Third Generation Germans

[Dreamwoven]

This was something I had never even stopped to consider, but it is certainly well worth understanding. Some Germans feel guilty about their grandparents who were Nazis doing the war. This piece sums it up well:
http://www.npr.org/2011/05/07/136028608/uncovering-a-grandfathers-secret-nazi-past.

I was made aware of this by August Guelfen, who was telling me about this in a private message, and later posted in my astronomy thread:

Hello again,

If someone is interested in the indo german/nurse roots of "Game of Thrones", so he or she should read the "Thule", especialy the Edda Saga, that is the whole truth about the Song of Fire and Ice. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is concepted the same way, but a bit more interesting, I guess... I read the "Thule" entirely, also the Edda Saga of indo german "apocalypse". But I am very lucky to be able to read old german, nowadays, I don't even know one person under 30 besides of me, who is able to read it, without being paid for it as historians or as scientists. Besides, their exist another funny thing,
called "The Guelphen Saga". It was written down the first time nearly 700 years ago, I guess... My old manhunter family is the best, beleave me... We hate and murder each other even sometimes today... We are indeed ol' dirty bastards of murder and mayhem... Can you imagine us at Christmas diner ?! It's great and more cold than in Sebiria in terms of emotions.

There are several Germans on LitNet. Its hard for me to understand that someone who wasn't even born in the Second World War can feel guilt for his grandfather having been a prominent and senior Nazi.

There were Nazi admirers in all countries, even in Britain: Oswald Mosley. Other countries had their quite substantial political parties, like the Arrow Cross in Hungary, Franco in Spain, Salazar in Portugal and Mussolini in Italy. The 1930s was the fascist era in Europe, partly the product of the Great Depression.

[Pompey Bum]

I alluded to something like this briefly in a thread about genealogical research. I have had stunning success retrieving life stories on my father's side but so little on my mother's that it has seemed sometimes like it has been intentionally obliterated. When I was a little boy my maternal grandparents uneasily dismissed my questions about ancestors. In the last year I have discovered that both had strong (though not exclusive) German ancestry. They covered this up during WWII (German-Americans were suspect then and sometimes severely harassed) and apparently never made peace with it. My research on their side turned up little but names. These go back to the generation of Erik the Red and King Knut. It's a damn shame so many stories have been lost.

[Lokasenna]

I was told about a German friend-of-a-friend living in the UK who recieved a large parcel in the post containing everything that her recently deceased grandmother had left to her. The box was full, completely full, of Nazi memorabilia. She had known her grandmother had been a party member, but she had had no idea of the extent of the old woman's activities during the Reich - nor indeed of her apparent continued and life-long enthusiasm for the Nazi ideal.

Her response was to burn the lot of it in the back garden. The people who bought her house, who are also friends of mine, keep finding charred medals and things while gardening.

I can understand her reaction, though I probably wouldn't do something as dramatic as burning everything. In principle, I think that the sins of the father should not touch upon the son - each person is responsible for their actions, and no other. Nor should one have to conceal where one has come from. If someone has been the product of fascist parents but has nevertheless formed more reasonable, mainstream views, that should be a point in their favour rather than a source of shame.

[Dreamwoven]

I alluded to something like this briefly in a thread about genealogical research. I have had stunning success retrieving life stories on my father's side but so little on my mother's that it has seemed sometimes like it has been intentionally obliterated. When I was a little boy my maternal grandparents uneasily dismissed my questions about ancestors. In the last year I have discovered that both had strong (though not exclusive) German ancestry. They covered this up during WWII (German-Americans were suspect then and sometimes severely harassed) and apparently never made peace with it. My research on their side turned up little but names. These go back to the generation of Erik the Red and King Knut. It's a damn shame so many stories have been lost.

On LitNet, Pompey? Can you provide a quote?

I didn't know that German Americans were suspect in the USA.

Yes its great pity that so many stories get lost.

[August Guelfen]

