Week 22 2014

Tendring Topics…..on line

A Personal Story

            Those who regularly read this blog hoping to find a solution to the World’s problems, the problems of the United Kingdom, or even those just of Clacton-on-Sea, will do so today in vain.  This week’s blog is a personal story that began in Germany during the closing months of World War II.  Last Saturday, 17^th May,  the Bowling Green pub/restaurant a few miles outside Clacton-on-Sea saw the latest, perhaps its final, chapter.

            I spent the last eighteen months of the war in a ‘working camp’ (Arbeitskommando) of British other-rank PoWs in the small German town of Zittau.  It has about 30,000 inhabitants and is now the Federal Republic of Germany’s most easterly town, just on the German side of the point at which the frontiers of Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic coincide.  There were only thirty of us PoWs.  Our accommodation (a dormitory and barrack room within what was left of the town theatre that had been badly damaged by fire) was luxurious by PoW standards.  These rooms were on the first floor and the guards lived immediately below us on the ground floor.   The guards were neither the sadistic bullies nor mindless morons of popular fiction.  They were, in fact, remarkably like us.  Most had seen active service on the Eastern Front and had been wounded and/or badly frost bitten.  Their sole ambition was to keep their heads down and survive the war.  Ours was the same! Our rations were better than they had been in the concentration camp in which we had been incarcerated  in Italy. The Red Cross food parcels arrived regularly – and we were often working with food, in railway trucks, warehouses and wholesalers’ premises.  We rarely went hungry.  I have spoken to many other ex-PoWs about their experiences and ours were far better than most!

            Our work, which was heavy, for up to ten hours a day and with only one ‘rest day’ in three weeks nearly killed us at first after idleness, boredom and semi-starvation in Italy. We soon got used to it though – and it did make the time pass quickly. The work was mostly loading and unloading trucks on railway sidings in and around Zittau.  We also did any other manual work that was needed – digging graves in the cemetery, sweeping the streets, moving furniture, delivering coal, potatoes and other vegetables from wholesaler to retailer and so on.  We worked in parties of two to six, sometimes with a guard but often with an unarmed civilian with an arm band denoting that he was in charge.  We quickly picked up enough basic and very ungrammatical German to make it possible for us to chat with German civilians and other POWs and forced-workers mostly from Russia and Ukraine, who worked with us.  We really had an astonishing amount of freedom while we were working. It would have been easy to escape – but where to?  Take a look at a map of central Europe!

            One day in mid February 1945 a few days after the fire-bombing of Dresden by the RAF and US airforce on 13^th and 14^th of that month (in my opinion a war crime if there ever was one) we were sent with a guard to Zittau civic museum.  I remember that the incessant thunder of gunfire from the east was getting louder every day as the eastern front moved inexorably nearer and nearer to Zittau.   It was obvious to our guards, the local civilians and foreign workers and to us that the Third Reich was collapsing and that within a few months – perhaps weeks – the war would be over.  Our job was to load large and heavy cases onto a lorry, climb onto the lorry and unload them at our destination.  This proved to be some ancient ruins near the summit of a mountain (Mount Oybin) a few miles from Zittau.  It was, in fact, a ruined monastery and we unloaded the lorry and put the cases in the crypt.  We were told that they contained ‘treasure’ from the museum and they were taken there for safety from the kind of air raids that had devastated Dresden – only some sixty miles away.  It was ‘just another job'.  It was sixty years before I gave it another thought!

            The war in Europe ended on 8^th May. A free man again, I walked through the front door of my home in Ipswich on 18^th May (by a happy coincidence my 24^th birthday!). How, in the turmoil at the end of World War II, I managed to get home from the Soviet occupied, most easterly part of Germany, in just ten days, is another story.

            Sixty years, almost a lifetime later, my wife and I had two adult sons and we were beginning to think about our diamond wedding celebration.  I was a freelance writer and had an article about some of my experiences as a POW published in The Friend, a Quaker weekly journal.  In the article I wrote positively of the time I spent in Zittau, although I thought it unlikely that any reader of ‘The Friend would have heard of the town.  I was wrong.  The family of Jasper Kay, a Quaker and Friend reader living at Cottenham near Cambridge, had originated in Zittau.  He was in regular correspondence with a Zittau family and would be paying his first visit to the town in a few weeks time.  Was there anything I would like brought back from there?

