at the end of Richard’s news. “Do you really believe that this is true?” Richard was a little mad that I had doubts and restated the trustworthiness of his informant. But I was irritated, because my question actually had a different goal. I imagined a house with many changing booths – like at the swimming pool. I couldn’t for the life of me imagine why someone would pay money to go into such a room if there was someone in there already, especially a naked lady. What sense was there in that? I never found out if Richard abandoned his efforts to enlighten me because he himself didn’t know any more or because he believed I was now adequately enlightened or because he gave up on my clueless naivety.

43 The last chronological and youngest memory stems from the end phase of our Ruetschlehen years. The gardens to the west of the Leo-Gans Strasse were rolled flat. New residential blocks were built there and for a long time we had wonderful play opportunities on the construction sites. Naturally, only on weekends. We found stable, thick, man-made materials – probably the cut-ends of the kitchen cabinetry. They were white and we got the idea from their shapes to make them into boomerangs. With pocketknives and saws we did it. We got the pattern from a catalog, apparently from Sanella margarine. The things truly flew. We were enchanted. Our boomerangs cut through the air, swung high, turned a large curve and came back. Naturally not into our hands, but even so a good distance. We were the sensation – and for a time a boomerang fever reigned among the children.

Then our ways parted. First socially, then also physically. I went to the Heimholtz High School in Bornheim, Richard to the Brothers Grimm Secondary Modern School. Naturally, I was concerned that our blood-brotherhood should continue.

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We never had a real fight or argument, but somehow it waned. And before we moved to the Alt Fechenheim, our ways had parted. We became strangers. But my love for Karl May has lasted till today.

There are other more depressing memories. I feel that I want to depress those. That strange nanny who took care of us, when mother worked in the practice, and that didn’t last very long with us. We must have made her life a hell. How old would she have been? Maybe 17 or 18 years, maybe also 27 or 28. To us she was an adult. But now that I am starting to write about her, I am reminded of a “great homesickness”. We children didn’t notice it nor would we have had sympathy for her. She was strange, disconcerted, and also “somehow crazy”, and handed to the Freyberg Gang on a silver plate.

Here, then, is a memory in which the Gang operated. This unhappy creature sat often in a dark corner of our residence and murmured crazed stuff. One of her crazy sayings we picked up and we lost no opportunity to call after her: “Gold is more than silver – silver is more than gold.” We were merciless – and mercilessly we created the downfall that meant the end of her in our family. We irritated her, murmured her magic words, threw a pillow at her in the children’s room – until she angrily threw it back at us. It flew through the open window down to the Ruetschlehen. She commanded us to go get it. But she had thrown it and we refused. And we knew she couldn’t get the pillow herself. Our escape was clear to us. We knew our father too well. All talk about it - who had started it, who had said what and then did what - he would firmly stop. Who threw the pillow out of the window – he would permit no other question – and to that there was only one answer. So then: only one was guilty. We had won – and even today I have unpleasant depressing feelings over this victory of the Freyberg Gang. There are many battles over power that would have been better not to have won.

And another such depressing scene – another such victory over the adults when I was a few years older. A little old man lived in our house, on the first floor left. He was living alone and he was our “enemy”. When we ran out of the back of the house, we took the shortest way through the

44 cellar, stormed by his winter garden, jumped over the wall, and in that way got to the Leo-Gans Strasse. This wild bunch of children was a horror for him. He scolded after us and became

Page 74 the object of our maliciousness, when we had nothing better to do. During rainy weather, the cellar and the laundry kitchen were our favorite play spaces. The old man, I can’t even recall his name, lived above that and must have suffered hellish torment. Sometimes he came raging down the cellar stairs. And we ran laughing out of the back cellar door. We were unreachable to our enemy when we sat up there on the 2-meter78 high wall that protected and kept his apartment out of view from the street. There we sat and sang at the top of our lungs, “On the wall lying in wait is a little bug,” incessantly, getting on his nerves, fresh, with a clear view of his winter garden. And one time we had a direct confrontation – and I have a strong feeling that it was my doing. The old man came storming again down the cellar stairs with face twisted with rage. I didn’t move, simply stayed put. “Don’t you dare touch me!” I said something like that, apparently mimicking my father’s authoritarian tone. And it worked. The old man stared at me, speechless, turned around and slithered – rather weak and dejected - up the cellar stairs. I was the hero of the house and had to tell repeatedly of my victory. I felt deep inside me a quiet nagging shame. It was a final victory. A few times when we had tested him, he had stood firm.

I believe our last provocation took place from the Gerth’s living room window. At that time, knitting-fever reigned among us children and countless yarn for knitting was produced from the remainders of our mothers’ yarn. We used the “stoppelliese”79 with round-headed nails or screws for the stitches for our large rolls of yarn. Richard and I combined our work into one cord that reached down to the winter garden roof of the old man. We let our cord dance on the roof – but he dashed our hopes and didn’t react any more. Not about anything. And so we lost our interest in him. Other than that, I have no more memories about this old, little and surely lonely old man - only those shameful ones of a false hero and an uneasy victory.

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Mrs. Stahl comes to mind. She lived in our house directly under us on the first floor right. Why Mrs. Stahl? Didn’t she have a husband or children? Not in my memory, but meanwhile I know that there was at least one daughter, somewhat older than us, but still somehow in that age range. She – a half century later – apparently found out that the Children from the Ruetschlehen were going to meet again. Even with that, I don’t have any spark of memory, which is a puzzle to me. Not in the least, not in a unit with only six rentals did I remember her. Maybe the small age difference was too large.

78 About 6.5 feet. 79 A small wooden object shaped like a mushroom, with a hole down through the stem. The stem was gripped in the hand, with the top above the thumb and finger. Small nails were in a circle around the top. By winding yarn around the nails and then repeatedly turning the yarn over each nail with nail or something of similar shape, one ended up with a tube of knitting that came out of the bottom. The tube could be made into hot pads or potholders.

45 So, Mrs. Stahl. I see a strong, powerful woman before me and Mozart’s “Queen of the Night” comes to mind. We children avoided her. She was loud, energetic and ominous. It required all our courage to shoot our water pistols through her keyhole from the hallway/staircase. And then we ran like the devil. With Mrs. Stahl, the magic formula: “Speak to our father” didn’t help. She did that without hesitation – and before the fatherly criminal court in the evening, our boldly maintained lies fell apart.

The punishment was horrible. Every one of us had to excuse ourselves to Mrs. Stahl. In these cases, Hagen liked to push me to the front because, he said, I could speak better. Today I suspect that he had an idea how my childish round face and my light blond curls affected the female gender, especially those of an older age of father’s patients. I still remember my speech at the door of the apartment below us. Presumably, it came from a multiple repeated hero tale: “Greetings from my father, and we want to ask for your forgiveness.” The outrageousness of this self-apology must have been quite clear to me, and I ask myself today why Mrs. Stahl accepted it. Was she overpowered by my curls or by my insolence, or by the mixture of both?

Now, at this writing I feel respect. Maybe this strong woman could overlook our impudence, didn’t have to make the most of her power and our humiliation, could feel the great fear in the dynamic appearance of a little boy and go easy on him.

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Picture of the Freyberg family.

Hagen and I were 15 months apart in age. At this time on the Ruetschlehen I began to catch up with him in body size. But in sports he was superior to me - faster, stronger - just the older brother. We were together in the athletic organization. Not in the “old one” on the Mainboernchen, but in the new athletic hall. This was located out in the fields on the extended Pfortenstrasse. There was a proper way to it from our place, one that was an absolutely unbearable detour. Down the Bodenseestrasse, right on the Ueberlinger Way and left on the Hennsee, then again right on the Mittelseestrasse to the Pfortenstrasse, and then right and endlessly out into the fields, where the athletic hall was on the left. It is still there today. As I said, an impossible detour, when the hall was actually only “a cat’s leap” distant from the Ruetschlehen. By air, or better straight through the gardens, the distance was hardly farther than the whole length of the Ruetschlehen. But a high wire fence, locked gates and more than eight small garden owners made that a forbidden zone for us children. I don’t remember ever secretly taking any tomatoes, apples or plums.

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But going through there lightning quickly was possible and became a weekly test of courage for Hagen and me. There, where the Leo-Gans Strasse made a bend into the Bodenseestrasse, was a wider path to the high entrance gate of the garden area. I still feel today the excitement of the athlete getting into position before the 200-meter obstacle course on our way to the athletic hall. Two fast steps up the chain-link fence gate, grab the perpendicular bar, a swing up the pillar, in the same swing letting the upper body fall down to the back side, the right hand tight on the

46 perpendicular bar, the left grasping as deep as possible into the wire fence, then an elegant jump over with a half turn, the feet landing on the inner side of the wire fence, then a light push off from a squat, another half turn, a jump to the ground and then maneuver the wide path to the end. I believe we had to get past three such gates – and my fingers itch as if I were still today in the mode to conquer effortlessly and victoriously every obstacle in this fashion. And a tremendous feeling of luck, strength, movement and physical ability surfaces in me from old times.

The memories do not produce a comprehensive story of the four years on the Ruetschlehen. There remain individual and occasional scenes and pictures. Maybe that is typical at this age. One lives from day to day. And yes, there were also important obligations. They demanded daily observance, caused worry and deep impressions. I suspect that this memory exaggerates that secretive important square cake pan - in truth could only cast its spell for a few months. I discovered it accidentally when I had to urinate desperately and didn’t have time to go upstairs. Diagonally across the street from our #24 was the house of the baker Wenzel. That didn’t belong to the Ruetschlehen, but was the first house on the right side of the Bodenseestrasse. A corner house, whose right side directly bordered on a farm. A narrow weed patch divided the farm from the raw brick wall. I ran on it to the back house corner, where the chain link fencing belonging to the allotted gardens prevented me from going farther. And here, in this lost and protected niche, I found in those weeks my square cake pan. Somewhat rusty, it lay exactly where it belonged – and I followed its invitation. After that first time, it was my holy duty to make sure this metal pan never dried out. At least two times a day – many weeks if not months – I sought out my secret urine spot and kept my vow.

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Another self-chosen duty to fulfill comes to my mind, and with it I realize that school has not yet been mentioned. My first school memory during the time on the Ruetschlehen: it must have been a very cold and long winter. We used to have more of those then. During school recesses, we used long, wide sliding paths, created of water from the school toilets. They were in an out-of- the-way spot on the long brick wall between the schoolyard and the yard of the Catholic Church. Here also the beginning was kind of an accident: One time I spit on the wall and watched as the spit slowly changed to ice. And on the next day at the same place to find it again. A second accurate aim – and here I had another regular duty and obligation. Only spring with its melting temperatures brought it to an end.

In Spain, in the vicinity of our little vacation house, there are several places with old cliff drawings. Cliff overhangs were probably good watchtowers for the hunters 7,000 years ago. The cliff drawings are mostly small, thickly applied three-dimensional dark red pictures; wild goats, horses, deer. There is a long intellectual debate why and when these pictures originated. My theory has been sure from the first glance and wholly without second thought. The hunters always returned, sat there watching for the kill. Sat on their same spot and painted over their picture, renewing it. That is how from small paintings the half-reliefs and lime crystals of the moist cliffs were preserved until today - these signs of individual appropriation of open spaces. Perhaps at the beginning of all art was the repeated, compulsory action, the ritual.

