Childhood in the Collective
- anon
- Apr 6, 2022
- 23 min read
Updated: Jun 8, 2023
(GDR/DE) My father was the formative and defining part of my childhood life. But he was never present. He was dominant through his non-presence, the fatherly role model function he did not provide, the professional work he took very seriously and put a lot of effort into, and the many changes of location for the family of five. The whole family was orientated towards his ideas of life under socialism, convictions, and career.
I was born in 1954 in Ronneburg in the GDR as the second daughter of a couple trying to realise the ideas of a socialist society as best they could in this time of awakening and ideals.
Everything for the construction of a socialist society
My father was the youngest son of a baker from Görlitz and had lost several brothers in the Second World War. There are photos of these brothers proudly posing in Wehrmacht uniforms. After the war, my father’s remaining brother joined the National People’s Army of the GDR, which probably indicates a military affinity more than a socialist conviction.
My father, on the other hand, had a job as a cultural instructor at the Free German Trade Union Federation (FDGB), the only trade union in the GDR. It was considered the extended arm of the Socialist Unity Party (SED).
My parents were both in the SED and worked in the union. But my father was the leading creative head. He studied cultural studies alongside his work by distance learning, then became an adviser and rose further and further in the union’s structures. By the time of the fall of communism in 1989, he was head of the department at the FDGB national executive in Berlin and was one of the leading figures in shaping the union’s work.
As a convinced communist, he was instrumental in developing a socialist culture for workers. The best known is the “Bitterfeld Weg” project, from 1957 to 1965. The GDR leadership tried to bring workers and writers together. Workers who wrote and writers who toiled were to produce authentic socialist literature together.
The project did not have the desired success. Still, my father was also active as a workers’ writer, wrote plays for GDR theatre, was involved in the organisation of the workers’ festival and worked in the Kampfgruppe, a civil defence organisation in the GDR.
My mother also studied cultural studies and last worked in Berlin as the clubhouse manager of the Oberspree cable works. As a young wife and mother, she set her priorities similarly to my father. She also worked for the FDGB, but mainly as a district or local executive. In her later years in Berlin, she was active in the Central House of Young Pioneers. My mother did not have a professional career like my father. My father’s career determined the location changes, and my mother then took the job offered to her. My father was the head of the family. She subordinated herself for his career and probably also out of love.
Weekly crèche – a model project of the GDR
My parents had no doubts about the compatibility of professional and social commitment and triple parenthood. Moreover, society and the state supported this attitude by providing weekly crèches.
This was an institution where children were cared for continuously from Monday at 6 a.m. until Saturday at 6 p.m. without parental involvement. Six-week-old infants to three-year-old toddlers were dropped off at the weekly crèche on Monday morning and picked up again after a week on Saturday evening.
No one was politically forced to place their babies and toddlers in such a crèche during the week, but they could. The original idea was that shift workers would be relieved, and their children would be well looked after and cared for in state care.
My parents were not shift workers. They mainly had regular working hours and still took the opportunity not to have to look after and care for their children during the working week. Since both worked at Wismut in Ronneburg, a mining company for uranium mining, he as a cultural engineer and she as a typist, they were free to place their children in the weekly crèche. This mainly benefited their leisure time, as they did not have to work in shifts. They worked in the AgitProp group (AgitProp = agitation and propaganda for the party group) of Wismut, sang in the choir and the homegroup (Heimatgruppe) and played in the orchestra. And my father was able to complete his distance learning studies in peace, undisturbed by screaming children. Such commitment was desired in the GDR and was massively encouraged, for example, by this childcare offer.
I have a sister two years older and a brother three years younger. All three of us shared the same fate of staying the first years of life in weekly crèches – but in different years and institutions.
I have a scar on my forehead that has to do with my week crèche trauma.
As a little four-year-old girl, when I accompanied my mother on a Saturday evening to pick up my little brother from the weekly crèche, a caregiver waved me into the house. In a sudden wild panic, I ran away completely mindless and straight into a swing. I suffered a bleeding laceration, the scar of which can still be seen today, and was met with incomprehension from the adults!
I had and still have no explanation for this feeling of panic. I think the early childhood psychological imprinting of the “week crèche” generation is a profound intervention in the psyche. This happened early in life, so it isn’t easy to talk about it. Nevertheless, some feelings and sensitivities that are perhaps typical for me could be explained based on the weekly crèche experience. These include, for example, the anxiety and stress symptoms that for a long time strongly affected me at collective events where there was a lot of pressure to succeed. But I will go into that in more detail later.