The Kulke family in 2008  Left to right – Ingrid, Maja (born 2006), Frau Ingrid Kulke, Kornelia (Konni), Andreas.  Tomas was not yet born but was imminently expected!

I replied, telling him where I had lived and where I had worked while I was a PoW there.  I would very much appreciate post cards or photos of the town.  Thus began my friendship with the remarkable Kulke family.  Daughter Ingrid had a knowledge of English.  She had been Jasper’s correspondent and became mine too.  She translated my original article and my letter into German for her family.  Her mother, another Ingrid, and her brother Andreas, cycled round Zittau and district taking photos of all the places I had remembered.  Frau Kulke also obtained for me a facsimile of the local newspaper Der Zittauer Nachrichten, for 18^th May 1944 – my 23^rd birthday that I had spent in the town.  My wife and I felt that we had become members of the Kulke family.  When Andreas married Kornelia (Konni) we were told all about it – and I received an excited card when their first child, a little girl whom they christened Maja, was born.  During the course of my email correspondence with Ingrid I mentioned that one of the more unusual jobs that I had done while I was working in her home town had been to help transport those heavy boxes of ‘treasure’ from Zittau Museum to the crypt of the ruined monastery on Mount Oybin. To my astonishment this caused great excitement.  It seemed that I had, quite accidentally and inadvertently, played a minor role in the 550 year history of the Zittau Great Lenten Veil (or ‘Fastentuch’) an enormous textile artefact that was, and is, the town’s pride and joy.

                                                     Zittau’s Great Lenten Veil on       display    

During the Middle Ages it had been the practice to screen off the sanctuary and choir of churches with a linen veil during the season of Lent – to impose a spiritual as well as a material fast on the congregation.   Zittau’s Great Lenten Veil was unique in that it had 90 pictures, 45 of scenes from the Old Testament and 45 from the New, painted upon it.  When the war ended it was found to be missing from its home in the Zittau Museum.  Months later it was discovered on Mount Oybin where it had been found by Russian soldiers, cut into four pieces and used to line the walls of an improvised sauna!  It was rescued and, after German reunification, lovingly restored and returned to its home in Zittau.  It is now permanently on display in a controlled atmosphere and lighting in the redundant church of the Holy Cross.  Here it attracts thousands of visitors every year.  No-one in post-war Zittau had known how or when the town’s famous artefact had been transported from the town museum to Oybin – until I sent that email to Ingrid!

Meanwhile my wife had become increasingly reliant upon me and, for two years, I could think of little except her care.  Sadly, on 12^th July 2006, just three months after we had celebrated our Diamond (60 years) Wedding Anniversary, her life came to an end.  It left a gaping and aching space in my life that even today, nearly eight years later, has not wholly healed.

 My interest in Zittau helped to fill that gap. I managed, with the support of my family, to visit Zittau four times between 2006 and 2011. I met Frau Kulke and her family.  Little Maja acquired a young brother Tomas.  They are my ‘honorary niece and nephew’ and I try never to forget them at Christmas and on their birthdays!  I met Dr Volker Dudeck who had been Direktor of Zittau Town Museum. Now retired, he devoted his life to the care and publicising of the Great Lenten Veil.  I visited Mount Oybin and saw the crypt to which I had helped take those cases in 1945.  My last visit (and it will be my final visit I feel sure) was on the occasion of my 90^th birthday (18^th May 2011) and I was accompanied by members of my immediate family.  There were nine of us in all.  We were given a champagne welcome and reception in the Town Hall by Mayor Herr Voigt, there was a special VIP showing of the famous Great Lenten Veil in its permanent home, and a ‘command performance’ by a local piano-accordion orchestra beginning with ‘When the saints come marching in’ as they marched in, followed by the European Anthem Schiller's Ode to Joy, and other folk and light classical music, and concluding with Happy Birthday to you’ performed with great gusto and enthusiasm.  On our last evening in Zittau I hosted a dinner party for the members of my family and all my German friends including Dr Dudeck and his wife and the Mayor of Zittau and his.  It was a birthday never to be forgotten.

