If my childhood was a happy one, what made me so angry? And if unhappy, why was it filled with such fun and laughter? To a child, poverty and deprivation, if not excessive, are hardly the major reasons for misery. Lack of love and understanding is a different matter. The heart always remembers the hurt of a careless or unspoken word. All those denials, those you mustn’t, oughtn’t, shouldn’t, were the daily red flags that kept the child from experiencing its longed-for freedom.

Every childhood is, at least in part, a prison cell. Perhaps by stamping my foot or raising my voice in hot-tempered vexation I mean to rattle its iron bars.

“I’m not going to!”

“Yes, you are.”

“I hate it! I hate it!”

I can no longer see what the fuss is about. I just see my unbridled rebellion. Yet the  rattling only makes matters  worse: I am sent  from  the table,  or  wherever I  am,   to

stand in the corner with my face to the wall. It happens again and again.

At first, I cry bitterly. After a few times I venture to cover my face with my hands and turn back to look at the grownups through my fingers— to see them chuckle at my humiliation. This makes me furious. My pain is their entertainment. Even Helmi enjoys the spectacle. This hurts more than anything, for Helmi, whose misdeeds are far worse than mine, has threatened to kill me if I ever squeal on him. Doesn’t he know that nothing is further from my mind? I think he has forgotten the extent of my devotion. The very thought that I might be capable of such betrayal offends me deeply. And now he is stabbing me in the back by ganging up on me with the adults.

            To my parents’ still greater amusement I soon start leaving the dinner table of my own accord, and head for the wall in the corner whenever I feel naughty. If they take me for a fool I learn to play their game-- instinctively turning my bad behavior into a clown act. It pays off and lightens my burden. So I win in the end.

It seems to be an unwritten rule for German parents in general, and for Chemnitzers in particular, not to praise their children. My parents firmly believe that any approval will make us conceited. As a result we don’t think that we are lovable or could do anything right. I suspect that Vati has a similar reason for never telling me that he loves me. He may care for his children, but is unable to express his feelings.

More often than not, we children find relief in our own world, in the streets, backyards and rooms of cousins and friends, where adults are excluded and have no power over us. We find freedom in our comradeship and the laughter gleaned from our elders’ peculiar mannerisms. The way an uncle talks or clears his throat or scratches himself turns into a source of endless imitations for Hilla and me. Cousin Hilla, my other best friend, one year older than I, is Uncle Fritz’s daughter, the second of three children. Next to my serious, best buddy Peter, she is comic relief. This skinny girl with her pretty face and long, slender neck makes me feel almost too solid, especially since Uncle Fritz likes to tease me by calling me chubby. I tell him to look at his older daughter, Hanna, who is truly plump, hoping to convince him that I embody the golden mean among the three of us. I always make sure that Hanna isn’t around when I say it, for I’m fond of Hanna and don’t want to hurt her.

Hilla and I call each other Pieps and Pummel. She’s Pummel, the fat one, and I’m Pieps, the little bird. We follow grandmother Hennerche and, using her enormous derrière as a special target for our tomfoolery, push out our behinds and wiggle them exactly the way she does.

Each October the entire family assembles in Grossmutti’s lofty apartment to celebrate her birthday. We grandchildren, all thirteen of us, are relegated to a room at the end of a long narrow hall, while the adults gather in the elegant ebony living room furnished with a black shining grand piano, and green velvet-covered upholstered sofas and chairs. Sometimes Hilla and I manage to slip in unseen. We hide under the large food-laden table and, concealed by the white linen cloth, listen to the adults’ conversation. After the high tea, or the highest tea with its infinite goodies, we children are to play some musical excerpt prepared in Grossmutti’s honor, or recite a poem. The smallest ones-- Reni, Ruth, and Hilla’s young brother Franz-- get away with a few verses, while Hanna and Hilla have to perform a Beethoven Sonata for cello and piano. (Years later, cousin Reni told me that she would confuse Beethoven with Friedhoven-- Friedhof means cemetery-- and was therefore convinced that Friedhoven’s compositions had something to do with funerals and mourners). Tonight, Hanna slips down half a tone, making Hilla lose her bearings; the sisters get angry and fight until Aunt Hilde takes over to restore the harmony. Aunt Hilde, married to one of my uncles, is not only my, but Hilla’s, Reni’s and who knows who else’s, piano teacher. She is stiff and methodical and we children dread those lessons. “If anyone ever asks you who your teacher was,” she tells students without talent or perseverance, “don’t mention my name.”

I hate every moment of those forced recitals, and when my turn comes to put my trembling hands on the piano keys I wish for the parquet floor to open beneath me and make me disappear. Stuffed with cake and stage fright, I feel lost under the critical gazes of all those aunts and uncles until Hennerche comes to my rescue by sitting down beside me and praising my effort.

With ten out of her thirteen grandchildren playing different instruments and improving each year, Hennerche’s musical salon is filled with the sounds of a fine youth orchestra, causing our grandmother to weep with joy. Looking back, I know that she feels partly responsible for the accomplishments of her offsprings’ offspring. This has somewhat compensated for an aborted opera career.

Most of our friends are part of the family, and all other friends know our extended family, so that the circle is quite large. Since early childhood we cousins and friends play and fight with each other, first in the sandbox and later all over the Kassberg.

