A Gnostic Childhood

Part VI
Berlin 1947-49
 Erkner 

Bootshaus (Marina) Baeumelburg
 

Picture shows my mother, myself and Frau Gertrude Beumelburg with the marina in background, taken in 1949.
Far back one can see three stalls of the outhouse. To the right of this picture, but not shown, is the air-raid shelter which Frau Beumelburg's husband had dug out and which he had covered with a heavy steel plate. When a bomb fell almost on top of it, the bunker collapsed and Herr Beumelburg and their adopted daughter were killed instantly. I don't know why Frau Beumelburg was in the area of Schwerin at the time of the bombing, but it most certainly saved her life.

 Some time after our arrival in Berlin in 1947 my mother was able to write to my 'aunt' Beumelburg and get an answer from her with the invitation to come and visit her.
 Erkner was located in the Soviet "Zone" surrounding Berlin. It is about one hour and twenty minutes away from us by S-Bahn, which is an electric train system going all through Berlin and its suburbs. The 'S' stands for 'Stadt' which means city and thus one could call it 'city-train.'

 Thus we decided that the next school summer-vacation would be a good time to visit her. This was the summer of 1949. Erkner is located by the beautiful "Daemmeritz See" which is a large lake connecting to other lakes and rivers outside Berlin.   It was located in the Russian zone and therefore we were somewhat reluctant to travel there into the 'heart of the beast,' so to speak.
 When we arrived at 'Bahnhof Erkner,' which is a rather large train station, as it also serves as a regular train station for the 'Reichsbahn'. We walked past a newspaper kiosk which sold cheap looking communist propaganda magazines and of course the communist city papers 'Neues Deutschland' and 'Berliner Zeitung'.
 The station was plastered with communist propaganda posters and banners which gave it all an ominous sense of oppression and fear.
 When we went out of the main door into the semi-circular street in front, we had first to decide whether we should turn left or right. My mother said that going to the left made more sense and thus we began walking.
 Erkner smelled of tar and the fishy odor of the nearby lake. A factory on our left must have been the reason for the tar smell and to our right we could see the beautiful Daemmeritz See which looked overgrown with algae and bamboo plants called "Schilf".
 We had to pass over a temporary looking wooden bridge to get onto main street. A few ruins were visible but much less than in Berlin proper. Still, everything looked depressingly in disrepair. We were searching for "Beethoven Strasse," and after asking somebody, we found it easily. 

Russian Soldiers

Tante Baemelburg was outside doing some work in the yard and, dropping her tool, came running towards us to embrace and hug us in complete joy. She lived in a small house next to the marina and the house had received some damage also when the bomb fell on the dug-out shelter killing her husband and step-daughter.
 Actually it was a terrible mess leaving only a couple rooms and the kitchen livable. Every once in a while we could hear the distant sounds of explosions, which my aunt explained as coming from Russian soldiers throwing hand grenades into the Daemmeritz lake in order to kill fish to eat.
 This was scary and yet fascinating to me. I had developed a terrible fear of the Russians from very early on, overhearing when family or friends talked about what horrible things they had done to the German people when they took over a town or village.
 The words rape (which I didn't understand, but which sounded ominous), nailing people by their tongues to  doors and other unimaginable atrocities were talked about in whispered conversations since I was three years old. Coupled with my experience on the train leaving Schwerin, I had no doubt about their truthfulness.
 This fear was reinforced, when we, after a few days in Erkner, ran into a bunch of them on main street.
They looked like wild beasts and that's the only way I can describe their appearance and they behaved even worse.
 Actually, they weren't even 'Russians,' but looked more like descendants of Genghis Khan with their unwashed and unkempt looking Mongolian faces.
 Worse than wild animals, drunken, in uniforms which looked not only filthy but also much too large for their size, they were harassing passers-by and scaring the hell out of everybody around.-Screaming Russian and German words I had never heard before, they were attempting to find women and more booze.
 Luckily a Russian jeep appeared suddenly and three, what appeared to be officers, got out and began grabbing them and starting to beat on them, while another vehicle appeared to take them away.
Later I heard that corporal punishment was a common practice in the Red Army, and I assume that these drunken soldiers would receive a definite measure of it. -But I also heard stories where Russian soldiers shared their meager rations with the population and sometimes even received severe punishment for their kindness.
All I can say now is that they were often primitive peasants who treated the German people almost the same way as they would treat their own people.
 These poor souls were whipped-up by propaganda, generated by the Soviet propaganda minister, Ilya Ehrenburg, who actually ordered the rape and degradation of the German civilian population...

