Father - 1st story

Father’s mother lived in Essen in the Ruhr area. As a young girl she studied and at a student ball she became friendly with a fellow student. Eventually she became pregnant. As long a possible she kept her pregnancy a secret. She had only a stepmother and she didn’t want her to find out about it so eventually she confessed to her father. He then told his wife that Hedwig (I was eventually named after her) is not looking well so we need to send her somewhere for recuperation. In Neuss lived a woman who looked after babies when mother’s didn’t want to keep them. After giving birth she left the baby behind and everything became a big secret. The lady in Neuss put an ad in the local paper to find out if someone wanted to adopt the child. A woman who already had 2 grown up children – one girl and one boy – answered the ad. Later on her daughter married and took Father with her to continue to look after him. Her husband did not like my father and so difficulties developed. They then wrote to the guardian to find another home for my father. And that is what happened. But Father became homesick and missed his friends. I then heard later from a schoolfriend of my father’s who often came to visit us, that father returned and that the entire class picked him up at the train station. And so he was found another foster home in the same village.
He had a strong feeling of not fitting in anywhere. He didn’t even know that he had a half-sister. And his sister also didn’t know he exisited. I don’t really know when he saw his mother for the first time but I believe it was after he was married and it came about because his sister who was looking for something in her mother’s paper, found a letter from his legal guardian. She then told her mother, I would like to get to know this brother. That must have been the first time that his mother saw him. Her husband was also unaware of her big secret. She kept it from him despite the fact that her sisters told her to confess before her wedding day. One of her sisters (Aunt Malchen) owned a station-restaurant by the train station in Koeln-Muehlheim. I visited there several times with my Mother. Sometimes we stayed a few weeks and if my Oma was there I was not allowed to call her Oma. Because I was still very little I often forgot this and then Mother called me into the kitchen and told me: “you are not supposed to say Oma all the time”.
Everything I know about Father’s youth and childhood I know from my mother’s stories. Because Dad drank so much I never got very close to him. And I regret that now.