As we landed in Munich, I was listening to the B-side of Abbey Road. The lyrics as the wheels of the plane touched the German tarmac, from Golden Slumbers, were:
‘Once there was a way to get back home…’
Today we do some shopping, then we pick up dad from the train station and hit the Autobahn. Then, I think, beer.
I’ve mentioned again and again on this blog my upcoming trip to Germany, where I’ll be eagerly wandering alongside my father, retracing the considerable journeys of his childhood in the war-affected country.
I leave this week, and rather than inflict on you constant updates (as my Facebook friends have had to contend with), I have started a separate blog tracking this trip.
http://ourgermanfather.wordpress.com/
I’ll only be posting occasional, brief updates punctuated by the odd photo and video, since I need to save something for the ensuing project. Can’t show you everything at once!
If you’re interested in these little snippets, please subscribe to the new blog and you’ll get an email every time there’s something new uploaded.
And, friends, I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.
I posted part one of this a few weeks ago, and the response was generous and overwhelming. Thank you.
Taking a photo seems to trigger something in my brain. I don’t have the greatest memory, but of almost any moment I’ve captured with a photograph, I still recall what happened before the photo, after, what was being said, how I felt, what the weather was like and why I chose to take it, even if it’s not clear from the resulting image.
Every photo is a window, and I guess these are the windows you can look through to find me, hiding somewhere inside.
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I am not, I will never be a photographer.
I know a little bit about f-stops and ISO speeds thanks to taking photography at university, we have a lovely Canon EOS thanks to our generous wedding guests, and I’ve had a few jobs that required colour-balance adjustment skills on photoshop, but that’s the extent of it.
What I am is a person who does whatever he can to hold onto a moment. It may sound counter-intuitive, but the more I’m enjoying a moment, the more photos I take (or want to take) of it. And it works.
When I look at a photo I’ve taken, I can see it well beyond its borders. I remember the time of day and weather, even if it’s taken indoors or has no visible sky. I remember what happened in the hours before the photo. I remember what I was saying as I took the photo. But I need the photo to remember those details. The photo is my anchor.
These are my favourites so far (part one…).
Some aren’t great photos, and they’re not in order of love, but they all inspire in me the memories of a moment, captured either through luck, opportunity or composition, that means something special to me.
My dad turns 80 next year.
My dad is an energetic, lively guy who, in my subjective eyes, looks no more than 70 (okay, maybe 74…). But it can’t be denied, my dad is a guy who’s getting old.
Luckily, he’s happy too, and surrounded by a wife, kids, grandkids, great-grandkids and (reluctantly) a dog who all love him. His house on the beach, his daily trips to the gym, his Monday night German choir rehearsals, I have no doubt these things all keep him feeling younger than he is, and help keep away most of the slowly-increasing effects of eight decades on the planet.
But to the boy, fleeing Nazi Germany with his father- who was a key figure in the resistance- moving from city to city and country to country, this contented elderly figure pottering around in his backyard somewhere in the south of the opposite hemisphere must not have even entered his mind as one of his potential destinies.
It is that very past though, however filled with war, fear, death and uncertainty, that led him to that backyard in Altona.
His experiences, as our own do for us, formed who he is and how he sees the world, even now, and while it’s something he’s always been happy to talk about, I’m ashamed by how little I know of it.
The truth is, his past is my origin story too. Dodge it as I may (and have), I have German blood, and the things I learned from my dad, as much as the things in him I swore I would never repeat, were all filtered through and flavoured by that. I can’t relate his upbringing to my own, and hope to understand it that way, because it was about as different a time and as different a place as you could try to find. War-torn Germany in the 1940s is to Melbourne in the 1980s what weisswurst is to pavlova.
History has never been an active category in my drunken-pub-trivia-night of a brain. As much as I love the tactile nature of the past and the way even the softest whisper can echo itself into a yell in the future, I don’t have the brain for dates and places and names. So sadly, as happened with my grandmother (on my mother’s side, another remarkable story fortunately captured on audio cassette), I have never properly absorbed the story of my dad’s childhood.
Actually, more often than not, the prevailing elements of his heritage- his accent, his epicurean preferences and habits, his insistence that my sister and I speak German at home- were things that made me angry or, worse, ashamed. To say I’d like to take those reactions back now is true but unproductive.
Acknowledging this ignorance is one thing, seeking to colour in the pages is another. As ashamed as I am of my lack of appreciation of his past, I also realise how lucky I am to figure this out now before it’s-dare I say it- too late. It’s not too late.
This is my plan. I won’t let the past slip away unrecorded, because I know with it will go an enormous part of who he was, and the true understanding of who I am.
So next year, as part of his 80th birthday celebrations, I will gather a video camera, a microphone, a camera, a tripod and my father, and we will make our way across Germany, visiting each of the places he lived.
In some, the houses he lived in may have been long removed, but I want him to find the small things- the street corners, the trees, the light in afternoon- or just the memory of those things, and I want him to share them with me.
In each place, I will set the camera on its tripod, attach the microphone to his collar, get him a beer, and let him talk. As long as he wants to.
I’m no documentary filmmaker. I don’t know what will happen or how I will use it later. In its way, it doesn’t actually matter. I want to hear what he has to say. I want others to be able to hear it. I want my children to hear it when they’re old enough to want to know about him.
But, I think most importantly, I want him to have been able to say it; to know absolutely that we value the role he’s played in our lives enough to want to know everything that made him who he is.
Note 1: At this time, my dad doesn’t know about this plan. It probably won’t stay a secret up until his birthday, especially if I keep posting about it online, but let’s see how long we can go without telling him.
Note 2: It should be noted that my mum is rad too, and has her own story worthy of telling. She will have her chance. One parent at a time!
Tristan Lutze, 2010