.... “Kill, kill, you brave Red Army soldiers, kill. There is nothing in the Germans that is innocent. Obey the instructions of comrade Stalin and stamp the fascistic beast in its cave. Break with force the racial arrogance of the German women. Take them as your legal loot. Kill, you brave Red Army soldiers, kill!” Ilya Ehrenburg 1945.
Ironically, Ehrenburg was Jewish and Jews would later also become victims of Stalin's paranoia.

Thus, most of those Mongolian-Soviet soldiers saw no wrong in torture, rape and murder of the civilian German population. --Plus, one has to bear in mind that Russian soldiers as well as the Russian civilian population was treated worse than horribly by the German army and the NS regime which was an atrocity in itself.
 So what could we expect?
Be that as it may, to propagandize RAPE as an official policy is beyond my capacity to understand.

 
        
     Whoever argues against race and genetics should look at this man.
     Although an avowed Communist he remained in heart and soul
   a Talmud Jew spewing hatred beyond reason. Who else would use RAPE of females of all ages
        as spoils of the victor??      
             
Poltergeist

Our first night at the marina was memorable indeed. Probably around midnight the whole place became a hive of "poltergeist" activity.
We heard hammering and mumbled words, objects began to move inexplicable and pictures were falling off the wall.
I woke up by all the commotion and saw my aunt Baemelburg and my mother in panic.
Of course they tried to convince me that the noise came from people working across the lake, but their whole demeanor and visible fear couldn't fool me even at that age.
Having had many visions and "psychic" experiences already, I knew instinctively what it was all about.
I saw books being pushed off a book shelf just as if somebody had moved his hand and arm behind them and just thrown them on the floor in front of the shelf.-Except there was nobody there to have done it.
I think the whole experience lasted for a couple hours and we did not go back to sleep that night.
I overheard my aunt explain to my mother that this took place almost every night ever since she returned to the house from Borken and that she had people pray in it and done some other things to stop this manifestation, but to no avail.
Obviously, she said, these things are caused by the spirits of her husband and step-daughter to get her attention, but she didn't know what she could do to give them peace so that they could move on.
 Eventually I would see them both in visions before falling asleep and I know that they tried to tell me something, but what they said seemed to go over my head. I just couldn't make out what they were attempting to tell me. 

This poltergeist phenomenon happened every night while we were in Erkner. After a few days though, we got somewhat used to it and it didn't seem so scary any more. Especially since we had an explanation for it's occurrence and felt so sorry for these two souls who had died such a horrible death and were now in what seemed to be a limbo.
 I prayed a lot there in Erkner to my beloved Jesus and I hoped desperately that I could help them through my prayers. But the activities kept on, night after night.
 We awoke to it and tried after a while to go back to sleep. Sometimes I know that I fell soon back asleep and sometimes I just laid in bed praying and seeing 'things' which eventually seemed to put me back to sleep again.
My aunt and my mother too, often fell asleep again soon, despite the hammering and whispering sounds. We apparently were getting used to it.
I just didn't like to have to sleep in a room alone. That scared me an awful lot.   Aunt Beumelburg was very interested in "metaphysics" and Spiritualism.
Often she would tell stories she had heard and read like the "sixth and seventh books of Moses" and of her having been to séances and other occult things.
 This was before and during the war and not after the war. She was a jolly, easy-going woman whom I liked very much.

