The (19)50s E-Book

Reinhard Lehnen

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 71

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

R. grows up in the 1950s. The world left behind by the recently ended war is full of shadows, but also full of moments of happiness and exciting experiences for the bright boy from Mainz. He lives with his parents in a station house and takes the train to school every day along with many others, where his interest in girls suddenly awakens. However, he prefers to spend his free time with his friends on the rubble field, where playing with lots of imagination always turns into an adventure. He enjoys daring adventures just as much as watching the World Cup on TV. R. never gets bored at school either - his classmates and teachers sometimes provide bizarre and frightening experiences ...

Leseprobe

Any inconsistencies in the text are due to the fact that it was translated using computer-aided technology for a company-wide study.

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Foreword

The 9 autobiographical stories are intended to give children and young people an understanding of the reality and attitude to life in Germany in the 1950s.

Topics include poverty, the destruction of cities, cold winters, the 1954 World Cup, Russian returnees, the relationship between the sexes, educational methods, etc.

It would be nice if the grandparents, who experienced this time themselves, read to their grandchildren - or vice versa.

1951

Rubble

R. looks out of the window of the kitchen-living room. It is part of an apartment on the 3rd floor of a house with a total of 8 rented apartments. It is actually only half an apartment, because two of the four rooms are occupied by other people. R., his father and his mother can only use the kitchen and one bedroom. They have to share the hallway with the other residents.

This was initially not the case in the first year after moving in, until the landlord even enforced access and letting to third parties with the help of a real-life police officer in an impressive uniform.

It is early May and already warm in early summer. So warm that R. doesn't have to wear his scratchy leather trousers with long socks, but rather a pair of short fabric trousers. Grandma sewed them herself. Grandma can sew anything. She is actually a milliner, but now she sells haberdashery in a large department store in another big city. She is a young grandma because she became a mother at a young age.R.'s mom was also only 20 years old when he was born.

The mother says to R.: "You haven't had your cod liver oil yet." R. hates cod liver oil. But the adults constantly emphasize that he has to take the stuff at these times if he wants to grow up and be strong. He has to swallow a tablespoonful every morning. Because meat is so expensive that it can rarely be eaten, the children have to eat animal products in other forms. It is terrible. It doesn't get any better when R. thinks about the large whales from which this supposedly originates. Their friendly image is on every bottle of the yellowish-grey juice.

R. looks out of the window and doesn't quite know what to do today. He has been at school since Easter and is a first grader. But he has no school this morning because another class is now using the classroom. Most of the schools in his town are still destroyed by the bombs from the war, so the few intact schools are alternately occupied in the mornings and afternoons. R. doesn't think that's a bad thing. It means he can sleep in twice a week. He sleeps in his parents' room and is therefore often woken up when his parentsgo to bed later. He is also woken up when his father comes home early in the morning from a rotating shift and night duty. He then comes home very early so that it is still dark in winter. Then R. wakes up or has bad dreams. His father works for the Bundesbahn. Perhaps it was still called the Reichsbahn back then, as it was known in the former GDR until reunification. His father knows all the trains that leave or arrive in their town and their exact times. He doesn't really need a watch. One look out of the window of the kitchen-living room at a train on the horizon and he knows exactly what time it is.

R. is still standing at the window and can't decide what to do. There is a large field of rubble right next to the property of their home. Here are the remains of the former houses that were hit by bombs during the war and have not yet been demolished or rebuilt. For R., this is actually a big playground. All the children from the neighborhood come here to play. You can build wonderful huts with the stones lying around everywhere. In the meantime - the war has already been over for six years - small bushes are also growing there, whose branches can be used to put together a roof. It's ideal if R. can find an old sheet or tin somewhere. Then you almost have a real house. However, playing in the rubble is not entirely safe. Especially if it has rained beforehand, whole stones come loose from the ruins with the mortar and fall down. That's why his mother doesn't want him to play there with his friends. But she can't see him. At most, she can hear him playing in the street.

R. says to his mother: "I'm going down to the street, let's see who's there to play." His mother just nods, because she is busy washing up at the small kitchen sink and has turned up the old radio. R. looks for the toilet key. The toilet for each of the two apartments is on "half the stairs", i.e. on the mezzanine floor between the actual living levels. The toilet is locked so that only the two apartments on the same floor can use it.

This used to be common in poorer areas, especially before the war. But R.'s grandparents already had their own toilet in their home.

With a "Bye, mom!" and a not exactly silent closing of the apartment door, R. makes his way down to the first floor. He meets the tenant from the first floor in front of the house. Mr. Z. is wearing grey uniform-like clothing and a matching grey cap. He is a chauffeur for the "French". At this time, the French occupying troops are still west of the Rhine, looking after the new German state and its citizens. Mr. Z. drives a black Opel Kapitän. A dream of a car for R.. He was allowed to drive it once. When he grows up, he wants one of those chic cars. Otherwise, all he wants is the big blue beach ball from the chemist's that hangs above the entrance - out of reach in every respect. His father's salary is just enough for the necessities of life. A beach ball is pure luxury. "Wat mat Dau?", asks Mr. Z. in the special dialect of this region. It sounds somehow Rhenish, as it is spoken in the nearby carnival stronghold, but is mixed with a dialect from the nearby Eifel region. The Rhenish sing-song is overlaid with a melancholy, harsh tone that comes from the nearby, harsh Eifel region with its deep maars and cold winters. Maars are the name given to the lakes formed from volcanic craters there.R. just shrugs his shoulders. Mr. Z. smiles and salutes with his index finger on his cap, says "Mat es juut!" and gets back to his work of somehow finding a speck of dust or a streak on the windows of the clean car.

His buddy A. appears. R. doesn't quite know whether A. is his friend or his leader. A. is already in the 2nd grade and half a head taller. With his red, cropped hair and white skin, he could have been mistaken for Pumuckl if he hadn't been so terribly strong for R.. R. therefore avoided any confrontation with A. and did what he wanted. A. lived in the side street in a back house, which was actually more of a shed. A creaky wooden staircase leads to one of the rooms on the second floor, which A.'s father has to hobble up with his two crutches. Like all men at that time, Mr. A. had been a soldier in the war and had lost a leg to a splinter from a grenade. Because of his missing leg, he was worthless as a worker for "the Russians". Mr. A. was therefore soon released from captivity as a prisoner of war in Russia. But now there is no work for him "at home" either. He is bored andhe is always looking for people to tell about his heroic deeds in the war. "I saw the towers of Moscow," he brags, deliberately concealing the fact that he only went backwards from that point and ended up as a prisoner of war. R. also has to listen to the stories about Russian tanks being "killed" with his own hands. But his buddy A. always found the war stories exciting. A. says: "My father was a hero."