Education

Coming  from a family of educators and having raised five children in this country my ears naturally perk up when I hear  education mentioned  which happens very often these days, here as well  as in Germany. Since I was born and raised in Germany and have not gone to school here I have no  qualifications  in this country other than having the right to have an opinion.And,of course, a lot of questions.For example, it took me quite a while to understand what it means “to teach to the test” just to mention one of them.The other word mentioned ,in this case with disdain is “rote” or “learning by rote”. Which is, how I was taught. So maybe I can explain why I think “rote” learning was not all that bad.

First I should maybe mention that the idea “school should be fun “never entered anybody’s head. At least I know I was never asked:”did you have fun today?”Neither did other Germans living in this country but having grown up over there. No ,school was serious business already before you had entered first grade. This was the first step toward becoming a more responsible person.I am not trying to convince  anybody,that that was the better way. It was just the way it was and we accepted it.Or had to accept it beause there was that cane with which some of the boys occasionally became acquainted  or standing in the corner as punishment for some misdemeanour, all of which sounds perfectly dreadful but strangely enough, it wasn’t.

Learning  rules by heart or poems ,or vocabulary, it was simply what you did. Learn.

And  what about creativity? Learning to read and write gave you the tools with which to be creative.Learning  grammatical  rules taught you to speak your language  correctly. Learning  a poem by heart it became part of your consciousness or even, your subconscious. Learning  songs opened up a whole new world, or old world  if the song was about some historical moment, such as a famous battle.Or a sad occurrence  such as the death or a comrad in battle. We all knew “Ich  hat einen  Kameraden,einen  bessern finds Du nicht.”I had  a comrad, you won’t find a better one.” Knowing this song nobody will have to  be told about the ravages of war. It is all in the melody and the text.

I realize, this all sounds very dilettantic, That is, because I am a dilettant.But I do know that I learned a lot in school right from the beginning.For e xample , geography. In my elementary school classsroom stood a large ,raised sandbox, about the size of a pingpong table. In our immediate region  two kinds of communities were common: the cluster village and the row village,all  the houses strung alongside the road running through the village.  The objective now was to recreate such a village.  In  art class we had all made little houses. All had gables and a pitched roof. First you drew the prototype, then cut it out, then folded  what needed to be folded and then glued  it. And ,of course, the doors and windows had to be drawn. After we had our houses we gathered around the sandbox  and shaped the actual  village.  And  there you had  a complete lesson  in local geography.

Of course it was no fun,learning  grammatical  rules. I always preferred to use my hands since I  was good making things. I had learned to crotchet at age four sitting on the step stool of  somebody’s  grandmother  whom  I was visiting. But if one wanted to go to Highschool  it was necessary since languages  were taught beginning  in Fifth grade .

Potsdam III

The following year,1991. things had changed completely when my friend Gabriele  Duvinage and I arrived in Potsdam, this time by car. The sleepy and rather dowdy little town of a year ago simply had exploded.  Cars were everywhere but no little  Trabis or Trabants. It seems everyone had dug deep into their savings and bought new cars. People in the streets smiled and even  laughed. And bought. It seemed they bought anything they could lay their hands on, just for the sake pf beong able to buy somehting. Whether they need ed it or not. But I may be wrong there.

We decided to stay in a bed and breakfast and were advised to go to Babelsberg, the parkland next to Potsdam which was now again  officially part of the town.After consult-ing  a map  we found the connecting streets, only to to be confronted with bumps in the road. The streets on one side were higher than on the other so that we ended up taking quite a few detours.But finally we arrived at the correct address where we were greeted by the couple who owned, and as it turned out, built the little house.Cement sack by cement sack, procured from his place of work.He told us that quite openly.. Legal or not legal seemed to make no difference to him.

But his pride was his large garden which he tended lovingly. And decorated. Smack  in the middle, more or less in front of the house, was a little pond in the center of which stood a small “Månneken Piss” a copy of the small sculpture attached to the corner  of a house in Brussles, right under he eaves which  spewed rainwater into the street. Somehow he had gotten hold of a copy and planted it right in the middle of his garden. His greatest worry, though, was: would the water department turn on the water for him? His second worry was, would the original owners of the property want the lot back?.This turned out to be the question number one all over Babelsberg. Would people be displaced again and have to move?

Our hosts were refugees themselves. Rural people from the Warthegau ,the strip of land between Poland and Germany,Hitler had annexed.  One of his first acts of enlarging  Germany’s  Lebensraum.(space to live)  The largest city of the Polish Corridor, as the area was called  then, was Danzig , now Gdansk.During the war one could hear sometimes a sarcastic remark when something unpleasant had happened, such as a bomb hitting nearby,” Heil Hitler, the main thing is, we have Danzig”.Sarcasm  certainly helps in times of stress and stress we all experienced  during many years

The next day we drove on an arterial road away from town, passing long rows of barracks originally built to house Prussian soldiers. Now they were occupied by soviet troupes who stood inside the fences, looking  longingly  at life now denied them, waiting to be transported back to Russia. Meanwhile citizens were busy planning to rebuild their city but first they had to rebury Frederick  to lie next to his beloved grayhounds which they had just done a day or two before we arrived. He now lies to the right of the castle on the top terrace where it is hoped he lies in peace.Now the town is completely restored and modernized. Now people come to see people rather than art or buildings which, of course displeases some people.

