It took quite some deliberation on my part to decide on whether or not I should publish the story of my personal childhood and youth. #1 has been online for some time now, #2 was written on the night between Halloween and All Saints Day this year, and today, on Penance Day, #3 is due for publication. This is a good day for the project, because on Penance Day we always had to go to church very early in the morning. The priest drew a black cross on our forehead in order to remind us of the fact that, in the end, we, too, would again turn into dust.
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After the summer holidays of 1960 and the four not very nice years at primary school I already wrote about, I was transferred to the Economic Science Grammar School Jacob Fugger at Augsburg.
🙂 That was almost 50 years after late capitalism had ended.
In my youth, attending a grammar school was something special. In the year 1957, we had 6,917 common secondary schools (“Volksschulen”) with 929,200 students, 165 middle schools with 36,300 students, and 295 schools of higher education with 142,400 students in Bavaria. (Source: BILDERWERK DEUTSCHLAND – Edited by: Bayerische Landeszentrale für Heimatdienst at Alfred-Wurm-Verlag)!
My father had chosen the Jacob-Fugger Grammar School both for me and later my sister, because they had both “modern languages” and a mathematical branch with economic sciences and book-keeping on the curriculum. Being a civil servant at Deutsche Bundesbahn, he considered this combination absolutely goal-oriented for my future life. Of the optional curricular activities, I also took stenography and typing. The former was esthetically beautiful (meditative like calligraphy) but totally useless, whereas the latter is something I still find useful today. Typing with ten fingers “blindfolded” and looking at the screen while doing so all the time, that is a nice feeling. Not to mention all that time I save when writing emails (and posts).
We had old teachers as well as young teachers. The old ones were often very old (considerably beyond pension age). Too many men had been killed in WW-II, so the gaps they left behind were very obvious. Yet, the young teachers were super and really made things hum. The headmaster had been a POW in Russia and was a late returnee. He, too, visibly still suffered from his time of incarceration. Whenever someone had thrown away his lunch roll on the playground, he got an incredible fit of irascibility. We respected that.
For me, grammar school was the entrance into a new world. The young teachers taught tolerance and cosmopolitanism. Being taught English and French, we learned about other cultures, first merely from heresay, and later as exchange students. I remember well my first time as an exchange student, when I was in France and witnessed a totally different world. And in a way, I could well understand that as a “boche”, I was not very popular among some among the French population.
Yes, for me, grammar school was definitely a time of liberty and tolerance. To be sure, we also caused some upsetting scandals – among other things with our “revolutionary” school paper -, but at least it all made sense and we did a well-structured job. We were footlose and enjoyed it to the full.
My third year of grammar school was when I really started feeling at home there. In a way, I seem to have woken up at that time, even though there had been some small liberties and enterprises throughout the first two years:
In 1960, five friends and yours truly founded a “whistling club” motivated by a Deutsche-Bundesbahn initiative. It was supposed to promote “railway awareness” among young people. That was real fun. The parents of one of my classmates (Gerhard – Wein-Müller) lived in a villa with an attic that was only rudimentarily equipped. We were allowed to hold our club meetings there.
We met regularly, built a model railroad out of shared materials, decorated the walls with pictures of locomotives and other railroad objects, went “locomotive spying” together, and had plenty of fun together. As I see it today, this was probably the first time I ever promoted a project. For some time, the club worked quite well, we even recruited some new members – until “higher” interests intervened.
And in 1961, my chess career took off. I was in second class when I took part in the team championship of the Augsburg grammar schools for my Jacob Fugger. I sat in the second team, on chessboard number 4. I was the only participant who was not a member in any chess club. Playing chess on tournaments was a totally new concept to me. It fascinated me so much that I became a chess club member. Apart from playing chess, we were also enthusiastic about playing “skat” and “schafkopf” (Sheepshead). All three games remain something I enjoy doing on a regular basis (with certain peaks during the time I served in the army) today.
Starting from 1962, life really began. One of the symbols of life was the Augsburg family swimming pool, situated directly on the railway line to Stuttgart. We went there on our season tickets at almost all weathers in summer – and even at the age of 14 we felt more like the kings of Augsburg than anything else. There was plenty of tabletop soccer and once in a while we treated ourselves to some white beer (which, at the time, was still called “Weizen” in Augsburg) and a cigar on the terrace. Whenever I see the blue swimming pools today, I get a little nostalgic.