            And the event at the Bowling Green on 17^th May this year?   Well, I had had a  birthday celebration lunch last year but I had left it rather late and several folk both in England and in Germany who would have liked to be present  had prior commitments.  I could also feel that my body and mind were wearing out (I can’t think of a better way of putting it!).  It wasn’t being morbid or pessimistic, but just realistic to feel that this year I might have my last opportunity to see some of my friends, particularly those from Germany.

 

Left to right - Frau Julia Dudeck, Dr. Volker Dudeck, me, Maja Kulke

In the end twenty-two of us sat down to that birthday celebration lunch on 17^th May.  I was particularly pleased, and humbled, by the fact that Dr Volker Dudeck of Zittau, a distinguished historian and a ‘cultural senator’ of the Federal State of Saxony had, with his wife Julia, driven 1000 Km. from the most easterly town in Germany to be with me.   I had four totally unexpected guests.  I hadn’t invited them because I hadn’t for one moment thought they’d be able to come – but I was delighted when they did!  They were my ‘honorary nephew and niece’, Tom and Maja, now five and seven respectively, but shortly to be six and eight!  With them were their mum and dad, Konni and Andreas.  Their presence made the event perfect.  There were seven Germans (all originally from Zittau), two Austrians (Ingrid’s god-daughter Jenny and her boy-friend Sebastian), one Belgian (my grandson’s partner Romy) and the rest of us were Brits.  Most, but not all, of the German speakers also spoke English but we were extremely fortunate in having a waitress who could understand and speak German!

Maja and Tom with their mum, Konni Kulke

The lunch, with friendly conversation, a delightful short speech by Jenny and Sebastian and a brief display of folk dancing by Ingrid and her English partner Ray, lasted till 4.30. Then I said farewell to my guests and was driven home for a much-needed rest, while the younger of my guests made their way to the sea front to sample the delights of Clacton’s sandy beaches and lively pier.  It was the first time that Maja and Tom had seen the sea and I’m told that they really enjoyed it. 

 That celebration lunch was, I think, my swan-song.  Even if I survive until this time next year, I will certainly not be capable, physically or mentally, of hosting another similar event. It was a wonderful way to celebrate my 93^rd birthday and I like to think that the friendship that has developed between members of my family and people of Zittau has been a tiny step towards Anglo-German friendship and thus towards world peace

.

 

           

           

           

Week 21 2013

Tendring Topics…….on Line

‘It wasn’t your fault – Someone else was to blame!’

            That’s the message that we all like to hear when catastrophe strikes, whether it affects us alone or a whole community. It’s a principle that makes the fortunes of the ambulance chasing lawyers whose no win/no pay adverts fund day-time commercial tv. When such a catastrophe or a series of catastrophes affect a whole nation, astute politicians make certain that we hear it. They can usually find someone else, a convenient scapegoat, to take the blame.

            Thus it was in Germany in the 1920s and ‘30s. Defeat in World War I had been followed by the world-wide ‘flu epidemic that claimed more victims than had the recent conflict.  The German Empire had collapsed, the Kaiser had abdicated and fled into exile, politically the country was in chaos, and economically in ruin.  There was uncontrolled inflation, widespread unemployment, homelessness and starvation. Folk were totally disillusioned by the apparent impotence of the government and the traditional political parties.

            There was just one rising politician who gave the German people a message of hope.  Germany’s intellectual élite thought that Adolf Hitler, the posturing little Austrian painter with his Charlie Chaplin moustache, was just a joke and his followers nothing but ‘fruitcakes’ (or the German equivalent).  The country’s leading businessmen helped finance him. Their fortunes were threatened by the revolt of the common people. They believed that they could control him and that he and his followers could defeat the socialists and communists whom they saw as their principal enemies.

            Hitler told the German people what they wanted to hear.   They were in no way to blame for the mess in which they found themselves.   Their brave soldiers hadn’t really been defeated in the Great War.   They had been betrayed; stabbed in the back by Germany’s internal enemies – the international financiers, the politicians, and the Jews.  Vote for the NSDAP (the National Socialist German Workers Party or NAZIs).  He and his party’s gallant storm-troopers would curb the financiers, get rid of the parasitic politicians and the Jews, and create a great new German Empire (the Third Reich) that would dominate the world.

