My Grandfather

I have never written about my grandfather in this blog. My maternal grandfather, that is. His name was Erich Rauch and he died exactly eleven days ago, on March 4th, 2011. A month after I turned 50. Born on December 26th, 1914, he lived to be 96 years old. Survived by his wife of 73 years, Liese-Lotte Rauch, nee Hinrichs. One of the most important things about his life is that he became somewhat of a substitute father for my own father whose biological father was killed on the Russian front in WWII.

I am writing about him today, on the plane on the way to his funeral, because I would like to figure out what he meant to me. What are my memories of this man whose life included two world-wars, the loss of his family’s farm in Eastern Prussia, the loss of two brothers in WW II, captivity by the Russian Army and a dramatic escape from what would have been certain Soviet internment in Siberia, followed by a weeks-long hike-by-night experience that eventually brought him back to Hamburg where his wife and three children had fled after Eastern Prussia ceased to be the peaceful island it had seemed to be for so long while WWII was raging elsewhere.

When my grandparents married, on November 30th, 1938, they were expecting their first child, my mother, who would be born in May of the following year. At the time of their marriage, my grandfather had already been drafted and was ready to enter the war as a German soldier. He soon had to leave his new family and wouldn’t see them again except for short visits during which first my mother’s sister, Heidi—in December of 1940—and then my mother’s brother, Hans-Joern—in January of 1943—where conceived.

My grandfather once felt it necessary to write a “last” letter from the front to his wife. This letter still exists and in it, above everything, it becomes clear that it was his family around which his life really was centered. It is a beautiful, but also painful letter in which he confesses his love in a way that later he would be loathe to speak in. He was a formal man, my grandfather. One would have to surmise his love behind this formality. My mother, I believe, to this day wonders, if he loved her. I am certain he did, her, the other two children, his wife and his grand and great-grand children.

What I remember about him:

A trip to the police horse stables near their home. This is really the only outing I remember taking with him. A sunny Saturday morning, I was, like so often, spending several days (if not weeks) at my grandparents'. He decided, uncharacteristically, to get out the bicycles and take me somewhere. It was fun. I can’t remember what we talked about. But the horses, the ride through the forest to get there and the sense that he had thought of something that I really did enjoy all that made for a great morning.

A scene where he gave me one of his blazers to keep. When I reached into the inside pocket, I found two 100 DM bills. He took them from me and said “you can keep the blazer.” And I wasn’t even angry!

A birthday and Christmas lunch of Roast Duck (my present to him for his 70th birthday) I had prepared for him and myself in my apartment in Hamburg. It lasted three and a half hours and when our time drew to an end, he liked to reminisce, “the duck was cold, but we had had a good time.” I had used this time to ask him all kinds of things about his past. But specifically I wanted to know more about his time in the Waffen-SS and his dramatic escape from the Russian army in Prague.

I remember his passionately repeated assertion: I was in the SS (Waffen SS), but I never killed anyone.

The letter I mentioned already was written while my grandfather was stationed in France. The Allied invasion at Normandy had already taken place and France, suddenly, had turned from a sure German capture into an almost certain loss for Germany. My grandfather recalled a particular air-raid by the allies during which he hid behind tombstones in a French cemetery. Before the allies could get to where he was stationed he was transferred to Prague where he was supposed to finally finish high-school, take part in an SS training camp and, finally, be promoted to Fahnenjunker (Midshipman). However, shortly after his arrival in Prague, the city was taken by the Americans and my grandfather, for the first time, became a prisoner of war. Since at that time Prague was already thought of as part of Soviet territories all German prisoners of war were surrendered to them. My grandfather realized quickly what this transfer of power over him would mean: certain deportation and internment in a Russian concentration camp in Siberia. When the prisoners were marched to the train-station, my grandfather ducked away and hid behind some shrubs. His escape didn’t go unnoticed and several shots were fired. But in the fading light of dusk the Russian soldiers missed their target and they didn’t take up pursuit. My grandfather then decided to do what so many others had already tried before him: he walked home. 305 miles. Since he could only walk at night without risking certain re-capture by the allied troops, the trip took him almost three weeks.
My mother tells the story of his home-coming this way: Someone rang the door-bell. Mutti (my grandmother) said to go and see who was there. So I opened the door and saw this man in uniform with a red beard. I didn’t recognize him. He was a stranger. Then Mutti rushed past me and, with a loud scream, fell into the arms of this stranger. It was my father who had returned home. Unfortunately this reunion didn’t last long. Only a few days later the allied authorities found out about his return and he was imprisoned again for a few months in down-town Hamburg.

I remember that after my 15th birthday I had passed him in height and, every time I’d visit my grandparents he would greet me by way of a triple-action-hug: embrace, push down on my shoulders and getting on his tippy toes. At the same time he’d say: na, mein Kleiner (hello, little one). We’d both laugh and go inside. Strangely, that same gesture is now something that Hans-Joern, his son and my god-father, is doing with me.

