Fifteen years in a childhood paradise

was near Anklam, north of Berlin. There I had to run the farm all on my own for some time, as the owner went away on an extended holiday.

"Meanwhile the war broke out, and I joined the cavalry as a lieutenant, spending three years on the Russian front, and one year on the western front. After the armistice I just made it home for Christmas in 1918.

"By then this area had become part of Poland. Opa couldn't cope with the stress of the war. He spent long periods in a sanatorium in Berlin, and left an incompetent Polish administrator in charge. As a result, the farm was run down again when I took over early in 1919. It wasn't easy to return the farm to profitability, though. I was helped by some financial manipulation. I bought fertiliser, life stock and some machinery on twelve months credit, and held on to the crops until just before the new harvest. By then the price was six times the amount I would have received immediately after the harvest. I had learnt this at Antwerp from the family merchants there.

"Well, gradually the farm prospered again until now, and you yourselves are the continuation of the story."

We had reached the Swițety Jan. It began to get dark. I thought of all the other stories which Vater had told us in the past. He always gave us something to think about. He certainly was a great story teller.

He was not so good, however, telling us about the facts of life. It had only been the year before when he told us on a long walk through the fields. Günter was then 13 and I nearly 12. By then we had heard from either Horst or our Polish friends ages ago, where babies came from. He told us about prostitutes, and how to avoid them, about sexually transmitted diseases and condoms, and about keeping ourselves clean, and to avoid the world's so-called pleasure spots. To us it seemed all a bit stilted. Probably we would have appreciated an open discussion on this subject, but Vater just didn't have the knack for it, but neither did we. Had he talked to us about procreation, when we received the rabbits from our people at the harvest festival, I'm sure it would have helped us more, as then we were not quite five or six. He had left it far too late.

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