            Enough Germans believed that message to give the Nazis a majority in the Reichstag – and, having gained power, they made sure (or so they thought) of securing it ‘for a thousand years’.  The rest is history, in which I and millions of others played tiny and insignificant roles.

            There are parallels between Germany in the 1920s and ‘30s and the UK today.  We haven’t been defeated in war but military adventures in the Middle East have impoverished and weakened us.  Our economic and political situations are nothing like as dire as those of between-the-wars Germany.   They are serious though.   We have narrowly missed an unprecedented ‘triple dip’ recession. Our credit-worthiness has been down-graded. There are two and a half million unemployed, and the number of homeless people sleeping rough in the streets is rising, as is the number of families relying on charity hand-outs from ‘Food Banks’ to keep their families alive..  We are all, except for the very rich, feeling the pinch.

            Most significant of all, we have lost faith in our traditional politicians and in their political parties.  We don’t really think that the present millionaire-friendly government is going to solve Britain’s problems (their continual bleat about the terrible mess they inherited is beginning to wear a little thin as the months and years pass) and we very much doubt if New Labour would do much – or even any – better.  There was a time when Labour’s objectives were pretty clear; the creation of a classless democratic socialist society in which poverty and homelessness had been abolished and the gap between rich and poor narrowed. After ten years of New Labour rule in which the gap between rich and poor widened it has become clear that their only real objective is now much the same as that of their opponents – to get elected and to hang on to power at all costs.

            But now – just as in Germany in the ‘30s - we have an anti-politics political party with a charismatic leader who reaches  above the heads of more conventional politicians to their disillusioned former supporters; and to those who have never before taken any interest in politics.  Nigel Farage, leader of Ukip (United Kingdom Independence Party) has a very English charisma.  He’s that very likeable - and very persuasive – fellow that one might meet in a well-run pub. He is always ready to explain complex economic and political issues in plain language that anyone can understand.  He’s ‘one of us’, enjoying a pint and a fag, and having no time at all for those who claim to know better than we do, how we should live our lives.

            What’s more, he’s found foreign scapegoats who, so he claims, are responsible for all the UK's political and economic ills.   Brussels is the hub of a web of evil called the EU whose sole purpose is to ruin the UK and everything in which we true Brits believe.  No-one, listening to Nigel Farage or any other spokesperson of Ukip would imagine for a moment that the European Union is an organisation of which the United Kingdom is an influential member and that it has a democratically elected Parliament in which there are Ukip members. 

           

The other factor contributing to the UKs downfall is, according to Ukip, the thousands of foreign immigrants who pour into this country from Europe and every other part of the world taking our jobs and our houses and enjoying our social and health services.  Withdraw from the evil EU and stop all immigration, in the first instance for five years (Oh yes, and allow smoking again in pubs, stop building wind farms and scrap all that ‘health and safety’ nonsense)  and all Britain’s problems will be solved.

            I think that, like Hitler, Nigel Farage has found a recipe for electoral success.  I am glad that I am most unlikely to see and experience its outcome, and be able to say, I told you so!’  Being very old isn’t all loss!

‘

PS    I note that Nigel Farage’s magic doesn’t work in Scotland.  The rough reception he received there has led him to the conclusion that Scots Nationalists harbour a hatred of England and all things English.  I think it more likely that their antagonism is directed not at England but at Nigel Farage and his deluded disciples. If I were twenty or thirty years younger I’d be thinking of relocating north of the border!

Some birthdays!

          I have had some somewhat mixed experience of birthdays in the past.  My 20^th birthday, for instance, was spent on guard duty in Montreal Park, Sevenoaks, where 67^th Medium Regiment, R.A. was camped under canvas while waiting for orders to go overseas.

Twentieth birthday – a break from guard duty.

           

My 21^st was spent in the Libyan Desert waiting for Rommel’s Afrikakorps to attack, and the next two, which I prefer to forget, were spent as a PoW in Italy and Germany.  My 24^th birthday (on 18^th May 1945) was a very happy one though I received not a single birthday card or present.  It was the day, just ten days after the end of World War II in Europe, on which I stepped through the front door of my home in Kensington Road, Ipswich after having been overseas for four years and a PoW for three of them.

