Hiking Home

1955: Our Move to the Sauerland In the late fall of 1955, I boarded my Uncle Heini’s Volkswagen bus. Already seated inside were my mother, my three-year-old sister, Margit, and the one-year-old twins, Karin and Dieter. At the age of five, I had never sat in a car, let alone traveled in one. Earlier that morning, Uncle Heini had left Hermeskeil to come help his sister, Änni, move her four children from Neumagen, a tiny village on the Mosel river, to Letmathe, a small town in the Sauerland mountains. In those days, cars did not have seatbelts or car seats. Uncle Heini’s Volkswagen bus had the middle row of seats removed. “Make the babies stay on the floor,” my uncle told my mother. “They can’t be allowed to run around while the bus is moving.” “Yes, I’ll try,” Mama said. Her voice sounded strained. At the age of five, I was already adept at reading body language and sensitive to the inflections in people’s voices. Mama’s nerves, I knew, were stretched to the breaking point. “Ingrid, sit on the floor and play with the twins,” Mama ordered while Uncle Heini started the engine. I was bitterly disappointed. Here was my first chance to see the world beyond our small village, and I was to spend it sitting on the floor with two toddlers. I loved my siblings and normally never objected to caring for them, but this was a special opportunity that would not present itself again in the near future. Nevertheless, I obeyed. I knew my mother was exhausted. She was worn out from caring for four small children without my father’s help for well over a year. Any joyful thoughts of the new house waiting for her were probably overshadowed by financial worries and, perhaps, the thought of moving to a town without an immediate support system or friends. In anticipation of a great adventure, I was not bothered by any such worries. My excitement over the ride and the move also blotted out any sadness I may have felt leaving the village of my birth. Until now, I had lived in a big, old house with my parents, three siblings, my grandparents, an uncle, Vitus, and my great-aunt. It was not until many years later that I realized how immensely fortunate I had been to spend my formative years supported by the love of so many people. They had neither showered me with gifts nor spoiled me with indulgences that are so common among adults who prefer to satisfy their own needs instead of doing what is best for the child. Instead, the love shown by the adults around me had been a true love. It made me feel secure and encouraged me to become a strong, independent, and confident woman, ready to take on life’s challenges. Over the centuries, the lives of most people living in the little villages along the Mosel river had been unspeakably harsh. Many had immigrated to foreign countries all over the world, with the majority of Neumagen’s immigrants choosing the United States of America. Our family’s move to Letmathe was a distance of 280 kilometers. The 174 miles were a Katzensprung—a cat’s leap—compared to the journeys of Johann Kriebs (1740, New Orleans), John Kranz (1855, Cleveland), Peter Wintrich (1857, New York), and others like them. Of course, travel in Germany was difficult in 1955. The country was still recovering from the war. Not many Germans owned cars then; public transportation was not nearly as extensive and sophisticated as it is today. Most people worked in or near the villages and towns where they lived and simply walked wherever they needed to go. Our uncle had bought the Volkswagen bus for deliveries of large household goods—mainly stoves—he sold from his store in Hermeskeil. His delivery of human cargo was a one-time deal. In the future, if we wanted to see our relatives in Neumagen, we would have to travel by foot and train. The last leg of the trip would be a ride on the very slow Moselbähnchen, running from Trier to the little train station in Neumagen, followed by a walk to the Burgstrasse. Were my grandparents devastated when we moved to the Sauerland, a region of Germany that is beautiful but has no vineyards and is very different from the Mosel area where my father and all of us children were born ? I don’t know. The adults of postwar Germany rarely showed their emotions. Years later, my sister, Margit, described the people who lived through the horrors of World War II as “emotionally frozen.” The members of the Görgen family were certainly pragmatic in their approach to life. In tiny Neumagen, my father had virtually no opportunities to advance his career as a civil servant. Only my great-aunt had openly expressed her disapproval over our departure. The woman we called Gothi had neither married nor had children of her own. Her entire life was devoted to helping raise her three nephews and a niece, followed by the children of the next generation. We adored Gothi. “I don’t understand why your Papa is taking you all so far away to the Sauerland. What kind of a place is that anyway? Sauerland! To leave the Mosel for the Sauerland —” She had shaken her head. Although I had felt a brief moment of doubt over Papa’s decision, I was willing to reserve judgment. Let me meet the children of the Sauerland first, I thought. If I like them, I will like the Sauerland. Little did I know, when we waved a final good-bye, that I would see my paternal grandmother—we called her Oma—in the very near future. Uncle Heini drove the Volkswagen bus, with odds and ends piled high in the passenger seat next to him. Mama and three-year-old Margit occupied the bench that my uncle had reinstalled for the trip. The twins spent most of the travel time seated on the floor in front of me or sitting on their potty chairs. Twice, the bus had to be stopped so we could discreetly dispose of the potty chairs’ contents in a ditch on the side of a country road. Uncle Heini, a childless bachelor, took it all with a good sense of humor. Papa had gone ahead with the movers. The furniture was to be in place by the time we arrived. There had not been much to move. We owned little: a modest collection of furniture, bedding, and household goods in addition to very little clothing and even fewer toys. When Germans move, they usually take their kitchen cabinets and appliances with them. We had left any storage cabinets and the heavy coal stove in Neumagen. “How will you cook for us?” I asked Mama, more than a little worried about this oversight in the family’s plans. “It’s a surprise. I’ll be able to cook,” she smiled. I don’t remember much about the first evening we spent in Östrich , a small village that was part of a larger town called Letmathe, but I recall our arrival in vivid detail. Upon entering the house, Mama took us immediately into the kitchen. With great excitement, she demonstrated the workings of a brand-new gas stove. We four children stood there—lined up in a row—in open-mouthed wonder. This was a miracle! With a flick of her hand, our Mama, not unlike a magician, created the dancing flames we saw in front of our eyes. Even more magical, the turn of a knob brought instant heat from what I thought was another very strange looking stove in the room we would use for all daytime activities. Amazingly, it also didn’t have wood or coal in it.