Dear Hanna: A Biography of Pacifist Martin J. Zimmer Based on His Letters from the Eastern Front during World War II

PART ONE

The Early Years

CHAPTER ONE

Growing Up — The First World War, 1914–1918

Martin’s experience during the First World War laid the foundation for his becoming a devoted pacifist. Apparently, the following is a quote from a speech by Kaiser Wilhelm II, which he made on August 1, 1914, at the mobilization for the war.

"I acknowledge no longer a [political] party.

I only acknowledge Germans. I will bring you glorious times."

I was born in Basel, Switzerland, on March 19, 1903, in the beer castle brewery Sternenberg where my father was the manager. By 1914, my father was working as a brewery master in Loerrach, Germany, and our family had moved back to the nearby village of Stetten.

It was in the afternoon at 3:30 on July 30, 1914, and we were just leaving the school when we heard pipes and drums in the distance. We ran as fast as we could because it was something special. At an intersection, we saw firemen, and everywhere groups of men and women had gathered. We heard someone shouting: His Majesty Kaiser Wilhelm the Second calls for the first day of mobilization. All reservists have to report immediately to the regional command. The women cried and the men thought that the war would be over in four to six weeks. Everyone was in a high state of excitement.

The German–Swiss border in Stetten was immediately closed, and nobody was allowed to leave the country. The next day, I went to the border. People from France, who had been on vacation or had been visiting relatives or friends in Germany, were totally surprised by the sudden turn of events. They were not allowed to go back home and were interned. Whole families were subjected to this misery on the border. Never before had I seen so many people weep. In the following days, the activities on the border became chaotic as Germans living in Switzerland were ordered to report for military duty. A number of boys, including myself, went with carts to the border and transported suitcases containing the meagre belongings of the young men to the town hall in Loerrach. We made a lot of money from tips. All the young men were sure that the war would soon be over. Some were already tipsy from drinking and some said it would only be a little stroll through France.

Not far from the end of our long property were the railway tracks. For three weeks, up to three times daily, trains packed with soldiers and cannons would pass by. They all came full of enthusiasm from the upper Rhine valley between Basel and Konstanz. The soldiers on the trains sang victoriously, We will slay France and die as valiant heroes. There were flowers stuck in the barrels of the cannons and the rifles. The carriages were festooned with slogans like, "Jeder Stoss ein Franzos, jeder Schuss ein Russ. (This translates as, Every thrust a Frenchmen, every shot a Russian.") As the trains rolled by, we boys yelled hurrah, hurrah with exuberance one can hardly imagine. In the first months, newspapers put out extra editions with announcements of victories and that many thousands of the enemy had been taken prisoner. Then they gave the names of towns and cities that had been conquered. With all this fervour, one could believe the war would be won and be over the next day.

I myself as a youngster was so war-crazy that I wrote to Kaiser Wilhelm II a letter in which I volunteered myself to fight for the fatherland. In school, I told the fellow sitting next to me that I had written to the Kaiser. The fellow immediately raised his hand and told the teacher. The teacher asked me to show him the letter. He took the letter and when he had read it he started to weep and said that with youngsters who loved their fatherland so much, we could not lose the war. He then took the letter and showed it to the other teachers. It was quite a sensation, given the mentality of the time. The main sentence in the letter read: I am 12 years old and request to be called up as a soldier because I want to give my life for my fatherland. The idea of writing to the Kaiser did have positive repercussions that I had not expected. The boys all wanted to be in my good books and gave me their toys, pocket knives, and other things that boys at that time treasured and carried around in their pockets. I didn’t think that a letter could have such an effect.

My brother Karl was born on September 13, 1898, in Loerrach–Stetten. He was five years older than me and he always treated me very well. We collected stamps and when we were in school we traded stamps with the other boys. Later he informed me about the birds and the bees. His relationship with our parents wasn’t a good one. In our home, a feeling of warmth was missing.

At the end of 1914, Karl was sixteen years old and volunteered to attend the non-commissioned officer school in Karlsruhe. After a few months, the school closed, and Karl volunteered to join the fusiliers on horse regiment that was stationed in Karlsruhe. The war didn’t end quickly, and soldiers on horseback became obsolete. They transferred Karl to the infantry, and he underwent basic training. A few weeks later, he was shipped out across the Rhine to the front line near Mulhouse in Alsace. He soon became ill, suffering from dysentery, and was shipped back to a hospital in Loerrach. Since at that time it was against the law for a sixteen-year-old to fight on the front, my grandfather was able to get Karl released from the army. By this time, my dad was in the army. He had been called up in 1915 and, on account of his age, was posted as a guard on a farm in France.

