The Immigrant

By Martin P. Hederich

The book tells the story of a young man who is disappointed with his personal circumstances and his surroundings in Germany of the Seventies and Eighties. He is looking for ways to change his life and broaden his options for his future.Eventually, he decides to take his chances and start a new life in Canada, the country of his choice. Starting over proves to be more challenging than expected and it takes all his skills and energy to overcome the obstacles in his way. In the end,he his successful and able to achieve his goals he has set for himself in his life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483560342

Book preview

book).

I

It was a beautiful late summer day and Lieutenant Marc Kiefer was driving his silver Porsche 914 with the roof down towards the Eastern borders of West Germany. The year was 1977 and he had just graduated with the qualifications of Company Commander from the Army Training Centre of Tank Troops. He was looking forward to his first posting in a position of real leadership. He would be in an Armored Reconnaissance Battalion as a platoon leader of the famous German Leopard battle tanks. After seven years of training in the Armed Forces, including an Army Scholarship at the University of Hamburg, he had graduated with a Master’s Degree in Adult Education.

The time had finally come for him to apply his acquired knowledge. He was to assume the role that the Army had assigned for him, to be second in command in a company of a combat battalion stationed at the Iron Curtain, as the Eastern Border was commonly called. He was expected to do his part in securing the Eastern most part of the NATO deployment of troops against the powerful Soviet Union and their East German Satellite State of the DDR (German Democratic Republic).

Marc was very tall with his six foot four inches and also slim and athletic. To stay in shape as an officer and military leader, he used to run between five and ten kilometers at least every second day or as often as his full schedule and his professional obligations permitted. He was born only five years after the end of the Second World War which had left Germany in ruins. He grew up in a time where food was scarce and everybody was scrambling all day to go after the business of survival. He was raised in a poor Protestant Reverend’s household, wearing only handed-down clothing and learning, at a young age, that everybody had to pitch in and do his part to make family life possible and fulfill everybody’s needs.

Children at the time were considered useful working members of the family. They spent large stretches of time after school helping to secure the family food supply. From an early age, Marc regularly worked long hours to help tend the gardens; furthermore, it was his job to make sure that the wood and coal bins for the different stoves in the house were kept full. Stoves had to be lit at certain times and cleaned out or refueled at regular intervals. As a result he became a very proficient operator of wood or coal stoves as a young child.

He often thought about the value of this workload as a means to keep the children busy, so they had very little time to get into trouble. Youth crime, gangs, loitering, and drugs which plague youth these days were unheard of. Children were valued contributors to everyday life and the family income. Should they ever forget to fulfill their duties, they suffered the consequences immediately by either being cold or being hungry. Life’s lessons were taught daily and responsibilities were deeply ingrained at a very early age. He wished nothing more for today’s youth than to have these experiences to get them on the right track in life. Health problems were rare and obesity was unheard of. People were generally in good shape physically due to their daily struggle for survival. Mental health problems, depression, loneliness and boredom did rarely exist until many years later when life became too comfortable and leisurely, which allows everybody to regularly concentrate on all their little aches, pains and problems. Those were his thoughts as the little sports car approached the Eastern Border Districts of West Germany. If he ever should raise a family, he wished for nothing more than being able to share and create those same values and attributes in the next generation.

Despite being raised poor himself, but with both of his parents well educated, he had learned to appreciate pretty or beautiful things from early childhood on. He learned as a child that it required effort to acquire them and to keep them. So, for instance, when he started his small collection of miniature cars, he kept them neatly parked side by side in a sturdy cardboard box: each layer protected by a fitting piece of cardboard from the next one, which would be stacked on top. Most children under the best of circumstances threw everything they played with in a heap in a container and eventually ended up with a pile of scratched and beaten up toys and scattered parts which quickly turned into garbage. Marc’s collection was carefully selected, kept in pristine condition, meticulously put away after each use and anxiously guarded from the prying hands of other children. In the end it was sold for many times its purchase price, when he could use extra money as an adult. In the same way he treated all his other belongings, like his books, which were kept neatly organized and clean on bookshelves, or later his clothes, all tidy on hangers in his closet, once he was able to purchase his own. He could never understand why people, for instance, spent thousands on a car, then failed to keep it up, running it into the ground until it turned into a pile of unrepairable garbage. So even as a child, he knew exactly the things he liked and admired. Even if they were out of his reach, he learned about them, kept books and pictures and brochures of the objects of his desire, some of them accompanying him through all his adult life.

