Here, Renate talks about tante Fanny’s home and factory. Fanny operated the cardboard box factory after her husband’s death in 1928, however, Renate doesn’t state when she retired. On my 2017 visit, I found that the house and factory no longer exist.
When the war began, my interest was increasingly focused on the cardboard factory. It was located behind the Nennstiel house and you could reach it via a covered walkway, the so-called crossing. In peacetime, this factory produced boxes of all sizes, mainly for packing dolls. At the entrance, immediately to the right, there was a long table on which the finished products were stacked. At the end of the table was Aunt Fanny’s workplace. Next to her were two pots of glue that smelled of resin and a small fire was burning beneath them. She used a brush to coat the edges of the doll boxes with paste and then stuck beautiful white paper lace on them. This was very difficult work, because the brown glue must not leave any stains on the white cardboard; so you were not allowed to help with the work, unless the paste had to be stirred now and again or a log had to be put on the fire.
There was only one strict prohibition in the factory: you were not allowed to go too close to the large punch. This was where “Engel”1, the factotum2, was in charge and cut large cardboard sheets into the right shapes for the boxes. Prior to when the men were required to do military service, a whole row of them stood in front of the staplers and quickly turned the cardboard into boxes, which I had to collect and bring to Aunt Fanny’s table. Very soon, however, the men, always in a joking mood, were replaced by young women from the Sonneberg area. Things were no longer so fun for them, because their fathers were at the front somewhere and they feared for their lives every day.
Today I wonder why I always liked helping in the factory so much. But somehow I felt very important among the adult workers when I could make myself useful.
There was a small office with an old standing desk next to it. The room was only used to store cardboard. The stacks of different heights made ideal hiding places. On the wall hung an ancient, majestic picture of Bernhard Nennstiel, the founder of the company, but in our excitement we paid no attention to it.
In this rather gloomy and certainly very outdated factory building, a worn wooden staircase led up many stairs, past a small room in which an old man stood year in, year out at a saw that kicked up a terrible amount of dust and made a huge amount of noise. But when you finally reached the top door, coughing and gasping, and for once you hadn’t forgotten your key, it opened the way to a green-painted tin roof that rattled loudly under every step. You only had to walk down a few meters over it, and after all the noise of the engines and dust you were in the midst of God’s glorious nature.
Aunt Fanny’s garden really did seem like a little paradise, as it suddenly, unexpectedly, appeared before us. Extremely well-tended flowerbeds were framed by peony bushes. A pear tree grew right at the edge of the roof, in the middle of a flower garden. The grey pears were dried until they were completely shriveled. The dried fruit then helped to enrich many a meal, especially during the years of hunger. I can still remember the green-painted arbor well. It had pretty little windows decorated with curtains, and in front of it stood an iron garden bench and matching chairs with curved backs. The paths were always neatly raked. Of course there was also a laundry bleach, but we had respect for that, even with the all-forgiving Aunt Fanny. The branches of a huge chestnut tree arched over almost half of the garden. Aunt Fanny once told me that her father-in-law had two brothers and each of them had planted a small chestnut tree, but only the middle tree had flourished and had very quickly branched out into three large branches. When you came up Bahnhofstrasse, you could see the Nennstiel tree shining in its splendid colors over the roofs of the houses. In one corner of the garden stood the old coach house. Horses and carriages had once been kept there, but the team in which Aunt Fanny had once driven through Sonneberg in her youth had long since disappeared. Cherry trees bearing fruit grew in abundance around the old shed. How often did we get terrible stomachaches because we ate the unripe ones too early.
Aunt Fanny’s garden was bordered by the huge Eller meadows. As far as the eye could see, there were only lush green meadows, which in summer were full of meadow flowers. There we eagerly caught butterflies and brought them home in our botanical drums. This wide, gradually rising field led into the unforgettable Thuringian Forest. In winter we whizzed down the slopes there on our sledges. There were no lifts yet, and anyone who owned a pair of wooden skis with Kandahar bindings was already a little king.
At that time we had no idea how quickly our sledges would be collected by the Wehrmacht to begin their journey to Russia, and that American low-flying planes would appear on the horizon above the forest in a matter of seconds, plunge down onto the railway road and drive into the helpless crowd.
Production changed more and more from one war year to the next. At the beginning it was mostly doll boxes that I helped load onto the rickety delivery truck, but later it became more and more strange corrugated cardboard tubes.
Engel sometimes took me with him when he made deliveries. At the age of seven3 I had never been in a car, so a trip to Köppelsdorf, wedged between boxes and cardboard, was already an experience for me. First we drove to the Siemens company. I had to get out at the guard post, and only when the cargo had been unloaded did Engel take me with him again, and we distributed a few more boxes to various doll factories. I never thought about the purpose of the strange tubes. Today I know that they were packaging material for grenades4. At the time, for some strange reason, I simply didn’t ask about it. But if I had known more about the production of weapons, I would certainly not have thought about the suffering that these missiles would bring to many people, but they would only have strengthened my hope for final victory.
- Engle is German for Angel, which I presume was his nickname
↩︎ - Factotum is the word Renate uses, it means a servant who is employed to do a wide variety of jobs for someone.
↩︎ - Renate’s birthdate was July 15th, 1932. Given the war started September 1st, 1939, my guess is she was older than 7 when these events took place. ↩︎
- The Siemens plant in Köppelsdorf was, during World War II, involved in the production of electrical equipment and components for military use. Specific details about the exact products manufactured at the Köppelsdorf plant are not extensively documented, but Siemens, as a company, was heavily involved in producing a wide range of electrical and electronic products during the war including: Electrical Relays and Switches; Electrical Motors; Radio and Communication Equipment; and Generators and Power Supply Equipment. The connection to hand grenades is unclear/undocumented
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