Goodbye to the spirit of youth and hello to the real ‘me’

LL: De-UK:

Guiding messages from my early teenage years that impacted my adult life decisions

Becoming a teenager is tough. When you’re 13, you don’t fit in anywhere. You’re not yet an adult, but no longer a child. Everything is either wonderful, but also strange and annoying at the same time. You have to cope with mixed feelings and don’t know how to behave or which choices to make, which does not enhance your self-esteem. The hormones run amok together with the emotions and mood swings. This is a time when teenagers are very open to influences around them.

Music creates desires and dreams

In the early 60s, my girlfriends and I listened to loud music. It drove my parents mad as we listened and sang, or shouted at the tops of our voices, to songs like ‘Twist and Shout’ by the Beatles or to the Rolling Stones ‘Get off of my Cloud’ or danced wildly to sounds like Wooly Bully. Our music repertoire did extend further and included soppy German Schlager music, which we sang with ardour from our hearts. Songs like ‘Marmor, Stein und Eisen bricht, aber unsere Liebe nicht’ (marble, stone and iron can break but not our love) by Drafi Deutscher or ‘Dich gibts nur einmal fuer mich’ (you are the only one for me), by Semino Rosso, or ‘Du allein kannst mich verstehen’ (you alone can understand me) (Peter Maffay) to name but a few.

These songs transmitted a message that we understood and liked: Love and Happiness forever.

No matter if it was far from the reality around us, we wanted to believe it. When we saw our parents having arguments, couples getting divorced or relationships breaking up, it was mostly considered a failure of individual adults, certainly not the reality of life. The message of the music stuck and created pictures, ideas, dreams and desires. So, off we went, in search of never-ending love and happiness and, especially we girls, for that Mister Perfect.

I searched long and hard. The first kiss that was supposed to lead to deep love passed, and love did not happen. When the first relationship ended, I was devastated, thinking life could not go on. Of course, you quickly learn: life goes on, you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and on you go to search for love and happiness. Over time, the songs of true love sounded hollow, and I also liked to listen to the bitter ironic songs of Hildegard Knef, which seemed to me more realistic of life. They portrayed a different picture of love as very intricate, not easily achievable, and about broken relationships. The songs taught you a lesson: some people will potentially lie and cheat, and some will continue to love although they know they are being cheated on. Wow, I was fascinated. There were pain, disappointment and sarcasm, which was obviously part of life. There was a deeper story here. Not everything was in pink colours, but also darker tones. Even so, I still thought this sort of thing would not happen to me and that I would find true love.

Films produce dream worlds

Hildegard Knef was also a well-known actress, made famous by a quite controversial film in 1951, called ‘Die Sünderin’, (the sinner), in which she played a prostitute, who helped her ill boyfriend to die and committed suicide herself afterwards. In Bavaria, like in the rest of Germany, the film caused a storm of protests. This wasn’t because Hildegard Knef briefly showed her breasts, but because taboo subjects such as prostitution, suicide and assisted suicide were raised. In many cities and towns, the film was banned. Some cinemas defied the ban and showed the film. So, it happened in Regensburg, my home town, on a cold February evening in 1951. Several thousand people came, some hundreds came to protest against the film, but most protested against the ban and fought for the freedom of expression in the art that just recently had been anchored in the new German constitution. Regensburg was almost getting into a civil war, with people throwing stink bombs and insulting the bishop and the clergy. Well done, Regensburgers! That was before my time, but I am still proud of those freedom fighters in this conservative town.

The film ‘Die Sünderin’ was a welcome diversion from all the other films that were shown at that time. In the 50s and 60s, people in Germany loved homeland movies, and soapy dramas and the German film industry produced many such films. Set in one of Germany’s many wonderful landscapes, idyllic villages or small towns, they involve good and bad people, grumpy ones with good hearts, an evil person, trusting children or loyal dogs or both. In the end, true love wins over animosity.

Most people went to the cinemas to distract themselves from the past, from the post-war reality of destroyed families and cities. An alternative world of harmony, apolitical love of the country and dreams of small feelings of happiness replaced the memory of the shameful history of war and National Socialism. Few films dealt with the guilt and impunity of the fascist perpetrators or the social double standards. The masses of Germans wanted to dream and believe in miracles and not have to think about the many economic, political, military and social problems.

Contradicting messages to the youth

With all these mixed messages, no wonder the search for happiness in life and love became so complicated and troublesome for the post-war generation. There were ideas from another time, there were rigid moral concepts, and there were dreams of love and happiness within the sanctuary of marriage and family. Reality counteracted these ideas.