In 1915, there was an appeal in the paper to sign up for war bonds. In the school, they put up a large board in the form of an iron cross. It was painted black and the edges were silver bronze. They used this wooden iron cross to solicit RM10 or RM20 [ten or twenty Reichsmark] gold coins as a sacrifice for the dear Fatherland. The pupil who brought a gold piece was allowed to hammer a shoe nail into the wooden iron cross. Above this wooden replica of an iron cross were letters that read, "Gold gab ich fuer Eisen (I gave gold for iron). There were many parents who had saved a gold piece for a rainy day. Now they were giving it to their children to bring to school, and the children felt like heroes when they were allowed to put a nail into the iron cross in front of their school comrades and say, as they hammered it in, Gold gab ich fuer Eisen."

The months of 1915 were passing by, and the victory did not arrive. We then were also fighting the English and the Russians. The Russians invaded Germany, and there was a great battle at Tannenberg, where the Germans defeated the Russians, and the offensive was halted. With the ensuing German victory at the Masurian Lakes, Russia’s invasion of Germany was totally crushed. However, the war had not been won. What did Kaiser Wilhelm II say at the beginning of the war?

"I acknowledge no longer a [political] party. I only acknowledge Germans.

I will bring you glorious times."

As time passed, these glorious times evolved. There was an oppressive feeling caused by the death notices arriving from the front, the lack of food supplies, the feeling of worse to come, and the doubt that the war could be won. When I entered my eighth grade, I looked for work at a bakery. The baker who hired me had his shop on Main Street near the Adler inn. There, no buns or cakes were baked, but bread made with potatoes — fifty kilograms of potatoes and fifty kilograms of flour. I had enough to do, peeling potatoes and then putting the peeled potatoes through a grinder. I worked there every afternoon for many months and was paid fifty pennies a day, and later, one Mark.

We lived outside the village of Stetten, where my grandfather had a rope-walk [a rope-making business]. My grandfather had customers across the Swiss border in a neighbouring village. Before the war, no one noticed the border. There were large farms in the village that needed his ropes and strings for sheaves. We transported the cordage in a large rack-wagon across the border. In this wagon, my grandfather had built a hidden storage space, which we used to smuggle meat, sausages, and cheese back to Germany. It always felt like a holiday when we returned from Switzerland with a load of food.

In March of 1917, my grandfather could no longer get the hemp necessary to make his string and rope. The hemp he had grown in his garden was not enough by a long shot. Finally, he had no choice but to quit making ropes. In order to make some money, he was forced to take on a factory job when he was seventy years old. Because of his connections with a textile firm, he was able to get a job there in the dye works. At that time he said to me, Martin, I have worked very hard all my life and now in my old age I have to go and work in a factory. Sure, I have a house, but I cannot eat it. In those days, one did not have pensions and everybody had to fight for his or her own survival regardless of how old one was. It was as the saying goes in German, "Vogel friss oder stirb! (Do or die!") Oh, those glorious times promised by Kaiser Wilhelm II turned out to be very bad.

Months went by, and the war was still raging. The sea blockade the English had put up was causing shortages. The food situation went from bad to worse. Everything was rationed. A person was allowed only 100 grams of meat and 100 grams of fat per week. To buy anything one had to have food stamps. We still had enough potatoes; otherwise we would have starved to death. From time to time, my father, who worked on a farm in France, would send us some beans and peas; if he hadn’t, we would have had nothing but potatoes, morning, noon, and night. Even the bread was made from 50 percent potatoes, which made it doughy inside, and one could buy it only with food stamps.

In 1917, I graduated from school. Now when walking through the village, I could feel an oppressive atmosphere. The war didn’t want to end, and soon in every house there was mourning. In one house, the only son of a farmer had been killed in the war. In another house, the father of a family didn’t come home. I could go on to count numerous other situations of this misery.

From the distant mountains of the Vosges across the Rhine River, one could hear the thunder of the cannons throughout the day and night. The thought occurred to me that the French might yet come across the Rhine. From time to time, they flew over with the small double-winged planes of that time, dropping some bombs. There were some people wounded and some killed.

