ANDREA SCHOLZ *, 57
(my interviewee is data-conscious and prefers not to be recognized)
My second interview is with Andrea Scholz, a media artist I met in Berlin. We spoke over FaceTime for about an hour last night– she shared her family’s background, their individual beliefs and the journey that propelled them into the new world after the war. Andrea is the same age as Christine but their postwar experiences are distinctively different. I’m lucky to get a glimpse into two very different lives, and learn about this history from multiple angles.
Both Andrea’s parents were artists, who moved the family around a lot. She spent her first 20 years in Stuttgart, West Berlin, and Munich. Unlike Christine who grew up in a rural town, Andrea’s childhood took place entirely in cities. This might explain some of the major differences in perspective and encounters. Nevertheless, there were some similar experiences that reveal significant features of German society and its process of reconciliation.
Racial discourse
From both interviews, I got the sense that the generation of German children who grew up shortly after the war learnt about it from their family, and not so much from formal education. In Andrea’s case, the school she went to completely left out the years between 1933 and 1945. Likewise, race or ethnicity is not something that is really addressed in education or in societal discourse. Christine told me that it felt like “a mystery” when her parents spoke about Jewish people, and Andrea said that when she first saw Orthodox Jews in London at the age of 28, she felt she was seeing people from “outer space”. She said she had no visual reference of Jewish people before that time. I would have thought race or cultural education would be a big part of official reconciliation efforts, but perhaps I am approaching this wearing cultural lens from the US, where race is a very big part of public discourse. Still, I wonder who was on the receiving end of the country’s immense collective guilt? If they know very little of the main victims of the atrocities, who, and what, do they picture in there heads? This is something I have to go more in depth to uncover.
Americans
One major difference between their experience is one Andrea herself noted when she read my interview with Christine. As a kid, Christine admired Americans; they represented youth and freedom, cultural figures that she wanted to emulate. Andrea, on the other hand, described to me her family’s anti-Americanism, something she alluded to their disdain of pop culture. Although she and her family were very poor, they were highly educated and above cornflakes, ketchup, Donald Duck, comics, and chewing gum. She talked about the supremely awkward experience of going to the US and realizing that all the TV shows she grew up watching were American programs dubbed in German– “sure the living rooms were different but I just thought it was TV!”
Where war endures
Another big difference between the two women’s experience was how much thought they gave to the war. Christine talked about the war being a constant weight in everyone’s hearts, while Andrea said she rarely thought about the war; the present was much more interesting, she said. I had asked her if the narrative changed in the different cities she lived in, but she said it wasn’t really a topic she noticed. However– this is the part that left an impression on me– till today, she would get very bad dreams, in which she is fleeing a war scene– “like I have to pack my stuff and I have dreams of being followed or being chased around. So there is some sort of a memory of wartime which is not my memory but somehow I can experience it.” Trauma doesn’t always choose to exist in the conscious mind. Sometimes that's more insidious because while you can block out thoughts, you have no control over your dreams. They're literally your reality.
"The loss of ideology"
There is one last point I wanted to highlight before I’ll let you guys go through our interview transcript. Andrea talked at length about her mother, the only person in her family that was pro-Nazi. These stories have deepened my understanding of grief and ideological change. First, age as a factor– born in 1925, her mother was the Nazi’s prime target. Not her parents, not even those born five years younger, like her father. Campfires, youth camps, the whole propaganda package made her very excited about Hitler. After the war, she wasn’t ready to let go of any illusions of a powerful Third Reich, and she joined the resistance. When she realized it was really over, she came back and started her family. It wasn’t anything she explicitly expressed that revealed her struggle with a new societal order. Andrea said she too wondered about her mother’s “loss of ideology” and could only speculate that it revealed itself in the way she and her sister were raised. She described a “socially aggressive childhood”, where happiness wasn’t pursued, only found when someone else made a mistake– “it’s being mean, lots of shouting, and having a kind of interaction more based on hatred than on love”.