The GDR courted this childcare model as a highly regarded achievement of the socialist workers’ state until the mid-1960s. Then, after several studies by Humboldt University and others, the weekly crèches disappeared relatively quickly. Why? The studies found that the children had glaring cognitive deficiencies and developmental deficits. This was not in the state’s interest but was counterproductive for developing the economy, politics and culture.
Holzdorf – a bit of Bullerbü*, but a sad one
*Idyllic village in Sweden set as the scene for Astrid Lindgren’s book “The children of Bullerbü”.
In 1958 we moved to Holzdorf, a tiny village near Weimar. My father got a job as a lecturer at the FDGB school there.
This FDGB school was a timber-framed castle that seemed huge to me at the time, with dark passageways and integrated living units for the staff.
Next to the school, there was a sheep farm with sheep and poultry. We children roamed around unsupervised, always looking for little adventures. My parents must have thought that nothing could happen to us in this small place. But children always manage to put themselves in danger.
Execution of the cock
I still vividly remember the rooster attack. We children often played in the courtyard of the timber-framed castle. As the ducks and chickens of the sheep farm also stayed there, we had to watch out for the smeary droppings on the cobblestones. I am endowed with a strong sense of injustice and therefore felt that the ducks had no right to roam in our yard. So I chased them with a little stick to the sheep farm, which the reigning rooster perceived as a threat. He flew at me and pecked with his beak just below my eye.
As punishment, his head was chopped off the next day in my presence. I had no desire for revenge against the rooster, but I still had to go along and witness the execution. The rooster, for his part, did his best to frighten me one last time. After the execution, it flew headless a few metres towards me.
The whole experience, including the beheading, is still a trauma for me today.
Big sister’s duty of supervision
My little brother’s involuntary bathing is also still vivid in my memory for two reasons.
One reason is that my brother, who was just one year old, almost drowned in the care of my six-year-old sister and me (4 years old).
For the workers at the FDGB school, there was a concrete swimming pool with an entrance staircase, which was relatively deep at the back. We siblings played alone outside and walked along the pool when my brother fell in. He paddled like a dog with his arms and legs. Since we girls didn’t know how to swim either, jumping in after him wouldn’t have done any good. Panic! Fear! Then my sister remembered that she had seen a bent stick a few moments before. She used it to pull my brother to the edge of the pool, and then together, we pulled him out of the water. My brother was saved! Relief!
The second reason is that I was now terrified of punishment because the misfortune could not be concealed at home. The little one was soaking wet.
Reproaches and punishments awaited us, but mainly my big sister because we had not looked after him.
My father would usually hit us with a slipper or carpet beater. I was a somewhat cautious and reserved child, but my lively and rebellious sister was often chastised. She also had a really bad hand in this because she was often put in charge of her younger siblings. If something went wrong, it was her turn. So it was no wonder that she didn’t exactly behave fairly and lovingly towards us little ones. But, on the other hand, she was also the one who stood in our father’s way when he wanted to beat up the little one.
I, in contrast, was only afraid for my siblings, especially when they were threatened with punishment. This helplessness frightened me very much. To this day, I am constantly worried about my brother and my big sister; although we agree on almost nothing, we have shaped our lives very differently and do not shy away from any confrontation.
How it could have been – a unique experience
The third early childhood experience also took place with my siblings again. It had snowed a lot. We owned a single sledge and were allowed to go sledging. My sister and I walked to a tobogganing hill where many children and their parents were bustling. I had never been tobogganing before and looked at it somewhat sceptically. My sister, however, loved it. She whizzed down the hill again and again. She didn’t take me along, and I didn’t dare go alone. Of course, I didn’t have any fun watching, and I was also cold. My gloves were too thin, and my hands were freezing. I cried to myself and would much rather have been back home. When my distress was at its greatest, a girl’s father approached me and asked why I cried. I told him that I was terribly cold, especially my fingers. He then took my hands and rubbed them with snow. As he did so, he spoke kindly and reassuringly to me and predicted that I would feel better in a moment. I was only four, but I still remember that scene today. The experience that touch heals pain and that someone cares only about my well-being did me a lot of good. I wished so much that it had been my dad who took care of me.
And once it happened. I experienced that my father cared for me intensively.
And that had a back story.