When I graduated from school, there was no opportunity to enter an apprenticeship anywhere. Everybody was working to supply the war machine. I looked for work and went to a foundry that made grenades for the army. The foundry was close to the Swiss border. My job was to use a large iron container filled with special sand and to punch six wooden forms into the sand, each of them one metre long. These forms were used to cast grenades. There were twenty of these large iron containers. Every week, on Fridays, the casting of the grenades was done. A crane was used to pull the wooden forms out of the sand, and then another crane poured the molten metal into the holes. On Monday, when the metal was cold and hard, we extracted the grenades.

I worked there for three weeks and then I quit. This was no work for me.

After this, I went to a nearby town to look for work and found a job at a place where they made lemonade. This job I liked. There, I had to clean bottles and then drive with a horse-drawn cart to the freight depot. The first time I went with the horse, the owner said, Just sit there and hold the reins, the horse knows where to go. This turned out to be true. The next thing I had to do was to drive with the horse to collect empty bottles. I worked there for three months. Soon the owner could no longer get sufficient amounts of sugar, and I worked fewer and fewer hours and eventually had to quit.

Then, I found work in a munitions factory. There I had to drill six holes into a little plate used in mines. I earned fifty Marks in two weeks, which for that time was an awful lot of money, especially for a youngster like me just out of school. There were three shifts; each was eight hours long, and we changed from day to night shifts every so often. I worked there until the spring of 1918.

I wanted to learn a trade, but these were not normal times, and mostly it was the establishments that worked for the military that received orders and were offering employment. I decided on the spot to apply to be an apprentice brewer at a local brewery. Since both my father and brother had worked there, the brewery gladly took me on. I thought that becoming an apprentice brewer would give me an opportunity to work myself up into a better position. The work started at six a.m., and I was put to work in the storage cellar. At 0˚C, it was a cold place. My job was to crawl into large barrels and clean them with a brush and a water hose. The work time was from six in the morning to twelve noon and from two in the afternoon to six in the evening. At the 9:00 break in the morning, I ate my sandwich of potato bread with carrot marmalade that I brought from home. To drink, we were given a glass of cold beer, which I couldn’t drink as I was already freezing from working in the cold cellar.

By now, the food was very bad. We had nothing but potatoes and again potatoes. The cellar master or boss was a friend of my father’s and was happy to have an apprentice. After three months of working, I knew that this could not go on. It was the middle of May. The workplace was just too cold. With no fat in our diet, I felt continuously cold and the work became just unbearable. One day when my mother called me, I just did not get out of bed. Twice somebody from the brewery came to fetch me, but my mother told them, He doesn’t get up when I call him; there is nothing I can do about it.

After a few days, I looked for work again. I did get another job at another brewery. However, this brewery had lost its main customers, who were in Alsace, across the Rhine where the war was raging. So they changed and they manufactured ammunition and were no longer brewing beer. I got the same job as I’d had before. I drilled six holes into a little plate used in mines.

Alsace across the Rhine was now an area where there was heavy fighting going on. Day and night we could hear the thunder of cannons, and I was afraid the battle would reach our town. They had already built fortifications on the Tuellinger Berg, a small mountain ridge that lay between our town and the Rhine. From the bridge across the Wiese River in Stetten, they had installed a funicular railway. The cable cars were to transport ammunition up the hill to the fortifications.

At the brewery, we worked in two shifts. One went from six in the morning till two in the afternoon, and the other from two in the afternoon to ten at night. At this place, I felt better. There were a number of people that I knew from Stetten. When I had the afternoon shift, it would be very dark as I went home at night. There were no lights allowed during this time. We lived a bit outside the village of Stetten. Sometimes as I walked home, the dear moon shone, and I was glad. When it was totally dark, I was afraid walking home. There was an ominous aura in the air. The thunder of the cannons coming across from Alsace fit it perfectly.

After my brother Karl was released in 1915, he went back to work in Switzerland at the Brauerei zum Warteck in Basel (Warteck Brewery). He was hoping the war would end before he was eighteen years old and he would not be called up for the army. His experience in the army had taught him that war wasn’t child’s play. It wasn’t as simple and harmless as when we were children and played soldiers and he was the captain.

But the war went on, and soon Karl reached the age of eighteen and was promptly called up. This time he had to go to Offenburg, a city south of Karlsruhe. There he spent Christmas of 1917 in the barracks, and early in 1918, he was shipped to the front line in France. He was with the 8th Badische Infantry Regiment, 5th Machine-Gun Company, which was deployed in the area of Oise and Aisne and the Marne River. On May 20, 1918, a grenade tore Karl’s legs off, and he died on June 21, 1918. In those days, one didn’t have penicillin, and I believe Karl’s severe wound became gangrenous, causing his death.