My days at the marina were adventurous and happy.
There was an old wooden Kayak, a 'Paddelboot,' which I could use freely.
I paddled with it on the Daemmeritz lake through thick bamboo plants coming out of the water everywhere and fished with a stick that had a rope and bent nail attached, never catching anything.
 When I later read "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckelberry Finn," I would easily connect to their adventures because of my vacations at the marina.
Everything, everywhere in Erkner, was wild and in complete neglect which might seem awful to adults, but to a young boy it was absolute heaven.
The only thing I missed were other kids to play with. There just seemed to be no kids at all in the neighborhood.

     
True Love

Then, one day, a couple of 'waifs' showed up. Brother and sister,-Horst and Helga Runge.
I think my aunt had talked to somebody and mentioned that she would like some kids to come around to play with me.
We were all poor and dressed raggedy more or less, but Horst and Helga were even worse off it seemed.
They were desperately poor and hungry and starved for attention.
I immediately liked them both very much and we had many days of happy togetherness at the marina.
They usually stayed all day with me and we had great adventures together as only children can.
I was fascinated and smitten by Helga who seemed beautiful and yet also not as girlish as other girls. She was what I would now call a 'tomboy' type who had no qualms about doing anything.
Helga liked me too and thus we both developed our first 'crush' on another person.
 Sometimes we would walk hand in hand and even get 'Goosebumps' when we touched each other.
Holger and Helga, even our names seemed to be in harmony.
The world looked good in deed!
It seems even more interesting that my mother later told me that she and my father had hoped to have another child, a girl which they would have named Helga.
Of course, this couldn't come about since my father's death two years after I was born.
So here was my 'mystical' Helga with whom I experienced my first true love!

We became inseparable which made Horst feel left out.
Eventually he would come around only occasionally while Helga came every day to play with me.
I was completely innocent to the ways of the world, just a little boy who had grown up in a relatively protected environment. Helga was worldly wise beyond her years, as children growing up neglected and extremely poor usually are.
I admired her and looked up to her like to a big sister, although she was the same age or even one year younger than I. Naturally, because of this, she was the leader and inspiration of our adventures together.
Her personality was a mixture of girlish kindheartedness and boyish toughness and daring.
Nothing could stop her once she decided to do something.
She radiated a sense of inherent intelligence coupled with a rowdy exterior as one finds rarely in young girls and she was always hungry to learn and listen to stories with the fascination of a deprived soul, coupled with a world defying temperament, she was exactly what my soul craved for.
She was my 'Helen of Troy,' my first and perhaps only true love. 

    
Humiliation - Defiance - Gnostic Awakening

It is only natural that we began to feel each other in other places of our bodies than by holding hands.
There was such a thrill, such an electrical current, to each secret touch as I had never known before.
Of course we were too young to have truly 'sexual feelings,' but there was definitely an already manifesting sense of sexuality in us at such a young age.
We were eight years old and she might even have been only seven, but we couldn't keep our hands from each other because it felt so good and so 'forbidden.' 
 My mother and aunt were blissfully unaware of our affection for each other and the physical explorations that went with it. Although they must have become suspicious eventually because on one ominous, black day, our love would be discovered and severely punished by forced separation.

