Legacy

When I first published my memoir I’m not sure what I expected - I mostly felt a strong need to get my manuscript out into the world. I had done some research about potential market in writing my book proposal, so I suspected that the book would interest German-Americans, possibly other European immigrants.  What I didn’t expect was that the book itself would form a connection that I had mostly avoided during my time here.  It would connect with me with other people like myself - Germans who had migrated to the US since World War II.  Years ago, writing to an author involved digging out the publisher’s address and sending off a note in care of someone else - I always found that daunting to the point of impossibility.  Communication has become so much easier, and much more of a two-way street.

I love the emails I’ve gotten from readers all over the US who tell me their own immigration stories.  There are parallels and differences, but most of all I have become aware that I am not in any way alone.  I’ve received links to recipes for German hard rolls, the best online source for German deli items, and, most gratifying of all, deeply felt thanks for expressing shared feelings.

I’ve also been referred to several books I had missed.  I just finished a memoir by J. Elke Ertle titled Walled-In: A West Berlin Girl’s Journey to Freedom.  The thread of the story couldn’t be more different from mine, but I was impressed with the writing and the author’s ability to convey the atmosphere of living in West Berlin during the Cold War.  I also admired her successful use of geo-politics as a metaphor for her own family dynamics. Right now, I’m reading a book given to me by a friend after she finished mine.  It’s called On Hitler’s Mountain: Overcoming the Legacy of a Nazi Childhood by Irmgard Hunt.  

As I’ve been talking to other German immigrants and reading these memoirs, I’ve been struck once again by the horrendous legacy of fear and insecurity Germans of the post-war generation inherited.  Not only the tremendous weight of processing the burden of the holocaust.  That’s the obvious issue.  What has come into focus for me is how difficult our grandparents’ lived were.  They grew up during World War I, with all the deprivations that implies, then suffered through the economically difficult times in the twenties.  And just when they finally began to prosper, Hitler dragged the country into another war. And then, for those stuck in East Germany, the struggle continued.   My Grandfather, Opa Gustav, was a perfect example.  His father was drafted at the beginning of World War I.  Gustav had to leave school at 14 to support the family in his father’s absence.  He became an apprentice to a fur merchant in Leipzig.  After the War, he and his father began to build a business manufacturing jewelry displays.  By 1933, the business was at last functioning well enough that Gustav could afford to take his family on their first vacation.  He struggled to keep his business alive during the Second World War and just managed to avoid the draft by converting to manufacturing weapons cases - this made his job necessary to the war effort.  He spent the rest of his life trying to keep the business going in the hostile environment of East Germany.  When I consider that legacy, I have two main reactions.  Is it any wonder that a part of me cannot trust in peace and prosperity?  And:  I am incredibly lucky to have made it to the age of 60 in peace time.  

Lost in Pre-History

Ever since my encounter with the Neanderthal museum in Germany, I’ve been digging through books on cave art.   I’m not sure whether my desire to escape into the past was partly motivated by our return - the first monitor I saw when I got off the plane in Chicago showed scenes of bloody marathon runners and bewildered bystanders.  Contemporary life didn’t look so appealing.

As soon as my jet lag calmed down enough so I could climb the suspended marble staircase at the Roseville Library (I refuse to use the elevator... there are few enough opportunities to climb in daily American life, and I am lucky enough to still be able to rely on my knees) and wandered through the Art History section looking for “cave art.”  I thought I was looking for images to stimulate my jewelry design.  I didn’t expect to get absorbed in pre-history. My last exposure to what archaeology had pieced together about the Pleistocene is terribly out-of-date. Not surprising.  I think my formal education on that topic stopped at age 11, so almost fifty years ago.  I also have a suspicion I might not have been paying too much attention to the vast segments of time discussed.  Perhaps when I was 11,  50 years and 50,000 didn’t seem so different.

One of the most amazing facts hit me yesterday.  Neanderthal humans existed on this earth essentially unchanged, with a stable hunter-gatherer culture, for 300,000 years.  We Homo Sapiens have only been around for 200,000.  And the change from hunting and gathering goes back only about 10,000 years. A few months ago, I went to see the touring Tut-Ankh-Amen exhibit, and was reminded that Ancient Egypt changed just incrementally over two thousand years.

A few days after the Boston attack, my sister-in-law called me to see how I was doing.  She called my cell and caught me in the library stacks, absorbed in tracing a line of 40,000 year-old red ochre dots in a photograph from a French cave.  I had to think for a minute what she was talking about.  I am not proud of this fact.  I admitted to her that one of my self-care strategies in times of crises is to stay far away from the TV and get all my news in written form.  And then I added: “ I’m busy escaping contemporary culture by studying paleolithic art.”  This doesn’t mean I don’t care.  It’s precisely because I do care, and there is nothing I can do, that I’m trying to take the very long view.  Another sobering fact: during one of the coldest glacial periods the total human population in Europe was down to 20,000 humans.  We almost didn’t make it.  

Megaloceros with line of black dots from Lascaux

What do you know?

I got completely absorbed in the pre-historic section of the Trier Landesmuseum yesterday, so much so that I was over saturated by the time we got to the Roman section. A shame, because I could tell it was stunning.  Afterwards, Ron and I sat in the museum cafe, having our Apfelkuchen.  (I almost never eat sweets in Minnesota, but being in Germany makes me revert.)  I mentioned to Ron that I  have been fascinated by pre-historic cultures, especially the Celts, since I was young.  He said he wished he’d been exposed to such things as a child.  Not sure if I just come from a really nerdy family. Probably.  My grandfather used to give me historical novels for my birthday.

Still.  I don’t know if it’s just that growing up in Europe you’re surrounded by evidence of history everywhere, or if it’s something different about what’s considered “education.” Maybe when Europeans left Europe and went to America, they wanted to lose that old culture. But why aren’t we teaching our kids how the Ojibway lived off the land?  Kids love that stuff. I suppose we’d have to take the Ojibway culture seriously if we did. And that would cause complications.

One of the revelations I had in the last few years was that my husband, who grew up Catholic, knew nothing about the reformation.  Martin Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, the Diet of Worms, the Augsburg Confession - all news to him.  He knew nothing about Johann Tetzel peddling indulgences and how that led to Luther posting his 95 Theses on the Wittenberg church door.  Makes sense, now that I think about it.  Why should the Catholic Church teach its children anything other than Luther = bad.   

So how does what we are taught shape us?  Once in a while I try to imagine what it would be like to be an illiterate woman living in some rural part of the world, cut off from all but what I can see.  It’s impossible.

In the meantime, Catholic Churches are still the most awesome places to meditate.