Eiderstedt II

     We knew we were lucky abd settled into our new life sorting through our few possessions. Summering in St. Peter always meant taking clothes for warm weather and cooler weather since we could experience quite chilly and wet days. Sometimes the rain would settle in for days, the so-called Landregen-or country rain, which meant it could get quite chilly besides being wet. Since my mother cooked our meals as did the other guest, and of course, Mrs. Tetens, we brought along our own eating utensils, in our case personal knives, forks and spoons. Until today I have my own soup-spoon and use it regularly. The fork, unfortunately, got lost some years ago.
        From my year in Spandau ( I completed  the requirements in two semesters rather than five,) I went to Breslau,now called Wroslow, in Silisia or Schlesien which now belongs to Poland. The year in Breslau was physically very difficult since it was very cold inside or out, lots of snow and not enough warm clothes or food. But musically it was more than rewarding. Instead of playing the organ I took harpsichord lessons which were given by the director of the school, Heinrich Boell who was a very good organist and conductor. I became his informal assistant, sang in the choir, pulled or pushed stops on the organ when he gave a concert,saw to it that the music did not land on the floor and fended off his verbal blows when he lost his temper which was often. During that year there was so much more going on emotionally that the temper tantrums of the professor were less than pinpricks in my consciouness than receiving the news that three of my friends had landed in concentration camp after distributing ant-Hitler leaflets in Munich. I had a lesson the day I received the news and simply could not concentrate. So the professor got angry and this time I started to cry, something I have never done much, not as child and not now. So he sat down, pulled me on his lap and wanted to know the reason for my distress. I did some quick thinking, not at all knowing whether he was a Nazi ( there seemed to be much more of those in Breslau than in Hamburg or Berlin) and decided to tell him the reason for my tears. This was when I found out that he had been banned to Breslau from his post in Cologne because he had had a fistfight with a high Nazi-official  who had accused his wife of being Jewish.
         Sometime during 1944 Goebbels declared what he called the "Total War" and ordered everybody to participate and help win it. This meant for us females to man searchlights or work in a munitions factory to make grenades but certainly not to make music. Though the more advanced students received permission to study half-days and I was tempted to take advantage of this privilege but the professor advised me to  pack my belongings and go to St.Peter to my mother's  since the Russians were steadily advancing and it became clear that the war would not last forever no matter what the propaganda machine was saying. I saw his point and since I had received a notice from the landarmy (Arbeitsdienst) to report to them, I decided to pack my bags and literally skip town. I made it to St. Peter via Berlin where I sat through a quite heavy attack which I watched from the balcony of my friends apartment. For some reason I felt no fear, though the bombs were hitting right and left and the ensuing fires lit up the night. Finally I made it to St. Peter and settled in with my mother in the cozy apartment.
        Though we knew the war would eventually end, this was no time to relax. The Nazis were as active  as ever The proprietess of the summer  where I had stayed as a small child who had three small children and whose husband had gone AWOL was kicked out of her house to make room for German troops to be housed. They did find a small house for her and the children but not big enough to also place the grand piano. Somehow we managed to shove furniture together in our rather nice but over-furnished apartment and in installed the piano in the living-room. So now I had a piano to practice on and life was not so bad. But the authorities caught up with me and wanted me to help win this wretched war. The Tetens' had a brilliant idea. Th community needed a milk-controller and I was to be it. What was to be controlled? The amount of milk each cow gave and its fat content. This was so that the farmers could not keep any milk for themselves. It sounds easy and is easy specially if you know how to milk which I certainly did. The idea was that one watches the milking and then calmly sits down and tests if the udder is really empty. Needless to say, I never did any testing. All the farmers I knew cheated and saved the cream to churn butter. So I got the job of milk-controller and learned to get up at four in the morning which is no fun in the summer but much worse during the freezing winter-months. I had exactly one pair of warm pants which were made of some thick army blanket which kept me as warm as possible. Except when I stepped by accident into water which was hidden under a thick blanket of snow. So now I had a pair of wet shoes, not sturdy boots but a kind of elegant loafer which I had bought just before the war. he socks, made of scratchy wool, spun by my mother, were also wet. The only stove we had was in the living-room and gave adequate heat when lit. But here was the rub. We had very little wood, very little coal, very little kindling,very little paper and almost no matches. In other words, everything we needed was used with utmost care and a lot of huffing and puffing to get a meager fire going. There are very few trees in that region so that we spent a lot of time collecting driftwood at the beach. Driftwood burns nicely when dry, but, alas, it is usually not dry but soaked full of water from having floated in the North Sea for quite a while.
       I must have had dome other garment to wear after these pants got wet but for the life of me, I don't remember what it was. I do remember developing frostbite and being advised by Mr. Tetens  to step into fresh cow-dung Anything was better than this itching. And, of course, it helped. Just about immediately. What else did I learn that winter? How to ride my bike on the narrow, ice-covered pah, constantly looking into the sky for a lonely plane suddenly swooping out of the sky, looking for prey, such as me.  These planed seemed to come from nowhere , swooping down and shoot. Many a time did I throw myself off the bike and luckily always managed not to roll down the embankment into the water of the ditch. Somebody told me that, if I stood stock-still I would be safe because the pilot could not make out the difference between a human and a lamp-post. But I must confess. I never tested the veracity of that advice. I was simply too chicken.