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I met Klaus for the first time in spring 1983. At first I wanted nothing to do with him because he wore such ugly chequered trousers in synthetic fibre. However, he turned out to be rather persistent and less traditional than his trousers suggested. In fact, he was a very intelligent person. Intelligence is a quality that I always had high regard for.

Klaus swiftly changed his tastes to simple jeans, and in doing so he looked completely different. That autumn we travelled to the Baltic coast on holiday. I became pregnant during this time, and it became clear to me that we were destined for each other.

Having a Family

Marriage was never on the cards for me at that stage. Working during those pregnant months wasn’t easy either due to my extreme intestinal problems, and at that time there wasn’t much that one could do about it. So, I determined to lie still for most of the day; at all costs I wanted to give birth to a child without health issues. It was great once the winter was over, I really enjoyed the spring season in 1984.

Nicole was born early one morning at half past six; she had conspicuously large dark blue eyes. Of course, the doctor and the midwife insisted that she was unable to see out of them at that stage, but that did not interest me one bit. I am convinced to this day that Nicole was able to ‘recognise’ me right from the word go, she was looking at me so intensely.

My husband didn’t want to be by my side as I gave birth. On the one hand that was fine with me, since I knew he couldn’t stand the sight of blood; otherwise the midwife would have had to attend to him more than me in the delivery room ! On the other hand, he would have very much liked to have done it for my sake alone. I do envy those wives giving birth whose husbands are there at the time of birth. Hence a new era began for us in our lives, us now being a threesome.

The Weekly Consultancy for young Mothers

I was still living in Herwigsdorf during the months after Nicole’s birth, in my hard won flat(there was an overall lack of accommodation in the former East Germany due to the chronic lack of building material available). Klaus visited me daily since his workplace wasn’t far away in the next village. However, I became increasingly exasperated at Klaus travelling back to his parent’s house at night, where he still lived. It was only during the course of the following years I realised what was really going on between him and his parents, with him being well and truly under their control. However, life had to go on and I was too busy dealing with Nicole to be that bothered by this.

The worst day of the week was the mother-child consultancy day which took place at my doctor’s surgery. The doctor there was very straight about the fact that my daughter would end up tyrannising me after several years – “I would end up regretting that I wasn’t listening to this doctor and heeding her advice”. What was I doing wrong? Simply picking Nicole up with my arms and cuddling her whenever she cried! I was also supposedly committing the cardinal sin of taking her to bed with me at night, having her on my stomach and stroking her back at the same time. This was deemed to make me an incompetent mother!

My only regret was telling the doctor about this ‘bad habit’ of mine in the first place. Nicole hasn’t remotely turned out how the doctor warned me with dark forebodings; on the contrary Nicole has done exactly the same with her two children, displaying even more patience than I did with her – I’m proud of her for taking after me in this respect.

Her father also shared the doctor’s point of view that I was “bringing her up all wrong”. Nowadays I am pleased to report that this opinion of theirs was a load of rubbish. How she developed I will detail later on in this book.

Good advice steamed open

Nicole hadn’t even celebrated her first birthday when I made the decision to move in with Klaus and his parents in Neundorf. Things got off to a good start and would have worked out so had I not been so self-righteous. You couldn't just do what you wanted with me.

I was driven to write a letter to my girlfriend in the west, Ortrud, giving vent to all my emotions and misery. Her reply was swift; she wrote me back a letter with the advice “move out as soon as you possibly can”. Things moved fast after that, with Klaus’ parents in control. They had read that letter themselves first by steaming it open, and “I would pay dearly for that advice”. The hue and cry that ensued was frightful! I cannot grasp even to this day just how so-called ‘Christians’ can really treat each other like this.