My grandparents lived in a tiny rental on the fourth floor, no elevator (my grandmother, at 93, still lives there). When we were visiting, as long as he lived there he would always come out to the top railing in the hallway and watch us coming up the stairway.

I still remember him bounding up those stairs, taking two steps at once, until his late eighties. He was a swimmer and cyclist into his nineties.

I remember the phrase (“das hab’ ich mir gedenkt”—that’s what I thinked) whose grammar he had purposely butchered. I still use that phrase now and delight in having my three sons correct me every time.

After I moved to the US my grandfather very much wanted to visit me. But my grandmother wouldn’t let him. Somehow this marital issue, men who want to travel and wives who don’t or only grudgingly let them go, continues to pop up in other marriages in the family, my own included. One may argue that my grandmother had had her life-time fill of my grandfather being gone during the war. But somehow something else must have been going on too. I suspect that behind this sense of “neediness and insecurity” of the wives may lie an equally strongly developed need to be needed on the part of the husbands.

During visits my grandfather often sat in enduring silence while my grandmother kept chattering away. At times he could be harsh with her. Despite his love it didn’t always seem clear to me that he really respected her. There was never a doubt in my mind that she was his intellectual equal. She was equally tough. The main difference: she complained loudly while being tough. He preferred the attitude of the stoic. (We were all taken aback, in fact, when after his second broken hip, during physical therapy, he would scream out loud from pain. It was almost unbelievable hearing those sounds coming out of his mouth. After I heard those sounds, over the phone, I have never stopped wondering, if the many other pains of my grandfather’s life where mixed in with this one. Whatever may have been the source, this pain, in the end, concluded his physical therapy and he never walked again.)

My grandfather wanted to know everything about America. America was the great role-model, the country that had ‘re-educated” Germany after the war and seemed understand how one needed to live.

My earliest memory of my grandfather is from when I was four, perhaps five years old. It’s more an image than a story. My grandparents had not yet moved to their rental appartment and were living in a rented house in Hamburg-Meiendorf. A garden, with a shed in the back, was part of this property. Not too far away from the shed where several red and black currant bushes. To this day I connect the shiny glistening clusters of red-currant and the single, almost somber seeming black currants with my grandfather. I remember the buckets we were filling with harvested berries. I remember his rubber boots, an olive-green shirt and pants of the same color. And I remember that it didn’t bother him in the slightest that most of the berries I picked ended up in my mouth, not in the bucket. I felt an incredible bond with my grandfather that afternoon. And I knew it then. Three decades later I found out that part of the garden had been sold to make room for another house. The currant bushes were gone and a pain I had not known until then took hold of me.

I remember an especially drawn out and somehow difficult correspondence with my grandfather about South Africa. During my first year in the US I had met Pat Naidoo, a south-african ex-patriate who talked a lot about the problems of apartheid and oppression in his home country. When I happened to write about this to my grandfather he reacted like a true colonialist: “it’s the whites who made South Africa what it is now. Nobody should think of taking this land away from them. Without them the “negroes” wouldn’t be anywhere near where they are now.

My grandfather had several dreams that didn’t come true. He never got his high-school diploma. After the war he tried to go back to school. But his family’s need for food, clothing and shelter made it necessary for him to go to work full time. He returned to the police (which he had joined before the war) and became a valued and respected colleague and later teacher of new recruits.

My grandfather always dreamed of buying a house. It never worked out. My sense is that it wasn’t a money issue as much as the stinginess factor. He would have had enough to buy a house, but he couldn’t face the “risk” of doing so. The more proud it made him that all three of his children ended up being able to make this dream real for themselves.

Up into his 94th year of life my grandfather continued to sell car-insurance for a company called HUK-Coburg. When, in 1980, I got my license and set out to buy a car, it was my grandfather who sat me down, did the math for me and, eventually, talked me out of it. I remember the feeling to this day: the disappointment on the one hand, mixed on the other hand with a strong sense of having made a solid decision. He was right. A car, though impressive to others, would have been very hard for me to maintain.

When I think of my grandfather’s passing, I think of a huge tree. Like a giant century old oak-tree my grandfather’s branches stretched out far around him. Under it newer trees have been growing, 3 children, 5 grandchildren and 9 great-grandchildren. The other oak-tree, my grandmother, is still standing. His though is gone. With him an incredible wealth of experiences and memories many of which I never knew about are gone. Nevertheless, his spirit, his optimism, his strength and his tenaciousness continue to live with us and in all of us. Despite all about which we sometimes felt the need to criticize him for, he was a wonderful great-grandfather, grandfather, father, father-in-law and husband.