Her mother’s enforced ideological vacuum was soon filled when the family moved to West Berlin. It was 1968– the height of the anti-authorianism fervour. Andrea described the revolutions as “a strong wind that blew away all this Nazi and postwar ideology.” Everyone in the family became “very liberal”, exhilarated by the promises in store; “this is a new age, we have new values, equality of men and women, and everybody should have the same rights– men looking like women and the other way too”.
It was perhaps providence that the denazification project coincided with the intoxifying rebellions against everything that stood in the way of “freedom”. The hazy procedures of reconciliation– guilt, what to do with a broken worldview– became clear in the peace movements. Collective responsibility was enabled by collective effervescence.
(Transcript of Facetime Call, 23rd August 2017)
Kar-men:
Thank you for agreeing to talk to me. This is just something I’ve been thinking about, especially after going to Berlin last month; going to the museums and seeing how different most people’s ideologies are now from that time. It’d be good to talk to someone about what it was like to grow up there right after the war.
Andrea:
Yes, i’m lucky to be of any service.
Kar-men:
Andrea, do you recall the first time you learnt about the war?
Andrea:
Uh no. I cannot say when. I have no recollection. It was part of my upbringing. Because of the family history. And um, I think it was there all the time.
Shall I start with my family history? So I think this can be answered easier. So, my father’s family comes from the Rhineland. He is born 1930. And his father served in WWII, maybe also in WWI. He died, two years after I was born which was in 1960.
Whereas other grandfather, my mother’s father, he is much older so he served in the first world war and during the second he was already so sick so he didn’t serve. He actually died before I was born so the grandfathers were not present because of the war time.
And my uh father and his younger brother, they also died very young, probably because when they were kids they had very bad living conditions. And without uh whatever joy of life.
Kar-men:
Because of the war?
Andrea:
Yes and the post-war. From what I heard, the year following the war was much worse. There was starvation. There was really little food to live on. And my family is rather small and that’s because quite a few uncles died during WWII and another thing– that is linked to my name. My name comes from a cousin of my mother. She lived somewhere in the countryside. And then the Russians were about to invade the area and then this person, the uncle of the cousin of my mother– he killed himself, his wife and his daughter and because my mother liked this cousin very much, she thought, “ok I’ll give her name to one of my daughters.”
Kar-men:
He killed himself and his family before the Russians came, you said?
Andrea:
Yes because the threat of the Russians were considered to be a big threat.
Kar-men:
Right. Most of these stories you heard from your mother and grandmothers?
Andrea:
Yeah. And my father was born in 1930 and it was in early 1945 that he received the draft. It was like the last few months of the war. And everybody who could walk and was male should somehow be drafted and be part of the army. He refused to go there which somehow seemed to have worked. He told this quite often that he decided not to go there.
The Rhine area was mainly of Catholic belief overall the Hitler policy had not so much success in the area.
Kar-men:
Did he have to learn Nazi ideology in school?
Andrea:
Um I guess so. I don’t know much about this. He just said they were not part of the party and they were not interested. Even though the grandfather had to go to war. And also many brothers of my grandmother; yes so a lot of family.
But regarding education in school, this was very different on my mother’s side. She was born in 1925 which made her the perfect target of the Hitler regime. So she was actually quite excited about this new policy and this man with the big charisma. She was quite enthusiastic about this.
Her parents did not support. My grandfather would say "Herr Hitler", instead of just Hitler - the full addressing would express he did not consent. He didn’t agree.
It was from very early on that my mother’s family had to flee from East Prussia so they had been on the run for quite awhile. My grandfather was a scientist so they did not live very long in one place. My father’s side grandfather was a simple worker. My father’s family was settled in the Rhine area since generations.
Kar-men:
They were on the run from the Russians?
Andrea:
The Russians yeah. And the war.
Kar-men:
They were more afraid of the Russians than the US forces and the British?