He loved fast cars and sturdy trucks, fast motorcycles, beautiful boats, military hardware and animals like dogs and horses. He always loved and collected books which allowed him to indulge in a world of fantasy and imagination. He liked to travel to his favorite locations, to own elegant clothes to match his personal style and especially he admired beautiful women, a habit which brought him some grief and multiple marriages later on.

II

As a direct result of the Second World War, which left Germany in ruins and occupied by the armed forces of the former Allies, the country was split up in four zones. These were governed by the military of the USA, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union. The first three military administrative districts in the West eventually evolved into the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik).

The East part remained completely separated and suffered a different fate under a brutal occupation by the Soviet Army. It later formed a totalitarian communist state: the German Democratic Republic. It was neither democratic nor a republic but a regime under the strict rule of the Soviets. This state was indifferent to human rights violations and a terror to its citizens, very similar to the dreaded Nazi regime in the past.

Right from the start, the suffering German population in the West benefited greatly from the goodwill and generosity of the American people. Humanitarian aid was organized on a large scale and found its way into West German communities in the form of CARE packages which were distributed largely by church organizations and consisted of food donations such as powdered milk, cheese, canned goods containing corned beef, chocolate, sugar and other goods unavailable in the destroyed country. American churches formed partnerships with German churches and should be credited to a large extent for the survival of the population. American politics very quickly changed from being an occupying force into helping West Germany to become a democratic, stable and economically revived country under the Marshall Plan.

The situation in the East was oppressive. The Soviets made a point of dismantling the occupied provinces for war reparations and took everything of any use away, transporting it into the Soviet Union. Later on the German Communist Party, under close supervision of their occupiers, took over the regime and did what Germans do best: outdo their own models by being more communist than the communists and establishing a totalitarian terror regime modelled after Stalin’s Soviet Union, always closely referring to the German roots of communism: Marx, Engels, then Lenin and Stalin. Walter Ulbricht was the infamous communist leader of the GDR during the fifties and sixties. He was later followed by Erich Honecker who, eventually, stood trial for his role there, after the fall, (in 1989), of the Berlin Wall in 1989, one of the most visible and infamous parts of the Iron Curtain.

East Germany never really recovered from the burdens they were saddled with from the onset: first there were the inherent flaws of the communist ideology, then the lack of proper assistance, both political and economical and the absence of a flourishing economic system, like the European Union, where West Germany was tied in from the beginning. Then there was the mass exodus of the intellectual and economical elite from the country, as long as the borders were still sufficiently open to allow motivated people to flee to the West. It is estimated that after the end of the war, several million refugees from Soviet dictatorship escaped into the West.

Over the years, tensions between East and West began to increase and led to a more pronounced split between the two systems, manifesting itself most obviously in the demarcation line between the Western Allied Zones and Soviet occupied East Germany. This line followed, in the central part of Germany, the old provincial border between Hessen in the West and Thueringen in the East. The population in the Eastern zone became very quickly aware of the new political realities and started to escape in ever-increasing numbers. The German capital of Berlin, although geographically located within the Soviet Zone, had special status and was controlled by the Allies separately, being split into four zones as well. The three Western Allies again united their zones very quickly to form the City of West Berlin, while East Berlin remained under Soviet administration and would soon become the capital of the newly formed so called German Democratic Republic.

The tensions between East and West culminated June 24, 1948, in a blockade of West Berlin by the Soviets, who tried to force the Western Allies to give up the surrounded city by interrupting its supply lines by land. Access routes had, until then, been guaranteed by Allied agreements. The Western Allies refused to back down from their commitment to the freedom of West Berlin and continued to supply the beleaguered city by air until March 12, 1949, in an unprecedented operation of gigantic dimensions.

Diplomatic activities, eventually leading to the end of the Soviet blockade, concluded with the establishment of two separate German states, the Federal Republic in the Western zones and the Democratic Republic in the East. To control the outflow of citizens from East Germany, the inner German border became more and more fortified. This led to the construction of death-camp-like walls and fences, beginning in 1961, with the most famous part being the Berlin Wall. The eventual collapse of the morally and economically bankrupt systems of East Germany and the Soviet Union culminated in November 1989.