Yes, even today, I feel embarrassed, not by what we 'did,' but by the way we were made to feel when we were discovered and humiliated by my mother and aunt.
 Our love was pure and we didn't see much wrong with exploring our bodies besides knowing that adults wouldn't approve. Even at age eight, we knew that we were doing something deliciously thrilling and secret of which the adults around us wouldn't approve. -Something so wonderful and overpowering that it couldn't be 'bad.'
Yet what these adults made out of it and how they humiliated us and made us feel 'dirty' and evil, would have an effect on us for the rest of our lives.
 My relationship with my mother became almost completely non-existent after this incident.
I simply resented her for the rest of her life.
Not that I displayed obvious hate towards her, but something within me died and I had lost all respect for her.
Of course, I couldn't have analyzed it then like I do now, but she became a non-entity to me and I would never respect her word nor her actions.
This is sad, because she was a truly good person who wanted to protect me from everything which could possibly hurt me. Instead she inflicted such a wound in my heart and soul that I could, subconsciously, never forgive her.
Even if I wanted to it wasn't possible. We would never be close again.
Even before this occurrence I had a certain attitude of resentment towards her, a distance, if you will, which now had become an unbridgeable gulf.
To this very day, Helga is in my heart and soul and I have desperately tried to find her in other women to no avail. 

What happened is really not much to tell.
Helga and I were in my bedroom playing with little cars and other toys as it was a rainy, cold day.
After 'accidentally' touching each other while moving the toys around, we decided to get undressed and see each other completely naked.
 We were laying on the floor together, naked and feeling each other's genitals when suddenly my mother tried to get into the room.
...I should mention that I had locked the door from the inside when we decided to get undressed and that my mother got suspicious when she couldn't get inside.
She called out to us but we, stupid as only children can be, kept silent and ignoring her.
We thought she would go away and forget about the room.
Of course my mother went outside and looked through the window, seeing us embraced and naked on the floor.
She screamed and broke with the help of my aunt through the door into the room.
We were called all kinds of names and told to get dressed and to get out of the room.
The way they reacted was very frightening to us as they both. Pale and shaking with rage, my mother and aunt called us all kinds of names and then told Helga to leave and never come back.
I was shaking with embarrassment and humiliation, not really understanding the scary reaction of the adults.
Of course I knew that we were not supposed to do what we did instinctively, but I had never expected such high drama over something which seemed so natural to me.
Anyways, Helga, the love of my life, my soul-mate and friend had to leave, never to be allowed to return.
 This is the last time I saw Helga and I miss and look for her to this day!

 My mother, being my mother, blamed Helga for the whole thing, which, of course, is not true at all but was mutual and unplanned. We truly loved each other at the tender age of eight even if the world thinks that this is not possible.
I have been 'lost' ever since, desperately searching for my Helga, never to find her again.
The implications of this false morality displayed by ignorant adults, my mother and aunt, are a deep and hurtful memory of bliss destroyed by others who were too stupid to realize what they were doing.
As it is, this experience, more than any other, during my formative years, is what led me on the path of rebelliousness and disdain for the 'establishment' wherever it might manifest in arbitrary rules and 'laws.'
 Perhaps it was all part of a cosmic plan and my mother and aunt were just 'pawns in the game,' but what they did certainly had an effect which they could not possibly have realized at the time. 

My life changed forever right then and there.
My 'innocence' was destroyed, not by this 'sexual activity' at such a young age, but by what the adults did and how they reacted.
 From now on I knew deep down, instinctively and irrevocably, that it was me against the world.
I was alone now and I would never listen to anybody in 'authority' again.
I would have to form my own world and my own knowledge from those whom I chose and not from those who were put in a position of 'authority' over me because they were family, teachers or whatever.
Only through books and people I chose would I learn and grow mentally, rejecting any other influences as not worthy of consideration.
This soul-wrenching experience of humiliation and separation from the one I loved by ignorant people would be a blessing in disguise, as many experiences in my life have been, and awaken within me the Gnostic that I was meant to be.

