Broken Lives

by Konrad H Jarausch

  Many higher pursuits required additional training, which was complicated by the restoration of traditional standards. Wanting to finish as soon as possible, the postwar student cohort threw itself into academic work with much enthusiasm. “We were all engrossed in our studies and expected to complete our degrees in two or three semesters.” Ursula Mahlendorf recalled, “Everyone knew exactly what he or she wanted to accomplish in life.” Because his future marriage depended upon a rapid graduation, Horst Grothus surprised his professor at the technical university in Karlsruhe by finishing the coveted engineering diploma in a record time of only six semesters. Other students, such as Joachim Fest, rejected the parental wish to study law and instead took advantage of their academic freedom to listen to prominent lecturers such as historian Gerhard Ritter or sampling creative works of modern culture. “Overall,” he wrote, “the university was something of an Arcadia.” Still others, such as Erich Helmer, chafed at the antiquated discipline of theological training.10

  At the end of the “wonderful time” of studying, however, loomed the difficult state examination that would decide the admission to a profession. Having worked hard, talented biochemist Heinz Schultheis was rewarded with excellent grades. By contrast, Horst Andrée, who would rather hunt than do paperwork, just barely got passing marks on his forestry examination. Horst Grothus managed to bluff his way to an engineering degree by concentrating on one subject at a time and taking the exams sequentially, even impressing a professor of economics with his reading. Although she considered pedagogical theory fairly useless in the classroom, the diligent Ursula Baehrenburg received a good grade on her teachers’ exam. But Erich Helmer managed to anger his church examiner, a former Nazi, so much in a discussion about the moral legitimacy of joining a plot to assassinate Hitler that he received only a bare pass and had to repeat the ethics exam.11 On the whole, the candidates nonetheless succeeded in gaining the necessary professional degrees.

  Because so many older people had been killed, these young adults quickly made the “transition into professional life,” though some encountered unforeseen difficulties. Having already trained as auxiliary forester, Horst Andrée was glad to be “able to work independently” when his superior fell ill. After a study tour to the United States, Horst Grothus accepted the invitation of his uncle to join his factory producing motorcycle chains and was told, “You are beginning with me on January 1,” 1952. After repeated rejections, Robert Neumaier was “offered a position in the technical office” by his apprenticeship firm, where he started to design circular pumps. By contrast, teacher Ursula Baehrenburg was shocked by having to cope with twenty handicapped children without appropriate toys and material. “A hard time began. Often I helplessly confronted the mountain of difficulties in despair.” Similarly, Erich Helmer felt as if he had been thrown into the water without knowing how to swim when he was asked to replace his father as pastor of a rural parish.12

  For sons, the easiest decision was to follow in their father’s footsteps. Hermann Debus, for example, used his family’s occupational know-how to become a Rhine River captain. Debus was born in the Ruhr Basin in 1926 and grew up on a tugboat when not in school, becoming an apprentice sailor as a matter of course. Persuaded by a fanatical teacher, he turned Nazi and was trained as a Navy SEAL, but survived unharmed. After the war he had no choice but to hire on to another tug, navigating the dangerous river around destroyed bridges and sunken ships. He survived a false accusation of negligence by a “hard and unjust” boss, got married, and became a captain in 1954. With a better salary—he was even able to build a house on shore—he was gratified that his life was slowly “becoming normal again.” But when oil replaced coal as fuel, Debus had to make the transition to a diesel tanker and ran great risks due to time pressure from petroleum companies. He considered the increased pace of these trips rather irresponsible.13

  In the postwar uncertainty, working for the government promised a more secure future. After fleeing from East Prussia, Horst Andrée managed to get admitted to forestry training in the Palatinate, where he earned a small salary while continuing the family tradition. Moving from one office to another, he passed his examination—although a massive oak that he was supposed to cut down fell on another tree, to the hilarity of the examiner. Once accepted into public service, his life improved with the purchase of a motorcycle and his 1956 marriage to Metchthild, which produced two children. In 1961 he was finally appointed Chief Forester of his own district, a promotion that provided him with a restored forester’s lodge and allowed him to pursue his passion for the hunt. During the following years he coped with emergencies such as “snow-breaks, forest fires, and storms” while supervising workers in managing tree harvesting and planting. Similarly, both Benno Schöffski and Anneliese Huber’s second husband, Paul, joined the police force in order to support their families.14 While the pay was limited, the security and respect of being an official made up for it.