47 For a long time, a great sensation changed all of us Children from the Ruetschlehen: the development was renovated. I can’t remember what actually was done. I think it was lengthy roof repair work. For weeks, our block was surrounded with wooden scaffolds. Workers climbed around in front of our windows and there was welding and soldering on the roof. Apparently the roof gutters were broken. The objects of our desire were the carbide boxes. Carbide was used for soldering. Combined with water, it changed into a flammable gas. We found small carbide pieces, small crumbs, sometimes also larger ones in some of the carbide boxes. We watched out for roofers and collected these small remainders of the desired explosive from the discarded boxes.

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This was put into the foil paper cigarette covers. The boxes became our canons; with nails and stones we made a hole in the bottoms of the boxes. A crumb of carbide and a large portion of collected spit into the box and quickly close the lid – the faster, the better. Then a little pause, the box positioned diagonally against the curb or adjusted against a rock and held fast with a foot. And then it was lighted, a burning match held in the hole at the bottom. With loud thunder the box flew through the air, accompanied by our triumphant cheers. Fascinating times and wonderful possibilities.

During the day, it was highly forbidden to get on the scaffolds. But when dark came, the control ended and everywhere children climbed out of their windows and roamed from room to room, unit to unit. It was not without danger, at any time a window could be pulled open and one could get caught. Especially dangerous in the dark was the changing from one story to the next. There was a unique excitement and mysterious mood on this nightly scaffold climbing. One repeatedly met up with other children, who sneakily or creepily moved forward, quietly whispering. Quiet greetings among accomplices who could barely see each other or seldom knew. Whispered information about thrilling glances into unfamiliar residences. Perhaps this was a time when something like that still existed, like us Children of the Ruetschlehen.

Then I actually can remember a gang. And this one had all the important qualities of a youth gang. But did it also have a name? I don’t know – how my memory of this gang is muddled and unsure. I suspect that my brother and I were allowed to join, unimportant members. The others were older, bigger, stronger. A queasy feeling from an earlier time comes into my stomach and clouds the few distinct scenes that I see. Fear, uneasiness and confused guilt feelings come through but I don’t have any stories or pictures to accompany them. Our headquarters were the huge rubble piles of the bombed Freiligrath School80 across the street from the swimming pool at the corner of Bodensee and Konstanzerstrasse, the only significant bombing ruin in Fechenheim. That was a giant mass of bricks and tiles – and as a destroyed, flattened school it was a predestined, exciting and dangerous place for us.

Naturally there was an initiation ritual .If I recall correctly it was the prerequisite for both: membership in the Rubble Gang – now I have found a name for it – and for

80 This is a mistaken memory. The school that was destroyed in the bomb attack was the Schiller School. The Freiligrath School was located on the Starkenburgerstrasse. I was attending school this school during the 4th grade, when we emigrated.

48

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permission to get on this colossal place. There were deep holes and fissures that led down into darkness and that were “forbidden”. There were large entrances to both. They were opposite each other and were bound together in a long, tunnel-like corridor through the rubble pile and the former school building. The initiation for being accepted into this Rubble Gang was to go alone into this dark tunnel and somewhere in the middle to grope one’s way into the former cellars and find a specific room. It wasn’t totally dark down there, for sometimes daylight came through the rubble. The goal of the initiation, the last and deepest room, had a pale glimmer even though there was nowhere a source of light. But it was light enough to see the black water that covered the floor and whose depth seemed unending. Several iron beams lay like tracks over across water in the room, the back wall of which the boy, internally cold from fear, had to reach.

Picture of the Willmannschule.

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There on the wall was the huge invisible secret about which we children only whispered and never talked about to the adults. I had to, more than once and under pressure, spread my forearm along this secret wall. This was the order. Then, I had to make my way back to the big tunnel and there turn right to the second entrance. There they stood, the youth gang, having waited the whole time, and now wanted the evidence that I had done it and truly had gone to that room.

My forearm was held in the sun and then back again into the darkness – everybody came along. And there my arm shone a phosphorous green – a thousand times brighter than any (clock) dial. Strange, that only this initiation ritual became fixed in my memory. We were often in the rubble vaults, and with time it became a rare sport to balance on these iron beams in the former air raid shelter space. But the space of time in which the bombed Freiligrath School belonged to us was short and came to a quick end after a big gun battle. Police cars with blue lights and sirens approached one day and our rubble field was transformed. I can remember vaguely that it happened shortly after the end of school when we boys ran excitedly behind the police cars. With loudspeakers, the armed police ordered some people to “come out”. The rumor quickly spread that a gang of criminals had fled to the rubble heap and barricaded themselves after a bank robbery, armed to the teeth.

For a long time nothing happened. The order of the police, to come out without weapons and to give up, seemed to have gone into empty space. It was suspected that no one was in there and the robber band had escaped into the hills. But then … and I note here that I want to tell how the story was said to end – and don’t know the end. Did we have to go home before it ended? Yes, I would gladly search through old newspapers and read what really happened on that occasion, how the far-fetched story ended. If my suspicion is true, that this event is what caused the rubble heap to be forbidden to us, that the Rubble Gang was dispersed, that there might even have been some connection between this gang and any other that was then really picked up by the police?

49 At the writing of this last section I am puzzled. I see myself walking from the Konstanzerstrasse 1 and not from Ruetschlehen 24 over to the rubble heap. Richard is missing in this memory. Could this have happened before our move to the Ruetschlehen?

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To that self-portrait could fit the really small and very fearful boy – I have become unsure. I am certain that the story of the old Freiligrath School belongs to the Ruetschlehen time.

And again there was a gang – was it the same one? Did it have a new leader? There was an older youth or more likely a young man. Maybe even a social worker, that cared for us? At any rate, the idea that for a few weeks kept us under a spell, could fit all this. We got ourselves our own soccer place – there where the ruins are now but earlier had been the schoolyard. That was on the corner of Bodenseestrasse and Ueberlinger Weg, where the rubble heap was fairly flat and big areas of the old school yard were smooth. We became workers, had wheelbarrows and shovels to use, and worked day and night. We felt like adults – and their praise gave us pride. We had joined with the army of workers that cleared the rubble and made place for the new Germany. Well, actually, for a soccer field. Then, after many weeks of cleaning up and even erecting two goal posts, we seldom played soccer there. The rubble-clearing of the gang was the exciting part. And, still clearly, I can remember the initial pride for accomplishment that grew with every uncovered piece. Somehow, I connect this memory with the idea that a part of our childhood had come to an end.

And the first love. Her name was Inge and everything was rather strange. Naturally, I watched with a mixture of jealousy and uncertainty, when the other boys in the class “approached” the girls. This took place during recess. One raced like a devil at the chosen one, who stood among a group of girls. At the last moment, he made a curve from the threatened collision and paid for the bold self-directed saving- act with a – voluntarily – painful fall onto the rough school asphalt. Only with effort could I bridle my admiration for the heroes of my gender and age for their silly mating behavior. I think her name was Traudel. And she was the dream of each one of us. And I include myself in that. Traudel was somewhat sturdy, somewhat early developed, and extremely admired. For she was the daughter of the only Fechenheimer bicycle store owner. Oh Traudel! Whoever got her got closer to the big dream of every boy: the dream of a beautiful new bicycle. Maybe there again I didn’t comprehend something. I only know that I didn’t bring to unity the true object of all love and the excitingly reported stories of Traudel and the sandbank in the Fechenheimer forest

Page 83 and of kissing and groping under dress or skirt: a new bicycle. But Traudel was unattainable and I stood shyly aside for many years. And then the miracle happened. I received a little letter. Surrounded by half the class, I read the message: “I want to go with Thomas! Inge”. Now Inge was not Traudel. She didn’t have a father with the only bicycle store. She only had a mother and in her store in the Konstanzerstrasse there were schoolbooks, pencils and erasers, the exact opposite of my dreams and wishes. But Inge was Traudel’s best friend. That undoubtedly spoke for her, and so did the envious looks and remarks of my classmates. I was chosen! Not for the

50 highest station but nevertheless the second highest. Of course, I didn’t really know what individual obligations this “go with Thomas” brought with it, but it was clear that I was now a member of the group of wild devils at recess.

My self-injury tendencies were – then, just as today – not very pronounced. I still remember the gnawing feeling when I preventively slowed down my deceitfully performed obligatory falls and their painful consequences at Inge’s feet.

Yes, this love was no blessing. And it found an inglorious ending before it could develop into something serious. And here it is also possible to give an exact time frame. It was around Mother’s Day during my last elementary school year – so in the spring of 1951. My father sent for me and therefore it must have been on a Sunday. He showed me a page from a sketchpad. It was from me – and deep shame suddenly came over me. I had drawn that picture at school; a large colorful heart out of flowers and in the middle – on a richly smudged background – written in colorful letters, “for my darling!”

Oh, what a profound disgrace. Oh, what a bottomless shaming! This situation belongs, sadly, to the most impressive memories of that time. Tears of guilt and shame suddenly came over me, although I couldn’t say for what offense. I was caught and now everything came out. But what? No idea, just everything! To my father’s question, I stuttered an explanation. This smudged background in the middle of the heart was from an eraser. Yes, one could still see what had been there, namely: For my dear mother! It was originally intended for Mother’s Day and later rededicated. Because it was so smeared and I didn’t want to give it to my mother like that, I tried to save what could not be saved.

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My father advised me quietly and with authority, that my love would be very confusing for Inge if I gave her a picture that also looked like a smeared gift for my mother. Oh, and oh again. To hear about my love for her from his mouth – that worked a powerful truth, fear and reality. No, I never wanted to see her again. No, never another look at her. I formulated in my thoughts no more painful falls on the rough asphalt. And of course, no more drawings with flower hearts for Mother’s Day! And again my father quietly and grown up: He didn’t mean it like that. He merely wanted to point out to me that it wasn’t right to give “my darling Iinge” a ruined picture. And didn’t I notice something? Through my tears of anger and shame, I at last saw my mistake: the unnecessary small “i” behind the big I” in the name of the formerly worshipped one. My father meant that I should correct it. But the best thing would be to draw a new picture for my darling Inge. There was no mockery, but also not a trace of understanding and feeling.

During the last school weeks after this hesitant conversion against the female gender, I stood in the school yard again, shyly, at the side – but now armed for battle for years to come with the earlier resolution: never again and to defend myself from all new beginnings.

Picture of three Freyberg children.

51 Page 85

Jutta von Freyberg Minute Facts

I can’t remember the Freyberg Gang, and if there was one, I certainly didn’t belong to it. And yet the word tweaks in my memory a weak echo: yes, there was something, there must have been something, but I can’t find any connection of it to my childhood.

My memories of that time that we lived on the Ruetschlehen are mostly scanty and even writing about these years has not brought much new into my mind.

There are a few pictures in my mind, they could have been photos, where Gerth, who was my school comrade and the second girl friend in my life (the first was Christina von Engel, with whom I went to kindergarten) and Mrs. Stahl, who also lived at Ruetschlehen #24. In the middle of our development block lived another school comrade, Renate Frommholz, somewhere in the middle Beate, who, I believe, was in the same class as my older sister Mechthilde. And then there was one of the older boys there, known to us as “the Pfender”.

Picture of two Freyberg children in front of the Wenzel bakery.

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When I think about that time, I remember a bag with dried bread crusts that hung on a bedpost in the children’s room, from which I sometimes took some if I got hungry during the night. I also remember a dreadful elderberry soup with grainy wheat cubes that mother served us one time and which today I might enjoy as a specialty, if I could bring myself to cook it. Naturally, I can remember all sorts of family drama.