Sometimes Aunt Emmy and cousins Werner and Helmut take me along to Langhennersdorf, a village near Chemnitz, where Uncle Martin owns a silver fox farm, and where they spend weekends in the summer. Like all fathers buried in their work, my uncle is never there. Aunt Emmy is an extremely tall and pretty lady. She always treats me as a special guest. The boys play with me until lunch, then their mother surprises us with a treat of homemade strawberry ice cream. “Blow on it!” she tells me, “it’s awfully hot!” and we children follow her example and blow hard to cool it off.

Aunt Emmy loves children and really talks to us. I’ve heard people say that she and our uncle are a most handsome, ideally suited couple. She and Mutti are close friends. I hear Emmy complain to her that Uncle Martin constantly brings her the most stunning evening gowns she neither wants nor needs, but won’t give her the money to buy the simple clothes she likes. I understand that evening gowns must have something to do with being “ideally suited.”

A year later Aunt Emmy leaves Uncle Martin for Dr. Glaser. Dr. Glaser wears glasses. He is neither tall nor handsome. He’s an interesting, brilliant man, Mutti explains to Hennerche who has come to our house in shock: a prominent physician, socialist and city councilor, who has so much more in common with Emmy than Uncle Martin; and he cares for her deeply. Seeing that Mutti is on Emmy’s side, my grandmother shakes her head in dismay.

“Martin is my brother, but you must understand-- he didn’t treat her right,” Mutti defends her position. She is particularly sorry for the boys who would much rather live with their mother. Martin only lets them visit on weekends and insists that Emmy and Glaser get married, or he won’t let Helmut and Werner see her at all.

“That’s terrible! To make those poor children suffer because….”I’ll talk to him,” Hennerche says. I can tell that she’s coming over to our, well, Mutti’s, side.

“I’m afraid it won’t do any good. You know how rigid he is.”

They are talking in front of me, probably thinking that I don’t understand what they are saying. But now it’s my turn to be shocked. Werner is just seven, six months younger than I. Suppose Vati wouldn’t let us see Mutti? I can’t even think of it.

At age five I start to read and begin devouring fairy tales and childrens’ books. “Struwelpeter,” (Slovenly Peter) and “Max and Moritz” by Wilhelm Busch lie already in the past. Funny and good as those stories may be, they all have a cruel streak. Now the brother Grimm’s gruesome stories fill me with dread and cause me to look under my bed every night. I make sure that there’s no bad man-- like the one who meant to kill Mutti in my dream. On hot nights I dare not let a naked foot dangle from my cover, afraid the burglar might grab and squeeze it. When I’m naughty, Liba or some other adult threatens me with the boogey man. Soon the boogey man waits for me around every corner. I quickly pull the chain in the bathroom and run out, so the scary witch who jumps from the roaring fountain in the toilet bowl won’t get me into her claws.

I don’t know if Hilla experiences the same terror. Though always full of mischief, she and I must be on our best behavior when Uncle Fritz and Aunt Margot take us for walks in City Park. Strolling in velvet dresses with white embroidered collars, white shoes and stockings, we must walk ahead of her parents and curtsy each time one of Uncle Fritz’s dignified Chemnitz clients greets us politely on passing. Sometimes they stop near the Rose Garden to shake hands with their highly respected lawyer.

“Good day, Herr Doktor,” they say, adding a polite remark about such pretty, well-behaved little girls…

A cold winter afternoon. Snow keeps falling in the silent street, while in my cozy L-shaped room with its white shag rug, its white bed and white heavy cupboard at its foot, Peter, Hilla and I are enjoying one of our favorite pastimes. First we climb on the warm shelf of the brown-glazed tiled stove, from where we pull ourselves up to the top of the wardrobe, crawl to the other end and jump down on my white feather bed. While the endless snow wraps the city in a thick ermine mantle we muffle our climbing, crawling and jumping in a noiseless, breathtaking rhythm, hoping that no one will hear us. We have done it before, we are not supposed to do it again. It is strictly forbidden. In Germany everything is forbidden. We are learning early that in order to enjoy ourselves we have to do things on the sly.

All at once the door is thrown open, and Liba comes in carrying a bucket of coals to rekindle the stove. She yells at us to stop before the bed caves in. Too late-- Peter and Hilla have just taken their leap and, as I follow with a jump, my thick down cover bursts at the seams, scattering the white feathers all across the room. The scene reminds me of Frau Holle, in one of Grimm’s fairy tales. Frau Holle is the snow queen in the clouds, whose maid, the Golden Mary, shakes out her feather bed to announce the arrival of winter: she shakes and shakes and the feathers never stop falling, filling the air and snowing over the entire landscape.

I have never seen Liba so angry. She looks bloated with anger, as if about to burst at the seams like my feather bed. You are a bad, bad girl, you never listen, she shouts, as I stare at her waiting for the feathers of her fury to float out of her-- Liba feathers that will be raining through the room where Frau Holle has decided to let it snow. Arms akimbo, she stands in front of me.

“Get out of here!” she yells at Peter and Hilla who run out in fright, then lifts me into her strong arms and, still scolding me for my disobedience, carries me through the hall, pushes me into the broom closet and locks the door.