Potsdam II

       Potsdam II

The war did its share of destruction in Potsdam and the communist  administration of the East zone which was the Russian zone, did the rest. Not only was the Garnison church heavily bombed, but the ruins were removed leaving an empty space good for parking their funny little Trabis, the only car manufactured in East Germany. When I was a child we took a steam engine train which stopped just at the edge of town. From there we walked across the parade ground where more often than not a group of recruits were practicing  their goose stepping, past the Bittschriften Linde ( the Linden tree to which the subjects could pin their petitions) to Breitestrasse corner Breite(Broad)brücke to Nr. 27. When I came back the first time many years after the war, things had changed.

This time I had to take a bus from Berlin. The wall deviding Germany into two parts was still standing, but restrictions had eased and it was possible to go and visit. With me on the bus were mostly Berliners who were finally able to visit their relatives after all these years of separation. Nr. 27 was still standing, seemingly unharmed, but the canal was gone. Now Breitestrasse really was broad but totally drab. Walking into and around town and talking  to a few people, I encountered caution. As if people were constantly looking over their shoulders. The chancellery in which my grandfather had worked stood, un-harmed, and I decided to take a look inside, only to encounter total silence.

I walked up the stairs to the mezzanine. Nobody. Up and down the hall past closed office doors. Total silence. Until I found one slightly ajar . Just as I pushed it open a bit two people passed inside from one room to the next, bending  over  some papers. I think I only got as far as clearing  my throat when they literally flew apart , their faces registering  great  anxiety, if not real fright. Fright of having been caught  at some conspiracy I assume. All over town, when trying to talk to people, I met wth suspicion, sometimes out-right hostility. Passing two people standing together talking they would immediately pull apart as if afraid of being  overheard. Caution seemed  to be the order of the day.

Many street names had been changed  to honor communist politicians.Breitestrasse was now Wilhelm Külzstrasse, whoever he was. Though the ruins had been neatly removed,neglect  and poverty were evident. The street where my father grew up, once a not very long but elegant stretch just outside the original town now looked delapidated. All the enameled  plates with the housenumbers were chipped, sometimes barely readable

A disturbing moment, for me, was the view from the “deathstrip” on the opposite side of the  Havel river, the Russian side.

I had gone  to Sakrow across the river to look for my great grandfather’s  grave and just check out the area where my father and his two sisters had spent many holidays of their childhood.After passing a few houses I went to the edge of the river and started walking along it a bit on the narrow path. The Havel is not very wide there, even I, who never was a very good swimmer,  would be able to swim it. Though, should you try it, you would be  shot. Walking along it I still could feel the sinister purpose of the path.These days,thank God were now over, though not yet forgotten.                                                                             

Potsdam

Potsdam, the capital of the province of  Brandenburg, Germany, is celebrating it’s 300^th  Jubilee. Since my father and his two sisters were born and raised there and his sisters lived and worked all their lives in that town, I visited there at least once a year from early childhood on. Coming from the commercial hub and harbor town, Hamburg, I always had the feeling of stepping into another age. There are no castles in Hamburg, no king or emperor ever ruled it or built beautiful edifices there and when the kingdom of Denmark reached as far as the Elbe river it had to stop just outside of town.

My aunt Tutti lived in an apartment built by the king, Frederick the Great .for his subjects.She lived on the top floor of  Breitestrasse 27 which, of course, nowadays you would call a walk up. And walk up you did. First you pulled open a huge door and then started climbing. But only about two flights. Then you were stopped by a grated door and  pulled out a huge key with which you could open that door. Then you climbed some more until you reached the top floor, got out another huge key, or maybe the same, but in any case huge, and opened her apartment door. And stepped right into her kitchen. The kitchen was light and had a door leading onto a balcony from where you could look at and over many roofs of the town of Potsdam. Down below you would see the canal  running through the center of Breitestrasse, lined with Linden trees, the barges  letting off goods and people or just passing through the Breite Brücke.

Crossing the bridge, and very close by, stood the Garnison Kirche After all, Potsdam was a military town and the military had to have their own church. But that was not enough. In the  churchtower was a Glockenspiel  which played every fifteen minutes. Twice during the hour a folktune and the other two times a hymn. In bed, at night, I was slowly lulled  to sleep, waiting for the next song.

The aparment had two rooms, the large one was Tutti’s and the other the guest room. And, yes, there was no bathroom of any kind. I suppose there was running cold water in the kitchen but certainly no toilet. In order to use the toilet you took another huge key and descended one flight down in the staircase. There you would find the communal toilet for  the tenants of that  floor.

At least once a visit we would walk to Sanssouci the residence of the king’s. Turning left on Breitestrasse one would reach the huge park of Sanssouci. Sowly we would stroll down the lane leading up to the castle until we finally reached the goldfish pond at the very foot of the terraced stairs leading to the castle. I have heard people comment with slight disdain, "After all, it is not Versaille.” As far as I am concerned, thank God it isn’t. If I want to think of something beautiful I only need to imagine  the trellis leading up to the top of the castle.