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| The first frosty morning and very thin ice on the village pond |
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| Maybe Christmas will be white after all! |
Tuesday, 9 December 2014
Winter arrived today
Thursday, 6 November 2014
More about Germany…
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| Tower of London, September 2014 |
… Hungary, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and
Rumania
I
began blogging again last week, after a long break. I was encouraged to begin
writing again mainly because one of my much valued readers wrote me a wonderful
motivational letter. That reader is Emma McDowell. Today I received a comment
from her prompted by reading my blog about the wonderful series that BBC Radio 4 is currently running about
Germany –
Instead
of publishing it on that blog posting as a comment I have decided to give it a
more prominent position as a blog in its own right.
This
not only reaches more readers it also gives me a good excuse to post some of my
photographs!
Thank
you very much Emma.
Dear Susie,
I enjoyed your blog in the Conductive Post about
the radio programme. With the Armistice Day celebrations coming up - and
everybody walking about with poppies in their buttonholes – I finally also feel
myself to be British enough to wear it. Not everybody does in N.Ireland, this
is another contentious issue here. Andrew S. should know all about it, since he
and Chas were here at one of the biggest
atrocities in 1987 when an IRA bomb went off at a war memorial in
Enniskillen, killing 11 people on
Armistice Day. (Andrew and Chas were our main
speakers at the R.A.C.E. Northern Ireland Conference at that time.)
As for the forced evacuees after the war, I lived in Hungary during the “big amnesia” of so called “Socialism” when neither Hungarian nor German soldiers, who perished in the World Wars, were officially remembered, nor were the many thousands captured or rounded up (civilians, too) and transported to Russia into slave labour. If they were lucky enough to survive they were ordered not to talk about it. Neither could the so called “Benes Decree” be mentioned which forced thousands of Hungarian civilians (as well as ethnic Germans) out of their homes and into exile at the end of the 2nd World War in the newly re-annexed (ex-Hungarian) territories in Czechoslovakia. The lucky ones went to Austria, but – as refugees – into poverty. The “issue” is still not solved, no compensation has been agreed on. The present (by hostile foreign press much abused) Hungarian government keeps the matter on the agenda…
There were many
ethnic Germans, enjoying Hungarian nationality for generations, who also had to
flee the land they regarded as home, from the Southern part of Hungary, known
as the Banat. When it was annexed to Yugoslavia, then to Rumania, at the end of
the 1st World War, the majority of these people were taken in by
(the territorially much reduced), Hungary, my mother’s father, and many friends
and relatives, amongst them. It was still a fairly civilized affair, even
pension rights of civil servants were guaranteed. The ones who stayed behind
had a much harsher destiny at the end of the 2nd World War: they had
to flee for their lives, leaving everything behind.
Again, many of
Mother’s close relatives were amongst them – their crime being that they were
regarded as “German sympathisers”. Mother’s cousins ended up in Graz (Austria)
and they were able to build up their lives again. Some of the older relatives
who couldn’t move died in abject poverty in the geographic area where they had
been brought up and which they had helped to make prosperous in times of the
Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. It wasn’t until 1958 that my mother was able to
visit her Aunt in her native village, which lay at a distance of about 40 km
from Szeged (where we lived), but on the other side of the border
with “friendly” Rumania.
Monday, 3 November 2014
Keeping in touch
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| Sinnwell Tower, Nürnberg, December 2014 |
BBC Radio 4 has come
up tops again!
This time
it is not because of keeping me in touch with my home, but by helping me to
understand better my adopted home. In Germany: Memories of a Nation I have been
listening to Neil MacGregor, British art historian and museum
director, describing historical aspects of Germany that make Germany
what it is. Things that sometimes go past unnoticed as part of my day to day
living but some things that are definitely a part of it.
I have learnt
more about the German car industry, the engineering, about Bauhaus, porcelain, Albrecht
Dürer (whose house is just out of sight from my front door), about the concentration
camp Buchenwald in Weimar, and more.
