The Grandfather Clock

This is a story from a memoir I am writing about life in West Germany during the Cold War. My husband was drafted into the US Army in 1968. Instead of going to Vietnam, as we expected, he was assigned to duty at a base in Darmstat, West Germany. I lived there with him for 14 months.

There were three items that American couples typically brought home after their service in West Germany: sets of Rosenthal china and crystal, a baby (more on that later), and a clock of some sort.

We looked at a lot of German clocks on our weekend excursions. We learned the difference between a grandfather and a grandmother clock. (The grandfather is over 6 feet tall; the grandmother is shorter.) Many of the cuckoo clocks were works of art, with intricate carved wood and clever machinery.

The problem with the cuckoo clock was, well, the cuckoo. Did we want a clock that chirped at us every 30 minutes, 24 hours a day? There were ways to turn off the cuckoo, but didn’t that defeat the purpose of owning a cuckoo clock?

We chose, as most couples did, to buy a grandfather clock. Don found an ad posted at the base by a German couple wanting to sell theirs. 

We made an appointment and went to meet them.

They lived in an apartment in downtown Darmstadt. The building was fairly new. They lived on the fourth or fifth floor. 

We knocked on the door; they invited us in. Their apartment was light-filled, with large windows along an entire wall of their living room. It was furnished comfortably. They offered us a seat.

Our hosts looked like they might be in their mid-forties. They spoke good English. We made polite conversation. 

“Where are you from in the United States?” 

We told them.

“This is such a nice apartment. How long have you lived here?” 

They told us they had lived in Darmstadt all their lives.

As typical of German hospitality, they served us Kaffee und Kuchen. When we finished, they told us they wanted to show us something. We thought they were going to show us the clock.

Instead, they asked us to come over to the living room windows. From there we looked down on the city of Darmstadt. It was, of course, a familiar scene to us because the US Army base was there and we had been in the town many times. To me, it had always looked like a pleasant, mid-sized city, relatively untouched by the war. 

It turned out that I could not have been more mistaken. Our hosts had a stack of photos they wanted us to see, showing us what was left of Darmstadt at the end of World War II. It was truly shocking. 

The only undamaged structure left was the spire in the Luisenplatz in the center of the city. It was hard to believe that the scene of mass destruction in the photos was the same place we were looking at from their windows. 

The Luisenplatz, Darmstadt, Germany, after WWII.  Image credit: Wikipedia

They were matter-of-fact as they showed us photos of ruined buildings and told us what life had been before the war. For some reason, they obviously needed to tell us what happened, but they seemed oddly dispassionate about it. It felt like a history lesson. 

And also like a kind of ambush. 

The situation was uncomfortable and confusing. Why were they showing us these pictures? Did the US destroy their city? Did they blame us? Should we apologize? If so, what should we say?

Neither of us knew, so we just stood there.

It was also very strange because it seemed that, except for places like the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial, references to World War II seemed to have been scrubbed entirely from public view. The museums we visited in various towns had nothing on display newer than the very beginning of the  20th century. Erika and Heinrich (our landlady and landlord) never mentioned the war. We never brought it up because the subject felt verboten. 

Finally, they changed the subject and returned to the reason we were there in the first place. They led us into the hallway to take a look at the clock. 

Image credit: Harp Gallery

The design was simple, similar to the one shown here. They explained how to wind it and maintain it. We liked the sound of the chime. We said we’d take it. Don paid the husband the agreed upon price. 

I was relieved when we said our goodbyes and left.

***

But that’s not the end of  the story:

When I started writing stories about life in West Germany, I remembered the strangeness of that meeting. I still wondered why they felt the need to show us all those photos. I decided to learn more about wartime in Darmstadt to see if I could make sense of it. 

It turns out that the US never bombed the city. But Britain’s RAF (Royal Air Force) did, repeatedly. It wasn’t clear why they did that. Darmstadt wasn’t a particularly strategic city in military terms. It was well known as an arts center. It was home to Merck, the pharmaceutical company. But otherwise? 

The attacks were so vicious that the Germans took to calling them the “terror bombings.” German bitterness over those attacks lasted decades. I believe that might have been the motivation behind the “lecture” we received. They weren’t blaming us necessarily, but the couple with the grandfather clock wanted us to know what happened, and did not want it to be forgotten. 

Given their ages, they were likely survivors of those bombings. 

The final RAF bombing took place on September 11, 1944. 

More than 200 planes rained bombs down on Darmstadt that night, destroying most of the city. The population of Darmstadt at the time was 110,000. In just 30 minutes, more than 11,000 people were killed. Another 70 - 80 thousand were left homeless. 

German bitterness over the attack lasted well beyond the time Don and I lived there. After the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, Germans took note of the date and began to refer to that final, devastating bombing of Darmstadt as Germany’s 9/11.

I wonder if the couple we bought the grandfather clock from was still alive when the US experienced our 9/11. If not, I hope that wherever they are/were, they know that their 9/11 was not forgotten.

Image credit: US Army

Since 2007, a joint memorial has been held annually in Darmstadt for both German citizens and American service members - in remembrance of both country’s 9/11 tragedies - 57 years apart to the day.