At the end of June 1918, when I was told that Karl had been killed in action, I got the first great shock of my young life. He would have been twenty years old in September.

It was so dark and gloomy in our village. Everywhere there was deep sorrow over the loss of a loved one. Many fathers and sons did not return.

More months went by until the armistice in November. We were still producing ammunition and plates for mines. Close to where I worked was the street that led to Rheinfelden, where we could witness the retreating and defeated German army moving along in a miserable state with their horses and wagons. For many days and nights, they came from Alsace across the Rhine to return to their cities, towns, villages, and farms. Four years before, we boys had greeted them with cheers. Now, the church bells were rung for dead soldiers. As the saying goes, "Der Mensch denkt und Gott lenkt. (Man proposes, God disposes.")

CHAPTER TWO

Martin’s Struggles after the War, 1919–1922

After the end of the war, one couldn’t find work anywhere. There was a revolution in Germany. In the big cities, there were bloody battles and there were many dead people in the streets. In Loerrach, near Stetten, they had a large demonstration; people carried placards and yelled, "Nie wieder Krieg! (Never again war!") Yet, only six years later, as early as 1925, the powers that be started to militarize Germany again.

The city of Loerrach provided make-work projects, and people were put to work repairing field and forest roads and city streets as well as building or repairing drainage and sewage infrastructures, etc. First I got a job working in the forest. Later I worked on repairing roads and drains. The hourly pay was one Mark. There was no shortage of money. However, there was practically nothing one could buy, and there was very little and a limited variety of food for sale in stores. This was the glorious time the Kaiser had promised the people when the war started. Again and again, the saying, Man proposes, God disposes comes to my mind. I asked myself, who are the people who are responsible for the war? It must be men who think without a heart.

Very slowly, sports activities were instituted again, and I joined a youth team playing soccer. I went for training in the evenings. On weekends we went to other villages and towns to play soccer.

My closest friend, Alois, who went with me to school, had gone to Freiburg to study theology. However, he soon quit studying theology and returned home to start a bank apprenticeship in Loerrach. During our school years, we had become good friends and saw each other quite often. I was glad that he had come back into this dreary daily life of mine, and I was again able to have somebody with whom I could have an intelligent discussion. Now that the war was over and we were older, we could see things more clearly and freely exchange our thoughts on political and religious matters. We were unhappy with the Church for having blessed the weapons in Germany and in France, and that in each country one prayed in the churches for victory. It occurred to us that there was something wrong with Christians in these countries. War and these actions were contrary to the teachings of Christ. For Christians, no borders should exist and Christians should not kill Christians.

It was during this time that we had heard of a place called Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland, near Basel, which was just across the border, and we went to visit it. The Goetheanum was a pleasant, but very odd-looking building. We went there from time to time and listened to talks on anthroposophy.¹

In time, I also developed my skills at playing soccer, which I enjoyed very much. One day, two of my teammates said, Let’s go to Hausen [a little town farther up the valley of the Wiese River]. They want to establish a soccer club there, and we could play on their team. That was the start of my fondness for the upper valley of the Wiese, its forests and mountains.

The months of the year 1919 were passing by, and I was tired of working on the road. I wanted to learn a trade and asked my father to help me to get at least an apprenticeship in a bakery. One day, he told me to come along, and we went to the senior baker master of Basel, who told us that the bakery Braun at the Spalentor was looking for an apprentice. (Spalentor is an entrance that was part of the old town wall.) We went there, and Mr. Braun said that I could start on September 1.

In this way, I was able to leave the depressing conditions of postwar Germany. It turned out that I was to be living with a pleasant family and that it was a good place to do my apprenticeship. The first three to four months, I had to live at home. Then I got a residence permit and could stay with the Braun family in Basel.

When I worked on road construction, it was a dismal time in Germany. People lived in wretched conditions. Despite this, one tried to make the best of things. Alois and I assembled a little circle of like-minded young men. The regulars in our group were: Theo Engel, who was an aspiring artist (painter); Otto Buehler, who worked in a bank and was studying astrology; Alois; and myself. Then there were others who came occasionally. We met every Monday and Thursday. We took it in turns to propose a theme for discussion and give a short talk about it. We talked about problems and had discussions about life in human society. We came to the conclusion that one ought to be tolerant, to have self-discipline, to be brotherly to one another, and help a friend in need. We wanted to educate ourselves to give our life more inner substance.