The after-school club, where almost all the children went, lasted until 4 p.m. I then usually walked the four kilometres home alone or with a friend. There would have been a bus that was always wholly overcrowded once a day. But you could only get on it with your pupil bus ticket, and that ticket was something special. Made of thin paper, it had 31 small squares that you had to punch when getting on the bus. But, unfortunately, over a month, it became more and more wrinkled and faded and eventually, you had nothing to show and were therefore not allowed on the bus.
Anyone who has anything to do with children knows that flimsy documents have little chance of survival.
Of course, this was also the case with me as a pupil in the first grade.
Together with a classmate, I set off one day in winter on the way home, which led past a lake. Of course, it was strictly forbidden for us children to walk on the frozen lake, and of course, not everyone complied. But while walking over the frozen lake, it was possible to cut the path short. At the end of the lake, near the shore, the older pupils had prepared a slide. They were laughing and screaming as they slid back and forth. My somewhat chubby friend joyfully stamped onto the slide with his school bag, and I followed. Then everything happened very quickly. He broke in, and I slid into the ice-cold water behind him. It was only up to my chest, but I had trouble getting out again quickly with my satchel in tow. The other children helped, and soon we were standing on the safe shore, soaking wet, freezing and completely scared. What now? Our biggest worry was the punishment that was certain to follow.
To keep our misfortune a secret, we went to the only grocery shop in the village to warm up and dry ourselves on the heating. However, the shop assistant unceremoniously threw us out. So we had no choice but to sneak home. First, we went to my schoolmate’s house and rang the doorbell, shivering and trembling with cold and fear. His father opened, wordlessly dragged his drenched son into the hallway and grabbed the leather whip on the Wall while slamming the door in my face. As I stood there, bewildered, I heard the crack of the whip and ran home in a wild panic, expecting something similar.
However, my father, who was the only one at home, reacted differently. He didn’t say a word. First, he put me in freezing water in the tub, then slowly poured on warm water and gave me lots of camomile tea. Slowly my whole body began to tingle. Finally, he put me to bed with compresses on my legs and piled several blankets on top of me.
It was an ordeal, but I was still happy because I had not received any beatings. Instead, I had received my father’s full attention and care—an almost unique experience.
Comfort and protection – unfortunately, a foreign word
My parents appear neither before nor after such dramatic experiences in my earliest memories. They were not present, not available, not responsible and not accountable.
I cannot remember my parents hugging me or showing me any other affection. The only person in my life who triggers such memories in me is my maternal grandmother, although she was also quite curt. But she lived in another town, and I was only allowed to visit her during the school holidays.
My paternal grandmother, by contrast, was very strict. She moved in with us for a few years after my grandfather died. She had her own strict and frugal style of upbringing.
For example, as soon as my mother left the house in the morning, we had to take off our nice new clothes and put on old ones. Presumably, the new clothes were to be spared. Only after a teacher asked our mother about our ragged appearance, the matter came to light.
Throughout my childhood, my parents always left the house at 7 a.m. and were not home before 6 p.m. During this time, the weekly nursery, kindergarten, school and after-school care were my places of residence. However, my sister was practically the “guardian”, the chaperone appointed by the parents. Since she was hardly older than us little ones, she was wholly overwhelmed, and her treatment of us had little to do with sibling love and cohesion. She often bullied us, and that’s why I didn’t feel safe in our kindergarten. It was not a place of comfort for me.
And even in the after-school care centre, where I had to go after starting school in 1960, it was not stress-free for me. Russian war films were shown on black-and-white television every day after the 2 p.m. siesta. We didn’t have a TV at home, so my sister was quite fascinated. The howling of the bombs and the clatter of the tanks scared me, and I covered my eyes and ears. But I had to do this discreetly and was not allowed to cry out because if I had, I would have been sent out, and my sister would have been ordered to go and supervise me. You can imagine what that would have meant. Lots of trouble with my big sister!
I certainly didn’t lead a sheltered life as a child. Then there were the many changes of location that forced us to start over again and again.
An unsteady life – constantly new beginnings
In my first decade of life, we moved five times. From Ronneburg, the uranium mining town of the Wismut mining company, we moved to Holzdorf, from there to Grünheide, then to Alt-Buchhorst and finally to East Berlin. Each time my father moved up the career ladder, we got to know a new place, a new school, and a new daycare centre. So we children frequently moved into unfamiliar structures.
Today I think of these childhood changes and have the feeling that I suffered from them and developed both fears of loss and survival strategies.
When other changes became necessary later – system changes when the GDR dissolved and career changes – I was able to deal with them more calmly. This is because I had already developed my own strategy.
I often realised what was necessary. You had to analyse the new situation, research available opportunities and make decisions.
