How much is that pat of butter worth
Apr 18, 2020 20:20:35 GMT -5
simplynaturalfarm, Shawn, and 17 more like this
Post by brigitte on Apr 18, 2020 20:20:35 GMT -5
I have been trying to record my mother's memories of the war years in Germany. She will turn 90 in August. So many fascinating stories, some related to cows and farming.
Not sure where to put this, but here is the story about the pat of butter.
It happened at an intersection along B3, a rural road in the Schwalm region of Germany in 1944.
My grandfather, a World War 1 veteran and doctor left behind by the second world war to treat patients in the agricultural region was returning from a farm call. He had one of the few cars held by the citizenry…a 1938 version of what would become known as Audi.
He didn’t like driving. The car broke down often, or got stuck in the mud and had to be pulled out by horses, and needed parts that couldn’t be found. But my mother, Gisela, loved it. He took her along because she liked to drive the double shift and knew just how to give it gas in neutral before climbing the next hill. She had a rudimentary knowledge of how to fix it as a teenager (as did, I now find amusing, the future queen of England)
Dr. Karl Merkel was a fascinating man. His story would have been a good sequel to Schindlers List. He healed people, including American GIs held at a nearby prisoner of war camp, and local jewish families against orders. He hated Hitler, and the SS, and argued with my mother to keep her out of the BDM- Hitler Youth But to keep her out would have separated her from friends. She joined.
He had a certain amount of authority as the only doctor to treat the rural population- the farmers who were the beginning of the supply chain to the military. The younger doctors were serving on the front lines, as was Dr. Merkel’s son- my uncle Eckart as a medic in Rommel’s Africa Corps.
He openly taunted the SS, and the local burgermeister- Wisch- an ardent Nazi, and the local police, all of whom had Dr. Merkel on their watch list. I never knew my grandfather, who had been born in the 1800s, and whose interest in rural medicine I inherited.
My mother recalled that on this day a local police officer stopped the car. He held up his hand on the left side of the road. “What do you have in the car,?” He demanded.
“They were at war with each other, the mayor and my father,” my mother recalled. “Wisch was trying to find him guilty of wrongdoing. But putting him in prison would have meant there would be no doctor, so there was always a standoff.”
Wisch must have gotten wind following a feud that the doctor was headed out of town. He suspected him of using unauthorized gas to reach his country home in Shoenstein a half hour from Schwalmstadt where he had a 16th century farm and tended honeybees and an apple orchard. He did use gas from time to time for the trip, that otherwise involved a train ride from Treysa and a four mile walk.
The policeman demanded the patient’s name. They argued loudly. In those days, my mother said, there were party members and nonparty members, and nothing in between.
Farmers didn’t have to pay a doctors bill because of socialized medicine, but often gave an extra thank you in the form of food- a commodity valued more than money especially toward the end of the war.Butter and eggs and cheese were rare. The butter spread evenly over the dark farm bread, and unlike the sugar beet syrup they usually had, filled the holes without running through them.
The farmers were required to give all of what they produced beyond what their families needed to the Third Reich. But they always found a way to hide a precious ham, a little milk, a few eggs and butter, at great peril.
On this day Dr. Merkel had been given a pat of bright yellow butter by a grateful patient. How much?, I asked. Wrapped in paper- also a rarity- maybe less than a quarter of a pound. Enough for the farmer to have been thrown in prison and my grandfather to have “lost his freedom.”
There was no time to hide it when the policeman suddenly appeared. My mother’s most vivid memory is how deftly he casually placed his black gloves over the side pocket in such a way as to distract from the butter.
She also remembers how yellow the butter was, and how grateful my grandmother was to receive it when it arrived-without discovery-home.
Not sure where to put this, but here is the story about the pat of butter.
It happened at an intersection along B3, a rural road in the Schwalm region of Germany in 1944.
My grandfather, a World War 1 veteran and doctor left behind by the second world war to treat patients in the agricultural region was returning from a farm call. He had one of the few cars held by the citizenry…a 1938 version of what would become known as Audi.
He didn’t like driving. The car broke down often, or got stuck in the mud and had to be pulled out by horses, and needed parts that couldn’t be found. But my mother, Gisela, loved it. He took her along because she liked to drive the double shift and knew just how to give it gas in neutral before climbing the next hill. She had a rudimentary knowledge of how to fix it as a teenager (as did, I now find amusing, the future queen of England)
Dr. Karl Merkel was a fascinating man. His story would have been a good sequel to Schindlers List. He healed people, including American GIs held at a nearby prisoner of war camp, and local jewish families against orders. He hated Hitler, and the SS, and argued with my mother to keep her out of the BDM- Hitler Youth But to keep her out would have separated her from friends. She joined.
He had a certain amount of authority as the only doctor to treat the rural population- the farmers who were the beginning of the supply chain to the military. The younger doctors were serving on the front lines, as was Dr. Merkel’s son- my uncle Eckart as a medic in Rommel’s Africa Corps.
He openly taunted the SS, and the local burgermeister- Wisch- an ardent Nazi, and the local police, all of whom had Dr. Merkel on their watch list. I never knew my grandfather, who had been born in the 1800s, and whose interest in rural medicine I inherited.
My mother recalled that on this day a local police officer stopped the car. He held up his hand on the left side of the road. “What do you have in the car,?” He demanded.
“They were at war with each other, the mayor and my father,” my mother recalled. “Wisch was trying to find him guilty of wrongdoing. But putting him in prison would have meant there would be no doctor, so there was always a standoff.”
Wisch must have gotten wind following a feud that the doctor was headed out of town. He suspected him of using unauthorized gas to reach his country home in Shoenstein a half hour from Schwalmstadt where he had a 16th century farm and tended honeybees and an apple orchard. He did use gas from time to time for the trip, that otherwise involved a train ride from Treysa and a four mile walk.
The policeman demanded the patient’s name. They argued loudly. In those days, my mother said, there were party members and nonparty members, and nothing in between.
Farmers didn’t have to pay a doctors bill because of socialized medicine, but often gave an extra thank you in the form of food- a commodity valued more than money especially toward the end of the war.Butter and eggs and cheese were rare. The butter spread evenly over the dark farm bread, and unlike the sugar beet syrup they usually had, filled the holes without running through them.
The farmers were required to give all of what they produced beyond what their families needed to the Third Reich. But they always found a way to hide a precious ham, a little milk, a few eggs and butter, at great peril.
On this day Dr. Merkel had been given a pat of bright yellow butter by a grateful patient. How much?, I asked. Wrapped in paper- also a rarity- maybe less than a quarter of a pound. Enough for the farmer to have been thrown in prison and my grandfather to have “lost his freedom.”
There was no time to hide it when the policeman suddenly appeared. My mother’s most vivid memory is how deftly he casually placed his black gloves over the side pocket in such a way as to distract from the butter.
She also remembers how yellow the butter was, and how grateful my grandmother was to receive it when it arrived-without discovery-home.