Regular blog readers will know that my 90^th birthday was a very special one. I went with members of my immediate family to celebrate it in Zittau, the small town in eastern Germany where I had once been a PoW but now had good friends .We were given a civic welcome and a champagne reception by Mayor Arnd Voight, treated to a special performance of a local piano-accordian orchestra and I hosted a celebratory evening meal to which my family and I  invited our German friends and the Mayor and his wife and other local notables.

 90^th birthday; Here is the Piano-accordian orchestra. I am on the left in the shadow. In the background on the right can be seen the Lenten Veil in the history of which I played a tiny part 

           

        As my 92^nd birthday loomed ahead it seemed that there was a distinct possibility (I will put it no stronger) that it might be my last.  I thought that I would like, on my birthday, to thank and express my appreciation to those who have helped and supported me since my wife’s death seven years ago.  There were my two sons and daughters-in-law, Pete and Arlene and Andy and Marilyn.  There were my grandchildren; Chris living and working in Taiwan, Nick, living mostly in Brussels and his Belgian girl-friend Romy, and granddaughter Jo, working as a social worker attached to the Renal Unit of a large Sheffield Hospital.  Then there was Ingrid Zeibig, originally from Zittau but now living in Bayreuth, a good friend  for some ten years, her English partner Ray and her Austrian god-daughter Jenny who spends a good deal of time with her.  There was Heather’s thirteen-years-younger sister Margaret, Dr Volker Dudeck, former Direktor of Zittau's town musem and his wife Julia, and two Clacton friends who had been a great support and help to me. I invited them all to a celebratory lunch at the Bowling Green Restaurant and pub at Weeley a few miles from Clacton, at 1.00 p.m. on Saturday 18^th May. My sister-in-law Margaret and Dr and Mrs Dudeck were already committed elsewhere but the others all accepted. 

            The Bowling Green is planned with a number of semi-private areas, some suitable for a party  like ours – or larger, and others offering a degree of privacy for just two or three.  It was almost as though we had a room and two tables to ourselves, though with no doors for the staff to negotiate between us and the kitchens.

The 'oldies'  -  Fortyish to ninetytwo

      It was a very successful occasion.  There was a wide á la carte menu.  The cooking was excellent and the service efficient and friendly.  Ingrid had arranged for members of her family and others who knew me, to record their birthday good wishes on a tape that we played on a tv screen provided for us.  The few words of Ingrid’s 101 years old grandma and her little nephew (aged 5) and niece (aged 7), were particularly moving.  She had also obtained  a message from Fritz Michel who in 1944 had manned the telephone of the Hitler Jugend headquarters next to our PoW barrack room.  A clandestine swap (of which I don’t think either Hitler or Churchill would have approved!) of some of our jazz records with some of the Hitler Youth members’ German folk and dance records had been arranged!  

Ingrid’s English partner Ray, played a guitar, and Ingrid a recorder to accompany sixteen year old Austrian Jenny singing  Lili Marlene, equally popular with both British and German forces in North Aftrica, and Regen Tropfen, die am dein Fenster klopfen  (raindrops that fall on your window) a popular German Tango of 1935 that had been one of the records we received in exchange from the Hitler Jugend way back in 1944.  It was a wonderful birthday celebration enjoyed equally by the British, Belgian, German and Austrian participants; a great pity some of the Europhobes of Ukip weren’t there to share the experience.!

The young'uns - sweet sixteen to thirtytwo 

                      (younger grandson Nick took the pictures so he doesn't appear on them)

 .

 

             

         

               

Week 2 2013

Tendring Topics.......on Line

Half the Human Race.

          The appalling gang-rape and murder of a young woman medical student, travelling with her fiancé on a public bus in India’s capital has produced both local and international protest. While this outrage was taking place the bus is said to have passed several police check-points.  Subsequent events suggest that the Delhi Police show much more enthusiasm for restraining public demonstrations at this atrocity than for preventing such incidents from taking place

            The blatant way in which this young woman was attacked, tortured, violated and then thrown naked from the bus onto the highway, ensured that it made the headlines world-wide.  Many similar, if less public, outrages against women occur in India and other parts of the world daily and are too common to attract more than local media interest. Only last week the Clacton Gazette reported an attack on a young woman and her attempted rape less than half a mile from my home and outside the primary school attended many years ago by my two sons.  Nor are such attacks on women and girls necessarily of a directly sexual nature.  Only weeks earlier an attempt was made, again on a bus but in Pakistan, to murder a girl in her mid teens for her courageous campaigning for the right of girls to enjoy the same educational opportunities as boys. Fortunately, and almost miraculously, this young lady survived the attack and has been discharged from hospital, though she will have to return for further major surgery.  She lives to fight another day for the right of members of her sex to a proper education.