Today I
am listening to Germans Expelled, that
began with a description of a Bollerwagon, (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bollerwagen)
that certainly is part of anyone’s life who works with children, but the
programme soon went on to discuss the
forced movement of over 12 million people after 1945, many of who had their
lives packed up on a Bollerwagen. One very close member of my German family was
one of these people forced to move. Before joining the Merchant Navy when war
broke out he had lived in Sudentenland –
He
returned home, when peace came, to see his mother but he was urged to leave
again immediately. His story goes that after two days with his family he ‘borrowed’
a bike and just started riding into Bavaria, so no Bollerwagen and no life
packed up and taken with him, just a blanket roll and a bike. After several
days and the loss of the bike which meant long walks, he landed in a rural area
just east of Nürnberg where he subsequently met his wife, and where he remained
until his death in 2008.
Just a few
years after his marriage he was reunited with his mother, who became a regular
visitor at the couple’s new home in Nürnberg.
This personal
story is one of 12 million similar tales and listening today I was reminded of
it. I also heard some more about this history and learnt a few of the bits in
between too, something about the political decisions made at the time, and
about the desolation of these millions of displaced people, something that
perhaps understandably I personally had never been told about.
I hope
that I will find time before 25th January 2015 to take a look at the
exhibition at the British Museum of the same name – Germany: Memories of a Nation, 600-year old
history in objects –
If you
get a chance do listen to the BBC Radio 4 programmes which is broadcast three
times a day 00.30, 9.45 and 20.45 –
PS
I have
the day off and after listening to the German programme I left the radio on.
Now I have another treat, British nurses off to Mauritius in the 1920s, this is
also of personal interest as it is where my Great Uncle John worked for the government
after his Army services with the Gurkhas in the Second World War.
Sunday, 2 November 2014
Edward Taub and the Dalai Lama
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| Home - late summer 2014 |
A Sunday Morning read
I arrived at the above article having first read the one below that I
got from the blog Dean’s Stroke Musings –
On Dean’s Stroke Musings I also read about Dean’s own Rocky Horror
Picture Show stroke rehab which reminded me of a Tina Turner concert with
Laddo. We were up in the gods and Laddo insisted on standing up with the rest
of the crowd. It was in the Köln Arena which is incredibly steep. I had images
of us both toppling down and down and down on to the stage, but I hung on to
his belt and the back of my chair and just hoped that we would both remain
vertical and balanced!
Notes
Saturday, 1 November 2014
All Saints’ Day – Hallowmas
I love it
when a Red Letter day falls on a Saturday. The atmosphere is so nice. Busy trams
and busy railway station, but it is a slow busyness. Today it is a family day,
solemn, but at the same time joyful as families get together to remember loved
ones. Hands are full of bouquets of flowers or the traditional arrangements
that adorn the graves in cemeteries all over the country.
A walk amongst the majestic trees
in the city's southern cemetery
After a sitting
and pondering a bit after bringing flowers for Boss, Anna and my Mum I wandered
in the long shadows and the shafts of bright sunshine.
I watched
the red squirrels zooming down vertical trunks to snap up an acorn from the
ground and stand, as if suddenly turned to stone, amongst the people visiting
the graves of loved ones, before vanishing into thin air.
I smiled as
a great tit bathed beside me as I sat on my usual bench for pondering. His flittering
back and forth was almost impossible to catch on camera.
Instead I
photographed the light playing in the leaves, the blue sky cut in half by fluffy
vapour trails, and the toadstools so well camouflaged amongst the fallen leaves
that I almost missed seeing them.
Thinking ahead to Christmas
Finally I
collected some of the long larch branches that had fallen to the ground in
recent storms; I chose those with cones attached, they will decorate my
Christmas parcels.
It is
difficult to plan for Christmas while walking in the warm sunshine just as it
is difficult to plan for spring or summer when the snow is falling. But as I
have more than thirty years behind me of planning crafty activities I always
have the next project in mind.
Although there
are only a four weeks until the first weekend of Advent, bringing with it the
opening of our famous Christmas Market, we are still enjoying the fresh air
without our winter gloves and scarves and still sitting in the sun at pavement
cafes for coffee and cakes!
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