The Willow Wren by Philipp Schott (free ebook reader for iphone txt) 📕

of the last two and a half years was beginning to transform, little by little, into some sort of new order, like particles in turbulent water settling out and forming a discernible, semi-solid layer.

Around this time the Sowjetische Militäradministration in Deutschland — universally known by its acronym, SMAD — made more pronouncements about the shape that this new order was going to take. In addition to the weekly ration notices, which were gradually becoming less laughable and occasionally even contained happy surprises of meat or eggs or bread that did not threaten to shatter your teeth, new information from SMAD began to appear as well. It was my job to check the notices as soon as they were posted early on Sunday mornings. Sunday had lost all meaning as a “day of rest” as the struggle for survival does not permit such things and our occupiers were vigorously atheistic. I was an early riser and often in the square waiting when the young Russian officer walked up to post the week’s notices. He and I became familiar with each other and although we never spoke, he would smile and nod to me as I sat on a bench beside the town hall’s door. I would smile and nod in return and waited until he left before reading what had been posted. In addition to the ration list (100 gm of fat! Six eggs!), there was the following notice:

A meeting of landless people is called!

The final expropriations of exploitative

bourgeois holdings of greater than

60 ha has been completed and

5 ha parcels are ready for

distribution to members of our

Agricultural Production Cooperatives!

SMAD–Colditz District

I asked Mama what this meant, but she just shrugged. As the autumn deepened, a dark period gradually settled on her again, like a heavy grey cloak. I often tried to engage her in conversation, but she usually resorted to the shortest possible answers, or no answers at all. Theodor was out collecting pine roots for firewood, so I asked him about the notice when he came home.

“They haven’t told you about this in school yet? Maybe collectivization is only part of the senior curriculum.”

I shrugged. We had missed quite a few days of school scattered through the autumn as the search for food sometimes took priority and also sometimes the train did not run. It was possible that I missed the class where this had been discussed.

“Well, the communist idea is that all the farmers should have equal access to land, that this is fairer and will lead to more food production than a system where a smaller number of wealthy farmers control most of the land.”

“That does sound better.”

“I suppose it sounds better as a theory, but when I was still going to school in Leipzig, we learned that this system was put in place in Russia twenty years before and led to famine because it was less efficient. Not every farmer is a good farmer, and the bigger farmers can afford to have better equipment.”

“Maybe that was Nazi propaganda?”

“Maybe, but you know Herr Dietmann, the potato farmer three kilometres south? He’s the one who was kindest and left some slightly larger potatoes on the field. His land has been expropriated and will be worked by people who fled East Prussia and who had been farmhands on pig farms there, not actual soil farmers. And all the equipment will have to be borrowed from a central cooperative. The so-called farmers themselves can’t own the equipment under this system. It won’t go well.”

“I suppose we will see.”

“I don’t know whether I want to see, Ludwig. I’m graduating in the spring and I’m thinking about going to the West. Many of my friends have the same idea.”

Coincidentally, not long after, this notice appeared on the town hall door:

Residents are reminded that travel between the

Zones of Occupation is restricted solely to those persons

bearing an officially issued Certificate of Travel.

All other inter-zone travel is illegal.

Offenders will be caught and will, without exception,

be punished with imprisonment and hard labour.

SMAD–Colditz District

Chapter Forty-Four

Winter 1947–48

The dreaded winter came, not with heavy snow and deadly frost this year, but with low ashen clouds and icy rain that fell unrelentingly for days and then weeks and then possibly months, I do not remember. I only remember it was a very long time to live in a world leached of all colour. But none of this mattered, not really, because this winter we did not starve. Better to have a full stomach in a miasma of chill damp than to be hungry under a cheery blue sky. The famine had staggered to an end through a combination of, as I mentioned before, more reliable parcels from the West and improved rations as well as through the reopening of a few shops and a regular weekly market.

Money, which had been useless before, began to circulate again. Our bank accounts had been frozen since the end of the war, but Mama had stashed old Reichsmark coins that we could use. Unfortunately the value of these was very low and the ones minted during the war that had swastikas on them were banned from circulation. Mama had also begun receiving a small support payment from the SMAD. In any case, the opening of the shops and markets was encouraging and Mama’s Reichsmark coins plus the SMAD money did permit a few small but useful food purchases.

I had not been inside any sort of shop since we lived in Leipzig, so I was curious to have a look at the first two that opened. I was realistic enough not to expect something really exciting like books to be sold in them, but I was still disappointed to see that both the shops contained nothing remotely of interest beyond a few items for small children and an odd assortment of foodstuffs. One shop had a large stock of cheap children’s sandals even though it was winter, jars of preserved plums, jars of pickled onions, jars with indecipherable Russian labels that