D E U T S C H L A N D R E I S E
Never told the children that I was German

   My wife was a teacher; she gave up teaching last year. Wenn sie mit ihrem Schulorchester nach Deutschland fuhr, bin ich immer mitgefahren als Übersetzer. [When she travelled to Germany with her school orchestra, I always went with them as a translator.] I never told the children that I was German. In my interpretation I made deliberate mistakes. But I have often been complimented for my German: “Where did you learn it?” – “In school”. Once I stayed with a family. There was a grandfather who came and I asked: “What did you do?” He was an ex-policeman. And he said: “But I was not in uniform.”

   But that is a thing of the past. It was earlier, just the earlier years that I had all the negative feelings. Especially as nobody of that generation is still alive, the generation who made life difficult, they have gone. They had to be older to impose this on us, and they have disappeared by now. It is a new chapter. How can I put it? Sometimes I had taken it as a joke. There has been a conflict between Germany and England and my father fought on the wrong side.
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