Open Writing

And then I was six. School had become compulsory. I have never enjoyed school and never excelled in it. Perhaps this was due to my IQ or an aversion to apply myself properly. I hate regimentation. Whatever the reason, despite the German custom of Easter-Cones (Ostertüten), I did not look forward to school.

The Easter-Cone is a cone-shaped container provided by parents. It is filled with sweets and, on that first fateful day, accompanies the child to school to sweeten that difficult day.

The size of the Easter-Cone is thought to be commensurate with the relevant parents’ standing, but my Easter-Cone was not particularly big since, as I mentioned before, my parents were anxious not to flout their privileged position. Obviously, I did not make much of it either since I have no recollection of ever holding an Easter-Cone - nor can I remember the titbits inside. But recently I looked at my family album and found my image hugging such a container.

Maybe the first school day is a landmark for parents rather than children, because a custom they also adhere to is to celebrate the 50th anniversary of that day. They call it Kinderfest. In my case that day came up in April 1988.

They do the same with the anniversary of the confirmation even if, in the interim, the people concerned haven’t been to church once. I am a little cynical about such landmarks and silently chuckle at these aging gangs who think they keep young by remembering their youth. In reality the opposite is true. Every time they meet they are bound to be reminded how much older they have become. If they want to celebrate, they can do so without a reason, but since Jutta brought up the date I duly responded.

Jutta was connected to our sugar factory in Derenburg. She was the daughter of its director and the star pupil in my class throughout primary school. She received the best marks in most subjects and, since she knew everything better, I did not like her very much. I already had a brother like that and did not need her in my life as well.

Jutta eventually became a schoolteacher in Western Germany, but since she, like myself, had a happy childhood in Derenburg and did not live as far away as I, she retained close links with some of our former classmates. Collectively they sent me a card inviting me to our Kinderfest and even attached a group photo of all the signatories so that I should be able to see how that ‘small fry’ had grown over the years.

It would have been fun to have spent that day with them, but a trip to Germany I just could not accommodate at the time. I thus composed a little rhyme to be read at the occasion and sent it to Jutta with my best wishes.

I thought my ditty was quite a nice literary effort. It read well and rhymed, was rhythmically sound, and I was mystified why it was not appreciated. Jutta informed me subsequently that my contribution was not ‘deemed fit to be read’. I am sure she alone was responsible for rejecting it.

I herewith add a similar rhyme in English so that you can assess what my former schoolmates were deprived of that day:

I wish I could be there with you,
but I am here, you thither.
I know that you, like horses do,
Get long in tooth and wither.
I see you with my inner eye -
you once were bright and twinkled.
But fifty years have since gone by
and turned you grey and wrinkled.

There were two more verses in similar vein, the one dwelling on the school pals who, in the interim, had kicked the bucket, and the other expressed the hope that ‘us’ survivors should reach the other side with a minimum of discomfort.

I met Jutta again two or three years later. She had retired by then but was still speaking staccato as she did in Sub A. I tried hard not to hold her act of sabotage against her, which was easy enough because, this time, she flattered my ego.

She asked me, “Do you remember how we used to gather around you like a swarm of bees whenever you were drawing something?” But I had no recollection of this. I know, of course, that I always got top marks in art, but seldom understood exactly what I had done to deserve it.

My passion for wanting to produce paintings awoke pretty early. While the grownups pondered the question from whom I might have inherited the talent, I borrowed four sheets of typing paper from Dad’s desk and stuck them together with glue in order to acquire a large surface to paint on. And then I painted my first landscape.

The medium was watercolour. I had just been given a new paint box. Unfortunately the paints were so fugitive that nothing remains, but I remember it pretty well. There was a gnarled tree on the right and another one on the left. In the background a row of stylised pines. The foreground was taken up by a field of dung heaps which, arranged in converging rows, created an illusion of depth.

Since I was not yet six, everybody thought this was very advanced. In fact, the relevant school committee saw fit to exhibit my painting at that year’s school bazaar even though I was not part of it yet. But I also showed promise in other artistic media, e.g. in the performing arts.

Our first teacher in primary school was Herr Schiebel whom I got to know properly after the following Easter holidays only when school began in earnest. I was not too happy that he had been assigned to our class. He was a big man and stern looking. Corporal punishment had not yet been banned, but once you got to know him you realized that most of his severity was just a big show.

Although he was not a native of Derenburg, it was more or less his first act to tell us our own ‘Straw-Head Story’. Tactically this was an excellent move for, small as we were, many of us knew that story already, were proud of it and accepted it as absolutely gospel.

Just like countries have a national anthem and are proud of it, we had our ‘Straw-Head Story’ defining how clever we are. On the strength of it Derenburg often was referred to as ‘Strohkoppshausen’.

According to this tale a ram once scratched the ground madly in a field where the border of our town converged with the borders of the two neighbouring towns of Ströbeck and Danstedt. When the shepherd became aware of the animal’s obsession, he helped him dig and they unearthed a huge, beautiful church bell.

But word got out and all three towns claimed rightful ownership of the bell. After lengtht negotiations it was decided that a horse-drawn cart was to leave each town at exactly the same time and on exactly the same day and the first cart to arrive at the scene would get the bell.

Well, on the agreed day the Derenburgers got up very early. They wound straw around their cart’s wheels and left an hour earlier than arranged. No one heard them because of the straw. They soon reached their destination and had the bell loaded before anyone else was in sight.

When the Ströbeckers arrived, the Derenburgers looked up and jeered: “Stump-fingers! Stump-fingers!” Apparently halfway there they had lost a wheel-bolt and had to use their thumbs to prevent the wheel from coming off, and as soon as the thumb of one man had worn off the next man would stick his thumb in.

The Danstedters arrived even later. They were all ‘under the weather’ because their cart had fallen into a ditch and the jolt had broken their vat of beer. So as not to let the beer go to waste, they transferred it into bushels and drank it. Their state of intoxication slowed them down considerably. You can imagine that they became the targets of more jeering. Both Derenburgers and Ströbeckers called them “Bushel-Gulpers, Bushel-Gulpers.”

Of course, the Derenburgers got their nickname as well when the others noticed their straw-covered cartwheels, but that was a name to be proud of. You could tell though that Herr Schiebel was no Derenburger. “You cheated,” he said and made a long song and dance about the moral right about owning that bell.

The other thing I remember of that initial school year was my first venture into the performing arts. Only two actors were involved, Toni Matcheroth and I. Herr Schiebel made us enact a simplified version of the Grimm Brothers’ dapper little tailor story.

I had to enter the stage from the right-hand side and brag about having slain ‘seven with one stroke’. On the left-hand side stood Toni brandishing a sword. He was dressed in a knight’s outfit and challenged me, “Where is your proof, man? Where are the bodies?” I then had to act all scared and submissive-like which I must have done very well because the scene brought the house down. That was not a bad feeling.

Anything to do with the arts gave me some satisfaction. Even music was not beyond me. I was five when in bed with measles. Not feeling too badly, my parents bought me a mouth organ so that I could pass the time more constructively. Within a day or two I was able to play most nursery tunes my mother had sung to me. A week later I played them with rhythmic accompaniment achieved by my tongue.

I never learnt to play more sophisticated instruments because of my laziness. During my first high school year in Halberstadt I was sent to piano classes, but since I was unwilling to practise, the attempt was abandoned. I hated repetitive work. Teachers should be taught to make learning fun.