The search for life

In search of .... what?

As for me, I looked hard but could not find Mr Right or Mr Perfect.

I doubted myself, was I not pretty enough, was I too boyish, was I not as men expected a girl to be? Although I never really knew how a girl should act or behave. I got on well with boys, but only as friends and not more. They accepted me as an equal. We had good talks and did great things together. However, when they were looking for a girlfriend, it was not me but someone more girly with long hair and mannerisms that I obviously did not have.

I continued with my search for Mr Perfect, perhaps looking for my fairy-tale prince, hoping he would come along and carry me in his strong arms and make my life heaven on earth, sort out all my problems and help me progress in my career etc. Such rubbish that Schlager, love novels and films put into the brains of girls and women, and I guess it was the same for the opposite sex too. The fairy tale of the Froschkönig comes to my mind, where a frog asks the princess to kiss him as only her kiss could remove the spell that was put on him and transform him back into the beautiful prince he once was. I could say, I kissed many frogs in my life, but none of them transformed into a beautiful prince. However, saying that would be unfair. Over the years, I met good boys and good men, and we had a good time together, some long-term, some shorter-term. Unfortunately, as time progressed,, these relationships, for whatever reason, did not work out and we separated.

Rethinking is needed

Perhaps the fairy tale princess is you?

At the University in the early 80s, frequently we discussed life and our purpose in it. Once, one of my friends gave me a copy of a poem called the Märchenprinz,

the fairy tale prince,

which is about a woman’s search for her fairy tale prince. She could not find him, but in the end, she realised that no such thing existed.

The moral of the story: if you want to have a better life, you have to do something, become active and change it yourself. The poem ended: Perhaps then you realise the fairy-tale princess is you after all.

This poem hit home and impressed me. If this was the case, then I had to take my life into my own hands, take responsibility and make changes and choices to get where I wanted to be. However, there was another problem in that I did not know where to go or what I wanted to do with my life, apart from searching for the fairy-tale prince. He and Mr Perfect were not around to tell me what to do. So I had to figure it out for myself. Not easy.

In search of Career and Independence

The search of career and independence - a search for identity

I decided to concentrate on developing my career. Once again the same problem: If only there was somebody who could tell me what to do, where to go and what to say. Perhaps somebody wiser than me, somebody with good connections to help me along…. Again, history repeated itself. I met many people, and some were helpful. However, most were like me, seeking or expecting me to help them and merely using me as a stepping stone to a better career. It was a long process which eventually led me to go to England to study for a Master's Degree in Public Health. I had to start afresh in another country, take on jobs in different areas, such as research and lecturing at University. Slowly I edged forwards, in between spells of unemployment and short-time consultancy work.

Something unexpected happened

Then something unexpected happened outside of work: One evening at a salsa dancing class (prescribed by myself to not slip into, depression), a dancing couple beside me wildly swung around and almost knocked me to the floor were it not for a handsome man who helped me up and offered to buy me a drink. We started chatting and realised that we had many things in common, such as the love for music, photography and travelling.

This ever-so-helpful man became a regular feature in my life. He was so different from my other partners. He was not obsessed with his own career but was very interested in me and what I was doing. He was very supportive of whatever strange ideas I came up with. When I struggled with my self-confidence as I sought to achieve the things I wanted to do, he simply believed in me.

Okay, I had to do all the work, the research, the studying, the writing, but he was there in the background, supporting me. When I came home late, as I frequently did, from a long day at the university, a warm dinner was waiting for me. When I decided on the silly idea to do my PhD at the same time when I had a very challenging job at the university as a Programme Director, he was there. He took on more of the household chores so that I had more free time to do my studies in the evenings and weekends. As a native English speaker, he was best placed to edit the various versions of my lengthy PhD and did so tirelessly. I still owe him a trip to New York that I had promised him for all the editing work. (He hasn’t forgotten! We simply did not have the time for it, yet.) In the meantime, we got married, on our Africa holiday after a safari in Senegambia. There were just the two of us and our taxi driver as witness.

You may ask, could he be my fairy-tale prince? No, I don’t think so. After all, it was I who did all the work, and hard work it was to get there where I am now. However, his contribution was vital. Without his moral and active support, it would have been much more difficult – or not possible at all. I may not have found the self-confidence to go for it or the motivation and the strength to finish it. I would say, he is my soulmate. And that is more than a husband, more than a lover, much more than a fairy-tale prince and more than I ever dreamt in my teenage years. I certainly don’t take it for granted, but I do hope that it’s for life.