My Moments In Germany in 1972-1973

The second city, where I served during my two years in Germany from 1972-1974, was Dortmund. It was a beautiful city, one I visited once during a conference in July of 1972. My first impression was very positive. I desperately wanted to live and to work there. The skies were relatively smog-free, unlike Oberhausen; the city was clean, unlike Oberhausen; the people were educated and elitist--three things I thought would make a great place to work. I would find out differently. Oberhausen had been a "blue collar" city, but it was where I saw the most success in terms of conversions.

There was a bakery in the northern part of Witten, a small city we worked near Dortmund. We found the bakery one afternoon, just before returning to the apartment for lunch. I discovered their cherry cheesecake. After that, I purchased twenty-four slices once a week every Monday morning, which was the day we had free until 5:00 p.m. to do things like shop and do laundry. On my last visit, the two women who had waited on me for months became emotional when I told them I was leaving on a transfer to Essen. They had been so nice to me as a customer, and on that last visit the day before I left, I took an extra large order with me to my new city. I never have found anything that tasted like that since. The people in the bakery always enjoyed seeing me return each week. The liked the fact that I felt their pastries were the best in the area.

The church in Dortmund was a beautiful building. Ironically, it looked very much like the building in Snowville, Utah where my Annie and I would attend church in the early years of our marriage in the mid 70's. This church in Dortmund was a reasonable walking distance from our apartment, and it was at the edge of a large park.

This was the street where the apartment was, a small room with a hotplate. One couch was against eastern wall of the room, and another against the southern wall. Both couches made into beds, while not comfortable, were much better than what we had in Oberhausen--two creaky metal frames with wires stretched across to support four inch foam rubber mattresses.

There was central heating, an improvement from what we had in Oberhausen, and there was hot and cold water, but there was no access to a shower. Like in Oberhausen, we went to the city bath once a week, as allowed by our mission rules. A bathroom with a toilet was in small room as you came up the stairs to the second level. It was like a lone section between the first and second floor. Our apartment was in an area of the city called Hombruch.

As mentioned, there was no stove or oven like we had in Oberhausen, and there was also no refrigerator. Whenever we bought milk, we kept it on the window ledge. And we used it quickly. For cooking, we used H-Milch, something you didn't have to cool and something you never attempted to drink either. I only made one attempt. But it did work for cooking.

The neighborhood was beautiful, large trees lining the street in front of well-kept homes. We lived in the upstairs level of a nice Protestant family. They had two small daughters, a five-year-old and small toddler. The two little ones were both cute, but they sometimes came into our room during the day and made a mess. That was rare. Their father--who was a carpenter--made them a small puppet theater, and sometimes when we came home for lunch, the two girls would put on a small show for us.

This Lutheran church was across the street. It took me at least one or two months to adjust to the chimes that sounded all night long, with additional sounds each quarter hour. The experience probably explains why I still love hearing our clock strike the hour in my own home.

My European house guests never complained about our grandfather clock, but others, like some friends of my children, occasionally told us that the chimes were not the best situation for a good night's rest. And at this point in time, I not only have the grandfather clock, but Annie and I also purchased a large Black Forest clock during our last visit to Germany. I always avoided the "cuckoo clock stereotype" thing, but I had to have it for grandchildren. I have memories of the one my grandmother had in her home. I wanted my grandchildren to have memories like that too. I figure that when I start serving Sauerkraut and brats for breakfast, then I have gone too far. Until that moment, the clock is just fun for them.

The high rise apartments in the picture below kept us busy in autumn of 1972 and throughout the coldest part of the winter in 1973. It seemed strange for me to discover just how cold it could feel outside in a country with high humidity. Some mornings the wind would seem the sting your face and hands, although it was not cold enough to freeze water more than just a thin sheet on top of a puddle. Those North Sea winds were miserable during the winter and early spring.

I only remember snow a couple of times. Dortmund was much cleaner than Oberhausen, but within hours of a fresh storm, the dirt from the air would pepper the white covering, dusting it to gray. And then it would melt, rarely staying more than a day. But the weather was still very cold, especially in January. I had fur-lined boots and gloves. The apartment buildings below were a good place to work, because they kept us warm.

In spite of the beauty of the city, our area was in the northern industrial part, where sections of housing rose high into the sky, yet it was nice finally to see blue sky like in the picture here, because in Oberhausen, the air was seldom clear. Industrial soot soiled our white shirts hours after being outside. That was not the case here. There were steel factories and coal mines, but the air was much cleaner. I did not, however, see the success I found in Oberhausen. I was here for nine and a half months, and although we had two baptisms, there was no satisfaction in the success. Our newly found members quit attending church quickly, although he members in the Dortmund Ward were incredible.

