These notes are taken from the manuscript “Denk Ich am Sonneberg” written by Renate Kehrein (née Schellhorn) in 1981, covering the period from 1939 to the end of the war, 1945. The significance of the year of authorship is that the Iron Curtain was still in place, meaning it was very difficult to cross over from the West to the East Zone. My grandmother tried to cross over about the same time, but was not permitted by East German Authorities.
Finally, the original text is in German, and my German is insufficient to fully translate. As a result I have drawn on automation to perform the heavy lifting.
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Death of Berta Schellhorn
August 4, 1943. In the hot August of 1943, we had come to Sonneberg from Leipzig as usual, and our somewhat stubborn grandmother had to pick currants in the sweltering heat. The result was a stroke, and the very next day she closed her eyes forever in her old apartment at Bahnhofstrasse 4. My mother…
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The Night of Terror in Leipzig
December 4, 1943. In the spring of 1943, the victorious German armies had already suffered their first serious defeats, which indicated that the war would end badly for Germany. Most of the major cities had been largely destroyed by bombs from Allied squadrons. Leipzig was one of the few exceptions. Although we went to the…
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Move from Leipzig to Sonneberg
December 5, 1943. We had no idea of the masses of people who were rolling around from the city, with nothing left but the bare lives they had saved. In the morning we visited the remains of the house that had been destroyed by the aerial mine. I simply did not understand how only a…
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Life in Sonneberg
Summer 1944. So we spent the last year of the war in Sonneberg in relative safety. There were frequent air raid warnings there too, and while many Sonneberg residents remained calmly in their apartments, we always ran into the basement, which offered little protection, but this escape had become so second nature to us that…
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Sambarger Klöß
December 1944. In what I have described so far, I have tried to familiarize the reader with the Thuringian landscape and the habits of its inhabitants. But this includes, above all, a Sonneberg specialty, the preparation of which has been made so much fuss that I actually have to dedicate an entire chapter to these…
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The Tomato Garden
During the last two years of the war I had begged Aunt Fanny for a plot of my own. I only planted tomatoes there. Every time a horse-drawn cart came up Bahnhofstrasse, I rushed out onto the street armed with a bucket and shovel to sweep up the horse droppings. As a result, I certainly…
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Uncle Walter
January 1945. But even during the last months of the war there were always little miracles. I often slept very badly, dreaming of bombs and Russians attacking us, and I didn’t miss a sound on the street. Once in the middle of the night I heard the trampling of army boots on the cobblestones of…