H E R M A N N
I didn’t like Hermann

   When the Nazis came to power including Hermann Göring I didn’t like my first name. I remember a little ditty: „Hermann heeßt er. In den Lüften ist er Meester. Rechts Lametta, links Lametta. Und sein Bauch wird immer fetter." [“Hermann’s his name. In the skies he gets fame. To both right and left lametta. And his stomach gets even fatter.”] But if you said that you finished up in a concentration camp. You wouldn’t have heard anybody say this at the time. But I thought it was rather funny. So I didn’t like Hermann. When I got to the English college here and when the other boys asked me, what was your name, I said Karten. But of course phonetically to an English ear it sounds like C-A-R-T-O-N and this reminded them of a book by Dickens, there is a character called Sydney Carton. So I became known as Sydney and there was nothing I could do about it.
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