Contemporary witness Franz-Jürgen Lehmkuhl

Childhood in the protective strip of the border

We had an excellent childhood. My sister and I, we grew up with my parents on the farm. My parents had run a very functional farm.

Chronologically, we got a car in 1957, I had a motorbike at 16 and a riding horse at 14, and my parents always made sure we were well off, that was the sunny side of our lives.

The shadow was the other, of course we have experienced that a child’s leg, for example, we once came home sometime after the official curfew of my father’s friends and were stopped right in front of our yard and then were not allowed to enter our property and then my father got very angry and then told the organ: “And the children come to bed, they don’t stay here sitting in the car!”

My parents then had to stand in front of the courtyard from 11 a.m. until 5 a.m. waiting to be allowed into the house, but in between, my mother was allowed to put us to bed.

And that is actually how it has always developed. The border was not as it was generally imagined. The border grew very, very slowly.

When we went to school, we weren’t allowed to say that my parents didn’t watch “aktuelle Kamera”, but the “Tagesschau”.When we went to confirmation classes, we weren’t necessarily allowed to talk about it.I was baptised, I was confirmed and I am still in church today.

It was a constant conversation, we always had to make sure that nothing was said about West German television.

There were people everywhere, for whom I even have understanding today, who walked around in front of the windows and obeyed. Those were the ones who fell for the things of socialism.

The border fortification

But the next fence was built along the dunes, with three big rolls of wire, and yes, that wasn’t so scary for us.
It was still easy to crawl through, and that’s what we did as children.

And the gates – I had to herd cows with my sisters and we brought in hay there and I bathed in the Elbe there, although it was forbidden “who knows how”.

My mother wasn’t always so afraid. For example, as children we were put on the hay cart because my grandparents from the west, on the west side of the Elbe, were standing so that they could see us. We were held up on the hay cart.

Als wir dann junge Leute waren und wir hatten im Hochsommer Hochwasser in der Elbe, da hat mein Vater gesagt, „du Jung…“– ich fuhr dann schon mit dem Moped – „…du kannst dann mal um die Hochwasserzonen rum hinter dem Stacheldraht und musst du noch mal das Heu umkehren“, weil die das Nachmittags einfahren wollten.
Und dann hat doch ein Soldat auf mich Warnschüsse abgegeben, wie ich durchs Wasser gegangen bin. Das hat mich schon geprägt!
Wenn das neben Ihnen mit dem Maschinengewehr plätschert, ich war sehr brav dann.