  Teaching, which combined the safety of tenure with intellectual stimulation, was another popular profession after the war. The Bohemian refugee Hans Tausch had always wanted to study at a university, but had to sell his stamp collection in order to raise the funds to do so. When his teacher advised, “you should become a philologist,” he chose Greek, Latin, and history as his subjects, having to work hard to master the ancient languages. While he passed his examinations with flying colors, he resented the authoritarianism of his superiors even after he obtained a regular position in upper Franconia. Another memoirist who fled from the East, Ursula Baehrenburg, was inspired by her love for children to train as a kindergarten teacher. But the reality of working in difficult circumstances soon “dampened her idealism” and made her try to get additional education. After several personal crises, she became a special education teacher. She was frustrated by the disinterest of the authorities but gratified by the love of her charges.15

  More difficult was the decision to become a Protestant pastor, which raised issues of Christian faith in a secular world. Taking his father’s resistance against the Nazis as an example, Erich Helmer nonetheless overcame his personal doubts and resolved to study theology. Impressed by the answers of Bishop Lilje to his burning questions about the Holocaust, Martin Sieg abandoned his technical studies and chose the church as well. Religious training turned out to be quite difficult: it required fluency in the ancient languages and mastery of the different positions of Karl Barth’s dialectical theology, Rudolf Bultmann’s biblical demythologizing, and Friedrich Gogarten’s lived Christendom. Though helped by their spouses, the young theologians often felt inadequate when having to console, reassure, and comfort their flock: Helmer was overwhelmed to be asked moral questions by a Nazi perpetrator, while Sieg had to hear the confession of a murderous SS leader.16 Both young men favored a reformist opening of the church to social issues.

  Attracted more by chance than design, budding journalists also had to wrestle with the questions of German guilt and the Cold War division. Baker Gerhard Baucke was delighted when the SED paper Neues Deutschland printed some of his poems, one of which began, “Youth let the flag fly high / and give the wind your song. / Call those who stand aloof / and remain an idle throng.” Hired by the Free German Youth to write about the young, he nonetheless refused to work for East Berlin Radio during the blockade, for he resented the “miserable blackmail” of the Communists. Hoping to become “a private scholar,” Joachim Fest fell in love with Italy’s “warmth, lightness, naïve animality and theatrical sparkle.” But when he wrote a few essays on Romanticism, the director of Berlin Radio in the American Sector noticed his literary talent and insisted “that I edit or preferably write a series of broadcasts on German history.”17 Even if this was not his favorite topic of study, the Renaissance, Fest thereby found his calling.

  Engineers, who were needed for the manifold tasks of reconstruction and economic growth, had a more direct career path. Some who started out as technicians had, like Karl Härtel, to go to special evening classes to
obtain the coveted diploma. Others like Robert Neumaier quickly rose up the ranks after his first pump design and the subsequent public lecture were successful. This encouraged him to write a book about “modern pumps” and he moved to another company that constructed urban waterworks. Eventually he returned to his first firm with another pay raise, wrote several more books on circular pumps, and became an international authority through foreign lecture tours. Chemist Heinz Schultheis did so well in his examinations that his professors opened the door for academic and business advancement. He only had to decide which branch of chemical research he wanted to pursue.18 Such technical careers both propelled the Economic Miracle and profited from it.