Andrea:
Yeah my mother’s family from Prussia– this was very far away from the American base. Or the American trenches. Um and um my father’s family side, sure the Americans overall were welcome from somebody that was freed from the Nazi regime but um what I heard from my mother was that American soldiers, they raped my grandmother. And my grandaunt. This was the grandmother from my father’s side.
Kar-men:
So both your parents had different feelings about Hitler and the Nazi ideology. Did they ever talk about how that affected their relationship?
Andrea:
Um no...I don’t think so. Ok my mother said shortly after the war she was interested in joining some resistance group but she gave up on this pretty soon. And she went to live abroad then and it was only when she came back that she met my father who is 5 years younger than her and she said it was because at the time there were hardly any men of her age available because many of them had died at the war. Or were maybe still in prison.
Kar-men:
Could you describe the resistance group?
Andrea:
Oh no I can’t...I think it was just in this period that there were these people that thought “oh no this can’t be it, oh lovely Third Reich” and so on. I’m not sure...I don’t think it led to any serious actions.
Kar-men:
So when the war was over and people started denouncing Nazi ideology, your mother, who was really excited about it growing up, did she ever talk about that experience of changing the way she talked about things or changing her world view?
Andrea:
This is a very crucial point. I’ve been thinking of that too. She didn’t really mention what exactly this loss of ideology led to. However, I got the feeling that me and my sister were brought up in a very aggressive atmosphere. It was not openly aggressive. Not beating or violent but some sort of social aggressiveness. And I thought maybe this was the result.
Kar-men:
Can you give me an example of what you mean by social aggressiveness?
Andrea:
Yeah like sisters toward each other are not nice and friendly and you don’t pursue happiness and it’s only when you notice that someone is making a mistake then you are happy because you think “ok this person loses score. I’m winning.” So it’s really not nice.
I mean things like this you never notice when you are a kid. You only notice when you are very, very grown up. Because when you are a kid everything is normal, what you experience. But it’s actually not normal and you only learn about this much later.
Kar-men:
Yeah I know what you mean. Only when you grow up and especially when you see how other people’s families operate.
Andrea:
Yeah so– not nice. I mean it’s being mean, lots of shouting, and having a kind of interaction more based on hatred than on love.
Kar-men:
And you feel you were influenced by your mother?
Andrea:
I do, I do. I was thinking where it comes from and she had this uh let’s call it loss of ideology. But this is speculation– I don’t know how to describe it. It’s just the way it is.
Kar-men:
Do you recall her ever expressing her allegiance to the Nazi ideology or, because it’s not the norm, intentionally stopping herself?
Andrea:
No. No I mean she never up till today made remarks that sounded like that. Just “at that time it was like this” but never refer to anything. When the family moved to West Berlin in 1968, I mean the war time might have been present in part but it was quickly replaced by this new world of 1960s revolution so our family became very liberal. There were promises. This is the new age, we have new values, equality of men and women, and everybody should have the same rights– men looking like women and the other way so things like this.
Kar-men:
How did your mother feel about those values?
Andrea:
Yeah she loved it. I mean there were books about anti-authoritarian education and I think this was a strong wind that blew away all of this Nazi and postwar ideology.
Kar-men:
Did she ever talk to you about which part of Nazi ideology she liked the most or was most touched by?
Andrea:
No, no. Maybe most touched by some clever man named Hitler? Apart from that, no. We asked her about Jewish people and whether there were any in her class and she evaded those questions. She just said “yes there was one. One day she wasn't there.” She’s not very talkative in that respect.
Kar-men:
So with other family members or in school, how did they address race back then?
Andrea:
You mean when I went to school? It was no topic I must say.
It was Bavaria in the early 70s; in History class we stopped at 1933 and the following year we just went to postwar Germany. I can only remember one session when the teacher told personal stories of her war and postwar time. But I cannot recall the content. So it was virtually not taught at school.
However Munich at the time was about to host the Olympic games so the general mood in the city was to be open-minded, international. There was a very, very positive mood.
