European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

On Sundays we sometimes went on excursions into the proximity of Berlin.

You just felt secure there in the circle of peers under the supervision of older people,

who pointed out a lot of things when we were walking

and that was something that impressed us especially.

The labourer sports movement had already been founded in the previous century

as a counter organisation to the civil sports movement that went more the chauvinistic way.

Apprenticeship, Inflation

I can’t remember when my father came back home.

When soldiers, who were demobbed, came through Tempelhof,

I always used to run there but I never saw my father with them.

One thing that just belongs to this time: 1923, the inflation.

My sister used to stand in front of the baker’s shop, me at the butcher’s

and we used to wait until my father came back from work and he had a backpack full of money.

Then he used to give us bundles of it and with them we paid for the bread or a 250 g of sausage or a 500 g of meat.

The money was worthless the next day.

During this time many sank into poverty.

A lot of people had paid war bonds

and they became invalid – were not worth anything.

So, whoever had no material goods, lost everything.

1927 I left school.