  Constrained by maternalist ideals, many women struggled between the full-time task of managing a household and caring for children or working outside the home. The teacher Ursula Baehrenburg wanted to be independent and held on to her job. But Erica Taubhorn reported laconically that her husband believed “that a woman belongs in the home and for that reason I stopped working after half a year.” Widow Anneliese Huber, who brought up her older son alone, similarly confessed that “it was not easy for me to give up my employment because I liked the recognition I received there.” After her remarriage and the birth of her second son, Kurti, she was glad to have done so: “It was a very happy time!” But as soon as her own children were beyond infancy, Ruth Bulwin allowed her mother to take care of them and the household and resumed her job as a judicial employee to bring in additional money. After Gisela Grothus’ offspring were old enough, she similarly worked as an executive assistant in her husband’s firm.19

  As a result of manpower losses, many young professionals ascended rapidly to positions of responsibility after the war. In his uncle’s factory Horst Grothus became an informal general manager in charge of about five hundred employees. When he had to fire almost half of them due to a business downturn, he began to rationalize production, modernize technology with small robots, and diversify the products beyond motorcycle chains. Often undertaken “against the intentions” of his traditionalist uncle, these reforms allowed “the firm finally to begin making money again.” He received “a general power of attorney and took over practically all functions of a technical director but was never formally appointed.” After his auspicious start Robert Neumaier was similarly offered a permanent position with a good salary and “put in charge of the technical office” of his pump company. There, he changed “almost the total production program of our circular pumps to more efficient and cheaper models.”20

  Those individuals who could not get into an established firm had to use ingenuity and perseverance to build their own businesses from scratch. When the unemployed Hellmut Raschdorff no longer saw any chance “to get a job,” he decided “to try to make it on his own.” With credit from a wholesaler, he started to hawk textile products from door to door in the villages around Kassel. When he helped an elderly lady with her suitcases, she was kind enough to order 100 DM worth of goods from him. This revived his courage. After securing the necessary permits, Raschdorff hired a small storeroom, working eighteen to twenty hours a day (while suffering from a severe type of hepatitis). Gradually he built up “a firm list of clients in the villages … who were regularly visited by me,” first by bicycle, then on a moped, and finally in a small car. It was this “personal service” that led to the typical business pattern of expansion, construction of a regular store, and the acquisition of a competitor’s business. Such success stories, repeated by Gerhard Baucke in establishing his printing business, were typical of the Economic Miracle of the 1950s.21

  For many enterprising young men in the postwar era, self-exploitation opened doors to social advancement. Initially the former SS member Rolf Bulwin could work only at unpleasant tasks such as disposing of animal cadavers for a slaughterhouse. But when that concern went bankrupt, his wife’s cousin got him a job as traveling salesman for a machine firm. This was “a complete turn-around. Had he needed physical strength before … now he had to become a well-dressed dandy.” For five days a week, Bulwin had to drive all over the Ruhr Basin to reach his clients, putting in long hours on the road and dealing with big sums of money. But when it became clear that his boss had cheated him out of his commission, he sued him for back pay. After getting the appropriate “commercial permit,” he then made himself independent as a “free commercial agent.” Due to his energy and persuasiveness, the business grew so well that he needed his wife for bookkeeping and could employ his older son as well. From the social margins, he had ascended into the middle class.22

  Some engineers opted for independence because working alone corresponded better to their individualistic personalities. By the late 1950s Horst Grothus decided to quit his uncle’s company, and therefore felt “relieved of the psychological pressure.” Using his management experience, he then focused on the problem of “preventive maintenance” of machines, which cost factories a great deal of money when these were stopped for repair. With the help of a research fellowship from the Association of German Engineers, he explored the literature and practice of this crucial field. After obtaining his first consulting job in a cable factory in Nuremberg, he disassembled the machines, consulted the skilled workers, and drew up maintenance plans to avoid downtime in the future. Once he had received orders from a broad cross-section of enterprises, he developed a series of seminars and became an authority on “zero failure management.” Though always somewhat precarious, this career as consultant proved largely satisfying to him.23

