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.  

Home Movies

“We convert your old video and movies to DVD!”  I drive past this sign at least once a month, but this time it grabs my attention.  Hurry, I think, before that pile of VHS tapes ( and even worse, the 8 mm tapes that I never got around to editing and transferring) become so obsolete they’ll be trash.   So I drag myself down to the basement where the library of videos has found a home.  

It’s not a new problem.  My Opa Gustav was what we now call an “early adopter.”  If there was a new appliance or gadget, he got one of the early models.  Sometime in the thirties, he acquired an 8 mm movie camera.  We inherited it in the fifties - made of cold, black metal, so heavy I could barely hold it up.  When I was a child, I could rarely persuade him to dust off the portable screen and set up the equally heavy and ancient projector.  Fleeting images flickered into view:  my mother on a swing, a glimpse of her sweeping the courtyard. When this snippet jerked into view my mother whispered to me that when she was young,  her sister would shriek: “ Look at her, she’s a lefty!”  every time.    As an only child, I flinched at the obvious intent to injure.  Opa also owned two purchased cartoons, each about 5 minutes long, one of Mickey Mouse and the other of Donald Duck. His possession of these American imports hinted at a time before the War,   before Western decadence was censored by the Communist Party.   I have no idea what happened to these precious strips of celluloid.  They probably went out with the garbage when the medium changed to 16mm.

Sometime in the 80’s my father had his reels of movies (8 and 16mm) transformed to video.  It was this set of three VHS tapes, titled “Poser Family Memories”  that I first dug out and took over to my father’s.  At this age, he is often withdrawn and shows little reaction to anything.  The movies got his attention.  His eyes focused, and as the images slid by, he began to supply names and places.  

What struck me was not just the magic of seeing my younger self and a parade of people who exist only in memory.  As a memoir writer, what intrigued me was that I couldn’t remember most of these events.  When you head out with your camera, you record happy moments. Vacations, holidays, visitors.  Most of the time, you are not stealthy, so your subjects put on a show.  They smile, they wave, they put extra effort into enjoying being alive.  If we didn’t have home movies, most of these moments would evaporate.

Real memory records the mundane, the daily trivia, the odd detail.  The color of a longed-for bicycle, the light illuminating the living room rug, a dog seen daily on the way to kindergarten, the numerous complex hooks and eyes on my grandmother’s corset.  Or the dramatic.  Getting caught in a lie and punished.  The squealing tires from a crashing motorcycle just around the corner.  The look of surprised agony in my mother’s face when she told me about being teased for being left-handed.

But here’s the painful thrill of watching my mother unpack a picnic lunch for my six-year-old self, secure in some Bavarian meadow, South Carolina a distant place on some half-remembered map.  There I am, 16, lithe and perfect, but hunching my shoulders to protect my insecure heart.  And again, at 30, confident and sleek with new love.  My father, at forty, a few pounds overweight, with impossible dark hair.  With a shock, I  spot a once beloved dress that I haven’t thought about in years. 

What do these celluloid, soon to be digital, snippets mean?  Once watched, some of them enter the realm of memory as hand-me-downs - we remember seeing the movie of a fugitive event.  But they don’t have the texture of those moments deeply recorded in our cells.  You can’t smell your mother’s perfume, the way you can when you close your eyes and reconstruct a moment on the way to the airport to pick up your father. 

Which is real?  

Exposed! Effects of Publishing Memoir

Ever since Dreaming in German has been available, people come up to me at parties telling me: “I just finished your book, and now I feel like I know everything about you.” I’m never quite sure how to respond.  Usually I mumble something about not having thought that out so well.  They often grin and say, “Yes, it’s weird, because I know you, but you don’t know me so well.”  A side effect of publishing memoir that no one warned me about.  

While I was writing, I did agonize over my Dad’s reaction. Especially early on, when my first drafts were powered by my need to express the anger I still felt at him for seeming impervious ( and oblivious) to my pain.  When I finally finished the manuscript, I’d gained some perspective, but as I handed him a copy to read, I fretted.  I knew I was breaking a family rule. One so basic, no one ever had to say it out loud.  “Do not distress your father.”

I needn’t have worried.  He read the whole thing in a matter of two days on a visit to my house.  I watched out of the corner of my eye, interpreting every facial expression.  He did look tense for a few hours.  When he closed the book his comment was: “Wow, you struggled with this for a long time, but it came out all right in the end.”  Phew. I should have been able to predict that response.  My mother used to say: “Your father only sees what he wants to see.”  After I recovered from the relief, I was miffed.  All my encounters with loss reduced to “it came out all right?” Once again, I’d failed to pierce his defenses. Hmm.  Still, he was proud of me for writing a book.

My other concern was my mother’s family.  Would Tante Isolde ever hear of the book?  My cousins?  Shouldn’t be a problem. I wrote the book in English, was publishing it in the US.  I have hopes of translating it and releasing it in Germany - anybody know a translator? - but that will take time. By the time I finally navigated the self-publishing process, my cousin Matthias’ stepdaughter had come to the US to teach German, and was my facebook friend.  A fact that I didn’t fully register until after I published the book, she ordered a copy and Matthias sent me a picture of himself in front of the Christmas tree, holding it up.  I haven’t heard from him since, but he’s always been sporadic at keeping in touch.  

What surprised me even more than realizing I had exposed my intimate details to acquaintances and strangers,  were the email and facebook messages from fellow displaced Germans.  I never knew I was one among thousands.  There are facebook groups with names like “Germans transplanted to the USA” sharing their nostalgia.  One man whose story roughly parallels my own, suggested I add a recipe feature to my website and sent me some links to his favorite sources for German foods.  I suppose simple demographics could have predicted this development.  What I never would have predicted is how many other people tell me they identify with my displacement.  My dentist said he only moved from small town northern Minnesota to the “Cities” as we call Minneapolis/St. Paul around here. Yet, he said, he understood my impulse to be careful when negotiating the two cultures.  “I always think twice about what I say, because I don’t want to offend someone when I visit home.  I don’t want them to think I’m talking down to them.”

 I guess it proves one of the maxims of memoir writing.  The more specific you are in writing about your own experience, the more people will be able to find echoes in their lives.