To formalize our gatherings, we formed a club and called it Heimorus. We gave everybody a new name and started to meet on Thursdays at Ottili’s home. His father was manager of a bank in town. At our weekly meetings, we talked about democracy, nationalism, war and peace, the after-effects of war, the misery wars brought about, the teachings of Christ, free love, the education of the heart, and so on. All in all, our meetings were very educational and highly interesting. I maintained the relationship with this group even after I had left Basel and worked in Zell im Wiesental (Zell i. W.), where I obtained a job through my soccer team connection.

At that time, there were two groups of people with whom I hung out. There were my soccer teammates and the fellows in the Heimorus club. Of course, there was a difference. The fellows of the Heimorus were friends with whom I could discuss anything intellectual. My teammates were sports comrades.

In 1919, when I began my apprenticeship as a baker, we began to bake very early, and at 10:00 in the morning, I started using a cart to deliver buns and bread to our customers. I soon was on really good terms with the housewives to whom I delivered the fresh bread every day. Away from the depressing misery in Germany after the war, I was happy to be in this pleasant new environment. Mrs. Braun, my boss’s wife, told me that the customers were happy with me and had told her that I was nice and friendly. Well, I was simply happy to be there after so many years of deprivation during the war. The boss was also happy with my work in the bakeshop.

Every Saturday, at about three o’clock in the afternoon, after I had cleaned the bakeshop, I took the four-thirty train up the valley of the Wiese River. The greenery, the forests, and the sports activities were a great recipe for recuperation. To my teammates from Hausen, I was a rich man. My pay of twenty Swiss Francs per month was a lot of money in Germany, where inflation had started to significantly devalue the Mark. To the soccer fans, I was known as the Basler soccer player. I played a good game and enjoyed it.

It was during the year of 1920 that I got the notion to look into my future. I don’t know whether it was curiosity, or what the reason was. At any rate, I made inquiries about where I could find a fortune teller or a clairvoyant, and I was told that in the part of the city called Klein Basel (little Basel) lived a lady who was supposed to be a good fortune teller. One fine day, I got together enough courage and went to see her. She lived on the second floor of a nice house. When I opened the door to her apartment, I stepped into the waiting room. It was a sumptuous salon. This room was beautiful, very beautiful. The easy chairs as well as the walls were covered with red-gold velvet. I stared into the room where five ladies were sitting and was so surprised that I almost closed the door again. However, I took a hold of myself and stepped quickly into the room to sit on the last available chair. While I waited, I heard one lady say to the other: Look at this young man; what does he want to find out? Is there something that bothers him?

I waited, sitting in a beautiful velvet chair until it was my time to see the fortune teller. Finally, I went into the room where at a small table an old lady was sitting. She bade me sit down. Then she mixed the cards of fortune and asked me to cut the cards. After that, she laid out the cards and told me how old I was and that my future wife would have brown eyes and hair, as well as other things that I did not consider to be very important. She spoke in the Basler dialect, and I noticed that as she spoke, she looked at me with a peculiar stare.

At the end of the session, she said: Young man, you will have a very hard, very difficult life until you are over forty years old. From then on, it will improve steadily. She kept looking at me as if she were going to say, Did you have a premonition of this and that’s why you came to see me? I was told later by someone that she was clairvoyant. I thanked her and paid her two Swiss Francs. She on her part was not allowed to ask for money. This would have been against the law.

For a while I was depressed over this news, but as time went on, I forgot all about it. I enjoyed working at the bakery and playing soccer. Years later, in Russia, when I was staying in Roslavl, I recalled that meeting with the clairvoyant and what she had told me.

My mother always thought that playing soccer would put me into bad company. If she had said that about the people who worked with me on road construction, I would have agreed with her. When I was playing in the junior league, I already played goalie.

Even when I was still in school, soccer was my darling sport. I remember playing with an old tennis ball on the playground across the train station. When I came home, there was a fuss, and I was threatened with a beating. That’s how it was in the old days when people believed that beating was a necessary part of raising and educating children.

