matter.
“Funny,” said my mother, “I once asked Oma Kristel that.”
“What did she say?” I asked.
“She sniffed, and said some people
had
to change their names afterthe war, and that it didn’t stop those who were around at the time remembering who was who and what was what. I suppose she meant people who belonged to the Nazi party,” she mused. “The older people in the town must remember who some of them were.”
“So
was
Herr Düster one?” I persisted. “Is that why Herr Schiller doesn’t like him?”
“I don’t think so,” said my mother. “I had the impression it was something more personal than that, a family feud or something.” She eyed me suspiciously. “We don’t know any of this for a fact,” she said. “I don’t want you going around telling people Herr Düster is a war criminal or something, Pia. Understand?”
“Yes,” I said impatiently. “But if it was a family feud, what was it about?”
My mother put down her work and looked at me askance. “What is this, twenty questions or something?” She shook her head. “It’s no use asking me. Oma Kristel’s the expert on Bad Münstereifel gossip.”
I never did ask Oma Kristel about it. I couldn’t imagine asking my grandmother prurient questions about “poor Heinrich’s” past. Besides, Oma Kristel did not like to talk about the war and the postwar period; it was too painful a topic. Evidently other adults felt the same, because the page on the town’s history in the annual tourist brochure mentioned such interesting events as the building of the B51 highway in 1841 but leaped neatly from the 1920s to the 1950s without one reference to the horrors in between.
Truthfully, it was hard for me to imagine anything as awful as the Second World War touching the town; looking at the half-timbered buildings and cobblestones you would think the twentieth century had bypassed it altogether. It was strange to think that so many of the old town houses had been bombed flat. It was a miracle really that the medieval walls, the old red
Rathaus
, and the church survived.
After the war there was a time of terrible hardship and the nuns of the local convent set up a sort of soup kitchen to feed schoolchildren who would otherwise have been too famished to apply themselves to learning. This was not a topic that was covered in my fourth-grade project about the history of the school. It was my mother who told me about it, rather to my father’s disgust—the British tendency to put “Germany” and “the war” in the same sentence had not escaped him, and hesuspected her of making a sly dig at her adopted country. Photographs of the postwar period showed children of my age dressed in ill-assorted and tatty clothing: saggy sweaters made from wool unraveled from older items, and hand-me-downs too big for their recipients. Apart from anything else, it was all horribly dowdy. I could see why Oma Kristel spent the rest of her life in an eternal quest for Glamour.
Quite often she went to Herr Schiller’s house looking like some sort of movie star, even affecting a little fur collar that looked like a real animal, with jeweled eyes and a tail hanging down at one end. She wore heels so high that they were a positive endangerment to a woman of her age; she could so easily have broken an ankle. But Oma Kristel refused to believe in osteoporosis. She continued to mince about with her heels clacking on the cobblestones and the tail of the dead fox swinging from her shoulder, looking like Marlene Dietrich.
She first took me along to Herr Schiller’s dimly lit old house when I was too young to put up a fight about being dragged out to visit one of Oma’s ancient friends, and later on I was quite happy to go with her anyway. Herr Schiller’s house was fascinating, full of strange old items, such as a sepia funeral photograph from about 1900, showing someone lying in their coffin surrounded by flowers, and a miniature ship in a bottle, tacking
“Funny,” said my mother, “I once asked Oma Kristel that.”
“What did she say?” I asked.
“She sniffed, and said some people
had
to change their names afterthe war, and that it didn’t stop those who were around at the time remembering who was who and what was what. I suppose she meant people who belonged to the Nazi party,” she mused. “The older people in the town must remember who some of them were.”
“So
was
Herr Düster one?” I persisted. “Is that why Herr Schiller doesn’t like him?”
“I don’t think so,” said my mother. “I had the impression it was something more personal than that, a family feud or something.” She eyed me suspiciously. “We don’t know any of this for a fact,” she said. “I don’t want you going around telling people Herr Düster is a war criminal or something, Pia. Understand?”
“Yes,” I said impatiently. “But if it was a family feud, what was it about?”
My mother put down her work and looked at me askance. “What is this, twenty questions or something?” She shook her head. “It’s no use asking me. Oma Kristel’s the expert on Bad Münstereifel gossip.”
I never did ask Oma Kristel about it. I couldn’t imagine asking my grandmother prurient questions about “poor Heinrich’s” past. Besides, Oma Kristel did not like to talk about the war and the postwar period; it was too painful a topic. Evidently other adults felt the same, because the page on the town’s history in the annual tourist brochure mentioned such interesting events as the building of the B51 highway in 1841 but leaped neatly from the 1920s to the 1950s without one reference to the horrors in between.
Truthfully, it was hard for me to imagine anything as awful as the Second World War touching the town; looking at the half-timbered buildings and cobblestones you would think the twentieth century had bypassed it altogether. It was strange to think that so many of the old town houses had been bombed flat. It was a miracle really that the medieval walls, the old red
Rathaus
, and the church survived.
After the war there was a time of terrible hardship and the nuns of the local convent set up a sort of soup kitchen to feed schoolchildren who would otherwise have been too famished to apply themselves to learning. This was not a topic that was covered in my fourth-grade project about the history of the school. It was my mother who told me about it, rather to my father’s disgust—the British tendency to put “Germany” and “the war” in the same sentence had not escaped him, and hesuspected her of making a sly dig at her adopted country. Photographs of the postwar period showed children of my age dressed in ill-assorted and tatty clothing: saggy sweaters made from wool unraveled from older items, and hand-me-downs too big for their recipients. Apart from anything else, it was all horribly dowdy. I could see why Oma Kristel spent the rest of her life in an eternal quest for Glamour.
Quite often she went to Herr Schiller’s house looking like some sort of movie star, even affecting a little fur collar that looked like a real animal, with jeweled eyes and a tail hanging down at one end. She wore heels so high that they were a positive endangerment to a woman of her age; she could so easily have broken an ankle. But Oma Kristel refused to believe in osteoporosis. She continued to mince about with her heels clacking on the cobblestones and the tail of the dead fox swinging from her shoulder, looking like Marlene Dietrich.
She first took me along to Herr Schiller’s dimly lit old house when I was too young to put up a fight about being dragged out to visit one of Oma’s ancient friends, and later on I was quite happy to go with her anyway. Herr Schiller’s house was fascinating, full of strange old items, such as a sepia funeral photograph from about 1900, showing someone lying in their coffin surrounded by flowers, and a miniature ship in a bottle, tacking
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