My very personal 69 revolution

(DE) It was exactly on the 1st August 1969 when my best friend, Luise, and I celebrated the first day of our future professional life. After graduating from the commercial secondary school (O-level), run by catholic nuns, then called middle school, we were to complete a one-and-a-half year’s apprenticeship as office assistants at the Local Electricity Board, starting today. Clearly, an indication of the, once again, beginning seriousness of life. This seriousness had already happened in 1959 when we started school.

Entry into working life

The staff responsible for apprentices like us welcomed us friendly but experienced, presented us with our training contract in a kind of ceremony and dispersed us into the various areas of responsibility of different departments. For us, these differences were, of course, not apparent. Desks, filing cabinets, telephones and electric typewriters formed the main components of our workplace. We had expected nothing else. We had been drilled in shorthand, typing, book-keeping and filing. We could do that, no question.

At lunchtime, our older colleagues took us to a pub nearby where the staff ate their lunch using their luncheon vouchers. We sat there, watched closely the real office workers, heard what made them tick, and returned to the workplace, where we were assigned our first tasks.

So far so good. But where did the pulling in the stomach come from? Where was the optimistic spirit of new beginnings? What should we be curious about and looking forward to? Disturbing!

After a few days, we had been assigned our permanent areas of responsibility. My friend spent the whole day typing columns of numbers, and I inserted every day endlessly long rows of transfer forms into the typewriter and filled them in. A very important work, because it was the money transfers for the farmers, who maintained electricity poles on their fields and had to be compensated for them.

Being cool was more in line with my self-image than that of an office assistant.

In the evenings we both trotted desperately next to each other home. This was now to be our life?! The youth of the world cried freedom. Away with conventions! Stop the consumer mania! The

Beatles and Stones suggested love and lust for life. We sat at our desks, typing what was given to us and had no feeling for freedom and lust for life. The seriousness of life clearly contained too much seriousness and too little life.

Desolation

Luise and I now stopped going to the restaurant at lunchtime with the others. Instead, we ate a sandwich in the nearby park and, aghast, talked to each other about the desolation of our working life that just had started. My friend was the first who drew the consequences. But that is another life story.

I, on the other hand, was still paralysed and did not know what to do with my bad feelings. What was I supposed to do and want? I could not tell my parents, because getting this apprenticeship was a matter for the wider family circle.

Relationships got me this apprenticeship

When I was looking for an apprenticeship, I had found that I was not easy to be placed. My grades were good, that was not the problem. But my personality, my appearance and my self-presentation could not convince anyone. I was a 16-year-old girl, who had no idea who she was or where to go. Obviously, nobody else in my environment knew that either. My parents didn’t have any advice, but they had relationships. That’s why I got the apprenticeship at OBAG, even though in the interview for this post I had not excelled myself with glory. My great uncle, a respected employee of this company, stood up for me. That is an obligation, of course.

Thoughts of escape

However, in my distress in August 1969, I struck this obligation from my memory and turned to the career advice service at the employment agency. I can still see the well-meaning career advisor sitting in front of me today. She didn’t think it was necessary to throw the slogan “Apprenticeship years are not manly years” around. She did indeed join me in exploring my obviously very hidden needs. Nobody had done that before.

And lo and behold, at the last proposal, which we put on the table with a deep sigh, my life spirits jumped up. School! Who would have thought that! Not even me would have come up with the idea in a hundred cold winters.

Rays of hope and opportunity

There was a grammar school for mathematics and science, where career changers, like me, were prepared to qualify in a transitional course for studying at the advanced level. Intensive French, Maths, Physics, Chemistry, English and German! A total of 3 or 4 girls studied at this grammar school. I wanted to prove myself there. Yet, school started the day after next. The school secretary took my name over the phone, but without any guarantee whether I could get a place. She told me, only when my name was called out in class the next day, then I was accepted and could finally register. After all, a chance! But what should I do with my job? I could hardly go and quit in the hope of getting in, but being at school and in the office at the same time was also not possible. So, I called in sick the next morning and trotted to school with my notice in my pocket. I somehow got through the frightening minutes from 07:45 to 08:15 and then it happened, I was called! My life had begun again!

Reactions

Now I would also manage to do the next two steps. First, I went to my boss in the office and gave him my notice of termination. I explained my plans to him and he was delighted. He said that I had done right. He supported my decision and let me go with best wishes for the future.

I met with less understanding from my parents. My father raved; my mother cried. Finally, my father granted me a slightly higher allowance, from which I was to pay for everything except eating, drinking and living. Then he made it a condition that if I did not finish this school year successfully, I would have to go to a factory to work and was not even allowed to do another apprenticeship. Throughout this year he hardly spoke to me. I am glad that he and nobody else realised that as a minor I could not make such decisions without the consent of my parents or guardians.

Consequences

I barely made it through this course, but then moved on to a newly established economics grammar school, where I took my A-levels. Finally, I studied German Language and Literature and Social Studies and, after some professional detours, became a secondary school teacher. My father did never come to terms with my professional development. After all, I would have been able to get a building society contract, to become a head secretary, to enter into a contract with my boss man and would have been able to build a house. Instead, I led an unstable life, but that is another story.

All my life I was happy about my decision. As a mother and teacher in similar situations I have always remembered how helplessly I searched my way as a 16-year-old and what ultimately helped me to do it: Showing possibilities without pressure to make decisions, as the careers adviser did; as well as acceptance and positive encouragement, as my boss showed. (TA)