After I completed my apprenticeship, Mr. Braun got me a job in the Swiss town of Rheinfelden, where I started to work as a trainee pastry chef. During the month of February in 1922, I got a phone call from an official in the Swiss capital, Bern. I was told that in order to work in Switzerland, I had to be a Swiss citizen. The official informed me that since I was born in Basel, I was entitled to become a Swiss citizen. The only obstacle was that in order to obtain the Swiss citizenship, I had to pay 400 Swiss Francs in fees. Having just completed my apprenticeship, I did not have that amount of money. This was a one-time opportunity to become a Swiss citizen, and I wondered where I could get that money. I went home and asked my father to lend me the 400 Swiss Francs. It would have been easy for him; he had plenty of money. I told him that in the event of another war, it would be an advantage to be a Swiss citizen. He rejected my request and said there would not be another war.

Hence, on February 15, 1922, I was forced to return to Loerrach–Stetten, my home in Germany. I was homesick for Basel, the city I had lived in and loved so much. Germany at that time still had not recovered from the First World War, and times were bad. Many people were unemployed. Even as a baker, it was hard to find a job. Today, I still cannot understand my father’s refusal to loan me the 400 Swiss Francs, which was not much money for him.

After I returned from Switzerland, I was again forced to work on road construction, with a hopeless future. Only the contact with my friends from the Heimorus club in Stetten, and with my comrades on the soccer team from the upper valley of the Wiese River, helped to make my life bearable. Life had to go on, and I tried to make the best of a bad situation.

On account of my soccer connections, I was able to cut short my road construction work. I had played soccer with the team from Hausen, and up the river lay the next town, Zell im Wiesental. The town was a bit larger and had a better soccer team. Some people from there had seen me play and enticed me to come and play with them. They offered to find a job for me in return, which they did, at the Dierenbach bakery in Schoenau, a little town farther up the valley. I was to work there until a job in Zell became available, and that’s how I came to live in the upper valley of the Wiese. On Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning, I would take the little narrow-track train from Schoenau to Zell im Wiesental. This half-hour train ride was a real treat for me, which I savoured each time as the train huffed, puffed, and whistled down the valley through the beautiful natural landscape. These were new surroundings . . . forests and mountains to left and right, trees and little meadows . . . fresh scents of pine trees, wildflowers, and cut grass.

My work, too, was much more pleasant. For all this change for the better, I had to thank my soccer teammates. Working in the bakeshop with dough was, for me, preferable to working on the road with a pick and a shovel, surrounded by people who had nothing else in mind than to tell sick, dirty stories and jokes. Among that motley lot any fellow who did not think for himself would be lost. Now I drove a horse-drawn cart on Saturday mornings delivering bread to Utzenfeld, a village up the valley from Schoenau. When the weather was nice, this was a real treat for me. Being respected and esteemed, one becomes a different person.

The team that won the 1922–23 Upper Rhine regional soccer league championship. They played the final game against the team from the city of Freiburg and won 3–1. Martin, the goalie, is sitting with the ball.

The manager of the soccer club in Zell was the local postmaster, who wanted to put together a first-class team; and with that he was successful. I had the feeling that he had been an officer during the war. Usually, I went to Zell on Saturday evening when the club had a meeting.

It was customary to try and hook good players up with a girl in town so that they would stay there. The same thing happened to me, when I played with the team in Hausen. There, it got dangerous. I stayed on the weekend overnight in the same house where a girl who washed our soccer uniforms was living. We often went for a walk, and I took from what she said that she had had several relationships with men. She was a beautiful girl and she was not bad. I wondered whether those girls thought it was normal to sleep around or whether they had been seduced and used by unscrupulous men.

Two teammates with whom I had played in Stetten had also joined the soccer club in Zell. We three, who got on very well with each other, were given the nicknames Sprise, Pilo, and Guge. My nickname was Guge.²

CHAPTER THREE

Falling in Love, 1923–1930

At the end of 1922, the soccer club in Zell started a second soccer team that was to develop players ready for use as replacements in the first team. One day, when I was at the soccer field watching a second team’s training session, I noticed a girl to my right, and I asked her if she was here to observe the new recruits and watch the second team play. She said, Oh no, I am here to watch my two brothers Rudolf and Oskar Engler play. They are here to try out and see if they like it and if they have a talent for the game. However, Mr. Guge, I do go frequently with my brothers to watch the first team play.

Well, I laughed, and she asked me why I was laughing. I told her that Guge was my nickname and that my real name was Martin Zimmer. She apologized, and I said, Most people here only know me as Guge. I am used to people calling me by that name. I looked at her, she looked at me, and then I asked her, Do you mind if I walk you home after the game?