But above everything else I see before my eyes the street Am Ruetschlehen, which I tie together with the many exciting games with the children of the Ruetschlehen whose names I have mostly forgotten.

This street was exclusively there for us children, it seemed to me. Occasionally, the Bohlender came with his three-wheeled vegetable cart, ringing a large bell and calling out all sorts of cabbages and potatoes. Or the scissor grinder, who at that time was associated with the frightening term “gypsy”81, and the second-hand dealer who collected old iron, paper and rabbit pelts, who announced themselves loudly to the residents.

The Ruetschlehen, less the development than the street, was an important and nice part of my life then. Life in the apartment was cramped, controlled, arguments, obedience testing. Outside was freedom, friendship, life. I know since then that these memories are selective and less consistent.

81 Gypsies sometimes walked through our neighborhood begging food at the doors of the residents. I knew that if a gypsy came to our door, we must never leave the door open while getting some food from the kitchen to give him, because while you had your back turned, he would quickly sneak into the apartment and steal something. I don’t know if that actually ever happened or if that was just what people thought would happen.

52

The years that I was in kindergarten don’t fit into this at all. How could I have lived on the Ruetschlehen when I was in kindergarten? And I was certainly in kindergarten, first at the one at the chicken farm, right near the Offenbach bridge, later, at least a short time, in the kindergarten at the end station of the trolley car #14. Or did I only take my sister Gabriele there?

I detested the kindergarten on the chicken farm. At some time, I must have absented myself from it. I frittered away the time on the long way toward it, climbed on a little wall and jumped down, stared holes into the sky for a long time until I saw the first children coming back. Then I turned around and went properly home. If a kindergartner hadn’t told on me to my mother, she would never have known. She didn’t want to believe it, but she and Hagen followed me secretly and had to convince herself of my self-decided vacation. Was I placed in the other kindergarten at that time? Was I allowed to stay at home and play on the street

Page 87 with the other children? Or did this wonderful time shrink in importance after I started school?

School picture.

I search my mind about my family. The results are astounding: slowly a colorful tapestry appears, but the moths have astonishingly, systematically eaten the life out of it, so that a remarkably distorted picture remains.

I had little to do within the circles of both my older brothers Hagen and Thomas. Their world was not my world. But sometimes I was proud to belong to them because they were four and five years older than I and were respected among the younger children of the Ruetschlehen. But about our relationship within the family, my feelings were conflicted. They often angered and teased me until I angrily slapped around me; and since they were strongly forbidden to hit me or the other sisters, they grabbed my fists in an iron grip with one hand and delighted in my helpless and ineffective squirming. They could be very obnoxious. But with my best effort I can’t swear that it was in the Ruetschlehen time or not until later on Alt Fechenheim when their physical superiority played itself out in this manner and if both brothers were equally involved.

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It was different with my older sister, Mechthild. Naturally, I didn’t belong in her circle either. Maybe what held us together was the fact that we were girls and were locked out of the exciting world of the boys. Of course, I worshipped my older sister, who couldn’t totally ignore me as I ignored my younger sister Gabriele, because occasionally I came into possession of rare sweets like chocolates and candies that awakened Mechthild’s covetousness and, in exchange for short moments of attention, I generously shared with her.

We seldom had any candy - a lot at Christmas and at Easter and then also on birthdays. In contrast to me, Mechthild always ate hers quickly and then turned her attention to my plate still

53 filled with Christmas cookies, my Easter basket, my Zuckertuete82 or my birthday plate. I don’t think that she secretly stole my goodies – but I never asked her. But she had her tricks, for instance after I started school, that was in the year 1950, there must have been classes in two shifts83, I sometimes met her on the way home with her classmates or with friends. Normally, she would have ignored me, but there was still chocolate in my sugar bag for which she needed my permission. So she greeted me enthusiastically as if we were the best of friends and asked as she walked along, “Do I get a piece of chocolate?”

I was so proud to be noticed by her. I would have given her some anyway! Naturally, I said yes. And when she played the Elephant Game with us in our bunk bed, hanging her arm down with a shallowly formed cupping hand like a trunk, I was more than happy to be allowed to fill her hand with the candies.

This calculating, that was inherent in this side of our relationship, was always two sided, even if the give and take was not always divided equally.

This is how it was with the story of the rings. Uncle Hanne, a brother of my mother, came with his family on a visit. He gave Mechthild and me each a silver ring with a small red stone. It may have been on the same day that we were both outside sitting on the grass, maybe only a step from the Leo-Gans Strasse? Mechthild had taken her ring off her finger, threw it into the air to catch it. That went well for a while,

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until – yes until the ring landed in the grass and we couldn’t find it. I had decided not to play, not wanting to (take a chance) because I wanted to keep my ring, show it to my girl friends to show off a little. Anyhow, it was a genuine ring, not one from the chewing gum machine – did we have those already at that time? When we gave up the search for her ring, she said, “You know that when one loses a ring, one has to throw another ring into the air and really watch where it lands, because it will fall on the lost ring.”

I had never heard of this magic rule myself in the much-loved fairy tales I had heard, but if my older sister needed my help, how could I deny her? So I took off my ring from my finger, threw it into the air and, although we both watched carefully, we never could find this ring either.

That could have been a lesson for me to be more skeptical about magic thinking in the future, but it wasn’t a lesson for me to be more careful about my older sister’s wishes.

I can’t remember any additional experiences we had together that only concerned ourselves. We played together on the street, mostly on the Ruetschlehen, with other children, but the family

82 On the first day a child entered school, he/she received a huge cone-shaped bag full of goodies called a sugar bag. Usually, the child had his/her picture taken holding the bag. I don’t remember getting one of those bags and we don’t have any pictures, either. Mother probably couldn’t afford it. 83 When I was going to school, I went at a different time each day, some days more hours than others. I think that may have been because there were two shifts because of the shortage of school buildings. The school closest to our house had been leveled by bombs during the war.

54 connection counted little or nothing. My brain tells me this. But maybe she had to watch out for me as her tiresome little sister. If that was the case, I can’t remember.

Life on the street was what really mattered – dodge ball, Abwerfen, tag, hide and seek, Ox on the Hill, Hickelkreis, rope jumping, marbles, press-picture/card exchange84, doorbell ringing. Then there was the most beloved play among the boys, in which they had to collect cigarette cases. Juno, Overstoltz, Eckstein stick in my memory.

I learned to ride a bicycle on the Ruetschlehen when I first started school. I couldn’t reach the seat on the borrowed bicycle, but I learned anyway. And on the Ruetschlehen I was successful one time intentionally or unintentionally in ruining a dress I hated, when I sat on a hot summer day on some tar with which the street had been repaired.

We played the wildest hiding games and games of tag on the green area between the Ruetschlehen and the Leo-Gans Strasse, where the housewives hung their laundry to dry or beat their rugs and where a little transformer hut stood85. Between the green area and the Leo-Gans Strasse there must have been a little wall, pretty high for me, for in climbing it while saving myself during the game of tag, I regularly scraped my knees.

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The scars on my knees remind me of that today. One time the wound must have looked pretty bad. I know that my father cleaned it with hydrogen peroxide. Foam formed on the wound that reminded me of the effervescent powder that foamed when I put it in my flat hand and let my spit dribble onto it. The minute gravel in the wound he had to carefully remove with tweezers and he didn’t scold me, but I can faintly recall the reproaches of my mother who did not like this kind of game.

And yes, the transformer hut. It stood in the vicinity of the development block in the Leo Gans – Strasse in which a classmate, Edda Sauer, lived. She couldn’t pronounce the letter “s”. “Say a sentence with S!” – “Die Dedda Dauer haten Dot deladden…” We laughed ourselves to death each time, over decades, and I don’t believe that any adult even once criticized us for this meanness.

Which games were explicitly forbidden?

84 An activity in which each girl had a notebook with each page folded in half lengthwise, two pages facing each other. Under each fold there was a colorful pre-printed picture/card of some object [flower, tree, child, angel, etc.]. When trading, one girl would hold her book towards the other girl, who would take one of her own picture/cards and stick it between two folded pages of the book. When the book was opened, the girl would choose which side she wanted unfolded. Whatever picture/card was in that fold was then given to the girl for the picture/card with which she had played the game. In that way, each girl ended up collecting picture/cards that she liked and put in a special album. If she didn’t like the picture she got or it was a duplicate, she could try again to trade it with another girl in the same manner. I still have a notebook in which I glued some of these trading pictures/cards after I came to the U.S.. 85 The writer remembered that wrong, unless there were two of them. This little hut was not within the triangle area in back of the blocks. It was located directly across the Leo-Gans Strasse to the west as one stepped out of the entrance of our unit. The little hut was at least 8 feet tall, made totally out of thick metal. It had no place to get a foot-hold while trying to climb up onto the roof. But some kids managed to do it.

55

Playing on the scaffolds on the Leo-Gans Strasse was forbidden. Otherwise, the rule was: When the street lights go on, we had to come home.

At the Abwerfen game, my sister Mechthild was the absolute star; she could aim well and also caught swift balls, just like a boy. I was afraid of her throws, although I could sometimes, but seldom, catch them. If she got me out, her balls always hurt hellishly, and when she aimed, her face got an aggressive look that appeared dangerous. There was a lot of rage involved in this game.

I think I gave up much sooner than she did to get even with the boys. I made this decision very early and it was because of a big disappointment. Just around the corner, in the Bodenseestrasse, there lived a family named Keim, if I recall correctly. They had a girl about my age and a somewhat older brother, who I recall as a handsome, dark-haired boy, my first love. We converged during a fight in which he brought me down mercilessly, demonstrating his physical superiority. I felt like a girl, that is, powerless, but full of anger. It was over with love. Was I already in school at that time? I can’t remember.

My younger sister Gabriele isn’t in my poor memories of the Ruetschlehen time at all, except for the fact that she appears in photos. I believe that I, whom she was enthroned as the younger sister, ignored her hard-heartedly.

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The moths have systematically destroyed these pictures. But not the photos:

Picture of Jutta with her sister Mechthild and a teacher.

Picture of Jutta and Gabriele with their mother on the back porch.

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According to my feelings, we five siblings lived in various circles that revolved around the family and also with those of their parents. Their world, the whole adult world, was for me something distant, strange and threatening. It was a world of rules, demands, prohibitions and punishments. It was very arduous and only with the stifling of one’s own wishes and longings was it possible to receive appreciation in this adult world. It seemed as if I were always doing something wrong.

I must have been between 3 ½ and 7 ½ yers old during the time when we lived at Ruetschlehen #24 for about four years, and Gabriele had been born after our move there. I don’t know when I – much later, apparently I was already a student 86 - read Simplicius Simplicissimus87. While

86 Of higher education. 87A novel of the Baroque style, written in 1668 by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen and published the subsequent year. Inspired by the events and horrors of the Thirty Years' War which had devastated Germany from

56 reading it, I thought spontaneously, “Such an idiot, that stupidly stumbles through the world and understands nothing.” That was I, when we lived in the Ruetschlehen. I didn’t control the rules of the adults, violated many of the laws and prohibitions, tried lying to protect myself from the fatherly punishments and, because of this, walked around with the weight of this bad conscience and fear that my misdeeds would become known.

