Childhood

I was born on 28th of June in 1904 - according to the Russian calendar of that time on the 15th of June - on the estate Joachimowo, a few kilometers southeast of Minsk. Minsk at that time was a government city of the Russian Empire and today is the capitol of Belarus. My name is Joachim Hanns Christoph; however, it has nothing to do with the name of the estate, but I was named after ancestors from both my mother and father’s side.

My father was director of the factory in Minsk of the company of Lietz and Grundmann, afterwards called “Proswet”, which was one of the largest syrup companies of Russia. The factory was three kilometers outside of the city in southeasterly direction on the river Swislotsch, who had carved its bed in the slightly hilly landscape. A small watercolor done by my mother hangs in my room; it shows the steep embankment with a few birch and fir trees. The place depicted in the picture was about 10 minutes away from the factory, upstream of a water mill, where the water of the Swislotch was dammed and went down a weir to create a wonderful swimming hole for us children. The water mill, at least parts of it, I could still see when I visited Minsk during a trip through Russia in the year 1966.

My childhood happened until the year 1915 on the factory lot. It was a wonderful playground for us kids. A plot of about 300 x 300 meters, positioned next to the Igumenski tract on the old Heerstreet with poplars left and right dating from napoleonic times. A few Russian log cabins, in which some of our workers lived and one or two small stores completed the neighborhood. The street went on a dam across the river, then crossed a little hill into which a lane had been cut. Exactly there was the factory lot, on the eastern slope. The entrance, perpendicular to the street in the middle of the property, also was a sunken road. Four massive stone pillars held the two-winged gate and the pedestrian entrance. On top was a little guard house for our guard from the city police. When he saw the coach with my parents, he ran down the steps, opened the gate, stood at attention, and called out in Russian “I wish you good health, Sir and Madam.” Then we would drive on a wide paved street to the eastern end of the property and turn off in front of the big white house. We lived upstairs, and downstairs were the offices and the apartment of the manager Wieting from Latvia.

The street divided the property into exactly two halves. To the left one would have driven passed a fenced in garden, whereas on the right hand side was a hedge behind which was the factory and some smaller buildings. A high wooden fence surrounded the whole property. The garden, according to my present day estimates based on old photos, was about 150x 300 meters. It was the most beautiful thing. The upper half, the one that started at the gate, was mostly a fruit garden, where we had between 200 and 300 fruit trees of all kinds, raspberries, etc. A tennis court that my parents had put in bound the fruit garden. From there down to the house was an English style garden with big lawns, a rose and flower garden, a little birch grove with benches to sit on. Hazelnut lanes on three sides surrounded this part of the garden whose harvest would fill several sacks in a good year.

Our apartment was upstairs in the big white house. From the square in the front of the house was to the left the so-called “parade entrance” with red carpets. It led upstairs into the wardrobe. From there one could step out onto big balcony that was on top a couple of columns. It had a beautiful view of the garden and the landscape that lay beyond with the dammed Swislotsch and the picturesque groves of trees. From the wardrobe one walked into the rather large salon with apple green silk covered armchairs and sofa. A rather light carpet lay on the floor and on the opposite wall stood a grand piano and a Phonola. On the walls were several oil paintings, most of them flowers, that had been painted by Mama. Next to it was the dining room with the oak furniture in old German style that was fashionable at that time. These rooms lay to the west, while to the east were the bedrooms and children’s rooms. A real, at that time very modern, bathroom came next and then the rooms for the maids and a staircase to the kitchen downstairs. It was a nice, roomy apartment. In front of the house a small lawn was surrounded by a hedge and four high poplars that stood there like guards. Downstairs were the offices, and the office of Papa could be reached from the apartment by using a spiral staircase.

I do not have special memories of my first years, except those that were projected from future knowledge. For instance, the Russian revolution of 1905/06 after the Russian-Japanese war could be felt not only in the Baltic States but also in the remote Minsk. A letter from Mama dated December 5th, 1905 written to Erna in Riga to where my Papa had just driven gave the feeling of the insecurity of those times. She wrote: “Well, in any case, I am going to have a revolver next to my bed and well lock all doors.” I slept during that time without worry and Papa came back to Minsk without problem using some detours. Our personnel and workers remained loyal to us.