            There is little doubt that a great many such offences against women and girls spring from a conviction, particularly prevalent in the Middle East, that women are an inferior sex created for no other purpose than the service and entertainment of men.  I once heard a supporter of this attitude explaining on tv that it was quite wrong for westerners to suggest that he and many of his compatriots and co-religionists held women in low regard.   On the contrary, he insisted, the women of their households were regarded as their most precious possessions and – like all precious possessions – were kept away from prying eyes and potential danger.  He was quite unable to see that to regard any fellow human as a possession, however highly prized, was in itself deeply offensive.

             Well-meaning people may hesitate to criticise or condemn such an attitude for fear of showing disrespect for a centuries-old culture and its traditions.  Respect has to be earned.   Past English culture and tradition  included burning heretics alive, bear-baiting and cock-fighting, hanging or transporting people to the colonies for trivial offences, torturing and hanging old women denounced as witches, and husbands  beating their wives, provided that they did so with a stick no thicker than a thumb! ! Although our country can’t yet claim to be completely free of bigotry, prejudice and the myth of male superiority, we may thank God that there were those of both sexes who showed no respect whatsoever for those old cultural traditions and who were prepared to oppose and eventually abolish them. 
 . 

           An extreme example of the effects of an uncompromisingly male-dominated society is illustrated by recently published statistics relating to the position of women in Afghanistan.   87 percent of Afghan women are illiterate, one in every eleven Afghan women dies in childbirth and 70 percent are forced into arranged marriages.   I have no doubt at all that those disgraceful figures will become even worse in the next couple of years following the complete withdrawal of NATO troops.  My advice to Afghan women who have embraced western values is to get out while they are still able to do so!

Towards Anglo-German Understanding

            On my return to Clacton from celebrating my 90^th birthday with my family in Zittau Last year, I revised my previous self-published memoirs ‘Zittau…and I’, corrected a couple of errors and added a section about my birthday visit to the town and the warm welcome that my family and I had received there.   In January 2012 I self-published the result as ‘Zittau…..and I’ (2^nd Edition).  I gave copies to all my British friends and relations and sent copies to the new friends that I had made in Germany.

             Among my German friends ‘Zittau….and I’ proved gratifyingly popular.  The scholarly Dr Volker Dudeck is a distinguished historian, a Cultural Senator of the Federal State of Saxony and the former Direktor (Curator) of Zittau’s town museum.  He now devotes his retirement to the conservation and display of the Zittau Grossen Fastentuch  (Great Lenten Veil).  He was particularly enthusiastic.   He arranged for my booklet to be translated into German, secured the interest and support of the Mayor, (Oberbürgermeister Arnd Voight) and of other members of the Council, and members of the Fellowship of the Zittau Lenten Veils (of which I was made an Honorary Member in 2011), and arranged for the German version to be printed and published for sale in aid of the continued preservation and display of the Great Lenten Veil.

As a result, Meine Begegnungen mit Zittau  (I was told that the English title made no sense when translated word for word into German)  was printed and published as a slim hard-back in December 2012.  I was delighted to receive copies just a week or so before Christmas; a very welcome Christmas Present!  It is printed on high quality paper with an introductory preface by Dr Dudeck. There are two black-and-white illustrations included within the text and. fourteen colour photographs illustrating my recent visits to Zittau form a supplement at the back.   These include a full-page picture of my welcome by Oberbürgermeister Arnd Voight on the occasion of my 90^th birthday!

The books are to be sold in aid of the continued preservation and presentation of Zittau’s Great Lenten Veil which has played an important part in my life during the past six years. Now permanently displayed in Zittau’s Museum/Church of the Holy Cross, it attracts some 30,000 visitors a year!

A pencil drawing of my late wife by grandson Christopher. It is one of the illustrations in the text of Meine Begegnungen mit Zittau.

