Life is a Journey: Live it (Part 35)

The other autobiography
Writing letters, putting them into an envelope, going to the post office, buying a stamp, and putting it into the provided letter box, that was what we experienced. Our local cinema was in Hellbrookstraße, later an ALDI discounter. It was a place to watch movies due to the lack of a TV at home. Going there was always a big and exciting event. We could not see movies as often as we would have liked to see, but when sitting in the red comfortable chairs staring at the big screen and when we had saved enough money, ice-cream confect in little square pieces rounded our day out at the movies off. It was not sitting in a posh car, which could have made us possibly as happy as this moment in that cinema with pieces of ice-cream confectionery in our hands.

Across our apartment on the other side of the road, just before school, the Fraenkelstraße was a grey bunker from the previous world war. On top of that, the government had put a playground for kids that was often used at night as a meeting point for motorbike riders. The underground bunker on my return from Ghana became the ideal place for my novel `The Underground Man`. The entrance to the bunker going down was blocked by a metal gate. As children, we often played in the sandbox of that playground, and my mother would watch over us while chatting along with other mothers from around.

Before I continue, it is very interesting to know the meaning of my name. Karl stands for the free and independent man, Heinz stands for the king, and Günter means the soldier, the army. Heerde has multiple diverse meanings. Karl, I got it because of the uncle of my father, who was called Karl, but that's for later. Heinz was the second name of my father, and Günter was the name of my father's youngest brother.

I recall one early night, a motorbiker gang had a meeting in the bunker. Among them was one of my classmates' brothers. That night was very loud because a girl was killed by that classmate's brother, and he, as a minor, served in prison for eight years.

Leading towards the school, towards Alte Wöhr train station in the middle section between the two small one-lane roads, barracks that had housed German migrants from Poland had been taken down. My granduncle Karl had a landscape gardening company, asked by the state and private companies to plant trees along the roadsides, make playgrounds, or set up parks in courtyards. That small stretch between these roads was assigned to be converted into a park with benches and a simple playground. Granduncle Karl and his company were mandated to carry out the project. As he and his wife had no male heir, I was the only male heir in the entire family. They came up with the idea one day for me to take over the company, which had employed twelve workers at that time. As my parents got divorced and this part of my family separated itself from us, the idea was dropped. The daughter of Granduncle Karl married a man, and he managed the company instead. Thinking back today, I would run such a company, not having written all my books and articles, never having touched down in Africa, not having met all those exciting people, and many more...no way, I would not want to have missed a single bit of it.

The area we lived in, Barmbek-North, was a typical working-class district of Hamburg. Workers like electricians, carpenters, builders, and alike were our neighbours. All of them were only Germans when I grew up. Over time, before I went to Hamburg University in 1980, this all changed drastically. Before Steilshoop, Mümmelmannsberg, and Osdorfer Born were built, Gastarbeiter from Turkey were intended by the German government to come for a few years and help with the Wirtschaftswunder, before years later to return to Turkey. In the end, three million Turkish workers stayed and became friends and neighbours. Around ten to twenty per cent of our neighbours came from Turkey. First one, then two, and all of a sudden they opened their shops in Fuhlsbüttler Straße, which soon became a shopping destination for us. Especially the Turkish bread and cheap fruits and vegetables were what we enjoyed buying at their shops. There were no sentiments against them. Soon they were a normal part of a German neighbourhood, and we went with their children to school. Mosques were not around our area. Only later in Fuhlsbüttler Straße, the old premises of Hamburger Sparkasse would be used as a Mosque.

After my return from Ghana in late 2017, I witnessed a new development in this area of Barmbek-North around my old streets. Blacks. Before I rented our new apartment, deciding on it alone as my wife had to work, we discussed not moving into an area where there are many Blacks. My wife had made up her mind to move to Germany and stay with white Germans. She wanted to stay as far away from Black as possible, not to be influenced by their spirits. Deciding on the flat during the day, we discovered in the evening they all came and entered their houses, blacks in almost every house at least one. And guess what! Nearly all of them came from Ghana. One lady standing out on her balcony in summer, constantly shouting in Twi for us neighbours to complain behind closed doors. When my wife saw what she had wanted to avoid, she was shocked, but as long as she was not approached by them, she did not mind.

Now, back to my childhood. For some time during and just after the divorce process, we children were under the supervision of the social security office. That was not a problem for us children. More of a problem was that every six months, we had to get our chest x-rayed, as my father, a heavy smoker, had contracted TBC and as a precaution, we were constantly monitored. After a few years, this stopped altogether. Sometimes my mother would bring us to the rehabilitation clinic in Groß-Hansdorf, where my father had been admitted because of his smoke caused laung infection.

When my mother had to start working again, she would bring us to kindergarten in Rübenkamp and pick us up when returning late afternoons from work. As school children, we attended the primary school in Fraenkelstraße, classes five and six in Genslerstraße school before returning to Fraenkelstraße for classes seven to ten for Sabine Fuchs and me, and to class nine for Heidi Jürgensen. While in class four, I was a poor pupil. My mother decided for me to repeat the class. For that reason, in Fraenkelstraße, my sister Sabine Fuchs and I would sit in the same class. Later, it proved to be a terrible choice for my sister as she was always compared to me. I was always marked with better notes than her and as the president of the students' union and a responsible student for the geographic collection was well known in that school.

In the kindergarten in Rübenkampsweg at Easter, we had the tradition that the kindergarteners would go to the Stadtpark and hide eggs coloured or painted by us weeks before behind trees and in high grass. Finding them and having the most collected made us jump for joy. Returning to the kindergarten, the cooks in the kitchen soon would peel the eggs, give them to us with salt, potatoes, and spinach. We loved it. In the evening, for afternoon tea, the kitchen would serve us with little baked rabbits which have a raisin as eyes.

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