On the 9th of February 1906 my sister Gertrud Erna Margarethe was born. It was the birthday of Papa and Great Aunt Mila. When later on in Germany we had to change the dates to the Gregorian Calendar, her birthday was on the 22nd of February while Papa and Aunt Mila celebrated on the 21st, since for dates before 1900 you had to add 12 days, whereas for dates after 1900 you added 13 days. That made me think about the relativity of time already as a boy,

From my first years exist a couple of pictures, some of which were taken by a photographer whereas others Mama took with her little Kodak box and developed and printed herself. On some pictures I am a little boy in girls clothes, a babyface, and hair tied into a ponytail. On another picture (New Year 1906/1907) I am already in a sailor suit with the 10 months old Gerda, a pretty and strong baby, and our Mama, a real beauty. A picture from 1906 shows us at the beach in Riga. Grosspapa is sitting in the chair, in his lap is Lalla (that’s how Gerda was called, while I was called Bubi) surrounded by his children Friedel, Heini, Alphons, and Mary who is holding myself the little two-year old.

The first experiences of the big world outside our house and garden came in the spring of 1907. I was 2 and three-quarters and Lalla was one year old. We had a Russian nanny and I could speak rather well with her and the children, but only Russian. In March, Mama traveled with both of us by train to Berlin, where Mama lived in a hotel and bought clothes for us. In the hotel Mama met a neighbor who I had visited a couple of times. She said to Mama, don’t believe that your Bubi speaks only Russian; he speaks fluent German with me. From then on, Mama also spoke German with us and we easily understood each language.

From Berlin we went on to Hamburg. Lalla was immediately welcomed by Aunt Dora and Uncle Eduard who were delighted to take care of her, while Mama and I, who she counted as big enough, visited our many relatives: Uncle Otto at Bieberstreet 9, where Ottokar was as old as I was; Aunt Kaethe, whose daughter Inge was also our age; Tante Hedwig and Uncle Hans in Erfurt. And then, of course, we visited the Zoo and Hagenbeck. I was allowed to accompany Mama everywhere. To avoid the rather difficult train ride back to Russia, we drove to Luebeck and from there a freighter brought us in comfort back to Riga.

In the summer of the same year we had visitors from Riga, the whole family came to visit us including Toni the loyal cook who also took care of Friedel. Grosspapa with Grossmama and Mary went on, while the boys stayed with us for several months. That was again a very happy time.

For Christmas 1907 we got a real small hunting carriage, which had runners for the winter so that it could be used as a sled. Our big white billy goat was used to pull the sled-wagon. Our wonderful, loyal carpenter from the factory, Mr. Nagorski, had built us this sled-wagon and we played with it for many years. He was a great craftsman and made may beautiful pieces of furniture, like our garden furniture, but also the sitting corner in the library. My parents had subscribed to an English magazine for applied arts – “The Studio” – and got many ideas from it. Mama in particular was very artistic.

The billy goat with the appropriate goats and baby goats were not the only animals we had. After the Russian-Japanese war, my Papa bought a Manchurian donkey with dark brown markings on the back and legs from someone coming home. We called him Max. He had a complete bridle and a saddle and also a little cart on two high wheels with four seats, a kind of dogcart. At first Max was meant as a draught-animal for the factory. But he was too smart: there was not that much work for him and he managed to avoid even that much. However, he became rounder and rounder. When I was a little older, I thought of him as my own and rode him in the garden or drove the wagon with him. Max was a rather intelligent animal, just lazy. He knew quite quickly, that the drivers of the wagons with starch for the factory had left the sack with their luncheon bread underneath their seat. Max stole their bread with great audacity. The drivers of course were furious.

Max had a grazing area in the yard, where on a grassy area the firewood was stacked. There was plenty of grass for him. We did have a stable, where earlier a team of carriage houses had lived. However, we had got rid of these and always took a cab to town. Max refused to go into the stable, and found a good place outside. Our garden was divided from the factory land by a low but sturdy fence. There were only two entrances to it, from the big pergola in front of the house and a small gate with a large wooden latch on the inside where the fruit trees began. When fruit ripened, we were always surprised to find Max having a nice meal in the garden. We were convinced that he would lean his had over the gate and push open the wooden latch.

