One Man’S Time

ONE MAN’S TIME

A MEMOIR

Copyright © 2015 Hermann Strasser.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-5983-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-5985-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-5984-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015902064

iUniverse rev. date: 02/04/2015

Contents

Preface

Book 1 My Parents and Childhood

Book 2 My Wartime

Book 3 Postwar

Preface

In December 2003, my daughter, Susi, gave me a computer for Christmas. My first thought was, Maybe I’m a little old for this, but that was soon eliminated. Before long my children were telling me to write something about my exciting life.

After I learned how to type on a computer, the idea of writing about my past started to grow on me. I began to realize the depth of all that I had saved in my old brain. It would be terrible if all that information were lost on my death. So I began to capture it here, using the emotional force that the mind enables through writing. This is written with thoughts of my descendants but also as a review of my life. These pages explore three generations, so it is also a chronicle.

Book 1

My Parents and Childhood

As a child, I received a postcard-sized photo from somewhere of my mother in traditional Bavarian dress. Because of this, I know that she was a pretty woman and, like me, attached to her homeland.

I never knew my dear parents, so I could never know where I came from. I do not know what genes and diseases I could have inherited from my mother and father.

Unfortunately, my mother died of pneumonia when she was thirty-six. Oddly enough, her mother had also died at thirty-six, in 1913, while on the lake in Waging. My grandmother was born on December 31, 1876, in Eberting, part of the community of Friedolfing, and went to Waging in 1903, where she married Ludwig Hüttinger. In July 2004, I went to the Waging registry office and held the marriage certificate from May 29, 1903. The parents of my grandparents, my great-grandparents, were also listed on the certificate, Simon and Helene Straßer. Both were already dead by the time my grandmother married. When I calculate it, they were at least twenty years old at the birth of my grandmother in 1876, so I know that my family tree reaches back to 1850.

My mother gave word of her departure to Heufeld from Bad Aibling on February 2, 1927. (Because Heufeld was later combined with Bruckmühl, I still have not had an answer from the registry.) She married again after a divorce, changed her name to Diepold, and had more children. I managed to find that information out from neighbors and acquaintances. My foster mother searched for information for a year to no avail; she was never able to meet my mother herself. So far I have not been able to find out where she last lived and died.

My existence began when my mother gave birth. I saw the original birth certificate in Tittmoning.

My mother, Genofeva Strasser, was born in Tittmoning in house number seventy on January 26, 1896, at six in the afternoon. Hebamme Franziska Spitzauer was the witness.

An additional notice from February 21, 1896, in Tittmoning: After a statement from the kingly county court of Tittmoning on February 20, 1896, the protocol of the above court names and acknowledges the unwed elderly Bräuknecht Georg Schwangler of Watzing as father of the child known as Genofeva, together with the guardian Kammacher Konrad Bayer Jr.

There are a number of documents saying the same sort of thing. The records reveal that the mother of my mother, my grandmother, was also named Genoveva Strasser and was in service to Kammacher Konrad Bayer. My grandmother was born on December 31, 1876, in Ebering in Fridolfing.

My mother was employed by Peter Wildgruber, a shoemaker in Bernau who was named my godparent on August 9, 1919. In 1995 I went to Bernau and got to know Peter Wildgruber’s daughter, and I asked her if she had found any information from the baptism. She told me that she didn’t have any information. She only knew that her father was married in 1919. Peter Wildgruber was my mother’s unofficial caregiver, and my mother was given lodging in Bernau.

My mother’s husband, Mr. Eugen Steiert, was military. They married during the war, in 1916. They were living separately at that time. My mother was a waitress. Her home address was 24 Rosenheimer Street, Kolbermoor. She worked with quite a few people, and among them was probably my father. My whole life I have asked myself what kind of man he was. How did he look? She took the secret to her grave.

To understand that, one must understand the turbulent times back then. The time of my conception was fall, 1918. The First World War was lost and over. At the large railway junction in Rosenheim, many troops were being discharged, deloused, and disbanded between Kolbermoor and Rosenheim. There was a large marshaling yard with a repair shop called Sanierung. Over the years the area had developed a bad reputation because all kinds of vermin stayed there. Our parents warned us about the area, but we kids from the Karolinen levels sometimes made patrols of the area anyway, to see what was different about it. It was a gathering place for people who did not want to or could not pay rent. Some lived in arranged railway cars. Sometimes we found thrown-away or destroyed military weapons. After World War II, the area was built into an industrial park.

The regent prince was in flight before the revolution. The communist government council fought against the white freedom corps that wanted to save us from the communists. Many innocent people were stood up against the wall and shot. Most of the soldiers had no future or goals, and some were wounded. After my mother’s husband, Eugen Steiert, was dismissed from his position as corporal, he needed to find a new path.

After my mother found out, to her horror, that she was pregnant, she tried to hide her situation. She continued her work as a waitress. This was, of course, done where no one knew her. Apparently she tried some extreme measures to get out of her situation. (A friendly dentist surmised this fifty years later in Bayreuth. The strong poison that should have ended the pregnancy deformed the roof of my mouth.) As an embryo, I had already had to fight for my life. After the secret abortion failed, she chose Bernau as the village for the secret birth.

