Dads stories

Silk stockings and the German language

17th January 2001.
I wrote in the beginning that I believed I had lost my German. Especially because I had already from youth on an aversion to German. I have a horror for fanciful pretence. And to tell me at school that my mother tongue (i.e. the language of my mother) was a bad and avoidable habit, was a terrible insult. Even though people in my social class could not afford to be insulted. I often had to boil. Especially on the tram. When in winter someone would forget to shut the door, I yelled at them, in my best Neusser Platt, especially if we were travelling through the Düsseldorf area.
My mother took the tram each day to Hamm to collect plants for our gardens. On day her basket got caught on a young lady's leg. Rightfully the young lady complaint. Silk stockings were very difficult to obtain. My Mother: “When I see this! Why don’t you stay home and knit stockings, then you wouldn’t have to go to work”. When it comes to it the Neusser’s have a damn impudent mouth!
Well I am delighted to hear that Platt Deutsch has come out of exile and is now actually celebrated. And a big honour to those who contribute and contributed to this.
Now to my own German. Despite my aversion, I actually enjoyed German lessons in school. I also had the great fortune to have a wonderful friend in the local library. This happened as follows. It was my weekly job to go to the library in Ness and to exchange the family books. They were mainly reading cheap novels. Well, I was always pretty dumb. I let the librarian select these novels who could then also check if one or the other book was available. In the beginning she asked me what it was that I personally enjoyed reading. Well, I didn’t have the slightest idea. I was not all that impressed with Karl Mai. So she gave me a few books for myself to read. And from then on she had a few books ready for me each week.
It wasn’t until much later, when we were already here in Australia, that I realised what was going on.
We had been married for a few years when a visitor to our house looked at me disbelieving and asked: “Peter, do you read this?” I think I had Dostoevsky and Tolstoy lying there. I really had no clue about literature. I just consumed whatever the lady in the library gave me. She did speak to me and ask me how I liked the books. But, despite my usually big mouth, I was very shy and never knew what to say.
So you see, in my life there were many guardian angles. It is a pity that I never rewarded this woman, not with one word! But maybe she understood this. She had me under her wing for may years. And maybe my loyalty was reward enough!
So my aversion to German must have been something else, maybe class hatred. I actually love this language.

posted by Inge @ 10:21 pm