Tante Frieda

I love the German word Lebensgefährtin.  Leben is life, and the second half of the word contains the word Fahr(en), the word for travel.  It's the German equivalent of life partner, a person you travel through life with.   It's the word my Uncle Otto used to introduce me to Frieda Müller, whom I would come to know as Tante Frieda (Aunt Frieda) over the years. I had close ties to Germany, one intellectual, my friend Achim, and one emotional, my Tante Frieda, back in the sixties, when I began to consider for the first time becoming something other than an American. I had begun to feel the pull of my German roots when I went to school in Munich, in 1960, and the feeling only intensified when I found my way to Berlin as a "cold warrior" a few years later. My fellow American soldiers called the Germans "doobies" (supposedly after the sound of the police, fire and ambulance sirens, which they said sounded like doo-bee-doo-bee). I, on the other hand, had a wonderful personal connection to the city of Berlin in Frieda and Achim and their friends and families.

Frieda and I were not related by blood. She and her husband were close family friends of Otto and his wife. Frieda's husband managed to survive the war only to die when a railroad trellis collapsed on him two weeks into the cleanup. He worked for Berlin's transportation service. Otto, too, had lost his spouse and in time the two of them took up what in German is called an Onkelehe (uncle marriage), a system of hitching up with somebody without marrying them, usually because you get more financial benefit by not doing so. Frieda and Otto had to wait over a decade to be allotted an apartment, and when they finally got one, they were reluctant to give up the luxury, including the pension rights which came along with it.  So every morning Otto got up, took the bus across the city where Frieda made him lunch - the main meal of the day - and the two of them just hung out, went to concerts and plays, and visited with other friends, many of whom were also in Onkelehe arrangements.

Otto wasn't a relative by blood, either. While I was the grandson of my mother's mother's first husband, Otto was the brother of her second. In those days I wasn't all that keen on some of my blood connections, so I saw this relationship in a more positive light than some might, an early instance of "chosen family," a concept which has come to take on powerful significance in my life over the years.

Tante Frieda had an actual honest-to-God twinkle in her eye. She was one of the most cheerful people

I've ever known. She loved to laugh, loved to find pleasure in the most mundane things - when you drip filter your coffee, be sure to stir it in the pot once before serving it to mix the flavors - and provided me with a place to bring my army buddies for Kaffee und Kuchen; they also called her Tante Frieda.

Over the years, through Otto's death and my years in Japan and Saudi Arabia and California, I took every opportunity to return to Berlin, usually at Christmas time. Nobody does Christmas as well as the Germans do, in my experience, with their Christmas markets, their choral music in the churches, their Christmas trees with real lighted candles. Frieda lived into her 90s and outlived everybody who once mattered in her life. I felt a strong obligation to come and hang out with her at least for a week or two at Christmas, despite the dreaded Bohnenkönig torture she put us through. Achim and his wife would invite us over for Christmas dinner and Tante Frieda would arrive with a stack of sweet rolls. We had to amuse her by eating them all until we found the one containing a coffee bean, whereupon the finder would be crowned "bean king." Too much dessert, usually following too much food and drink. More fun in retrospect than it was in the moment, I assure you.

Not long before I left Berlin and the army, in April of 1965, the Germans infuriated the Russians by inviting the German parliament, the Bundestag, to hold a session in West Berlin. The Russians retaliated by flying planes low over the city, virtually at eye level past tall buildings. Tante Frieda and I had gone to a concert and were having coffee in the rooftop cafe of the KaDeWe department store in downtown West Berlin and at one point a plane flew so close I could clearly see the pilot. The racket was ear-splitting and Tante Frieda insisted we leave then and there.

That was the first and only time I found her willing to talk about her war experiences. She had been a chemist and was pressured to join the Nazi party. She refused, and was punished by being given double duty as watch during air raids. During one of those raids, crawling from one damaged air raid shelter to another in the neighboring building, she fell and damaged her spine in a way that affected her hearing. She was now nearly deaf, and if she didn't have her hearing aids in couldn't even hear the door bell. Since she didn't have a telephone, the only way we could get her to answer the door if I ever arrived (I'm talking about later years now) unannounced, was to stick a broom handle through the mail slot and hope she would see it.

All these events, the Russian pilots staring me in the face, the broom handles, the bloated feeling from eating too many sweet rolls, the "einmal rühren" (stir once), the twinkle in the eye - all this comes flooding over me today. I don't recall, if I ever knew, what year she was born - it must have been around 1895, or 130 years ago, give or take. I do remember the date, though. It was August 30th.

Happy Birthday, Tante Frieda!

photos are:

1. Tante Frieda in her late teens

2. friends Ed and Bonnie, me, Tante Frieda, and Onkel Otto, 1964-5

3. Tante Frieda, my guess in her 30s or 40s