Once in a while, we went to the rivers Lech or Wertach, and as a rare treat, we went to take a swim in the river Isar in Munich. Wonderful parties were organised near the lake “Friedberger See” and later “Kissinger Baggersee”. As opposed to what Willy Michl sings about during the same time, at our school, those pupils with the suntan were not the worst students.
We had our first cigarettes and beers, the republican clubs and Rehak, directly along the Bahnhofstrasse. And there was the realization that there is an opposite sex. In Tschibo and Eduscho (even more smoky than the discotheques), the coffee we bought cost 20 (later 30) Pfennige. And we were “en vogue”!
We got acquainted with Italian food – a Pizza at Orlando or Venezia was the top of the list. There was the GoGo, a wicked and smoky discotheque, the Playbo in Pfersee and the Hanks Night Club in Oberhausen. Those were two joints where only African-American GI’s went (in those days, Augsburg was still truly a garrison town of the US army) to meet bad girls – and, being really bold boys, we, too, went there (not just in order to look at bad girls). And at 2 a.m., they played “The Getto” by Elvis and the GI’s cried because they knew they were going to Vietnam in the morning.
There was a lot that moved us in those days. The “Scheibenwischer” with Dieter Hildebrandt on New Years Eve on the radio, Italian and French films, Goldfinger (James Bond) and the Yellow Submarine. It was the time of the Beatles and Stones, of Black Music and later Flower Power and Going to San Francisco.
In 1967, I climbed the ladder to the editorial staff of our school paper. We were proud of the “Bridge”, as the school paper of Jacob-Fugger Grammar School was called. It made us especially proud to be the least good-mannered of all Augsburg School papers. We were the nasty “underdog” who was not at all liked by the establishment.
This was when we started to feel we were heretics. Interests, however, were fiercely competitive. Time was always too short and computers had not yet been invented, which meant that every single page had to be typed on the old-fashioned typewriter and graphically processed until it was ready for offset printing. Is anybody surprised on hearing that we were not only the heretics of Augsburg, but also the paper with the most typing errors by far? Now that was a balm for the souls of all our “enemies” in the establishment.
However, there was still the small matter of school. Our book-keeping teacher was well-loved and appreciated by everybody. His name was “Professor” Neumüller and he remained both our class teacher and friend/comrade until graduation day. I always finished with an A in his courses, including the graduation test 🙂 – as you can see, we were given a really future-oriented education.
From a business perspective, the last three years were also quite interesting. We learned the basics of economic science, for example the meaning of the words bill of exchange or cheque, assets and liabilities or debt and credit. We learned that there is a balance and an earnings report, how to book a cash sale (15 cash to 80 sales) and a purchase on credit (30 purchase to 17). The digits are from the account frames of the time. Basically, it is still the same principle today, except that now Datev or SAP does all the work.
At school, we also learned about entrepreneurial and economic facts! The interested reader will find my insight into return of this time in the post I wrote some time ago.
In business administration, I always wrote A’s until I started developing my own business administration theories. Our “Professor” Eugen Hirn (Brains) – nomen est omen – was not at all happy with my revolutionary concept of a new type of business administration.
After graduation, it was my juvenile idealism that made me study mathematics, instead of – as I had originally intended – business administration. Business administration seemed too full of conflicting ideas for me, and I wanted to study something logical. I chose computer science as a secondary subject, because it was totally new and had a nice sound to it. And since at the time I was an enthusiastic science fiction reader, I found big control units (computers?) extremely interesting.
Yes, grammar school was definitely a time when life began! In our classroom, we tried to beat each other in the lottery of the first soccer league, copied the most beautiful songs from England or the USA, and started a band. Since there was no musical instrument I could play halfway decently, I was made manager. Unfortunately, our big success never came.
I could continue endlessly. But then graduation day arrived – and before I could start at university, there was the next obstacle overcome: serving in the armed forces. That put a damper on the good times for some time.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
Music fitting to my feelings in this time:
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