My membership in the disreputable Freyberg Gang had nothing to do with this. But it must have existed, this Gang, at least as a phantom, for as I met again, during the 1990’s, an acquaintance of my parents from Fechenheim, the former dental assistant Maedy Mosbach, she spoke immediately of this Freyberg Gang. If no one in my immediate family belonged to my world, then who did? Ask me something easier. When I was outside, I was in my world. But other than that, I was really quite alone in this world, and even the visits to the apartments of friends, like Ilse Gerth, who lived in the same unit, like Elfriede Schuller and Heidemarie Kammacher, who lived diagonally across on the better side of the Ruetschlehen, were excursions into an unknown world into which I had to move with caution. Clumsy and maybe improper behavior could turn into a catastrophe. For instance, I could get locked in a strange bathroom and not be able to get the door open again – which is what happened to me at the Feudtners’, patients of my father’s who lived in Am Saalenbusch. The claustrophobic fear, the panic! My calls, then desperate screams, until someone heard me! And then the shame when the adults laughed about my misfortune and told the story to others.

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Such catastrophes always occurred when I was temporarily in the care of strangers, such as when mother went into the hospital or if she was somewhere else, and mostly they happened because of disobedience or curiosity. As for instance, when I in violation of a specific forbidding of disturbing the works of an alarm clock, or because of inexperience with chamber pots, I peed outside of it, and instead of confessing my clumsiness, covered up the disaster with the bedside rug.

Why couldn’t I be obedient? Disobedience had caused so much anger. But I just couldn’t do it. I just never figured it out.

And why was I always farmed out when mother wasn’t there? Was I easy to take care of? Or did my parents believe that I wouldn’t object? Anyhow, I felt at that time that I was abandoned, an unimportant outcast.

Picture of the Freyberg family at the Kahler Sea.

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When I think, for instance, of the days when I had to live with the deaconess nun. These old women in dark long dresses and white caps, that totally covered their hair, frightened me. I felt

1618 to 1648, it is regarded as the first adventure novel in the German language. It contains autobiographic elements, inspired by Grimmelshausen's experience in the war.

57 so lonely and couldn’t tell anyone. There were, as it now appears to me, much stronger family ties than I want to admit.

Before I started school, the whole world was both sides of that section of the Ruetschlehen where we girls played, namely between the junction of the Saalenbusch and the Bodenseestrasse full of uncertainty and possible traps, and I had no one to whom I could tell my fears.

Even the adjoining end of the Ruetschlehen, where it connected to the Jakobsbrunnenstrasse, was unknown country. There was the Konsum, where we bought the awful whole wheat bread, which, after eating one piece, spoiled my appetite and my desire for more. And how often I had to take a spoiled egg in a coffee cup back to the Konsum, to ask for another one in the name of my mother. I believe I was conscripted for this embarrassing errand while my older siblings divided up the rights to oatmeal boxes and Sanella88 so they could fill their albums with reproductions of the continents and colored pictures of the adventures of Wurzelputz89.

This other end of the Ruetschlehen was bordered by a red brick wall. What was behind it was a secret and only known to the adults. Behind it was the “Cassella”90, which took in a huge area that was surrounded with this high brick wall. Sometimes on way home from school, I walked along this wall and it seemed as if the way would never end. Later, when we lived on Alt Fechenheim, I walked on the path to the garden again along this wall, which in the summer reflected much heat and quietly hummed. To walk next to this endless red wall was always a little creepy, I had no idea what could be on the other side. I never asked about it and no one ever told me, at least not when I was a child.

With the beginning of school, I suddenly enlarged my little world. The Ruetschlehen gradually lost its significance as the safe haven, we moved to the street Alt Fechenheim. The Main River and the Main meadows became the new center for the exciting life. The memories of the previous life paled. And if the path on the Jakobsbrunnenstrasse to our garden91 near the gas tank hadn’t passed by the Ruetschlehen junction, I would not have been walking along the long red brick wall,

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which also bordered a portion of Alt Fechenheim, and the pictures of that time would have been more quickly left my memory.

88 In 1932 or 1933 a German margarine company called Sanella issued various sports cards and an album into which 112 cards could be glued. 89 The name of a little dwarf, the main character in an illustrated book called “Wurzelputz - The Story of a Little Dwarf”. Children could collect pictures of the story in an album. http://www.mikevienna.at/werbungsammelalbumwurzelputz.html 90 The chemical factory. 91 Our allotted garden was also not far from the gas tank. A wide path led to it, not too many feet back from the street. It was small but a lot of work for my mother to dig up each spring with a shovel, rake smooth and plant seeds. A lot of the vegetables I didn’t really like as a child, but I loved the strawberries in one corner, close to the path, right inside the fence, where I could reach through to get some. And I loved the raspberries that our neighbor, Mr. Weber, grew in his garden. But one had to watch out for worms, because we didn’t use fertilizers and insecticides then. My brother says, “It (our garden) was big enough for me to build a little chicken coop but somebody stole the chickens so we never had any eggs or chickens.” And yet I remember a chicken running around without its head!

58

Picture of Gabriele and Jutta Freyberg.

The Little Russian Forest

The Little Russian Forest – this term I picked up as a child and I am preoccupied by it even today. Something secret and fearsome was connected with the words Little Russian Forest; when it surfaced in the conversation of Fechenheimers, it seemed as if a forbidden zone was entered, a taboo broken. Quickly the topic was changed and I never learned anything specific about the Little Russian Forest. Once I asked about it and the uncertain answer was: “Well, there must have been some Russians living there during the war.” That’s in my memory.

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When we came to Fechenheim, the Americans were establishing the occupation power. Later I learned that the Red Army never even came to Frankfurt/Main; but Fechenheim was already obsessed with fear of the Russians before WWII, fed by the Nazi propaganda.

So where did the Russians come from that gave the little forest its name? What were they doing in Fechenheim? And where was this little forest?

In the 1990’s, when I was involved with a project to research the Nazi terror, the resistance and its aftermath in Frankfurt am Main, I found many little Russian Forests in Fechenheim, places that are connected with the barbarity of the Nazis and their beneficiaries, and about which no one even then wanted to speak – or even could, because many eye witnesses were already dead.

I never found the Little Russian Forest of my childhood that occupied my fantasies and made me shudder because it was a place of the unspeakable. The question of what the Russians were doing in Fechenheim, I can meanwhile answer. They did compulsive hard labor, especially in the work of the weapons industry. It was not only Russians who were abducted to Fechenheim, but also men and women from France, the Ukraine, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Bulgaria, Lithuana and Poland. I found where they had worked –all the names of the businesses that were familiar during my childhood: Diskus, Cassella, Mayfarth, Meuser, Naxos, Teves, Voigt & Hafner, Woerner.

The forced laborers, men and women, were sometimes housed in the barracks on the factory premises, and often in the rooms of the Fechenheimer Inn. The Casella forced laborers, for instance, had their quarters in the Alt Fechenheim, the Friedrichshafenerstrasse, the Steinauerstrasse and the Hydronstrasse. In the Jakobsbrunnenstrasse and the vicinity about 4,500 Russians were quartered. Vicinity? Wasn’t that also the Ruetschlehen?

The names of the inns in which quarters were arranged were also familiar to me from earlier times and I had no problem in finding them: “Zum Mainboernchen”, “Zur Krone”, “Zum Engel”, Zum Schwan”.

59 I could locate no concrete information about the work and living conditions of the forced laborers. I don’t believe that they were any essentially different from those in other cities and businesses. Their labor was mercilessly exploited with minimal pay, especially the “eastern workers”, branded as subhuman creatures by the Nazis, were shown no leniency.

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If a piece of work broke, then whoever produced reject would be suspected of sabotage and executed. If he were lucky, he got away with having money withdrawn from his pay or corporal punishment. If he became truly sick, he had no way of sustaining his life and he could count on being sent to the death chambers at Hadamar92.

The quarters, even in the inns, were all crowded. In most of them there were no beds, too few toilets and washing facilities. The food was miserable and medical care non-existent. The general conditions of the male and female laborers were pitiful. They were always guarded, commanded and punished.

I could imagine how the forced laborers, male and female, every morning and every evening dragged through the streets of Fechenheim in columns, ragged, dirty, full of lice, hungry, getting weaker every day and only able to carry on in the hope of living until the day they were freed.

Certainly not a pleasant sight for the Fechenheim residents. And because they could become suspect for feelings of sympathy, possibly be punished for it, it was better to simply look away and ignore the cause of that horrible picture: the dirt, the smell, the rags, the lice, the hunger for food, the feelings of revenge.

At last, I did discover the gruesome story in connection with the Little Russian Forest. It was told by Adolf Diaman93. It is the story of a portable gallows that the Frankfurt Gestapo commissioned a carpenter to make, in order to more quickly carry out executions in the cities. The Polish forced laborer Josef Ochmanek was hung on this gallows on 10 January 1942 in the Fechenheim forest. Could every place in the forest where murder took place have been the Little Russian Forest?

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92 As the 2nd Infantry Division marched across Germany, it uncovered several sites of Nazi crimes. In early April 1945, the unit captured the German town of Hadamar, which housed a psychiatric clinic where 10,072 men, women, and children victims were gassed between 1941 and March 1945 in the Nazi "euthanasia" program, while another 4,000 were found to be victims of so-called "wild euthanasia." In the first phase of the killing operations (January to August 1941), Hadamar personnel murdered German patients by asphyxiating them with carbon monoxide in a gas chamber made to look like a shower room. From August 1942 to March 24, 1945, victims died at Hadamar by lethal injection.

93 Adolf Diamant: Chronik der Juden in Leipzig, Leipzig 1993. ISBN: 3-910186-08-4

60 Blank.

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Small Street – Big People

Gerd K. Binnig94 Professor and Nobel Prize Winner

For eight years, from 1951 to 1959, Gerd Binnig lived in the left first story residence Am Ruetschlehen #4. He studied physics at the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. Together with his colleague, Heinrich Rohrer, he received the Nobel Prize for physics in 1986.

Binnig and Rohrer developed scanning-tunneling-microscopy. This method allowed the reproduction of conductive surfaces with nuclear solution.

Recorded by Bernhard Pfender

Picture of Gerd K. Binnig

Picture of The Bohlender (vegetable seller in Fechenheim)

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The Bohlender – One of the Last Ambulatory Vegetable Merchants of Fechenheim

Friedel Bohlender liked to call himself the “oldest ambulatory vegetable merchant in the Federal Republic”. Everything began in 1927 with a horse and wagon. Then followed as transportation a two-wheeled pushcart that was created out of a motorized three-wheeled delivery van. Lastly, he drove the Fechenheim streets and lured the residents with his big bell on his delivery wagon, to sell them fruit and vegetables.

He was a lovable human being with a mischievous humor, a Fechenheim original. People tell all sorts of stories and anecdotes about him.

Not only the bell belonged to Bohlender, but also his advertising sayings with which he presented his wares: “Red cabbage, white cabbage, savoy cabbage” or “sky blue blueberries, if they weren’t so expensive they would long have been gone”95, “lettuce as large as a wagon wheel”, “radishes, carrots, onions and garlic”; and at the crowning end, the obligatory: “The Bohlender is here!”

The Bohlender died in 1979, a piece of old Fechenheim. He belonged there as much as the humans who streamed out of the gates of the Cassella morning and evenings. Everyone who

94 Look him up on google.com 95 Spoken in rhyme

61 knew him likes to remember him. The Children of the Ruetschlehen sometimes had their fun with him.

Hermann Fischer The Emperor’s Coachman and Chauffeur

The Fischer couple moved into unit #16, second floor left, in the Ruetschlehen in 1945. This was the unit that the former deputy local branch leader Weber speedily left with his family before the total breakdown of the NS regime. For us children, the Fischers were a normal, lovable older married couple. At Christmas, for instance the Fischers gave presents of wine and chocolates to the housemaster and the manager and his wife.