At about the same time as Meine Begegnungen mit Zittau was being printed I had other heartening news from my good friend Ingrid Zeibig, originally from Zittau but now living and working in Bayreuth in Bavaria, and from Joyce Hartung, born and brought up in Sunderland but now married to a German and also  living in Bayreuth.

            Both are members of the Bayreuth Anglo-German Society and Joyce runs an ‘Improve your English’ course for members.   They have been using both my ‘Zittau and I’  (English version of course) and ‘In the Beginning’, ten monologues written by my late wife and myself that purport to be by witnesses of Jesus Christ’s Nativity and its aftermath, as text books in their English classes. Ingrid and Joyce both tell me that members of the Anglo-German Society have thoroughly enjoyed reading them.

            I like to think that the publication of Meine Begegnungen mit Zittau and the use of my own and my wife’s publications by the Anglo-German Society in Bayreuth are small steps towards greater Anglo-German understanding and are thus tiny steps - the 'minute particulars' commended by William Blake perhaps - toward world peace.

.

           

           

            

Tendring Topics……on Line

Some Pictorial Memories

It was just as I was posting last week’s blog on the internet that my grandson Nick’s photographs from our trip to Zittau arrived by email. They were far better than mine (well, he did get a B.A. Honours degree in photography at Westminster University) and really revived my memories of that very happy and action-packed weekend.

There was the picture of the high-speed train pulling into Frankfurt Airport station where we changed trains on the way home. Its streamlined glass-fronted driver’s cab reminded me that on our outward journey we had been in a carriage just behind the cab. It was possible for us to move forward so as to be just behind the driver, able through the glass windscreen to have a driver’s-eye view of the rail-track ahead.

Then there were the pictures taken on the summit of Mount Oybin: the arched doorway to the crypt through which, in February 1945, we had carried those heavy cases that we now know contained the historic Great Zittau Lenten Veil, and the nave of the monastic church with its soaring stone walls and windows. How on earth, we wondered, had those medieval builders managed to create such a magnificent and beautiful structure at the summit of a mountain? While we were there, concealed loud-speakers brought us the sound of plainsong chant from an invisible monastic choir; very spooky!

The following day had been the celebration of the restoration of the Lenten Veil and tenth anniversary of its installation in the museum/church of the Holy Cross. Speeches in German, most of which neither Nick nor I could understand, were punctuated by captivating performances by a Polish choral group, two violinists, two guitarists and four singers (though the musicians also sang). The lyrics, some in German some in Polish, all so we were told, had their origins in the Bible. The music was arranged by one of the choir members and had been inspired by traditional folk music of Polish, gypsy and Jewish origin. It was just the kind of light-classical/folk music that I, and it was obvious the German audience, enjoyed.

Among the speakers was my friend Dr Volker Dudeck, retired director of the Zittau Museum, who referred to the contribution that ‘the Englishman, Ernest Hall’ had made to the history of the Lenten Veil and how honoured they were that he and his grandson were with them on this occasion!

When the speeches were over, but before we repaired to a posh mayoral reception at the Town Hall, Dr Dudeck presented me with three copies of a glossy, illustrated booklet entitled, in German, ‘Return to Zittau’ by Ernest Hall. It was a German translation of the long, nearly 8,000 words, article that I had written after my visit to Zittau two years earlier, illustrated by local pictures and pictures taken from my Flickr site. It came as a complete, and very pleasant, surprise. The photograph shows my friend Ingrid and myself each holding one of the booklets.

But, of course, the photos also recorded something of the friendship that has developed between my family and the Kulke family of Zittau. There was Ingrid’s little niece Maja, who will be three in September and, at about the same time, will have a new brother or sister. Her mum and dad, Ingrid’s brother and sister-in-law Andreas and Kornelia, and Ingrid and Andreas’ mother Frau Ingrid Kulke who has always been so friendly and hospitable. And, of course, Ingrid herself, who now lives in Bayreuth in Bavaria but who made the long car journey to Zittau to see us.

Nick and I are on the photograph too. My eyes are shut and my mouth open (I hope I wasn’t snoring!) and I appear to be asleep. Perhaps I was! It was at the end of three very busy and tiring days and, as I constantly need to remind myself, I am eighty-eight!

‘Forty years on…….’

