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I was
born in Berlin in 1943 and lived there
for 21 years.
Here I'm giving my first political
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Berlin
divided into two parts. You can see the
rail, air, and roadlinks that connected
the city to West Germany.
The
Brandenburg Gate with the Wall in front
of it. 30 years
later we stood in front of it again
and the Wall was gone.
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The first political event I remember was
the end of the Berlin blockade in
1949.
I didn't understand what
had happened, but clearly something
wonderful had occurred. Everybody was
very happy, and my mother told me that
from now on we'd have electricity all day
long, and she wouldn't have to iron at 4
o'clock in the morning any more.
I remember no
deprivations growing up in postwar
Berlin. We played in the streets; there
were hardly any cars during those days. A
fair number of buildings were in ruins
and we were strictly forbidden to play in
them. Kids sometimes got hurt by
unexploded bombs or falling walls.
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Age
10 w/ Renate
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My childhood was pretty uneventful.
I was rebellious, not in the sense of
being ill-behaved; I got good marks in
school, but I was always in conflict with
authority.
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8th
Grade – we still used the old wooden
desks
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At one point I published the
school newspaper and got kicked off
because the articles were too
controversial. At another time I re-wrote
the constitution of the Student
Government (an American innovation,
unthinkable in the old Germany) to make
it more confrontational.
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Confirmation,
Age 14 |
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My first real
camera,
same day |
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Taking pictures in Berlin
ca 1960. |
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I
worked on the school newspaper at Browne &
Nichols (I'm on the left). It was a
prep school, we all wore jackets and ties
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When I was 18, in 1961, the big event of my
life occurred: I was sent as an exchange student
to America, to a prep school in Cambridge, MA. (Browne & Nichols).
I fell in love with America
overnight. A year later I returned to Berlin and decided
to emigrate.
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The
Berlin City Hall, where in 1962 JFK said
"Ich bin ein Berliner." I was
in the crowd.
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In 1965, when I was 21, I convinced my
father that I should go to college in
America for a year, and he agreed.
Unbeknown to him, I had got an immigrant visa...
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It
was easy to get a visa in those days; the old
quota system was still in effect, and the German
quota was never filled. I simply went to the
American consulate and said I wanted to
immigrate, and they said "Fine, here are the
forms." Six months after I arrived the law
was changed and the door pretty much slammed
shut.
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The
photo on my immigrant visa, the last
picture of me taken in Germany
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I arrived in New York on
April 14, 1965, after a 16 hour trip on
Icelandic Airlines. The immigration
officer took my immigrant visa, gave me a
big smile and said: "Welcome!"
I
had thought I would be just passing through New
York, but it became obvious very quickly that I
needed to look no further.
More about that on the next
page.
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