The Fischers became something special one day when we heard the story that Hermann Fischer had been in the service of Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II.

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Apparently, Fischer belonged to the squad of imperial drivers, one of many employed there. First, Fischer steered the magnificent horse-drawn coaches of the imperial family, and later the motorized state coaches of the Horch, Daimler or Autounion brand. Fischer also chauffeured the emperor to Holland into exile.

After the forced abandonment of the throne by Wilhelm II and his formal abdication on 10 November 1918, Fischer returned to Germany. He practiced his profession as a taxi-driver for a few more years.

On the Ruetschlehen, the Fischer couple spent the evening of their lives, until they died at a ripe old age.

Sadly, we couldn’t find more information about the emperor’s driver. No relatives could be located and they had no children.

Recorded from the memory of Bernhard Pfender in March 2004.

Dr. Otto Frey Dentist, Sportsman and Society Official

Picture of Otto and Emma Frey and their son Armin.

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Unit #21 was the residence of the Frey family. Friedrich and Emmi Frey were both in their second marriage and each brought one son from the first. While son Otto became a dentist and settled in Fechenheim, his stepbrother became a pathologist and worked as a professor in South Africa.

62

During a heavy bomb attack at the end of the war, one half of the duplex in Am Saalenbusch was totally destroyed and #21 was heavily damaged. In this bomb attack, Friedrich Frey lost his life. Soon after this, dentist Dr. Otto Frey, his wife Emma and their son Armin, moved into the residence of his parents.

Son Armin became an architect, married and moved into the area around Frankfurt. Otto and Emma Frey lived in this residence until 1978 and cared a long time for their mother-in- law/stepmother. The old woman, advanced in years, was a very determined but, deep down, a very loving woman who sat enthroned on the second floor in a brown leather easy chair. We lovingly called her the Adele Sandrock96 of the Ruetschlehen.

Besides his occupation as a dentist, Otto Frey was also an active gymnast and hockey player. After his active career, he was appointed to a variety of honorary office positions, such as referee in hockey games, head referee and member on the executive committee of the Hessen Hockey Association.

In 1951, he became the 2nd chairman of the TSG-Fechenheim 1860 e.V. In 1962, he became the 1st chairman of the new Fechenheim Organization of Gymnastics and Sports (TGS) that was formed from the 60’s and the 85’s. Otto Frey held this post until 1968 In 1963, Otto Frey was honored with the Ehrennadel of the DTB

His wife, Emma Frey, in 1954 was voted as deputy leader of the department of students and female gymnasts.

Armin Frey, the son, founded in 1964 the first society newspaper that was continued after his departure by Heinrich Haas

Dr. Otto Frey died in 1994 at age 82.

Recorded by Bernhard Pfender in February 2004

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Werner von Freyberg Notes about my Father

My father was born on 18 August 1909 in Dresden as the second of three sons. He studied medicine. He wrote his doctoral thesis at the University of Dresden. For acceptance to this work, he had to become a member of the National Socialistic Doctors organization. But my father was a member of the Confessing Church.97 Because of this, he never received the title of doctor – and I believe he was proud of this.

96 German actress born 1863; died 1937

97 (German: Bekennende Kirche) was a Christian resistance movement in Nazi Germany. In 1933 the Gleichschaltung forced Protestant churches to merge into the Protestant Reich Church and to support Nazi ideology.

63

In Neuhausen in the Erzegebirge 98, he established his first practice as a general practitioner – his family also lived here until 1945.

In the war, he was a captain in the medical corps and was seriously wounded and was taken prisoner, first by the Soviets and then by the Americans. In the summer of 1945, he was released and came to Fechenheim where our mother had fled with us children in May/June 1945.

In Fechenheim, my father worked first in the practice of Dr. Hofmann in the Konstanzerstrasse, then in his own practice in the Gruendenseestrasse and as of 1954 until his death in his practice in Alt Fechenheim.

On 27 January 1957, he died as the result of a car accident.

Thomas von Freyberg, March 2004

Picture of Dr. Freyberg

Conrad Furchland Railroad Freight Contractor and Package Deliverer

The war and the post-war years brought great transportation problems with them, also in package delivery. The German mail in our delivery area appointed Conrad Furchland to the department of package delivery. Because of the lack of gasoline and diesel fuel, there were interesting alternatives.

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For one, the so-called wood carburetor was built that worked by burning wood into the motor vehicles. This “wood carburetor” was similar to a cylindrical shaped wood-burning stove of the bath water heater in which a gas generator produces wood gas. About 2.5 kg of fuel produced about a liter of gasoline. Another alternative was the one to two horse power-strong horse and carts. Conrad Furchland and his son used one such horse and wagon to deliver packages.

When this wagon came into our street, it was quickly surrounded by children, because on the whole length of both sides of the wagon, there were boards that served us as benches. How happy we were when we were able to ride with it for a distance.

But at some point, the Furchland business came with an LKW99 through Fechenheim. The mail came in yellow vehicles – and so ended the romantic period of our childhood.

Opposition was forced to go "underground" to meet, and created the Pfarrernotbund that September. In 1934 the Barmen declaration, primarily authored by Karl Barth, with the input of other Confessing Church pastors and congregations, was ratified at the Barmen Synod through which it was re-affirmed that the German Church was not an "organ of the State" for the purpose of strengthening Nazi agendum but only subject to Christ and his mission.

98 Ore Mountains in Germany that form the border between Saxony and the Czech Republic

64

Told by Bernhard Pfender in January 2004

The Ice-Guenther

In 1888, the Ice-Guenther business took over both reed ponds from the city of Bergen-Enkheim. These were formed in the 19th century when peat was taken from the old riverbed of the Main. The Guenther business first produced natural ice (until 1924). In winter, the frozen ponds were sawed, the ice hauled out in big blocks and stored in an ice barn. This ice was regularly delivered to butchers, innkeepers and other users. The blocks were used to cool iceboxes that one could rent from the firm. One such icebox can be seen in the Heimatmuseum Bergen-Enkheim.

The production of artificial ice began in 1924 and made possible a larger customer base. In 1938, 6,000 pounds of ice could be produced daily, delivered by 12 to 15 vehicles and approximately 70 pairs of horses with wagons. In the fall, when the demand for ice was less, the horse and wagon teams were cut back to 15 to 20 animals. The excess horses were sold to the farmers and replenished in the spring.

The Ice-Guenther also appeared each week on the Ruetschlehen. The coachman steered the heavy cooling wagon that was pulled by a sturdy horse, into our street and stopped in front of the apartments

Page 105 that had iceboxes. There weren’t many. A bag with oats in it was hung around the neck of the horse and a pail of water was placed by him.

I still like to remember the coachman. He was a somewhat stocky, strong man with a round, always red face. He was dressed in dark corduroy pants and wore rubber boots and a blue/white striped work jacket whose shoulders were protected with red rubber mats to carry the ice blocks.

Picture of ice wagons in the street.

It was a sensation for us when we now and then could get a hold of a small piece of ice that we could suck with pleasure.

After WWII and the introduction of the electric refrigerators, the business of the Ice-Guenther became uneconomical and at last, about 1950, was totally discontinued. The factory buildings were torn town after several years. A housing development was built in their place. One of the reed ponds was preserved as a nature reserve.

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Elsa, Reinhold and Georg Gumpp Sellers of Fresh Milk

99 Abbreviation for Lastkraftwagen. In English - a truck.

65

In the Ruetschlehen #9, in an open garage, we could buy fresh milk in the mornings. In those days it wasn’t in bottles or wax-covered cartons, but was poured by Elsa Gumpp out of the huge milk cans into our little aluminum cans. As children we had the ambition to overcome the laws of gravity by circling the can with milk without letting a drop come out. Sadly, this didn’t always work. The milk poured over us and then the squealing was loud. With sheepish apologies at home we had to ask for money to go get more milk.

Picture of the Gumpp Family

The milk prices were cheap at that time, but income was also small. So it happened often that the unsuccessful milk twirler had the second milk money taken from his spending money, if he even received any.

With the currency reform and the so-called economic upswing in the 1950’s and 60’s, this milk station was discontinued. New hygienic standards were required, and the open milk distribution was no longer allowed.

Reinhold, the son of Elsa and Georg Gumpp, lives today as a forest ranger supervisor in Weilburg.

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Franz Gutermuth Pioneer and Entrepreneur

After the eastern European forced laborers left the Ruetschlehen, families moved in that had not lived there before. The family of Franz and Anna Gutermuth moved into the second floor in unit #12 as well as their relations Fritz and Toni Merget with their son, Willi, living next door to each other.

Franz Gutermuth, born in 1897, possessed the only car that stood in our street at that time, an Opel P4. He was an entrepreneur, with his Opel, and he succeeded in building a business.

Across from the Fechenheim train station Mainkur in the Vilbelerstrasse, Franz Gutermuth ran a thriving business with bicycles and sewing machines, very desirable products but hardly affordable in the war and post-war years. In the back area of the business was a lathe shop in which machine parts had been produced for the still-existent machine factory Diskus-Werke of his time. But earlier, in the Goethestrasse in Frankfurt, Gutermuth ran a business for the marketing of sewing machines and accessories of the Seidel & Naumann brand in Dresden. This business had been laid in ruin by the hail of allied bombs. Immediately the family set to removing useful remains, to guarantee availability, for instance, of needles for the sewing machines. Even young Willi Merget, related to the Gutermuths, and the women became involved in this arduous work. They cleaned the needles and other objects that they found and sold them.

66 At the beginning of the Cold War, the sale of the products from the Dresdener company Seidel & Nauman was discontinued. Temporarily, Gutermuth replaced these with the sewing machine products of Gritzer & Kayer of Karlsruhe and sold their products.

The Gutermuth business developed further in the time of the economic miracle and other products were in demand. The manufacture of fittings, at first in small volume, but which would soon change. As the lathe shop became too small, the production was changed to a larger facility in Bergen-Enkheim. Since 1991, the business produces out of a new building in Altenstadt; since then it is named Ohl-Guthermuth and the business flourishes. The business-founder and his partner from the time of the establishment

Page 108 have long been deceased and the last of the family, the nephew Willi Merget, meanwhile, has also left the business.

Told by Willi Merget in January 2004

Picture of Franz and Anna Gutermuth

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Coal Kahl The Singing Fuel Merchant

With a large pushcart and later with a three-wheeled LKW of the Tempo brand, Friedrich Hans Kahl drove through the streets of Fechenheim and the Ruetschlehen to deliver fuel to his customers. This Coal-Kahl sang on the street, and he sang when he hauled coal and wood into the cellars of his customers. We children were always highly impressed with his ability to do such heavy physical labor and also sing along with it. Sometimes he encouraged us children to sing with him and we had fun doing that. Once he was sitting in the cellar on a sack of egg- shaped coal, lifted his hand charmingly up and sang a choir piece from Lohengrin for Margarete Wiesinger. I think he thought of his singing in the street and in the open air during his heavy work as training, for he was an active member of the Frankfurt Opera Choir and his singing brought him great pleasure.

His singing has been silenced for many years, yes, decades, but still lives in our memories.

Told by Bernhard Pfender in January 2004

Picture of Friedrich Hans Kahl as a singer in the Frankfurt Opera, taken in the 50’s.