      
Gnostic Awakening

Another humiliation awaited me when we returned to Berlin and I had to go back to school.
One day my mother came to the school during break and she was with me in the school yard looking for Fraulein Ziegle.
We found her and she kind of took Fraulein Ziegle aside talking to her.
I was listening standing close-by and over-heard her talking about what I had 'done' with Helga in Erkner.
My heart stopped for a minute and I felt as if I would pass out any second from even more humiliation and embarrassment. Now I was doomed and everybody would know and talk about what I did!
I heard Fraulein Ziegle say something like: "Oh yes, these kids today are completely depraved, I catch boys and girls sometimes in the school-bathrooms doing things!" 
 I couldn't believe that my mother would make me the object of all this negative attention.
How could she tell others and make me feel so dirty?
God, how I hated her, the school, Fraulein Ziegle and all adults around me!
How I despised all those stupid, ignorant and childish kids who surrounded me in school.
-How I hated their subservience to teachers and authority!
-How I hated their childish games and actions!
Suddenly, it seemed, I had grown up and shed my childish innocence.
Suddenly I saw that this was an ugly world I lived in, where people tried to humiliate and deprive others of everything that would make them happy.
What angered me even more was, that my class-mates and friends were so sublimely willing to let it happen to them without even a rebellious word of defiance.
Yes, it was the subservient behavior of my friends and their acceptance of things the way they were without ever even questioning anything at all which shook me to the core of my being.
This sudden realization of being a slave in a world which I didn't like nor wanted any part of, and of being all alone in my understanding of it, is what would form my character and complete independence to this day.
Although feeling all alone, is not pleasant ever and even more so frightening to a child, there is also a certain joy in its promise of total freedom.
 I was free, even though I had to comply to a certain degree with 'authority,' to question and reject whatever I wanted in my mind.
I could take the world down and rebuild it in my own mind to my own specifications.
I had attained a mental and spiritual  maturity so suddenly and unrepentantly which even most adults would never be able to attain.
From this moment on I would be "the stone which the builders had rejected," -the odd man out, the 'outcast' who didn't fit because he decided not to fit.
Just imagine, an eight year old awakened Gnostic! 

Yet it is true, I was suddenly propelled into a state of mental and spiritual awareness which would eventually lead me on a path far beyond my age and the average lives people lead.
May God bless my Helga who, in a remote way, had truly been my 'Helen of Troy,' my Gnostic consort who had led me into realms of life and spirituality unimaginable to most people and unattainable even to many 'seekers' in a lifetime. 
"God works in mysterious ways" indeed!
Here I was, a depraved sexual 'pervert' at age eight, being awakened and 'cosmically groomed,' by this very act of 'depravity'! 

Through all this, feeling all alone in the world, I still had Jesus, my beloved Jesus with me, in my heart and soul.
Knowing next to nothing about 'Christian' doctrine and 'morality,' I never felt, even for a moment, that Jesus would not be with me because he disapproved of what had done with Helga.
 Jesus was thus the only one, the only true friend, who would understand me, listen to my pain and approve of me just the way I was and what I had done. 
 Eventually I got over the embarrassment and loss of my Helga, at least on a conscious level, and my life and boyhood went on... 

 Thankfully, we got a new teacher in the fifth grade, Herr Schwartz, who didn't know about my 'depravity' and what I had done with Helga.
 He was a nice, middle aged, man who was also an excellent teacher. I liked him but didn't trust him as I would distrust all adults since my 'experience.'
 Being in the fifth grade now, I developed a definite desire to read stories and dream of adventures.
 

  
The Air-Lift Of 1948 - 1949

We experienced a very difficult time in Berlin at the time all this was happening.
The Russians had sealed off Berlin which meant that supplies such as food and coal could not get to us from West-Germany by trains or trucks. Thus we would have less and less to eat until either the border would be opened up again or we would gradually die of starvation and the winter cold.
 Somehow it had to do with the attempt of the Western Allies to establish a separate government in Germany of which the Russians didn't approve since it would preclude their dreams for a united German government under Communism.
Thus the allies, mainly the United States, decided to supply Berlin from the air.
All supplies had to be flown in by airplanes. A monumental task involving flights coming into Tempelhof Airport and Tegel Airport within minutes from each other in almost any weather.
It was called the "Luftbruecke," which means "Air-bridge," and started June 26, 1948, lasting until September 30, 1949. 