During this time, West Berlin was surrounded by a 155 kilometer wall while 1300 kilometers of barbed wire fencing went up from the Baltic Sea to the Czechoslovakian Border. Fortifications became more and more sophisticated with mine fields and automated shooting devices added to the fence.

The number of East German citizens who successfully fled into the West since 1961, together with those who were eventually permitted to leave or fled to other countries, when the opportunity arose, together with those who were bought out of Eastern jails [made possible by West Germany due to a diplomatic achievement in the relaxation of relations between the two countries] totaled approximately one million people. Approximately 1,000 people died trying to escape, most of whom were shot at the border or drowned in the Baltic Sea.

The picture of border fortifications was published by the West German Border Police and described in detail the barrier system in place during the Seventies and Eighties at the modern Inner-German Border. Number 1 indicates the original border line, Number 2 indicates West German warning signs along the demarcation line, all other installations being in a five kilometer deep barrier zone on East German territory.

III

Marc knew this border area very well. He had lived all his life within a 100 kilometer radius of the city of Kassel, the regional capital of the province of Nord Hessen. His professional career choices had been well within these limits. As his little sports car followed the familiar road to the East, his thoughts automatically went back to the days of his early childhood; when his parents had raised their young family in this area.

He was the oldest of four children and had spent the first five years of his life in this quiet rural area where his father was a young Protestant reverend. He looked after a parish consisting of three small villages in the district of Eschwege, directly adjacent to the now heavily fortified and guarded border. He thought it a twist of fate which brought him back here, more than twenty years later to play a small role in the defense of the Western world in this remote part of the country (For more details of Marc’s upbringing please see The Black Beret by Martin P. Hederich, Brentwood Productions, 2011).

The roads were in excellent condition. The German government heavily invested in the infrastructure of the border districts. Substantial tax monies had been spent to compensate this area for its remoteness and lack of essential economic development. Also, some of the few border crossings into the East were located nearby and traffic to and from East Germany and to West Berlin travelled the roads on a regular basis. But besides that, industry and commerce were seriously limited and many border towns were grateful for the establishment of military garrisons along the Iron Curtain with their aspects of job creation, the inflow of military personnel with their steady government pay cheques and the related spin off businesses which benefited the communities.

Marc thought it only logical that he settle down here and contribute to the local development. Real estate prices were well below the average of the booming West German economy. In addition, the cost of housing and construction was almost affordable and more within his reach than in most other parts of the country. Marc was a hard worker due to his frugal upbringing. He was very determined to get a good start in professional life and to further pursue his personal goals in regards to his family and his hobbies. Seven years earlier, he had married his high school sweetheart Brunhilde, just before he joined the military. Together they rented a small apartment on the outskirts of Kassel. She had graduated from a medical school while he attended officer training and now had a well-paid job as a lab technician in one of Kassel’s larger hospitals. They had two good incomes, low rent and very few other expenses besides their two cars and his motorcycle. Marc expected correctly that the banks would be only too happy to finance their entry into the real estate market, leaving only the task of finding a property that would correspond to their wants and needs.

It so happened that in the area was a large orthopedic hospital and clinic. It was being developed into one of the major medical facilities in its field. For Brunhilde, there was an entry-level opportunity to join this operation as the head of its small lab. On his urging, she applied for the position and based on her qualifications and experience in a large city hospital, had no problem securing the job. For the time being, her driving time to work had doubled, but because they were planning on living in the area, it would be for a limited time. Once they found a home, she would probably be able to reach her place of employment within 15 minutes, driving on a nice rural road instead of being stuck in city rush hour traffic.

Property sales in Germany were quite different from those in America. Most properties for sale in Canada and the United States will have a real estate for sale sign on the front lawn. This makes it easy for the public to see what is available to buy in any given area. This is not the case in Germany. A large portion of sales is handled by the real estate division of the banks who will also look after the financing and the closing of the transactions by involving the legal profession. There are also brokerage companies who will investigate the availability of properties on the market or place ads in the ‘for sale’ columns of local newspapers. Checking those ads, Marc found a listing in the town