Heinrich Kraft SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany) Politician

67 The later Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschland politician Heinrich Kraft was born on 28 July 1903 in Frankfurt in Grossen Hirschgraben. When he was six years old

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he moved with his parents into the “German House” on the Ober/Ecke Salmuensterstrasse in Fechenheim. From 1909 to 1917 he attended the Schiller School (later called the Freiligrath School) on the property where now the playground is found. He began as an office trainee in 1917 at the compulsory medical insurance company and in 1921 he joined the Socialist Democratic Party of Germany.

In 1926, at age 23, he married Martha Gross. In 1929 their son Heinz was born and in 1936 their daughter Ursula was born. At that time the small family lived at Ruetschlehen #31.

In 1933 he was released as an official card-carrying member of the Nazis and had to work as a laborer in a shingle factory in Kelsterbach.

In 1939 the shingle work was moved to Linz in Austria. Heinrich Kraft was sent to compulsory service in Russia and was called into the military as an orderly. He was held by Americans as a prisoner of war and he was able to get back to Fechenheim in 1945. Now began the building up of the compulsory medical insurance company. First he became the administrator in Friedberg, then manager in Frankfurt, and later director and president of the national insurance institute for salaried employees. In 1948, he became city councilor in Frankfurt and because of that for many years was party whip in the Socialist Democratic Party in the city parliament. In 1953, he finally moved the family into the new house in the Fechenheim Bodelschwinghstrasse, where family members still live today.

From 1960 to 1971, Heinrich Kraft was again city councilor and held positions in many other offices during this time. He was president of the Welfare Association, vice president of the National Health Council, presidential member of the Council of European Communities, member of the Administration and Supervision of the Airport, the Exhibition Committee, the National Bank and the Frankfurt Merchant Bank and Director of the National Insurance Institution of Hessen.

He became committed to the children of the Frankfurt Home and twice a year visited the Zoo, the Palm Garden, the Airport or the Christmas Market with them. Every year he arranged a Christmas celebration for them in the Roemer.100

He never forgot “his Fechenheimers”. For instance, he supported the building of residential developments and high-rises near the Main River. The building of the Gymnastics Center in the Pfortenstrasse was accomplished with his help. His biggest wish was that the money to be spent on wreaths after his death would be contributed to the Frankfurt Home for Children. Heinrich Kraft, whom the old Fechenheimers affectionately called “Heiner”, died on 22 January 1971.

100 The Roemer is the ancient hall in the Old City area of Frankfurt where the Holy Roman coronation banquets were held for many centuries. The building was sold to the city in 1405 A.D. and is still used as a city hall today.

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Four months later the Heinrich Kraft Foundation was founded, whose chairman always is the current head of the city council. The second chairman is always a member of the Kraft family. At this time, Barbara Kraft, granddaughter, holds this position.

Many honors and awards were given to Heinrich Kraft during the course of his life. In 1956, he received the Philipps Badge from the University of Marburg; in 1958 the Honor Badge for the City of Frankfurt; in 1960 the Honorable Membership in the Workers Samaritan Association; in 1962 he was awarded the Roemer Badge of the City of Frankfurt in bronze, later also the silver and gold. In 1964 he received the Freiherr von Stein Badge; in 1968 the Wilhelm Leuschner Medal of the Land of Hessen; in 1970 the Honor Ring of the Hessen Welfare Association and the Honor Badge of the Trade Corporation of Frankfurt. The Play and Leisure Park in north Fechenheim and the Comprehensive School on the Fachfeldstrasse carry his name. The residence of the Krafts on the Ruetschlehen #31 was occupied after the absence of the family by the Roeder family. In 1945, the U.S. Army established a command center there. That was the time when the eastern European forced laborers were quartered in the Ruetschlehen.

Recorded by Bernhard Pfender with the friendly support of Mrs. Hilde Kraft in November 2003

Picture of Heinrich Kraft

Irma Krebs and the Konsum Cooperative

Since the spring of 1944, the Konsum was located in the low building at the beginning of the Ruetschlehen. Previous to this the business was in the house on Am Saalenbusch 9, which was destroyed by bombs in March 1944.

This little shop carried a stock of groceries, fruits and vegetables. The branch manager and salesperson was Irma Krebs, an always-friendly woman to whom we children gladly went to carry out errands for mother. Mrs. Krebs arranged the fruit and vegetables in the window in a wonderful display. The chestnuts, apples and pears (fruits from the south were rarely available then)

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drew us magically to them. In winter, when it got dark early, we slithered sometimes on all fours close along the wall of the building to these delicacies and stole some. Mrs. Krebs had a love for children and often kept both eyes closed. Only when we went too far did she react with a verbal blast.

Irma Krebs died in 2003 at the age of 72.

Told in August 2003 and record by Bernhard Pfender

69 Picture of the Konsum

Picture of Bernhard Pfender

Bernhard Pfender Christian Democratic Union Politician

I was born 28 September 1937 in Cologne on the Rhein. In the spring of 1938, my parents moved with me and my older sister to Frankfurt am Main/Fechenheim. Since then, except for a short interruption, I have lived on the street Am Ruetschlehen.

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I am married to Ingrid Pfender, who is a born Eschmann. We have one daughter, a son-in-law and a 10-year old grandson Marius.

At the end of elementary school in 1952, I began training in carpentry. After the three-year training time, I passed the examination to become a journeyman with a good grade, and my journeyman project, a music chest, was displayed and viewed by many in a handwork exhibition in Offenbach. For health reasons, I had to abandon working in this manual trade. My further path of occupations led through many phases, including night schools. In 1965, I began work at the Cassella, where I worked as an export purchaser until I retired in 1994.

During the 30 years of my membership in the Christian Democratic Union, I held various positions of honor: For ten years I was the chairman of the CDU-City District Association Fechenheim, from 1981-1985 the head of the City District Association, eight years a member of the CDU party in Association Day of the Association of Frankfurt Surroundings; for a short time member of OBR 11. I was awarded the Honorable Letter of Hessen and the bronze and silver Roemer Medal, was a founding member of the Home and History Association of Fechenheim, the Fechenheimer Music Parade. For ten years, I was the chairman of the House-, Apartment -, and Property Owners Association, which awarded me with the gold honor “needle”. I was declared an honorable member of the music parade, and I was given the gold honor “needle” of the Sports Association in 2003.

After 43 fulfilling years in the work force, I enjoy a variety of hobbies in my well-deserved retirement.

Bernhard Pfender April 2004

Rudolf Oscar Popp Lawyer and Notary

In the year 1949, Rudolf Oscar Popp moved into an apartment in unit #12 with his wife. They lived there for seven years before they moved out in 1956. After a temporary residence change in Frankfurt, the Popps later moved back to Fechenheim into the residence of an ancestor of Mr. Popp in the house “Zum Schwan” at Alt Fechenheim 123.

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Rudolf Oscar Popp was active as a judge and lawyer in Frankfurt am Main. In later years, he settled in Fechenheim

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as a lawyer and notary. Rudolf Oscar Popp died on 7 March 1993.

Maria Popp came from a pastoral family and was born in January 1911 in Stralsund. She studied to be a teacher in a mission school with the goal of teaching in Southwest Africa, but this plan was not fulfilled. Mrs. Popp celebrated her 93rd birthday in January 2004 and is still enjoying good spiritual health.

Recorded in November 2003 by Bernhard Pfender with the friendly support of Mrs. Maria Popp.

Picture of Rudolf Oscar Popp and Maria Popp

Mr. Ruetters Graphic Artist and Movie Poster Artist

The graphic artist Ruetters lived and worked in the first floor of the unit at Ruetschlehen #8. Mr. Ruetters had no descendants and we were not able to locate the residence of his wife, if she is still alive.

For us children, Mr. Ruetters was an interesting character, above all because of his awesome abilities to create movie posters. In the summer we could look over his shoulders through an open window and observe his amazing creations of these movie posters.

I believe this was the time of the marriage of the theater and the Hollywood films. In our part of the city of Frankfurt (Fechenheim) the old Anker Movie Theater101,

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formerly a barn, was renovated as an impressive movie theater for circumstances of that time. Later, there followed the new Mainkur Movie Theater, and the seats were sold out every day. Mr. Ruetters created the posters for exciting movies about the Wild West, crime films like The Spiral Staircase, Gaslight, and the 49 Steps 102, as well as other movies. Mr. Ruetters was at that time, besides Mr. Gutermuth with his Opel P4, the only car owner, a black VW with a … rear window.

101 This was located near the city hall. I went there at some point in my childhood but don’t remember what movie I might have seen. My father took my mother there on one of their first dates. She fell asleep and he decided not to waste his money taking her to any more movies. As long as I can remember, my mother always had a problem staying awake for a movie. 102 This should be 39 Steps.

71 Later the TV became popular and the moviegoers stayed away from the theaters. In a small street in Fechenheim, there was a radio and television merchant, who always had a TV playing in his show window that lured crowds of curious viewers. Summers and winters, in the evenings, 20 to 30 people would stand in front of the store window to see the evening program. In today’s time, a graphic artist like Mr.Ruetters would have no chance with his art.

Memories of Bernhard Pfender, recorded in January 2004

The Sachs Bakery

Since 1931, the master baker Rudolf Sachs ran a small bakery in the corner row house #17 on the Ruetschlehen. His wife, who ran the household, was essential in the salesroom of the bakery. During these years, two sons, Werner and Ernst, were born. We children exchanged sugar stamps for simple lollipops and later the bright red raspberry candies and fizzy tablets. The Sachs Bakery closed in 1961.

Picture of the Sachs family in their bakery.

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Heinrich Schleich Retired Government Director, Religious Socialist

In 1934 Heinrich Schleich moved with his wife, daughter Martha and son Karl Heinrich, into the first-floor unit at #20 on the Ruetschlehen. He lived there until his death at age 90 on 10 December 1985.

His name is not only familiar in Fechenheim and far beyond the borders of this part of the city but is also a symbol for great commitment for conflicting entry into favorable high ethical ideals in the social realm and for a deep religiousness. That is how the Frankfurter head of city council Karl-Heinz Trageser, worded it in a eulogy and characterized him as a “religious socialist.” In this hindsight, he has a great resemblance to the also-deceased Fechenheimer Theo Bauer, once the head of the Frankfurter Social Office and member of the board of the Heinrich Schleich Foundation.

Picture of Heinrich Schleich at the Groundbreaking

Born at the end of the 19th century, Heirnich Schleich was of age for war service in the unfortunate WWI and had to serve from beginning to the end. He was awarded the Iron Cross I and II class - one of these he was awarded by the German emperor himself.

After WWI, Heinrich Schleich studied general law and affairs of state, to which he felt strongly drawn. He also served as an active soldier in WWII.

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72 He fought as a captain and as battle commander at Normandy, before he was captured as a prisoner of war and spent the last war years in England. He was respected as a democrat and as an opponent to National Socialism and soon after the total capitulation of the German army he was able to return to his homeland.

Shortly after his return, Heinrich Schleich was commissioned to implement the necessary measures to process the law for liberation from National Socialism. He was later retired with the rank of government director. Although his health was at that time already weakened, he engaged in church service and decided to begin something new in the area of elder care. The result of that can be seen by every Fechenheimer with his own eyes. The older residents, especially, among them many Fechenheimers, are enjoying the evenings of their lives in the modern adult residence quarters in the Bregenzerstrasse. They are thankful today for his decisions of those years.