She answered, If you like, I don’t mind.

On the way to her home, she told me that her name was Johanna Engler. She mentioned that she was singing in the church choir and that she had a girlfriend whose boyfriend, Christian, was playing soccer with her brothers on the second team. The girl was discreet and was very much interested in singing, and I liked everything about her. So I asked her out for a date. I suggested I meet her next Sunday after the game and asked her where we should meet. She agreed to the date and told me that she would come to the clubhouse with her brother Rudolf.

We kept talking in front of her house. We talked about the war years, and I told her that I had lost my brother in the war when he was nineteen years old, the same age as I was now. She told me that her dear brother Theodor was killed in the war, too, and that when the bad news arrived she saw her mother and father embrace each other and cry. We talked about the stupidity and futility of the war, and the fact that Christians killed each other, etc. The time went fast. My train was leaving in an hour, and I said goodbye, reminding her of our date the following Sunday.

During the following weeks, I asked her to go out with me on more dates, and we would go on long walks. One day, we were on the way back to town, but still in the forest, when I took her in my arms and hugged her. We didn’t say a word, but looked into each other’s eyes. Our deep feeling for each other spoke without words. Afterwards, we walked back to the train station and took leave as good friends. We both felt drawn to each other. There was that wonderful feeling of a certain kind, the feeling of belonging together. In this frame of mind, I asked her if I could call her Hanna, and she said, I don’t mind. Then I boarded the train and waved goodbye to my dear Hanna.

During one of our walks, she told me that at Christmas, the choral society was staging a musical in the dancehall of the Kranz (Wreath) Inn, and that she was engaged to sing the lead soprano role and that Christian had the tenor role. Christian was by now engaged to Elsa, her girlfriend. The name of the musical was O Strassburg. This was the title of a well-known song. Hanna told me that the musical is about two lovers and that her partner had the role of a deserter who was being executed. I said, Well, why choose such a sad story? She explained that the musical director of the choir had chosen it because of the beautiful melodies and rhymes of the songs.

In November, it was snowing heavily, and on account of the weather, we couldn’t play soccer. It was also too cold and miserable outside to go for a walk. So we went to the Café Schuermeier, which later became Café Engler, owned by Rudolf Engler, Hanna’s brother. Mr. Schuermeier was a soccer enthusiast who frequently would stand behind my net. When the opposing team was threatening to score a goal, he would yell at me, Guge, hold that ball and I will give you free coffee. He usually didn’t charge me for coffee when I visited his café.

Soon the place was full of teammates and fans, and there were lively conversations. I told Hanna that I was not able to make it for Christmas because my parents and two sisters wanted me to stay home. However, on Boxing Day, I would come to visit her, and I assumed that the weather would be bad enough so that we wouldn’t have a game.

She said, But I hope you will see me a few times between now and Christmas, too. And I said, Of course. Then she told me that the musical had been postponed till January because some cast members were ill. When we parted at the train station, she said, Martin, we have been going out now with each other for three months and you have not given me a kiss during all that time. You do like me?

I answered, You know, Hanna, you are such a young girl [eighteen] and I have not grown up yet. In this we have to be very careful, but if you want, I shall kiss you. I really don’t know you; and you, too, don’t know me. You like me and I like you. I have those feelings in my heart that I never experienced before. I am so happy, but you and I must not experience a disappointment, and when we say we like each other, which is true, it has to mean, Hanna, that we must like each other our whole life. Do you remember when we sat in the forest on that big stone? Neither of us spoke a word and we looked at each other again and again. We didn’t know what to talk about and when you kept looking up at me were you afraid?

She said, Well, one has a peculiar feeling when one goes walking in the forest alone with a man for the first time, although I did hold you to be an honourable young man.

The weeks went by, and soon January arrived. On account of the weather, we could not play soccer. However, I had another reason to go to Zell.

The Sunday arrived when the musical was staged, which was now called Roses Blossom on the Heather Grave. Hanna had a lead role, and I went to see the musical. When it was over, there was long, boisterous applause; and when Hanna came down from the stage to sit with me, I was happy and proud of my girl. A number of people looked at me as if to say, Now, what do you think of that? Hanna had given a good, very good performance.

I asked her, Did you think of me, think of losing me, when you cried on stage?

