Childhood and First Encounter with Horses

I grew up in a very sheltered environment with my parents and my great-grandmother Friederike, who was over 80 years old. She and I shared the children's bedroom. My life was utterly unspectacular. Like all the children in the neighborhood, I went to kindergarten at three. There was a lovely, big garden with wildflowers and many colorful butterflies, which I loved very much.

I was a dreamy child, and I liked watching animals - not just butterflies but also ants and pill bugs. I could name most of the field flowers and knew their benefits.

I didn't see much of my father during the week. After the war, he became an architect, which happened quite on a whim. Being a displaced person from Silesia, he had to help remove the wreckage in Stuttgart, his new home of choice, to receive food stamps.

This task was recognized as fieldwork for architecture studies, and as most of the houses were destroyed after the war, he decided to become an architect. Instead of becoming an aircraft maker - which would have been his dream job - and building aircraft, he opted to build houses. His decision proved to be the right one. He was successful and built several hundred houses during his professional career. For me, as a child, this had rather negative consequences because I hardly ever saw my father. He rarely showed up for lunch and came home so late in the evenings that I was often already sleeping. Even on the weekends, I saw him only during meals, and if the weather was good, we went for a walk around Lake Ried on Sunday afternoons. He spent the rest of his time in the office, at construction sites, or in meetings with clients and craftsmen.

As I was an only child and always had to keep my mouth shut and be good and modest (at least from my point of view), I spent most of my time across the street with my friends Christine and Conny. There we could be free. We played in the garden and the house. We even altered half of the flat to build our own "tunnel of horror." We closed the shutters and placed bed linen on the furniture. Two of us would hide inside this scenery and try to scare the third one, who had to walk through the tunnel of horror. That was so much fun. Such games would have been impossible at my home.

Christine and Conny also had a doll's kitchen that worked with carbide. During the winter months, we cooked stewed apples and roasted oat flakes. It tasted delicious, and we could also play "restaurant."

We also loved to sleep in a tent in the garden. As we grew a little older, we invented a test of courage. At midnight, we had to climb over the fences to other properties. That was very thrilling, as we sometimes didn't know if there would be dogs. The scariest thing, however, was walking across the cemetery in the dark. That was terribly frightening, but we were also incredibly proud because we were so brave. Our parents, of course, didn't have a clue about our nightly adventures.

Another thing I loved was going to the funfair on the Cannstatter Wasen, the Stuttgart Beer Festival. There, we rode the chain carousel, bumper cars, and rollercoaster, and we went, of course, into the tunnel of horror. What impressed me the most, however, was that Conny, the youngest of us, always wanted to ride on a horse. I was totally in awe because I was terrified of horses.

This resulted from my very first and rather traumatic encounter with horses: Like every Sunday, I had to go for a walk with my parents and my great-grandmother - an activity I thought silly but unavoidable. My parents knew that I didn't like these walks, especially as we always went the same way. From Sonnenberg towards Möhringen, around the aforementioned Lake Riedsee, and then back home. An absolutely futile endeavor, at least in my opinion. Afterwards, we would have some coffee. This was incredibly boring and pointless for me, as I didn't even like coffee.

On that sunny Sunday in May, however, we left our usual route and walked across the fields and along a paddock where several horses were grazing. I assume my parents wanted to increase my enthusiasm concerning Sunday afternoon walks. Well, they failed. Until today, I haven't been able to find valid reasons for walking or hiking.

Nevertheless, I liked the prospect of passing the paddock on our walk. I've always liked animals, especially horses, and I was very sad that even after years of begging, I only got a turtle. A dog, a cat, or possibly a real pony were entirely out of the question.

I was only six years old and had never sat on a horse before. I always admired my friend Conny, who never missed an opportunity to interact with horses. She always beamed happily while riding endless laps on the back of a horse at a circus or a funfair while her sister and I ate some ice cream or rode the chain carousel, the Ferris wheel, or bumper cars.

When we approached the paddock, I wanted to take a closer look at the horses. After all, it had been my secret wish for a while to ride one day. The horses seemed rather big, but fortunately, a high fence made the whole encounter quite secure - or so I thought. Imagine how startled I was when a giant white horse jumped lightning-fast forward, bent its long neck over the fence, set back its ears, and bit me vigorously in the back. It wouldn't let go but bit into my jacket, lifted me, and shook me around. I still remember the pain and the panic I felt. I was sure this wild horse would break my back, and I was going to die. My father intervened by screaming and waving a stick around, and that threatening gesture did the trick. The white horse dropped me. After this experience, it took seven years before I dared to get close to a horse again.

When I was twelve years old, a classmate at grammar school told me that she was taking riding lessons. I was at a loss for words. I was horrified and jealous at the same time and struggled with myself for weeks trying to find out what that meant for to me. But the longer I pondered the situation, the more certain I felt that I, too, wanted to learn how to ride.

I gathered all my courage and talked to my mother about my wish. She answered: "You are already playing the piano. Apart from that you are attending grammar school. That doesn't leave any time for another hobby."

I am basically an artistically inclined person and have always been open to the arts. But playing the piano was about the same as our Sunday afternoon walks: an activity as unpleasant as pointless. I couldn't find any sense in practicing endless etudes, especially as you could listen to the radio or use record players if you wanted to listen to good music. The never-ending finger exercises really didn't knock my socks off. And anyway - why did I have to do the exercises without moving my hand and with slightly bent fingers? That felt totally stupid.

My piano teacher, at least seventy, in my juvenile opinion, did nothing to contribute to my enthusiasm for playing the piano either. It was all about Czerny, the art of dexterity, and short but daily exercises. I simply could not enjoy it.

I still remember the pain I felt when she pressed my little finger on a black key with her fat thumb and yelled: "Hoooold!" All my friends, although they'd started to play much later than I, were allowed to play Schlager music and folk songs. But I still slogged away at chords and stupid triplet exercises.

The worst, however, were my friends Christine and Conny, whose house I had to pass on my way to my piano lessons. They knew exactly when to wait for me at their garden gate. They'd jump around, point their fingers at me, and laugh at me because my piano case was bigger than I.

After my mother had read an article about Mozart, the prodigy, she asked me when I was three if I wanted to learn how to play the piano. Obviously, I said "yes" at the wrong moment, and as a result, I had to stay the course for nine years.

As I hadn't gotten anywhere with my mother, I asked my father the following Sunday. His diplomatic answer was I should think about it for four weeks. After all, riding was an expensive affair, and I should be very sure to stick with it once I started.

I was an obedient, rather shy child and, as an only child, found it difficult to stand up for myself anyway. My upbringing in the nineteen fifties was still influenced by the war experiences of adults in general and, of course, by those of my parents in particular. My mother had lost her parents during the war and lived with her grandmother. My father had been a night fighter from the age of sixteen and didn't know for a long time if his family was even alive and, if so, where they lived.

After they had been expelled from their home in Silesia, the most important thing for my father was that they left the Soviet occupation zone. Otherwise, he would never visit them, as he had told them already during the war. He went with a war comrade, who had been born in Stuttgart, into the American occupation zone - as far away from the Soviets as he could get - and thus ended up in Stuttgart. This turned out to be very fortunate for him and our family. Many of his relatives and friends had stayed in East Germany and lived in the GDR until the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989.

I will never forget that date and how I learned about the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was on vacation with my parents in the United Arab Emirates, which had become a tradition over the years. My father's birthday was in November, and we always spent it on a beach vacation in Sharjah.

We stayed in the best hotel in town and treated ourselves to...