(This year, 2005, I am going to investigate further why the town of Kolbermoor absorbed the cost of caring for me. I have a handwritten note dated 1921 in my possession, which states that the baker, Spiegel, took custody of me. There may also be records in Kolbermoor of the school costs and books that the community paid for.)

My Birth Certificate from Bernau on the Chiem Lake

Before the undersigned registrar appeared today the midwife Katharina Eggers, a resident of house number 80, Bernau, showed that a child was born on Friday, August 8, 1919, at four fifteen in the morning to the housekeeper Genoveva Steiert, born Strasser, wife to Rosenheim’s living mechanic, Eugen Steiert, both of the Catholic religion and living in house 4 ½, Bernau. The child was male and was called Hermann.

The midwife, Katharina Eggers, was in attendance.

Representing the registrar

Engelländer 2.Mayor

Added on December 24, 1921

The following report is a message from the district court of Bad Aibling.

The final verdict of the Traunstein district court on February 21, 1921, has determined that the child born Hermann Steiert on August 8, 1919, was an illegitimate child of Genoveva Steiert, born Strasser, and is therefore named Hermann Strasser.

Bernau, December 14, 1921

The Registrar

J. W. Engelländer

Just one day after my birth I was given the name Hermann. My godfather was the shoemaker Peter Wildgruber. I wonder where they got the name Hermann, such a rare name in Bavaria? Is that a reference to my father?

Later my foster mother, who I called Mama, tried to the best of her ability to shed some light onto my dark past. When she found out that my mother received 4,000 Reichsmarks in hush money, she was convinced that I must be descended from a famous person. At the time, a person could buy a house with 4,000 Reichsmarks. Whoever could spend that much money for the sake of his reputation must have been a politician or a famous person.

While she was investigating, Mama also found out that my mother asked that I be given to the mortuary woman right after I was born, a solitary woman who washed bodies and was shunned by the world. It was hard to tell by this that she had a foster child. My mother wanted to be relieved of me as soon as possible. There could have been worse possibilities for getting rid of me. From this I conclude that she must have been a good person.

My mother wanted to be relieved of me as soon as possible with the hope that she could still save her marriage with Eugen Steiert. After she got rid of me, she moved to an unknown place. Sometime later she must have had some remorse, because according to a document she later brought me to a Munich children’s home. She had to pay 130 Reichsmarks per month there. At the time, that was a lot of money. At the time a person earned around 200 Reichsmarks in pay.

From Munich I was brought as a foster child to the large family of the carpenter Hageneder on 24 Rosenheim Street. I had my first memories of life there. This was where I got too little to eat and got sand. They were small discs with the taste of nuts. After Mrs. Hagender found out that her brother wasn’t my father, she didn’t want to have me anymore.

So the community of Kolbermoor gave me to another large family that lived in a house near a railway embankment. The wife got up in the early mornings and would deliver the newspapers, despite the fact that she had six children. The community paid 130 DM in foster money for me. I have one memory of that house: On St. Nicolas Day, holy St. Nicolas came with his servant, rattling chains, carrying a bag with the foot of a bad kid sticking out of it. The living room was full of kids; when he read our sins to us from a big book, I hid under the table. I was happy that he was gracious and gave every kid a gingerbread St. Nicolas cookie at the end. It turned out the kid in the sack was a scarecrow.

In the winter of 1923, my future foster mother found me at the railway embankment tobogganing. She told me later that I was half-naked, had lost a stocking, and had a strong cold. Snot ran down from my nose. That shocked her so much that she went right to the community to apply to be my foster mother. She didn’t have any kids of her own, and she had a huge wish to have me as her child. When I came to the Warter family, I was four years old. It was 1923.

Mama, Therese Warter

The Warters had married in 1919, the year I was born. Childless, they lived in a beautiful farmhouse on the Huberberg on the outskirts of the town of Kolbermoor. The house belonged to Papa’s oldest brother; they had a two-room apartment with a balcony. We had a beautiful view of the mountains from the balcony. Papa’s brother was a farmer and a brilliant innovator. He could carve and paint portraits and pictures, and he was a specialist at processing fruit trees. He was one of the first people who had shot at hail clouds with homemade rockets. He was very well-rounded.

After Mama brought me into the home, I was generally brought back to speed. In the bathtub I was scrubbed and deloused from head to toe; my hair was cut and combed in a pageboy style. After that I was dressed in knee pants, a sweater, long stockings, and new shoes. Mama was very relieved with my new look and took me to get photographed to record this new start in my life. (See photo.)

Mama’s sixty-year-old mother, Grandmother Grabmeyer from Munich, was with the Warters. She came on holidays and important days to visit and always brought presents from the big city. Mama’s youngest brother, Peter, a journeyman working as a carpenter, had traveled all over Germany by foot for work and had had many adventures. He told me a lot about it.

Papa had a good position in the Kolbermoor in the farming