In the past years, three outstanding facilities of senior care have been built on Fechenheim soil. Their catchment area reaches into all of the city of Frankfurt. The Heinrich Schleich Old Age Home and Nursing Home in the Fachfeldstrasse was officially opened in January 1972. In the past 14 years it has irreplaceably served old and sick people. With some remodeling and modernization, the home has 210 rooms, of which 180 are identified as nursing beds.

In 67 living units, mostly two-room apartments in this facility (some with wheelchair accessibility), single people and also older married couples make their home. The Foundation provided about twelve million Mark for the building of this facility.

Recorded by Bernhard Pfender in November 2003 with the friendly support of Kurt Heinrich Schleich.

Franz and Lina Siebel and Their Grocery Store

Not only was there everything possible to buy in this store, it was also a meeting point of the housewives of our street, who exchanged news and naturally also gossip.

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Here in 1929/30the father of Franz Siebel began a business with bottled beer with the brand BABA Beer. The son, Franz, actually a fisherman by occupation, used his hand-working abilities and enlarged a business space into a store in house #9. When the renovation was finished, he began selling goods, which took place much differently than today: Almost all groceries were stored in large sacks, barrels and the like. Salt herring, sauerkraut, salt beans and other things were stored in barrels. Beans, peas, lintels, sugar, salt and flour were kept in sacks. When there was coffee available during the war years, it was stocked in sacks as green beans to be self- roasted. Many products were also already pre-packaged.

Picture of the house where the Siebel store was located.

Picture of Franz Siebel with a child.

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If someone wanted to buy salt herring or sauerkraut, he brought his own container with him. Dry groceries were weighed and packed in paper bags103. Today one would say this was one-way ecological packaging.

Later the sale of open groceries was no longer approved for health reasons. Everything had go over the counter hygienically packaged. The massive accumulation of packaging material soon increased the problem of getting rid of garbage.

At the end of the 1950’s, Franz and Lina Siebel gave up their business. For a short time Mrs. Siebert took over the business but it was soon put out of business because of the rivalry of the wholesalers and discounters.

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From this time on, the housewives of the Ruetschlehen had to go farther to provide their families with the greatest necessities.

Gone was the time of individual service, the friendly “Good day, Mrs. Miller,” and the important communication among the housewives. The so-called “modern time” invaded our lives.

Told by Bernhard Pfender in December 2003

Stahl Family – Maria, Johanna and Carl Sale of Solid and Fluid Fuels

At Ruetschlehen #24 on the right side on the first floor lived the Stahl family: father Carl, mother Maria and daughter Johanna.

A trained bookkeeper, Carl Stahl lost his position in the Carlton Hotel during the time of the recession. The new position that he found with the city of Frankfurt brought him no happiness. Meanwhile, the Nazis had begun their purges. They released all members of left parties and Jews from public service. Because it was found that his wife Maria had Jews among her ancestors, Carl was ordered to divorce her. Because he refused this unreasonable demand, he was released in 1933.

The next twelve years must have weighed on the family like a never-ending nightmare. Twelve years of existential threats; twelve years in which Johanna was teased as a child, excluded and discriminated against as “racially inferior”.

After 1945, Carl Stahl built a new life. As general company secretary, he represented a familiar Frankfurt business, selling solid and fluid fuels. For this purpose he created an office inside his residence. With this work, he was able to replenish for his family the material security that had been lost in the difficult years before.

86 The brown paper bags were in a cone shape. The customer brought his/her own tote bag to carry the purchases home.

74

For Carl Stahl’s work, a telephone was necessary. Because a telephone in a private residence was a rarity at that time, the people of the Ruetschlehen sought out the office not only for the ordering of fuel. The Stahls were a lovely, pleasant family and were friendly and happy to share their communication equipment with their neighbors.

Sometimes, when my mother took me to the Stahls’ to order coal, their breakfast was still on the table and gave the room an atmosphere of coziness.

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Before we placed our order, there was always some conversation (Babbeln104). And by the time we left the office, we knew more about the newest events on the Ruetschlehen and the whole area.

Recorded in September 2003 by Bernhard Pfender

Picture of Maria, Johanna and Carl Stahl

Ernst and Sonja Steinkraus The Last Housemaster Married Couple

It was the assignment of Ernst and Sonja Steinkraus for 35 years to care for everything in the Ernst May Development - the developments on the Ruetschlehen, Jackobsbrunnenstrasse and Leo-Gans Strasse. Until the year 1958, according to the incorporation contract between the city of Frankfurt and the community of Fechenheim, the manager on the weekends had to clean the street and in winter clean the walkways of snow and ice. That was difficult physical work that Ernst Steinkraus later made easier. He fastened under the chassis of his moped a metal plate in the shape of a plowshare. In this manner, he fashioned himself a sort of motorized snowplow. After 1958, the street cleaning authority took over this assignment (today’s FES).

The manager represented first and foremost the interests of the Nassauische Heimstaette to the renters, which could be a very stressful job. His responsibility to ensure cleanliness, justice and order often drove him to the edge of despair.

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As time passed, the structure of the residents and the social balance shifted more and more in the direction of welfare recipients and immigrants from various origins. The respect for the manager waned. His attempts to motivate the new renters to keep order in their own interest increasingly failed. Steinkraus began his job in 1957 and gave it up frustrated in 1992.

His predecessor was Anton Wirth, who worked at that time together with the married couple Karl and Emilie Schmitt. Anton Wirth, as I recall, suffered from a nervous tick. Constantly, he jerked his head toward the right shoulder. As part of his duties then, he had to make sure that the

104 Fechenheimer slang for a casual conversation spoken in dialect.

75 large bleaching areas were not used for playing and that the dogs were leashed. He also had to mow the grass, clean the walks, rake and trim foliage. That programmed the conflicts between him and the playing children.

The manager couple, Karl and Emilie Schmitt, took care of the managerial responsibilities. Among other things, they collected the rents at the end of the month that the renters had to pay in cash. This procedure gave the housewives the advantage of having a place at the Schmitt’s to talk and exchange gossip.

Mrs. Schmitt had to make sure that no quilts hung out of the windows to air after 10 a.m. Saturdays and Sundays no laundry could be hung outside and carpet beating was also forbidden. At that time, the wives met their husbands with their wages on Fridays at the end of the work- day at the Cassella gate to make sure that the money didn’t wander into the next pub but rather that the rent would be paid.

Told by Ernst and Sonja Steinkraus and Renate Schmitt. Recorded by Bernhard Pfender in April 2004.

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Picture of Josef Stioborsky

Picture of the Stiborsky sisters with Ingrid Pfender.

Josef Stiborsky The Siemens Man

During the great expulsion and the flight from the east, the family Stiborsky, father Josef, mother Edeltraud and the daughters Dorit, Monika and Rosemarie, came to the west. Immediately they got an apartment in our part of the city (Fechenheim) on the Ruetschlehen #4.

The father Josef Stiborsky, a qualified purchaser, got work at Siemens, where he soon was employed in technical management. Sadly, his occupation at Siemens only lasted a few years, for Josef died in 1951 at the age of 46 years. Edeltraud Stiborsky, his wife, lived in her apartment in #4 until her death in 1999. She reached the wonderful age of 91 years.

Recorded from information of the sisters Stiborsky in February 2004.

Johann Engelbert Wenzel Bakery and Cake Shop

In the 1920’s and 1930’s, during the development of our street, various merchants and laborers settled there.

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76 In 1935, the baker Johann Engelbert Wenzel and his wife Maria settled at Konstanzerstrasse 37 to start a bakery and cake business. Bodenseestrasse was perpendicular to the south entrance to the Ruetschlehen. The bakery business was directly across from the entrance into the street.

During the years, and particularly after 1950, this bakery developed from its small beginning into a large bakery. Its trademark was the “good outstanding Wenzel farmbread.” After the death of the baker, Johann Engelbert Wenzel, his daughter Mathilde carried on the business until 1990. Thereafter the sales rooms and the baking room were used by a large Italian firm named “Italsbaeck”. Only Italian bakery items were sold using recipes from Apulien105. This era ended on 31 August 2003. Now living quarters are being built there.

Picture of Johann Engelbert Wenzel

Picture of a man at the baking oven.

We children of the Ruetschlehen loved to go there to get fresh bread. Often, the loaves of bread got stuck together in the baking oven and were torn apart when they were taken out. The wonderful-smelling bread led to our weak spot, and we gnawed into it on the way home at the spot where there was no crust.

Very early in the mornings, Mrs. Eich delivered the fresh rolls, laying them in a little basket by the apartment door. The residents on the upper floors tied their baskets to a rope that reached all the way to the ground. A note in the basket said how many rolls were desired for the next day. 106

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When my brother Horst and I were in our “uncouth” years, one night as we came home late, we saw the roll basket of our neighbor, Mrs. Gommeringer, a lovable older woman. She had laid the note with the number 2 in it. We added a zero, so that Mrs. Gommeringer got 20 rolls. The next day, she told us never to do that again. It would take a long time to use all the breadcrumbs she had made from the 20 rolls.

Told and recorded in September 2003 by Bernhard Pfender.

Three Concentration Camp Sacrifices

Here I will report about the fate of three men from our street whose journeys through life during the Nazi dictatorship took a painful, gruesome turn.

On 11 April 1945 a U.S. Army patrol came upon the concentration camp Buchenwald near Weimar. Of the remaining 21,000 prisoners, many were so weak that their survival after their freeing was questionable. Since 1937, 56,000 people had died here from hunger and disease, were sacrificed in inhuman experiments, or had to work themselves to death. As far as we could

105 An area in southeast Italy 106 I don’t remember this delivery method taking place at our apartment in the Jakobsbrunnenstrasse.

77 determine, three men from our development were among the many prisoners of the concentration camp.

Hans Kieffer: born 10 August 1901, died 8 February 1945 in Buchenwald. Heinrich Staaf: no dates or facts could be found about his experiences; it is only known that Mr. Staaf survived the concentration camp. Richard Wolf: born on 11 March 1900, trained as an engine fitter; he died on 8 August 1946 in a psychiatric clinic as a result of his imprisonment.

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Hans Kieffer was one of the large numbers of concentration camp prisoners that were condemned for their beliefs, political opinions or as antifascists. As far as can be determined, Hans Kieffer was arrested in the year 1939 and imprisoned in Buchenwald. During that time, Kieffer wrote letters to his wife from Buchenwald that were censored and were re-written according to the mail requirements. Hans Kieffer had the Lager #6190 and was in block 39.

On 18 January 1945, Mrs. Kiefer sent her husband 15 Reichsmark in Buchenwald through a money order and on 24 February 1945 she received the news from the SS commander in Buchenwald that her husband had died on 18 February. Meanwhile, Hans Kieffer had been moved to Wernigerode in the Nordharz to Lager D where war materials were produced. Letters from this time to his wife exist that were smuggled out of the Lager (and therefore bypassed censorship). Both of these existing letters awakened the whole misery and the torture that the concentration camp prisoners suffered. Also, in this case, the whole absurdity of the Nazi regime was pointed out clearly: while the father Kieffer languished in the concentration camp, the son Josef was inducted into the marines and was aboard a blockade breaker in a distant ocean. At the war’s end, the soldiers sank their ship near South America and were taken as American prisoners.

Both siblings, son Josef and Sonja Kieffer, are enjoying the best of health. Sonja Kieffer’s name is Steinkraus and she still lives on the Ruetschlehen.

Recorded by Bernhard Pfender in May 2004 with the kind assistance of Elke Amend and Sonja Steinkraus.