I spent my first "German" Christmas Holiday in Dortmund. The Weihnachtsmarkt or Christmas Market was a great experience. Whenever walking down the crowded pedestrian zone or Fußgängerzone, you could smell the roasted almonds. The sights and sounds were incredible, but there was never the time to enjoy anything like this at the time.

The people in the city were very gracious. A non-member family invited us for Christmas dinner. It was the only time in my life I ever had roast goose. It was an incredible meal, and the people were so nice. Christmas in Germany is for families. The fact that they included us as "outsiders" is amazing to me now. For New Year's Eve a family in the Dortmund Ward called the Hobohm Family invited us to dinner. Both holiday meals were a welcome break from our attempt to cook anything at that time. I will never forget New Years. At midnight, people began lighting rockets that shot high into the sky, and the heavens lit up--almost like daylight. On our way home, there were eight inches of paper debris from the firecrackers and rockets. The Hobohm family invited our entire district to dinner that night. There had to be at least eight of us there.

It was in front of this church, the St. Reinoldi-Kirche, where we worked street board and talked to people while passing out pamphlets and other materials. The church was in the center of the city, and it was a city landmark.

Before I left Dortmund, a bizarre thing happened one night. My missionary companion and I returned home to a darkened house, something that did not happen very often. We assumed the family was out, and when we climbed the stairs and entered our room, all our books and belongings were in a large pile in the middle of the floor.

I was a bit angry, because some pages of some of my books had been damaged after being flung to the floor. As I put them away, I heard a noise on the stairs. The father came into our room. He asked us how long we had been there, and we said we had only been there for five or ten minutes, just long enough to begin cleaning up the mess. I assumed the two little girls had done everything. The police arrived immediately. My mission companion and I had frightened away robbers who had broken through the back entrance we never used. And they had been in their children's room next to ours on the top floor when we arrived. We had frightened them away before they could take anything or harm the children. He and his wife had left that evening briefly without getting a baby sitter. The children had been asleep, and they knew what time we would arrive, which we did. They did not intend on being gone very long that night, and they knew the sleeping children would not get into any mischief. And they knew they would be safe with us.

In the 90's I did a foreign exchange with a school in Hamm, not far from Dortmund. One Sunday, the German cooperating teacher drove Ann and me to the city. We knocked on the door, and the father answered. He was glad to see me. He became emotional twice: once when I asked about his first wife who had died years earlier from cancer, and a second time when I told him about the break-in. He cried. And he thanked me for being there that night. The German Police had told him that the robbers were in the room with the sleeping children when we arrived and frightened them away. I never knew that the burglars had been in the room like that. When it happened, I assumed that the intruders had entered and left, but obviously they had been there longer than that, and although no harm had happened to the children who remained sleeping the entire time, it was a dangerous situation.

During that visit than Ann and I made to Dortmund, we attended church there and met a Schwester Kruger. I injured my knee severely in Dortmund, and I could not walk on it for a week. She brought me something every day. The Kruger family had invited us to eat once, and I raved about her cheesecake. She brought me a treat every day while I recovered, cheesecake one day and hazelnut cake the next. I had a picture with me that day from the time I was in Germany in the early 70's, and although she didn't recognize me, she remembered bringing me the treats. She smiled when I told her about how I gave that recipe out to my students in my German classroom and how much they enjoyed it. It truly pleased her to know that.

The recipe I received while I lived in Dortmund, although I substitute cream cheese for quark, is here:

Frau Krüger's Käsekuchen

Pastry:
2/3 cup flour 1 egg—beaten
½ teaspoon baking powder 1/3 cup margarine or butter
1/3 cup sugar

Sift baking powder and flour into a bowl, and then push it to the sides forming a hole in the middle. Add the beaten egg and sugar in the hole spreading the margarine around on the flour in clumps. Knead ingredients together until a ball can be formed. If the ball of pastry tends to stick to your fingers after being well kneaded, add more flour in small amounts.

Filling:
2 packages (8 ounce) Philadelphia cream cheese
1 cup milk 2 egg yolks
1 cup sugar juice of a lemon
2 teaspoons vanilla 4 Tablespoons cornstarch
2 stiffly beaten egg whites 1 teaspoon baking powder

Mix cheese and milk until creamy. Add sugar, vanilla, egg yolks, lemon juice and mix well. Stir in baking powder and cornstarch and mix well. Fold in egg whites.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease two round cake tins. Divide pastry dough. Press it evenly over the bottom of the cake tin, allowing some to be pressed a bit up the sides. Use a fork to make ventilating holes in the pastry. Pour in the cheese filling and form it with a spoon or spatula to a mound in the center. Bake low in the oven for 45 minutes. Make sure that the cakes brown well before you take them out. Cool before eating.

(By the way, there is a machine from a site called the German Corner where you can make your own German quark. It not only works well in German recipes like this one, but it tastes great on bread or bagels.)