She said, Martin, I have to put myself into such a situation in order to express those feelings, and that is only possible if one thinks of somebody very near and dear. She continued, Before I left the stage, Mr. Schneider told me that in the future we would put on more musicals. This made me happy, for I love to sing.

I told her that singing was a very nice hobby. The evening went by joyfully. Those were happy hours. At midnight, I escorted my dear girl home. I took her into my arms and with a happy heart kissed her. It was a beautiful night.

Hanna and Martin in Zell i. W., 1928.

[My father did not write much about the period from 1924 to 1930. It was during this time that he and Hanna, my mother, went out into the world to work and learn how to operate a café and pastry shop, which they opened in 1930.

Martin did leave behind a file with pictures, certificates, and some comments about places where he had worked from 1924 to 1930 as a journeyman to become eventually a master pastry chef and confectioner.]

For some time, I had been looking for work at a café and pastry business. In 1925, I found a place in Hanau am Main. When I presented myself at the Court Pastry Shop Pannot, the chef took me on as a pastry chef trainee and told me that I was to start in three days. He also informed me that I had to stay with him for two years at a monthly salary of RM 40, and then he would certify that I was a journeyman pastry chef. I accepted the conditions and started to work three days later.

My workday started at 6:00 a.m. and ended at 6:00 p.m. We workers didn’t have a break at noon and ate at a table in the bakeshop while the machines were running. Either on Sunday or on Monday, we had a half day off. In the morning, I was assigned to make yeast, short and puff pastry, and sweet biscuits. In the afternoon, I had to make flan cakes, English cakes, etc. For the start of my training, this work gave me a good grounding. The Pannot Café was a first-class establishment and that was how the work was conducted, too.

The working environment was cool to lukewarm. The chef, in contrast to me, was a military type, whereas I liked to work co-operatively. During the time I worked there, I resigned several times, and he fired me a number of times. The first time I resigned and asked him for my papers, he said, Are you crazy? and slowly I got to know him. In time, I learned that the Chamber of Commerce didn’t allow him to have apprentices anymore because he used to beat them up. I told myself, If you want to learn something then stick it out; and that way, the first year passed and I had become very proficient in all the work done in the bakeshop.

One day the supervising journeyman in our shop had made a fruit flan with a shortcake base that had a crack in the middle that showed only at the edge; otherwise the cake was perfectly fine. He placed the fruit flan on a glass plate with a short pedestal. No sooner was it put on the store counter, when the chef came into the bakeshop and yelled, Is this supposed to be a fruit flan? and then threw the plate with all his might on the tiled floor. With glass splinters flying all around, I had to jump out of the way to avoid them. My colleague’s face became white. He hadn’t experienced this kind of behaviour anywhere he had worked before, and he resigned immediately. He hadn’t been a bad worker, and he and I got along well. Now the chef told me to take over the fellow’s position as lead journeyman in the shop. By this time I was accomplished in doing any job that came along, and now I had to help the new employees to get used to how we worked because we had a continuous turnover of workers at this place.

In the morning, the chef brought the book to me that listed what had to be done that day. When the chef had a dispute with me or one of my colleagues, I asked him to come with me into the next room, because I didn’t want to argue with him in front of my colleagues. I wanted peace and harmony in the bakeshop so as to produce first-class material. I also wanted to reduce the turnover of workers because when a colleague became upset and left, the others had to pick up his work until a new person was hired.

From time to time, I thought back to the incident when he threw the fruit flan on the floor, and I couldn’t help thinking that he did that because by then I was able to replace the fellow whom he had to pay RM 120 while he had to pay me only RM 40. If he did it because of the money, it would have been a despicable act. It was only during the last four months that he finally raised my wage to RM 60. For Christmas 1926 he gave me some cloth for a suit, but I had expected some money because I was going to have two weeks of vacation in January. What could I do with that cloth, which I assumed had been given to him by someone?

During the fourteen days I was off, I took the train home and was happy to see Hanna again. It had already been seven months since Hanna had quit her job in Hanau, and soon my time there was coming to an end, too. The thought of soon leaving the cool environment at Café Pannot and being a certified pastry chef journeyman, made me happy.

[For the following three years, Martin worked as a journeyman at numerous establishments to broaden his skills. First he went to work at Café Riemenschneider in Bad Pyrmont. The spa town is located near Hanover, in lower Saxony. Martin writes that the café and the outside were beautiful, but the working and living environment was terrible.]