  For some professionals, the increasing pace of performance got to be too much and forced them to seek a less hectic alternative. When the oil companies demanded that tankers travel for at least sixteen hours a day, “the occupation which I had loved grew more and more repugnant” to Hermann Debus. In 1969 he decided to change jobs, for “it could not be the purpose of life to work day and night in order to earn a pile of money.” But finding a new career proved rather difficult at the age of forty-three, forcing him to work shifts at a chemical factory. He did not want to remain an hourly laborer for the rest of his life, so Debus applied for a job in the financial services of local government. This paid only one-third of his former salary, but he was nevertheless happy about the reduced stress and quickly advanced to a higher pay grade in the tax division. Though risky, this change of occupation saved him from a three-hour commute and left him more time to pursue such hobbies as master’s swimming and amateur theatricals.24

  Due to the war-induced maturity of the entering professionals, generational conflicts were inevitable with superiors who wanted to restore the authoritarian patterns of the prewar period. Hans Tausch had to sue the Bavarian government for summer pay, which he was legally owed as a teacher trainee. Erich Helmer had a series of run-ins with the conservative administration of the Protestant church, since as a married veteran he wanted to live with his wife and child rather than in an ecclesiastical seminary. Accused by the bishop of being “a stubborn man and troublemaker,” he threatened to resign from the cloth unless his parishioners were taken care of and he received more flexible accommodations. Rejecting the complaints of the shipping companies that “loading and anchoring were taking too long,” Hermann Debus as union representative claimed that the fault lay with unrealistic management. But when his underpaid workers demanded increased wages, patriarchal businessman Hellmut Raschdorff rejected their demands as excessive.25

  One secret of the postwar recovery was the close connection between academic research and practical application of its results in industry. The results of Heinz Schultheis’ chemical experiments were so promising that after he completed his dissertation, two professors of chemistry competed for his services. After working several years as research assistant in Marburg, he joined the chemical giant Bayer. In his own dissertation, Horst Grothus introduced American “expert systems for management consulting in machine industry” in a German context. His subsequent career as a consultant not only built on practical problem-solving, but
also on the systematization of knowledge for improving management decisions through publications and seminars. Robert Neumaier sought to spread his expertise on centrifugal pumps “by writing a real reference book which takes into account the wishes of our clients.” The publication of four handbooks and numerous articles made him a respected authority in his field.26

  Another element of successful rebuilding was the promotion of German business approaches and products through international contacts. In the early 1950s the United States was the example from which engineers such as Horst Grothus wanted to learn innovative production methods (and a more relaxed lifestyle). By the mid-1970s the relationship had largely reversed, and he began offering seminars on management topics to a US audience. Now speaking in English, Grothus widened his travels from neighboring countries like Switzerland to the Balkans, the Near East, and Japan. Robert Neumaier reasoned similarly, “Being responsible for selling our products, I recognized the necessity of directing our activities mainly toward export” after the domestic demand had dried up. Hence he visited trade fairs in Russia, Eastern and Western Europe, and the Balkans “as a kind of traveling preacher” for German machines. This tireless promotion, the high quality of the products, and reliable maintenance were the secrets behind the FRG’s astounding export surplus.27

  The recovery of “the global reputation” of firms such as the electrical giant Siemens was largely the result of the ability and dedication of their employees. For instance, a teenager named Hans-Gerd Neglein started an apprenticeship at Siemens in 1946, convinced “he had to succeed” on his own because his officer father had died in the war. In the early years of rebuilding he had to “work, work, work” for ten hours a day and on the weekends. When his superiors noticed his talent for making semilegal exchanges of electric motors for food, they had him trained as an accountant, believing “everything has to be correct.” He wanted “to get out into the world” and so served the company for fifteen years in Brazil, until he was ordered back to Germany in order to oversee the Latin American business. Known as “a tough guy,” he nonetheless took care of the employees below him. Due to his intense devotion and personal modesty, he eventually became a top manager of Siemens, in charge of worldwide sales, through which he met political leaders Mikhail Gorbachev and Helmut Kohl.28 In many ways, this stellar individual career was typical of German business success.