The boys in Riga had riding instruction and I had often watched when Mr. Lyra gave the lesson. Of course, I had to practice that at home, especially when visits from Riga were imminent. Max did not like at all being saddled by me. He was ok just walking or trotting but he hated to gallop. Once during a gallop he just went into the fruit garden and threw me off using the branches of a pear tree. Another time he tried to use the hazelnut hedge to get me off. If he was not asked to gallop, he was very good-natured.

Sometimes we went in the dogcart across country through several fields. More than once it happened, that we met a long column of farm carts that went to market. The farmers slept, because the horses knew the way. However, the first horse that would see Max, would panic and run across the field and the whole column after it in a cloud of dust. We would laugh and thought that the horses must have thought that Max was a wolf.

Part of our menagerie was a hedgehog, which we had raised with milk when he was a small animal and ran tamely around the apartment. He disappeared in the fall. Around Christmas we were expecting visitors and a mattress was retrieved from the storage room to be cleaned. Suddenly they saw quills coming out of it. Our hedgehog had been hibernating in the innersprings.

In the spring one of our maids brought us a very small squirrel from her village. Mama put it into one of our birdcages. It soon learned to eat peanuts. After a few weeks it was too large to be caged. Mama put the open cage in the open window of the library, in front of which was a large poplar. After a few days, Puck, that’s how we called the squirrel, had disappeared and the window was closed. One day Mama hears knocking coming from the library. And lo and behold, Puck was sitting outside and knocking on the windowpane. From then on the window remained open and he could get his peanuts whenever he wanted. Puck became so tame, that in the garden he would come when we called his name. Once, the coffee table in the arbor was set for guests. Mama went out to make sure everything was set correctly and found Puck, whose head was deep in the cream pitcher.

Not far from our factory was a small country store where our maids could quickly get something they needed, and it was all put on an account. One day, Mama found on the account an item for one pound of peanuts. While she was paying, she asked about it. “Well,” she was told “your squirrel comes in the store to get them.” In the following spring I saw him once on a high tree, but he was very shy and probably left for the woods.

Our hen yard was securely fenced in, part of the garden, with a nice strong hen house. One day we found one hen bitten to death and the next day another one. Our gardener set out a trap and caught a big mean polecat. We also had other fowl. On the yard by the factory were a gaggle of geese and a group of white turkeys. Even as an eight to ten year old, I was still afraid of the big tom turkey when he tried to attack me with open wings and a loud noise. I wanted to start a real menagerie and wanted to catch a wolf in the woods, but I did not see any. But on the meadows I saw where storks were catching frogs. However, all my attempts to creep up to one and catch him by the leg were in vain.

My playmates were the sons of our manager Wieting. Of his three sons, Ati, Juli, and Jani, the middle one Juli was my special friend. Ati was already grown and played the clarinet. Mama liked it best when I played with Juli. She thought that little Jani was too impudent. And then there was also Kola Leckert. But we lived rather far apart, because the brewery that belonged to Mr. Leckert was exactly at the opposite edge of town. My parents were good friends with the Leckerts, who were the same age, and one or two times a week we got together. They also had a little daughter, Ilse, who was the same age as Lalla. The Leckert’s apartment was big and therefore we were allowed to stay overnight at their place, or they stayed at ours. These friendships remained after 75 years. Nico Eckert, as he is now known, lived in Berlin and we met last year to exchange memories and Lalla, who is now known as Gerda, still visits Ilse in Berlin. There were several other German couples in Minsk with whom my parents were friends, for instance the doctor Dr. Pilemann and the evangelic pastor Matschulan. And there was a lot of tennis playing at our place.

I loved and admired my Mama. She was the most beautiful and smartest woman, but also the very best playmate. One could race with her and she would win. She always took me seriously and understood the trouble and problems of a little boy and always had a solution. She loved animals and transmitted that love to us. She always was busy and I do not think that even when she got old I ever saw her without some needlework, handiwork, or a book. Even as a small boy she included me in her activities. I was her gardener and had to fill the flowerpots with earth into which she put the flower bulbs. Or I was allowed to help her when she was working on a carpet. Mama read a lot, including English and French, and after she had learned Russian, she also read Russian. When visitors from Riga, like Aunt Charlotte, Grossmama, or Erna, often stayed for a month or more, then they would always sit around the warm fireplace and read aloud. I would sit on the carpets and listen, whether I understood it or not. Thus I listened to The Jungle Book by Kipling, When Nature Calls by London, David Copperfield by Dickens and many other books. Erna, who was taking her Oxford Exams also read in English. Later on she gave me English lessons. Mama was a very smart person with a quick, keen mind, enlightened and interested in everything. For instance, I remember that she and Erna read The Foundation of the 19th Century by Chamberlain.