Then it was a matter of rolling up one’s sleeves and taking action. Every significant change that forces a change of location, job, status, etc., means leaving familiar things behind. But it also opens up new possibilities and broadens the horizon of life. Unconsciously well-worn tracks can be left behind, and new paths and goals can be found. Therein also lie opportunities.
There would be other stories from my life to tell, but I would like to mention at this point that one can also draw a lot of positive things from negative life experiences, which also include education in the spirit of the collective.
The collective – a formative experience
Due to the many moves, the changing dialects and circumstances, I had no close kindergarten and school friendships. I was not aware of this lack for a long time.
Only much later did I realise that the weekly crèche and other children’s institutions, which were supposed to educate about socialist consciousness and collective behaviour, had a strong influence on my perception and attitude in life.
In collective structures, you learn as a child that you have to behave as inconspicuously and disciplined as possible if you wanted to be at least without problems or maybe even successful.
There was no protective parental home in my early childhood, no security and tenderness, but instead fear of sanctions, humiliation, rejection, and intense pressure to conform.
You had to submit to the group and go along with collective decisions if you wanted to receive recognition. Group and collective opinions were absolute; individual creative ideas were undesirable, fought against and sanctioned. Such a collective was more than just a group. Behind the convictions of the collective was the indisputably remarkable socialist ideology of the state. So anyone who stepped out of line was suspected of being harmful to the collective. The potential for exclusion is more profound and extensive than with simple groups.
As a very imaginative child who developed irrational fears and unconventional ideas and perspectives, I did not fit one hundred per cent into this society. Moreover, I often lacked the self-esteem to contribute and assert myself.
And so, I gave myself a framework for my own world through self-chosen isolation. Alone with myself, I was safe and liberated. Fantasies and creativity were allowed.
On the other hand, to this day, under stress, I am sometimes unable to express feelings towards fellow human beings and groups, assert my ideas and concepts and claim my rights without feeling guilty.
In my professional life, when colleagues or departments acted as a collective and peer pressure was high, I was regularly tormented by fears of being blamed and overwhelmed.
This phenomenon also occurred later. For example, when it came to expressing one’s opinion on specific topics in subject teacher council meetings or school management meetings or even in everyday teams, I came under intense pressure.
If I had a feeling of certainty, I was also eloquent and confident. Conversely, if I lacked confidence, I unconsciously reacted aggressively, dismissively, or not. Perhaps this is also a behavioural pattern developed from experiences in collectives?
How collectives work
I was always ambitious when it came to solving tasks successfully. I invested a lot of time and energy in my work. But often, the strongest motivation for my commitment back in the GDR days was to avoid making mistakes. Here I mean work and actions whose successful completion was in the interest of the respective group, not in my personal interest.
Failure meant the threat of punishment such as belittlement, verbal judgement, rebuke in the collective, and denunciation by the group leaders.
The spiral of mistakes made and the frantic efforts to avoid mistakes sometimes got out of control, more often in the past than today.
When the stress built up, I felt helpless and overwhelmed and broke off contacts, whether friendships, relationships or work. In isolation, I was able to feel inner security at first and later regain calm and composure.
Successes in the collective were very desirable. They brought recognition from all sides. But successes required faultless action by everyone in the collective.
A big surprice how teams of individuals work
When, after the fall of communism, I belonged to teaching teams in which teamwork was understood as cooperation based on compromise, taking individual preferences into account, I was at first startled, then amazed and finally very liberated.
I remember a team meeting of the maths teachers in one year group. I was new to the school and ready to adapt. The team leader and most of the colleagues favoured a uniform school assignment, which also involved narrowing down the subject matter. The meeting lasted about an hour, and a decision was made. When everyone got up to leave, one colleague said that he would not participate because he was not yet ready with teaching the material in his class. He would have his own school assignment later. I froze inside, expecting a huge drama, fundamental discussions about solidarity, community, etc. None of this happened. The team leader and the team members only said: Yes, if you want to do it that way, go ahead.
Such experiences reduced the pressure I felt to conform and participate. How liberating!
In the meantime, I also had a family of my own and developed other strategies for dealing with people who might demand my successful functioning with my loved ones and friends. Only sometimes do the old patterns still break out. But now, I am no longer helpless in the face of them.
