Germany Eight
Transcription of Unscripted Speech
So I was born in..in..Memel, which at that time was Lithuania. So for the first ten years I lived Memel, both of my parents were German, but my father's ancestor's came from Russia, and I was born in '34, that time this town Memel was not even known as Memel, it was known as Klaipėda...and it is again now if you look it up on a map, it's--it's again Klaipėda, which is not that uncommon for European border towns to change to and fro. And then '39 it uh, had the same or similar fate as Austria was annex by the Germans, so Austria in '38 and the..part where I was born Memel was annexed in '39. And I have seen Hitler, because uh...when--when the Germans came, there was a big parade in town, and I would say people were, were happy to become..part of Germany, and it was a peaceful annexation, I think, not a single shot was fired. Uh, but it became then German and stayed German 'till '45, but we fled from the Russians in '44 as the Russians advance westward towards the end of the war. Um, my mother and us children (unclear) Germans fled summer of '44, and arrived in what later became West Germany and so I grew up in, in the Frankfurt area from February '45 'till '53 when I started to study medicine. I had accepted a position in Berlin to start on September the 1st 19...61 which was uh, two weeks after the wall was built, uh August 12, 1961. So my father who, like me, was a physician, said, "in that (?) you cannot go to Berlin it is a mousetrap and once the Russians take over you will not get out ever." So listening to my father I said, "Well, where should I go," and he said, "Well, I have a friend in Mainz." So from '61 to '68 I was in Mainz, that was the place where I got married to the same wife I still have...had two children born over there then we came to this country in '68 because I had an offer to join a well-known professor here in town. What happens now-a-days in Germany, and it is for linguist like you, or voice coaches it's a sad affair, that subtleties.. um, in the areas of Germany where dialect is still spoken disappear...and it disappear because of television. Television is almost exclusively high German..and so even if you go to Munich and you turn on radio or TV to um, get the news or get a play or a comedy session it is all in high German, and that type of German goes back to Martin Luder, not Martin Luther but Martin Luder, because the Germans don't have the diphthong for Luther, you can say Martin Luther King that's alright, but you cannot call the reformer of the--of the church Martin Luther, it was Martin Luder please.
[Speaks German]
The actual translation is: Love at first sight it is easily understood, but you can only talk of a miracle after many years of looking at each other.
Unscripted Speech Transcribed by Faith Harvey 17 March 2008