Kar-men:
That’s so interesting to me that race was such a big factor in WWII but it’s not part of the reconciliation; there’s no talk about it, even though people do feel a collective guilt. It’s very different in the states. There, race is always in the forefront.
Andrea:
There was no race nor religion. There was no serious enemy. Not even Russians nor the Communist people. Even for my family who was left-wing and liberal. My parents had become progressive and liberal. But yeah none.
Kar-men:
How old were you when you started noticing your family becoming more liberal?
Andrea:
Maybe it was between 8 and 10. It was the Berlin mood. It was very different. It was full of changes and this continued to the beginning of the 70s.
Ok, I remember one story from my grandmother’s side. I think for some reason she had to go to the mayor’s office to wait to get allowance or something. She was deeply impressed that she had to wait with people from other nations, other races.
Kar-men:
When was this, sorry?
Andrea:
It was when my grandmother was a young woman. Maybe before the war. She moved around too many places, I can’t tell you where. But maybe Berlin.This was one moment she thought negatively about race, sitting there with people from other nations, she felt really terrible like “why do i have to sit with these people?”
Kar-men:
Is this your mother’s mother?
Andrea:
Yes.
Kar-men:
So you said your mother was excited about Hitler, not her parents right?
Andrea:
Yeah yeah she was the only one in the family–on the father’s and mother’s side– to be a follower.
Kar-men:
Did she tell you why her parents were against it?
Andrea:
Uh I think it was for humanitarian reasons. That this man was just after increasing his power and influence, and they did not agree with that. They did not have a religious background but they had a strong humanitarian background.
Kar-men:
It must be an age thing as well. Your mother was so young then, learning it in school.
Andrea:
Yes...yes, she was top target. I mean it was like they have organized holiday trips and campfires and singing– it was this whole youth package that was for this awful Nazi ideology.
Kar-men:
Did you notice any propaganda from the Allied forces, aimed at creating collective guilt and a sense of responsibility for Nazi crimes?
Andrea:
I recall that my mother said she saw a film. One kind of denazification film propaganda. She just said it was awful.
Kar-men:
Did it make her feel different towards the ideology?
Andrea:
No, no she didn’t. She just said it was awful and I don't think she really grasped a need for it. She saw it not like some kind of information, but some kind of torture.
Kar-men:
This was on tv..in school..?
Andrea:
No I think this was before the TV era. It was shortly after the war, probably set up in the cinema. So something about the US culture I saw growing up. For my family there were certain products that were highly connected to the US– Donald Duck comics, chewing gum. Simple things that would be detested by my family– “oh no this is not high culture, we believe in high culture.” So there was some kind anti-Americanism around. Not because of the war, but because they were representative of popular culture. My parents didn't like it, they liked upper culture. We didn't have cornflakes and no ketchup; this sort of cheap little products that people would use to cheer up their lives. They were not available in our family.
Kar-men:
Did other families feel the same?
Andrea:
No we were always somehow different I noticed it. Both my parents worked in the creative industry. We were very poor but there was no need for money; we were highly educated. My father started as a graphic designer and changed into PR, to the sales point. My mother used to be a potter, doing pottery, ceramics. So I always felt different when I went to school– the profession of the parents were different, we didn't go on holiday, there were things that were different from my schoolmates’ family.
But one thing– this is interesting to you too. As a student I went to the states and I hired a room with a TV set inside. So each morning after breakfast I would switch on the tv and I was surprised i knew all the TV programs. I had grown up with American TV but I wasn’t aware it was American TV. Sure the living rooms looked different but I just thought it’s TV! It was only when I was a student that I found out that 80 percent of my education via TV was produced by the US!
Kar-men:
Where did you think it was from?
Andrea:
I had no notion. Everything was dubbed. So people spoke German. I had no conception. Just thought this was a different world. I couldn’t give them a source.
Kar-men:
How did you feel about it?