What I remember of those days is that planes were coming over the city steadily and flying real low as Tempelhof Airport is located right in the center of Berlin.
We kids used to walk to a cemetery adjacent to the airport, close to "Columbiadamm," a wide street with many American armed forces facilities like a movie theater, baseball field and gymnasium.
Also there were many US soldiers quartered in the huge airport building complex.
This made the whole area fascinating to us children and we would love to hang around and get a taste of the wonderful American life as we could see it with our own eyes and almost feel like we too were living in America.
 We used to watch soldiers play baseball and come and go to the movies with dreams of being there ourselves.
 America, to us, was truly heaven and paradise and American GI's were gods incarnate.
 If we ran into them, strolling along on the sidewalk, we would approach them and beg for chewing gum and candy unashamedly. Since most of them were likeable and friendly guys they would reach into their pockets and give us what we asked for.
 Black and White GI's alike were mostly quite compassionate and kind.
Of course there were exceptions, who became angry and annoyed by our begging and would curse us as they chased us away.

Watching the constantly approaching airplanes coming in from the cemetery we could even see the pilot and he would often give us a wave with his hand.
 Some pilots had the side-windows of their DC 3's and DC 4's cockpits open and threw out candy which sent us scrambling to find it in the deep grass and wild brush.
After a while, these pilots even attached candy to little parachutes they had made which made it easier to find those treasures as we could see the parachutes on the ground.
What generous and kind people the "average" American GI's were!
I shall never forget this kindness of people towards people, without the distortions of propaganda.
For by this time the American soldiers had discovered that we Germans were just like them and not the 'nazi-monsters' government propaganda had made us out to be. 

America and it's American people were warm and generous to a fault in those days and this only changed with, what I perceive, the coming to power of a neo-liberal, left wing clique in the highest ranks of the US government who had as an agenda the deliberate destruction of everything which would obstruct the establishment of a One World government.
 The un-bureaucratic and freedom loving nature of American life and character was the target of their secret manipulations, since they knew that this attitude to life would never permit the establishment of their One World Dictatorship.
 Thus, in the sixties, after President Kennedy was murdered by them, things began to change gradually year by year.
With the beginning wave of unchecked mass immigration from 'third world' nations in the early seventies, gradually and ever so slyly, "multiculturalism" and the need for Americans to accept other cultures within their own culture began to be openly promoted by the government.
 More and more people from third world countries who had no ideals of government and democracy as practiced in the US and who only wanted the same things we wanted as kids when we watched the American GI's, namely to live in abundance, began to crowd into the American environment.  Since these third world people came from cultures and governmental rule so far removed from American character and culture, they could never be integrated into American society.
 Often these people would feel out of sync with the American people and resort to crime or political pressure to attain their dreams.  
 Americans, feeling repulsion and anger towards these people and feeling forsaken by their own government, began to become more and more reclusive and security oriented.
 What was once an open society with people who would think nothing of inviting you in their homes and giving you a lift with their cars if you were walking on a sidewalk on main street (As has happened to me many times in the early 1960's), America became a society distrustful of everybody including its own government.

 Be that as it may, I often think back on those days of the air-lift and American generosity.
Through this action of American ingenuity, generosity and know-how, Berlin was saved from Russian take-over and I would remain free to have access to books and ideas which would continue me on my Gnostic path.

     Jesus said, "Show me the stone which the builders have rejected.

     That one is the cornerstone."

     Jesus said, "That which you have will save you if you bring it forth

      from yourselves. That which you do not have within

        will kill you if you do not have it within you."  

      From the Gospel of Thomas

        Go to part VII of "A Gnostic Childhood" to continue.

      Return to Page I and Index

     Here is an outside link to a woman's story
   about Berlin during and after the war,
   which is quite fascinating and true:

      http://www.austincivilwar.org/warstories/tipping.html