Hello, first of all, thank you Dreamwoven for your help and support. I am glad that there are others interested in that kind of subject... My grandfather was and is a mystery for me like for his two living children, my aunt and her older brother, my father... My father was born in December 1945, the coldest winter in a time periode of many years. The historic buildings, where he was born, still exist. They were build between 1933 and 1940, I guess, and were part of the hospital complex for epidemia and such deseases... My father nearly died by the birth process and contaminated his mother with this epidemical illness, I mentioned above... His Father died in 1961 by heartattack in the age 56. Same building, same location... His older brother Egon died 1968. He was smashed to bits in the peace of the night on his customized BMW motorcycle on a Bavarian Autobahn at 3 am, I think it was... He was a very talented hobby racing driver on his BMW. He was on a retour from a race in Bavaria back to his hometown 450 miles away in the north. He drove as fast as he could, at least 150 km/h at the fastest point. A truck gave him death, which was parked illegaly at one side of the Autobahn without illumination... My uncle was smashed to little bits, he was dead immediately. Every morning, when I wake up, my first obssezive thought is to make it like him, nearly 50 years ago. I tend to feel peace in dying this way, as a deathless king, as the fourth rider of apocalypse, as the Angel of Death and Silence... I obviously hate my life, I even hate my existence and the fact that I was born... No one understands, no one cares. Objectively, I have or could have everything anyone can wish to have or wish to be... I am
a brillant thinker and poet at the same time, women love me a lot, I have money..., but finally I only want to find peace and salvation in a cruel death by sacrefice. My whole identity is broken up into millions of pieces, I can never hope to repair. My blood preasure kills me nearly every day, because off my genetic devine... I saw more doctors you can imagine since my 4th Birthday. Nobody could explain, why I beated my head against walls as a four years old child... No one can help me, even not today... My whole social behaviour is careless and narzisstic, antisocial and posttraumatic, depressive and manical...

[Pompey Bum]

On LitNet, Pompey? Can you provide a quote?

I'm not sure what you mean, DW. If you mean a quote from my earlier thread about genealogy, I just mentioned the German issue in passing. Here's that part:

Last names, by the way, are not all their cracked up to be. People changed them all the time to fit in or to avoid persecution or social censure (the 20th century produced a plethora of unknowing Germans). And in earlier times the commoners sometimes just took on the names of their lords and masters. My last name is Scottish. I was taught growing up that I was a Scottish American. But the DNA test that my brother gave me for Christmas showed that our largest ethnicity factor is Irish and that Scottish is quite small (I know that the Scottish and Irish are both Celts, by the way; apparently there's a marker). I'm more Spanish than I am Scottish--and much more German! A lot of the things people think they know about themselves are a bunch of poop.

Here's the entire thread if you're further interested:

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?85057-Genealogical-Research&highlight=Genealogical+research


I didn't know that German Americans were suspect in the USA.

Some were interred during the war. Some of those were self-professed Nazis (there was an American bund) but not all. There was also a degree of unofficial anti-German bigotry. People like my maternal grandparents, who had some German ancestry but lacked German last names, just kept quiet. They forgot the stories lost the records, making my job much harder. I was also researching the wife of a family member from my father's side; this woman had the unusual name maiden name of Buxter. Almost nothing else about her appeared to have survived. It took a while, but eventually I found her. She was the daughter of a first generation German immigrant; her real name was Buchter, of course. She had simply started giving her maiden name as Buxter or Baxter on documents after the war started. Her husband had been gassed fighting Germans in the First World War. His ruined health led to an early death. His widow had to work in Chicago factories to survive the Great Depression. My father, who knew her as a boy, remembers that adults ostracized her during the war. But he was innocent of the reason until I told him.


Yes its a great pity that so many stories get lost.

Retrieving the ghosts is why I write.

[Dreamwoven]

This was very interesting, Pompey. I didn't know that some Germans were interned in the USA during the Second World War. Names are indeed of often misleading as people change their names frequently, for all sorts of reasons.

[Pompey Bum]

This was very interesting, Pompey. I didn't know that some Germans were interned in the USA during the Second World War. Names are indeed of often misleading as people change their names frequently, for all sorts of reasons.

Thank you, DW. I am not a racialist, so on one level I am indifferent to whether I am Scottish or German or Irish. But it is personally important to me to uncover the people and stories that were brushed under carpets by racism and fear. I want to find all these Irish ancestors who discreetly decided that it was time to be someone else. I can see hundreds of ancestors. So where are they?

I don't entirely understand the implications of the DNA test my brother gave me. One entirely unexpected result is that about 2% of my ethnicity turns out to be black African (although phenotypically I am as white as Caspar the friendly ghost). So were my American ancestors raping their slaves? No, the DNA group was from an area in Mali that wasn't slaved into the New World. But it was slaved earlier by Muslims. Another unusual result of the test is that I have some Spanish ancestry (not much, but more than I have Scottish). Could that mean that my African ancestors were Moorish slaves in Medieval Spain, whose line continued after the Reconquista through so-called Hidalgo blood?

Who knows and to a certain degree who cares? Whatever is going on, it's way off the map. And it's the sort of fantasy genealogy I have no use for (Don Pompe de Bum--the poke of death!) But it is an interesting mystery and I wish it were possible to know more about it. Those ancestors are lost ghosts, too.