Andrea:
Yeah I felt really awkward. It’s a big influence and I wasn’t aware of the source and this was what puzzled me most, huh.
Kar-men:
In all the different places you lived, did you encounter different narratives of the war or holocaust? From the people you met or in school...
Andrea:
No I can’t recall that it was somehow present. But as I said apart from occasional stories from the family, it was not really a topic. I think present time was so much more interesting and there was the tendency anyway to forget about the past.
Kar-men:
What kind of questions arose in your mind about the war as a little kid?
Andrea:
I’m not sure I had any questions. I mean it was there and ok and there were stories. There were stories about the house being bombed. As a kid I couldn’t say i had much connection to it. Only much much later till now, I occasionally have very, very bad dreams that I have to flee somewhere. Like I have to pack my stuff and i have dreams of being followed or being chased around. So there is some sort of a memory of wartime which is not my memory but somehow I can experience it.
Kar-men:
Are you yourself in the dream or are you someone else like a family member?
Andrea:
No, it’s myself.
Kar-men:
Is the setting familiar, are they things that you’d seen when you were awake like pictures or scenes from stories?
Andrea:
Very often its familiar surroundings yeah.
Kar-men:
Did you talk to your family about it?
Andrea:
Not sure, i talked about it with my sister. I guess i am the only person in the family who had these dreams. When i moved to East berlin in the 1980s, there was a squatters movement and that went along with a lot of street fights and taking part in these events felt to me like wartime. There was the noise, and you had to run away. There was a second squatters movement in Berlin when the war came down but this was in the 80s. At one point i had a nervous breakdown and I realized i couldn't participate in any political action.
Kar-men:
What drew you to it?
Andrea:
The care for equal housing conditions, social housing conditions. It was a time when West Berlin was of high interest for investors. They would tear down old houses and build new stuff.
Kar-men:
Was the Cold War something you thought about growing up?
Andrea:
No, when i was in West Berlin there was the wall and the wall was just there. I didn’t question it.
Kar-men:
Do you remember when you first met a Jewish person?
Andrea:
One encounter when I lived in London one morning; I went around a corner. The synagogue had just finished. There was all the Orthodox Jews coming onto the street. And to me I thought, “Wow I never saw people who looked like that.” I had no optical reference of what Orthodox Jews looked like. And to me it was like they were from outer space. And I thought this was a heavy result of the anti-Jewish policy of the Third Reich and at that point i was already 28 or so. I had no perception, no idea how they looked like.
Kar-men:
That’s so interesting that in History class, there was no mention of them– even tho Jewish people were such a big part of the war.
Andrea:
Yeah yeah as I said i had no perception, no awareness. And I felt ashamed living in a Jewish area and being a German person. I went to the store and there was this Jewish woman and she spoke German to me, like “ah u can speak German!” She was so happy that I could speak German. That made me feel even more guilty.
Kar-men:
So if they didn’t talk about Jewish people in History class, when they taught the Holocaust what did they focus on?
Andrea:
As I said they totally left out the entire the entire years between 33 and 45. I cannot remember I learnt anything in school about that.
Kar-men:
I never knew that. People talk about how Germany did a good job admitting they did wrong, educating their citizens. I never knew they left out that whole part.
Andrea:
Ah maybe this was limited to my generation i don’t know.
Kar-men:
But people knew about it right.
Andrea:
Yeah. My sister started investigating a lot about that and I’ve done some research work. Not from official sources.
Kar-men:
So if they didn’t teach the holocaust in school how did they explain people going on trial, going to jail. And how did that make people feel?
Andrea:
I cannot recall this was a topic at all. History was something that was past, until the Weimar Republic and uh I don't know what was then considered to be contemporary history. From my experience, there was a very fast history on the left-wing terrorists. They were quite present at that time.
Kar-men:
Besides your mom did you meet anyone that followed Nazi ideology?
Andrea:
No i don't think so.
Kar-men
OK, those are all my questions. Thank you Andrea!