No, I wasn’t at either Eton or Harrow. Nor, as far as I know, have I ever met anyone who was. However I have always had an ear for a good lyric and the opening lines of the Harrow School Song have stuck in my mind.

Forty years on, when afar and asunder
Parted are those who are singing today…….

It was forty years ago, on 12th July 1969, that our then-new Quaker Meeting House was officially opened by George Gorman, Secretary of the Quaker Home Service Committee, in effect, though I doubt if its members would have cared for the description, the Quaker home mission organisation.

Clacton Quaker Meeting House as it looked when first opened. We have more recently added an extension to provide a toilet with wheelchair access

I was the Clerk (secretary, chairman and general dogsbody) of the Clacton Quaker Meeting at the time, so I had been deeply involved in the fund raising, the building and furnishing, and the official opening. We had invited members of every Christian tradition to attend. I am not sure if all sent representatives, but many did, and I know that there were, among others, Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Salvationists present. With Clacton Quakers and others from Colchester and Sudbury, the Meeting House was full and those present overflowed into the entrance lobby. Luckily we didn’t, in those days, take ‘health and safety’ quite so seriously as we do today.

The interior of the Quaker Meeting House today. The central table and the stacking chairs were there for the opening but many of the chairs have since been reupholstered.

We didn’t do any singing at the official opening. That’s not the Quaker tradition. However, those who were present on that occasion certainly are scattered ‘afar and asunder’ and many have departed from this world. I was shocked to realize that I would be the only Clacton Quaker who remembered that official opening and who would be able to attend our Meeting for Worship on Sunday morning 12th July and the Area Business Meeting (with Quakers from all over north-east Essex and from Sudbury in Suffolk) in the afternoon. At both these Meetings our Meeting House’s fortieth birthday would be remembered with thanksgiving.

And so it was. The paragraphs above were written before 12th July and it is now the day after. What I haven’t so far mentioned is that that date was not only the 40th Anniversary of the Meeting House’s official opening, but was also the third anniversary of the death of Heather, my wife for sixty years.

The last fifty years of her life had been inextricably intertwined with that of the Quaker Meeting. We had attended Meeting for Worship most Sundays, for the last year or so with Heather in a wheelchair friendly taxi. In the 1960s and ‘70s she had run a successful Quaker Children’s Class. Until disability overcame her in 2004 she had visited the sick and disabled and written long and chatty letters to absent Friends. She had often provided the flowers for the Meeting Room table and served tea for an after-meeting chat. For thirty years she had organised the letting of the rooms at the Meeting House to local organisations, and had made firm friends of some of their secretaries. It was in the Meeting House that we had held meetings of celebration and thanksgiving to mark our silver, ruby, golden and diamond wedding anniversaries. It was in the Meeting House that, three months after our Diamond Wedding Celebration, we held a Memorial Meeting of Worship to give thanks for the Grace of God made evident in Heather’s life. All our F/friends and family were present and I was very pleased that the vicar of St. James’ Anglican Church and the Christ Church URC Church Minister were both there.

At 0ur Golden Wedding celebration at the Quaker Meeting House on 27th April 1996. Heather and I were still in our early '70s (well, I was almost 75) and we were both still pretty fit.

At the Sunday morning Meeting for Worship on 12th July, sitting where Heather and I had so often sat together on Sunday mornings, it was difficult to accept that she was not still sitting there beside me. I rose and spoke about her, as I felt impelled to do, with only the greatest difficulty.

I had promised to talk about Clacton Meeting and the official opening of the Meeting House for about thirty minutes at the end of the afternoon’s business meeting. Remembering how I had felt in the morning I wondered if I would manage to do so. I needn’t have worried. There’s nothing like a Quaker Business Meeting (or I imagine the business meeting of any church!) to dampen the emotions and restore calm to the mind. I managed to give my thirty minute talk and I think that Friends found it acceptable. At least nobody fell asleep; nobody got up and walked out; nobody came quietly up to me later and said, ‘I wish Friend, that you hadn’t felt called upon to say this, that or the other’, and several did thank me.

Afterwards I, and I think everybody else, thoroughly enjoyed the tea that a few untiring and unseen Clacton Friends had provided for us.

It had been, I thought, a good celebration of forty years of Quaker service to God and to the local community, and of the service that Heather had rendered to the Quaker Meeting.