My father did not participate in these hours around the fireplace, but he was a music lover which he probably inherited from his mother and also from the family of the grandfather. He had taken piano lessons for a time but did not have the right patience for it, while his older brother Robert played piano rather well. Papa often went to concerts. As a married man he regretted that he could not play. But an invention of that time came to his help, the Phonola. It was an addition to the piano, padded hammers above the keys of the piano. The piano pieces had been played by great players on a special instrument, that punched every note in the order of the keys onto a long rolling paper band. This roll was put into the Phonola and ran across a pipe with air channels. Through pedaling a vacuum was created and when the air reached a hole in the roll air caused the corresponding key to be hit. Tempo, pedals and soft and loud could be regulated through switches.

At a time when there were only music boxes and the just invented gramophone sounded scratchy and died when the spring wound down, the Phonola was a great thing were the complete piano repertoire had been recorded by original artists. Thus I could here as a small boy the sonatas by Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert and many others. Papa had a whole cabinet full of these rolls. When I was bigger, I was allowed to play them by myself. My love of classical music comes from this time. I also received piano lessons and enjoyed them but had a very poor piano teacher. And times prevented me from going further. About Papa, I also have to add, that he read a lot, Philosophy like Kant and especially Schopenhauer, then also the letters by Goethe and Wagner. But he read usually by himself.

On December 15th (28th) 1910 our second little girl, Sigrid Kaethe, was born. We older siblings were already quite sensible and were very happy about the Christmas present. She thrived quite well, and I wrote quite proudly in the summer of 1911 to our Grosspapa: Sigrid was weighed today, she weighs 17 and 3/8 pounds. The summer we spent with Mama and the family at the beach in Riga.

In the fall I got sick, stomachaches, fever, and vomiting. The doctor diagnosed appendicitis. At that time, they did not operate when the inflammation was acute, therefore they tried treating it with compresses and ice packs. I had more bad pains, cried and fantasized. I think, this lasted three or four weeks. I was very weakened and the fever got higher. Finally, they did call in a surgeon. He prepared everything for an operation on the dining room table. I was fantasizing and had a very high fever. The surgeon said, he had to operate now, or the pus might move into the stomach cavity. While the last preparations were made, Mama and the doctors noticed that I had become calmer and the fever had gone down. They postponed the operation and the next day Mama noticed that a large amount of pus was in the stool. The doctor did not want to believe it until he saw it himself. The inflammation had gone into the bowels.

I got better, but was still very weak. In the winter I had two more attacks. Mama drove with me to Riga, where I was supposed to have the operation while I had a healthy period. But in Riga, Mama got nerve fever. To recover more quickly she went with me to Bileerlingshof on the Baltic. I still remember well the frozen Baltic, where one could walk way out, the high, deeply snowed in dunes with the fir tress that bent under the snow. In the Hotel it was very comfortable and empty of people. Mama recovered quickly and taught me the basic moves of chess and when we did not play chess, we glued stamps into an album that Mama had given me, or she read to me.

As soon as there was an empty room in the children’s hospital in Riga, I was admitted. Mama was allowed to stay in my room. Dr. Klemm operated me, according to the wishes of my grandparents. The convalescence time was nice. I had a lot of visits of the boys in Riga, who would play chess with me and spotted me several pieces, or brought stamps for me, since they also were stamp collectors. I did get well quite quickly and Mama and I went back to Minsk. I could show my playmates quite proudly my appendix, which had been cut open and preserved in alcohol in an octagonal brown glass bottle .

Through the chess playing I made a new friend. Our engineer Wacholder, from a Baltic state, had been moved to another factory and we received a Russian engineer, who was a great chess player. I do not know whether there were no other more suitable opponents, in any case, he played with me. First he spotted me pieces and I learned a lot from him, until we finally played with an even number of pieces. We played in the factory, were I soon felt completely at home.