Beneficial effect of socialisation in the collective
However, I also have to say that this formation through collective structures did not only produce negative behaviour. As much as my individuality and deviation from consensus constricted and unsettled me during my life in GDR structures, orientation on the success of the collective was of great benefit. It brought the enjoyment of successful problem solutions, which were attributed to the work of a team. I don’t need profiling, competition or rivalry. A successful project is the success of many. And I am happy about the success and the recognition of my personal performance. However, I attach great importance to the fact that the performance of others is also appreciated accordingly.
This, I have seen, is not a matter of course in the strongly individualised society of people socialised in the West. Competitive battles and efforts to raise one’s profile often impair successful teamwork.
Inexperienced in establishing closeness
With the onset of puberty, my desire for friendship and closeness grew. I wanted to have a trusted person, a best friend, by my side.
Since I was good at school and studied easily, I offered my homework to the other girls to copy. Because I had never experienced how friendship develops, I assumed that being useful would be the best way to start. And I was right. In fact, I acquired a real best friend whom I devotedly defended when she was attacked, no matter by whom and whom I always agreed with. It was not a question for me whether she was right or wrong, whether what she said was true or false. I stood by her side. Loyal or in solidarity, whatever you want to call it. In any case, I supported her devotedly to the point of self-sacrifice.
I had no experience whatsoever of how friendship works. I did not think it was enough to feel affection for each other, share fun and secrets, open up, and be who you really were. According to my socialisation, I tried hard, made an effort and sometimes overshot the mark.
To impress my friends, I was pretty rebellious and cheeky with the teachers at school. That got me into trouble, but I could afford it because of my exemplary achievements.
Nevertheless, I was usually ridiculed as a rebellious little girl in retrospect. The effect of my rebellions was more like a storm in a teacup.
I had girlfriends now, but the relationship was not relaxed.
The only loving relationship I had in my childhood was with my younger brother. He was the only person I could meet in my childhood without reservations. We played together, visited museums together or read books together. By my standards, we were very close. However, even together, we were not strong enough to resist the pressure of our father. My brother is three years younger. So I often saw myself as the one caring for him. When we were home alone after school, I would prepare us small meals, make tea or go to the playground with him. This included dangerous areas in bomb shelters in the forest or old ruins. I also took him to the disco when he was 14 years old for the first time. But he was not my “best friend”, and we did not necessarily have confidential conversations. The age difference was probably too big for that.
When my brother fled to West Berlin in 1977, aged 20, contact almost broke off. We didn’t have a telephone, so conversations were hardly possible. After the fall of the Wall, we had to and were able to rebuild our relationship completely.
In the later years, I no longer had to earn friendships and closeness diligently on a daily basis. It’s probably because I have three children whom I could love unconditionally. This has perhaps pushed my head back regarding interpersonal relationships and given me more room to feel instead.
But this tendency towards loyalty to colleagues, for example, is still powerful, though now without the desire for close friendship. My pupils could also count on me at any time. I am still small in stature, but no one made fun of me anymore later when I became renitent for a good reason. That is what remained.
My socialisation shaped me in the collective, the described distortions and consequences, and negative and positive role models in the family and my personal environment.
My father – a communist and absolute ruler in the family
My father was a convinced communist in his role model as a citizen of the GDR, but in his role model as a husband and father, he was utterly stuck in traditional conventions. He was the authority, the determiner, the tyrant, the punisher of children. He expected us to laugh at his jokes, even if we didn’t understand them, and not to be offended by his sarcasm. A negative reaction could well end in violence.
I often found his words and behaviour humiliating. For example, when my brother had once again brought home bad grades, my father would drag him around the flat by his ears and mock him as “Count Coke of the gas station” (meaning: someone who pretends to be more than he is).
I also remember my father entering our children’s room one day and stroking the surface of the tiled stove with his fingers, then the curtain rod and finally behind the cupboard. All the while, he would say, “Dirt! Dirt! Dirt! Finally, he rubbed his dirty finger down my face and under my nose, looking at me contemptuously. I felt humiliated but didn’t dare talk back. My sister, 14 at the time, would have confronted him, even if it would have become nasty for her. But I, just 12 years old, was just too scared.
My mother did not behave like that but did not restrain him in his actions either. She also suffered from his constant infidelity.
As a workers’ writer, co-founder and designer of the “Bitterfeld Weg” project, he wrote books and dramas for workers’ theatres in the socialist sense and had many contacts in the cultural scene. He also got to know many female artists and often cheated on my mother until their final divorce in 1970.
My father remarried and lived in Berlin with his new wife and two children. As I was to learn later, he became a completely different, more loving and interested father in this family.
