My wife, Ilse

Dear Friends and Family,

I can remember as a child, my grandfather telling us long and laborious stories about when he was a young boy. I do not wish to bore you with my stories but simply to leave something of my life behind when I die. That is why I am now going to address my blogs to friends and family as I would like to think of them being able to log on and read about my life when I am gone.

I have never told anyone how I met my wife, Ilse. Ilse was a wonderful woman and whilst she was alive, they were the happiest days of my life. Everything in my home, from the angle of the tissue box on my desk to the handwritten labels on the oven explaining which way to turn the button, are all her doing. There are of course the exceptions such as the robust chairlift and the dangling emergency courts which hang from every known crevice in the house. She always said that she would never grow old. How lucky she was not to.

We met in the summer of 1939 when I was just 18 years old. I was very keen to get involved in the English group at the University I had started at. I perhaps did not mention in my earlier blogs that I grew up in England until the age of 10. We had to leave our farm in Somerset to take over the family one in Cologne when my grandparents were too old to manage it without help. Anyway, I really enjoyed my time in England and being fluent in the language, I decided that I would like to meet people with the same interest. The group talked about English culture and many students were learning English and so keen to practise their skills on me. After the first group meeting, I went every week without fail. Of course the reason I went was because I fell head over hills, the second I walked through the door, with the group leader - my future wife. She was so charming and charismatic. I had never met a girl with so much confidence and so self assured.

After a couple of months, we became good friends and she would often say hello to me if she saw me around the University. I decided to invite her round for dinner with my parents. This may sound strange to my grandchildren as now a days it would not be 'cool' to invite friends, girlfriends or boyfriends to dinner with their parents. None the less, it showed honest intentions in those days. The dinner was less than a success. Ilse was a vegetarian which of course my mother did not approve of. I can remember her saying something along the lines of 'no wonder she is so skinny. She needs to eat proper food.' Although the dinner was not a success for mother, I knew that Ilse was the sort of girl I wanted to be courting. That evening, I walked her home and we kissed outside her house. I was on cloud nine! I immediately asked her to go to the picture house with me and the following week we went to see 'The Wizard of Oz'. It was a wonderful film and one which we saw every year on our anniversary. Just two months later, the British declared war on Germany and our lives were separated for a number of years. We vowed in that time to be married once we were reunited.

Guten Nacht