Yesterday I wrote about my mother's family, through the World Wars and into the post war years. It's been interesting to think back to the stories I was told, and I'll try to do the same thing about my father's side of the family now. I know much less about them, partly because I never asked my father (and he wasn't keen to talk); I cut him out of my life when I was 12, and before that there was neither opportunity nor was I mature enough to ask much about his background. When I became a Christian at age 21 I did speak with him again, but carefully keeping him at a polite distance. He died in 2010 I think, maybe 2011, and I never did ask him much about our family. So my knowledge comes mostly from his mother, my grandmother, who I lived with for a few years in college. By that time I was aware enough to know that if I didn't ask her about her history, I would never know! So the stories here are mostly told by her. As with my previous post, these are mostly anecdotes and stories, and I have no way of verifying them - it's just what's been told me, and I'd like to pass that on to my children.
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| My grandfather |
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| My grandmother |
Both my grandmother Hedwig and grandfather Ludwig, who died from a heart attack at a very young age (in his 40's), grew up in the countryside of Austria. They lived in a small village, and because he was an illegitimate child, he was a bit of an outsider and her parents didn't approve of their relationship. In her late teens she became pregnant by him; they went to the Priest to get married, but he refused because the child had been conceived "in sin". Her parents disowned her, and they moved to Vienna - an anonymous city where no one knew that they hadn't been married when my father was conceived.
Ludwig's mother did marry later (a different man, not the father), but Ludwig's biological father remained, at least financially, supportive. None of us know who he was but family legend has it that he was rich and influential, possibly in politics.
World War 2
My grandmother was born in 1927, so she was only 12 at the outbreak of war. She recalls the poverty of the between-war years, in her childhood: as cars became more prevalent, occasionally a car would drive through her village. When this happened, it was a big deal, and the children would stand by the roadside to watch; and hope that maybe a chicken would be run over so they could eat chicken that evening!
When she was 14, in 1941/42, she had to do her "year of service" and went to Germany as an au pair for a city family - the big wide world, in her view. She was excited. War hadn't come to her little village yet, and when the bombs started falling on that city in Germany, she felt this was mostly exciting and adventurous. When her father one day stood at the doorstep to take her home to the safer village, she was dismayed!
At the very end of the war, Hitler was well aware the war was lost and threw everything and everyone into the fire, so to speak. All the boys over 16 in the village (my grandfather among them) were ordered to assemble at the train station to board a train to the front lines - they were untrained and unarmed village boys, sent to die, and everyone knew it. By then, everyone knew the war was lost - what Hitler was doing was obvious. But there were still many Nazi officials around, keeping the people in line. On that day, as the boys and their tearful families had assembled to see them shipped off to certain death, the Mayor of the village took a risk: he gave a very, very long speech and then sent them back home for the night. He ordered them to come back the next day to board the train. The next day, he did the same thing, sent them home again and ordered them to return the next day. The next day, Nazi officials having made very clear that their patience had run out (and the Mayor had put his life on the line already), he didn't send them home but still waffled on for another very long speech, just buying time - until, at last, in the early afternoon the news came that the war was officially over!
The post war years
My grandparents moved to Vienna just after the war because she was pregnant (my father was born in 1947), getting away for good from the judgmental small village that disapproved of them - my grandmother only very occasionally ever went back to visit, mostly for funerals. She always loved living in the city, where no one cared about your business.
Ludwig became a chemistry apprentice in the national oil refinery, OMV - a job apparently secured for him through his biological father. This was a secure job and their income was assured. After the war, Austria was carved up into sectors overseen by each of the Allied Forces, and Vienna was in the Soviet sector. This was the worst place to be; while the other Allied members tried to help rebuild the war-devastated sectors in their care, the Soviets were there to plunder as much as they could in reparation for the wrongs done to them. The oil refinery was a critical industry to maintain, so my grandfather's work was assured, but often they didn't have the materials they needed to actually do their work. So once a month, Ludwig or a colleague of his (alternating months) would travel to another sector of Austria to buy things like test tubes, canules and the like; until his colleague was caught on one of these journeys and deported to Siberia, where he was in a Gulag for nearly a decade. It could just as easily have been my grandfather.
When my grandfather died from a heart attack in his 40's, in bed over night right next to my grandmother, she was just done with anything relating to God. She was a very hard, bitter woman who never remarried, and remained a postal worker until her retirement.
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