My parents’ divorce initially also meant complete separation from my father. I only saw him twice briefly until he died in 1993. The second meeting was at my sister’s birthday party in 1992. At that time, he was already severely marked by cancer. He chatted with me for a few minutes and wished me luck in life. It was the second time in my life that my father was only concerned with me. How sad! It was only much later that I could forgive him for his distance and lack of love and interest in me. Forgiving was a long process. I thought about him and his background, his losses during the Second World War, and the circumstances that led to his first marriage. I also needed this forgiveness for a personal closure in my own story.
My mother – was not a rock
On the other hand, my mother was a broken woman after the divorce. She was wholly absorbed in her work. We children could not give her any support.
For months she was in tears and saw no way out of her situation. I felt helpless and angry because I could not help her in this grief. At the same time, I was indescribably angry at my father as the cause of this grief.
Much later, I realised that our mother had manipulated us with her tears and anger, with her worldview. Through her suffering, reproach, and anger, she ensured that we rejected our father and had prejudices against his new wife.
But it also became apparent that our mother loved our father but could not love us children enough. There is no other way I can explain the constant emotional detachment with which she treated us children.
But I don’t blame her so much because she was weak, an adopted child herself and uprooted early.
My parents and the Zeitgeist in the GDR
My parents are not the people in my memory who positively shaped my life and my decisions with their behaviour, empathy or help. I deliberately did not orient myself on them.
Others have taken that place.
My grandmother, for example, impressed me with her strength, assertiveness, and ability to express feelings. So I took her as an example.
My favourite teacher was a very motherly woman. She not only recognised my strengths, but she also encouraged them and helped me successfully overcome the hurdles of puberty. She became a role model for me both emotionally and in my career choice. I became a teacher.
In the end, I often wonder what my parents’ fault is. They were war children, emotionally uprooted themselves, wanted to be fighters of a new age, believed in the GDR as a better form of society, and absorbed it. They sacrificed their relationship with their children, accepted alienation and lost the chance to develop love and responsibility towards their children.
They were not the only ones who acted in this way.
The weekly crèches were offered to many parents in the GDR for a long time. Accordingly, many children experienced something similar. Often, weekly crèches were the only form of care offered. Did the parents then know what they were doing when they gave us children away every week and were absorbed in realising their idealistic ideas or even just their careers? Were relaxed evenings off worth so much to them? As I wrote initially, my parents used their free evenings for social and sociable pursuits.
Were they aware that they were cheating themselves out of the experience of seeing their children growing up?
Could they have resisted this tempting offer at all? Was it possible to express doubts in this social atmosphere and convictions? Or was being together on Sunday enough for them?
In any case, one thing is clear. Giving the child into the weekly crèche was not a compulsion. Some certain constraints and necessities may have arisen from the world of work, but there was no compulsory weekly crèche. Parents definitely had room for manoeuvre.
My parents chose between work, career and leisure time. That is bitter, even though I keep trying to make excuses for them. They were young and war children, a generation of speechlessness and alienation. Perhaps it was, therefore, easier for them to give up their children. Besides, the working hours were from Monday to Saturday, and they were both working.
But I sincerely hope that this kind of alienation in families will never happen again.
My chance as a mother and citizen of the GDR
I have three children myself and worked most of the time. Unlike my parents, I raised and looked after my children myself.
In the 1980s, times had changed a lot compared to my childhood. I was able to take up the generous offer of the GDR and take a break for a year at a time with parental allowance. There was a so-called household day for mothers on which they could take time off. There were even hourly reductions at work depending on the number of children. If you had to look after sick children at home, you could do so with full pay. And I took advantage of these offers so I could be there for my children.
I was always close to my children and loved them dearly. So hugging them and caring for them lovingly has been natural for me from the start. I didn’t have to think about it. The feelings were simply there.
This has been very good for my children and me. We still have a very close, trusting relationship even though they live far away with their families.
I managed not to let the coldness and loneliness of my childhood experiences dominate me but find my own way as a mother.
With my eldest son Matthias’s birth and the feelings that came with it, a door opened to entirely new experiences. I was allowed to give and experience unconditional love for the first time. I experienced feelings of responsibility and closeness to a degree I had never encountered before. The first year of life with him was constant wonder and discovery. The gratitude of being able to accompany such a tiny child and giving him trust and love created a feeling of strength and responsibility in me.
During this time, I also realised how fortunate it was that the GDR, which 30 years earlier had only offered weekly crèches, now actively supported the relationship between mother or parents and child. (KK)
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