Heinrich Staaf

First and foremost, Heinrich Staaf was criminally persecuted because of his communist leanings and then arrested. He was affected by his stay in the concentration camp when he returned home to his family. The family was: wife Anna Staaf, daughters Ria and Hilde Staaf, as well as brother Heini, who died in the war.

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Such gruesome fates were not rare in families of those who were persecuted by the Nazis. The father was locked up in the concentration camps and was freed only at the end of the war. The

78 son was inducted into the military and died in the war. The rest of the family was left without someone to support them.

Daughter Ria lived many years at Am Ruetschlehen before she moved away from Fechenheim. She was not willing to speak about these things: they should just be left alone. I couldn’t make contact with the older sister Hilde. All the recorded information came from former neighbors.

Recorded by Bernhard Pfender in May 2004

Richard Wolf

Richard Wolf was born in Darmstadt on 24 June 1902. He married Elisabeth Wolf, born Buser. Their only child was Heinz Wolf. The grandchild of the couple, Elke Amend born Wolf, still lives today at Am Ruetschlehen #12.

On 19 July 1940, Richard Wolf was accused of the crime of breaking the extraordinary radio measure107 of 1 September 1939107. He was accused of constantly listening to foreign radio stations since the outbreak of the war to 10 June 1940, specifically the Luxemburg station. After the conviction by the charging authority in the special court, he was imprisoned on 7 August 1940 and transferred on 10 July 1943 to the prison Papenburg-Ems-Walchum for enemy retention. On 8 August 1946, Richard Wolf died in a psychiatric hospital as a result of the crimes of the Nazi regime.

The widow of the antifascist Richard Wolf led a long, unceasing, extensive paper war for recognition as the bereaved and victim of persecution of the NS regime. Finally, in the year 1954, after the exhumation of the body of Richard Wolf and the examination of his brain, it was established that the imprisonment and the treatment in prison were the cause of his severe illness.

For Mrs. Wolf, this was a difficult time of suffering: first the imprisonment of her husband, then her son died as a soldier on the eastern front and finally, in the post war years, the battle for the recognition of the sacrifice to the Nazis.

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The Scissor Grinder of My Childhood and the Predicament of Sinti and Roma

Sometimes he rang our doorbell while we were having the mid-day meal because we couldn’t hear him from the living room when he announced in a loud voice on the Ruetschlehen: “The scissor grinder is here.”

Mother gathered her blunt knives and scissors together and sent one of my older sisters down. One of the scissors I remember exactly. It was used so much, that when they were closed, they formed an embellished cross. I was both fascinated and repulsed by these scissors that were used for many years by my mother. I could never bring both together: the scissors and the crucifix, a

107 Law signed by Hitler. It forbade Germans from listening to foreign radio reports in their homes.

79 frightening and incomprehensible symbol. These scissors, which I remember in later times as usually being blunt, were brought to the scissor grinder along with the other things. Sometimes the scissor grinder must have been delayed, because I can weakly remember my mother sometimes scolding him because all her knives and scissors had become blunt.

Knives and scissors were at that time an absolute taboo for me, very dangerous. I wasn’t allowed to touch them. For that reason, I knew in advance that I would never bring the knives and scissors to the scissor grinder. But there was always something else in my mother’s voice, in her behavior: an unexplainable and never-explained tension that I found alarming and that sank into my soul as a confused fear.

I never heard the scissor grinder called by name. He was the scissor grinder, just as the Bohlender was the Bohlender. For a long time, I thought that Bohlender was a sort of occupation. It was a word so understandable and foreign, like “sabbath rest” that occurred in one of our Sunday songs, or “rabbit filet” or “Mr. Zeboath”- I took these names and concepts like Casella, and much later I decoded their meanings.

I can’t remember that I ever saw the scissor grinder who came more or less regularly through the Ruetschlehen. The picture that I formed of him was fully and completely equivalent to clichés: a man with a brown face color and neck-length hair that was oily and black; other than that he was the product of childish fantasy, for the sharpening tool was in my memory always a large millstone that I only knew from fairy tales.

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The scissor grinder must have activated within the adults in the development all possible prejudices and clichés about “the gypsies”; otherwise I couldn’t explain to myself for a long time why his arrival in our street always brought out a feeling of apprehension and fear. Towards the end of my school years, as I began to examine German fascism and its genocide policies, I realized that these prejudices and clichés, although I now was aware of them, still slumbered inside of me. The scissor grinder remained scary for a long time.

In the 1990’s, I held an interview with a Frankfurter Sinti108, Ricky Adler. As a child, he was transported to the concentration camp Auschwitz, where 26 of his 29 relatives were murdered. Ricky Adler and two of his sisters, although they were still children, were declared suitable to perform forced labor and so they survived.

As Ricky Adler told his life story, he showed me the most important places of his life in Frankfurt: the residence of his parents, the school from which he was taken in the middle of a class, because the family was locked up in the forced labor camp for Sinti and Roma109 that the Nazis established in 1937 on Dieselstrasse in the east harbor area.

108 Sinti and Roma were gypsies, considered inferior and persecuted by the Nazis along with Jews and blacks.

109 Web site about the Sinti and Roma: http://fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/people/VictRoma.htm

80 Sinti families lived there, mainly from Frankfurt and the surrounding area, Rheinhessen, Mainz, Darmstadt, crowded together in trailers without heat or electricity, with only one water tap in the camp and only eight toilets for about 300 people. Fifty marks were taken from them for rent.

I had also accompanied Mr. Adler to the Dieselstrasse, from there to the Kruppstrasse to where the Sinti were removed and then to the east train station where the deportations to Auschwitz began. I had read that some of the Sinti still lived in the camp on the Kruppstrasse as the allied troops marched in and the few survivors sought for their relatives in the concentration camp after 1945. As I stood by the chain link fence of the property in the Dieselstrasse, I tried to imagine the situation of the child Ricky. I was unsuccessful. As I realized that this forced labor camp lay almost within view of the Ruetschlehen residents, a deep shivering feeling of nausea went through me.

Since I have been working on the “Ruetschlehen Children” and my memories, I think that each scissor grinder was one of the few survivors of the Nazi murders of the Sinti and Roma. I ask myself from where the fear of my childhood stems: from the current, as well as then, broadened prejudices about Sinti and Roma

Page 129 or from the muffled feelings of the adults, who don’t want to confront the question of their share of the responsibility for the crimes of the Nazi times.

Jutta von Freyberg October 2004

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Where Are You Going, Old Dame Ruetschlehen?

Yes, where are you going, I ask myself, when I look at the development of our street. Its structure was formed as a residential development on one side and one-family row houses on the other side. It is still a good area and it is worth living there; nevertheless, the general development causes me great concern.

At the beginning of our documentation, I explained that the residences were built from plans of the architect Ernst May and the row houses on the other side of the street from those of Fechenheimer Alix. In the long-stretching development block, the units #4 to #12 were reserved for Fechenheim residents and the apartments in units #14 to #24 were freely rented. After the Nazis came into power, many of the residents Am Ruetschlehen made themselves known as sympathizers or party members, now openly wearing their SS110 and SA111 uniforms. In 1945, as

110 Schutzstaffel. 111 Sturmabteilung; Brown Shirts.

81 the war ended, the American occupation power quartered the forced laborers that they freed (now called displaced persons) in this residential area. After about six months, they vacated the apartments, but the members of the Nazi parties were forbidden to return to their former apartments. This was the first big change in the composition of the residents of our street.

The serious housing shortage caused by the war and the migration of the refugees brought new residents from various social levels and regions into the Ruetschlehen. Partly, they were managerially employed by the surrounding residential industries: lawyers, manufacturers, politicians; another part were the so-called “little people”. Over the years, a reasonable social existence developed from which, most of all, the children who saw their paradise in this street, profited.

In 1948, the currency reform came and the people found hope again. Gradually things got better. They worked like crazy, 48 and more hours per week. They wanted to forget the war and to reach a modest prosperity. The consequence of this was the change in the residential population. Those willing to build could hardly get a building lot in Fechenheim. Many went into the green surrounding countryside where there was adequate space for building and living.

A further new developmental period began when the guest worker families came to Germany. Little by little, at first hardly perceptibly, they moved into the Ruetschlehen. Gradually, our generation grew up and many of us “Ruetschlehen-Children” moved to other areas for work.

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The Ruetschlehen began gradually to age and soon hardly even one old-established family remained.

Scarcely a half century later, Fechenheim (in 2003) had a foreign population of 38 percent. Naturally, there are repercussions for our street, although not to the extent of other places. The row houses on the east side of the street are, as formerly, occupied by fellow German citizens. It appears very different on the opposite side of the street. In the development block (units #4 to #24), six families live in each unit. Of these 60 apartments, 18 are occupied by families of various national origins. They come from Turkey, Morocco and the former Yugoslavia.

Meanwhile, in the residential districts adjoining this social development block, the mixture is taking place in a rapid tempo and extent with dramatic consequences. As soon as a German family moves out or older people die, foreign families move in who have come out of Turkey at 28.6 percent and 23.1 percent from the former Yugoslavia to Germany. The immigrants and the Germans are in a constant battle. The social peace is seriously disturbed and it is foreseeable that the social focal point is expanding. Integration is out of the question because the Turkish families, for instance, live for the most part within their own culture.

How things will go on in our city-part Fechenheim, and how the future will look, no one knows.

Bernhard Pfender, November 2003

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Thank You

This book is based on the documentation “We Children from the Ruetschlehen”, which was compiled by Bernhard Pfender. It is stored in the “Library of the Aged”. Without his work, this book would not have come about.

We “Ruetschlehen Children” thank all who contributed to the success of the documentation and this book:

First of all, naturally, Bernhard Pfender. Then we must certainly mention:

Nassauische Heimstaette Publishing House Busenkell Hessen Culture Minister, Mrs. Karin Wolf Museum of History Frankfurt/Main Homeland Museum Bergen-Enkheim

In addition to the authors, photos were made available by:

Brigitte Janz Publishing House Busenkell Nassauische Heimstaette

Many thanks.

Addendum by Translator

I completed this translation from German into English in June 2008. I added the footnotes to clarify terms and locations and to record memories stimulated by the reading of the book. I was born at Jakobsbrunnenstrasse 43 on 16 March 1939 and lived there until 3 October 1949, when I emigrated with my mother, Katharina Berthold Kaiser Whittlesey, and my brother, Wolfgang Wilhelm Kaiser, six years older than I, to the U.S.A. My father, Richard Kaiser, had died as a German soldier in World War II on 21 October 1943 in Luschnia, Albania, and was buried there. After six years of widowhood, my mother married Earl Burton Whittlesey, an American soldier, in Frankfurt am Main, on 22 January 1949. He returned to the U.S.A. in February 1949 and made arrangements for us to travel to New York. On 3 October 1949, we left Germany by train to Genoa, Italy. On 6 October 1949, we embarked on the ship S.S.Atlantic and arrived in New York on 15 October 1949.

I have lived in many places in the U.S.: Connecticut, Utah, Washington, Florida, Texas, Hawaii, Tennessee, California, Alaska, Ohio, Maryland and Arkansas (in that order). Since 1980, I have lived in Puyallup, Washington, about one-hour’s drive south of Seattle. My husband, Gerald Ray

83 Foster, and I have six biological children (three sons and three daughters) and one adopted daughter who was born in Korea. At this time, we have eight grandchildren - five grandsons and three granddaughters. Our children and grandchildren live in the states of Washington, Iowa and Utah. Our oldest grandson, 21, is serving a two-year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Brazil.

Ursula Kaiser Foster

6/23/2008

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