Читать книгу The Great Hollenberg Saga - Heinz Niederste-Hollenberg - Страница 12

--- The “feudalism” that followed and what nobility and clergy later did with those initial

rulings. Feudalism came from Italy, and then started first when the Merovingian and Franconian king paid their generals and administrators with grands of land. Soon it became hereditary and (semi-)independent. Feudalism developed then to total economic subjection and military allegiance of a man to a superior. Over time it had in parts of central Europe hundreds of variations in material volume and human/personal severity.

--- The conflict between Crown and Clergy and what came of it, lasting till modern times.

--- And within that framework the suffering and endurance of living creatures throughout the following centuries.

Every visit at the family estate there reminded me of what did it take throughout those 1000 years to stick to-gether, to struggle and to survive: It was just that kind of family glue that held together pieces of my life as well, to help me find my own way. The parents Mama Alwine and Papa Wilhelm did and brother Erich and his wife Christa still keep the family bonds alive to this day.

I will never forget my parents’ final farewell when I migrated to the United States: “Son, whatever happens, never forget where your home is, and that’s where you always can come back to”.

Even now, when driving down the “Hollenberg Straße” towards those old, big oak-trees, I am again the young boy at the place where I grew up and where I was allowed to be a child. A place full of liberality (not to be mis-taken with the modern US-version of liberalism!) and permissiveness coupled with strictness and discipline and lots of family – often kinship. A place where I could count the clouds in the sky from under the huge oak trees lying under the biggest of them and where one could dream about the world, the future and what it might hold for me, for all of us.

There I learned riding the bike, played soccer with brother Erich and the boys from the neighbourhood.

There was PAPA, our father, the thraight-forward, always responsible chacacter, and MAMA, the “woman of love”.

Then on-going, there came the educational/schooling part of those years at the Gymnasium in Tecklenburg and at the University of Hannover.

That’s what childhood is all about!

This kind of childhood with its accompanying environment has in the German language only one word:

--- Heimat ---