*)The old man (Wolfgang L. M. Pehlemann)
On the picture ...the old man - as I was younger
The old one, no, not the one from German television, not acted by me. But I lack training for the film and television world.
And all this is translated from German using Google translator online.
This is about me for once, or once again.
That said, here is something “biographical” about me, Wolfgang Lothar Michael Pehlemann, who in the family tree I belong to the Zernickower main line, as the coat of arms says here. In 1982 I drew it in large size with ink and pen based on a color picture (as well as the coat of arms of the Ortwig younger line). I made the coats of arms smaller for different purposes. Because I don't want to be a great artist, I'm still looking for a coat of arms and portrait painter here in my northern German surroundings. Of course, when you are born into such a family, you also “inherit” the family solid gold signet ring with the Pehlemann coat of arms when you are the right age. And proudly owns it. But I’m getting ahead of myself – so back to the “beginning”.
First I'll let see you a note from my mother from her very old calendar:
When I was born in January 1947, during a time of hardship, my mother had a hard time letting me see the light of day. At 58 cm long, I missed the 60 cm length record; it must have spurred me on for life to always have a worthwhile goal in mind. And for "the goal in mind" I got the right stubborn head, a 38 cm head. I also weighed a whopping 4,500 grams on the scales at the district hospital in Bünde/Westphalia in a territory that was occupied by British soldiers and was also administered by them. It took me over 60 years to get from 4.5 kg to 110 kg. There's still time for that, so please be patient.
I was born in a state no man's land, Germany was not yet Germany again! From the German capitulation after the Second World War in 1945, through my birth in 1947, to the founding of the divided (new) Germany in 1949, the former Germany was considered occupied territory by the Allied superpowers, who divided it into four occupation zones in 1949. Post-war hardships, my mother had to endure terrible and deprived times twice, after the First and Second World Wars. I will come back to my mother later, sorry, with a few more details.
But I took on learning to walk myself so that I could move forward in life. And to learn to read, yes, I ran four kilometers every school day. Hösel elementary school near Ratingen/Düsseldorf, then later by train to high school in Kettwig on the Ruhr, followed by the Kaiser Wilhelm High School in Koblenz on the Rhine. Then the high school at the Electoral Palace in Mainz on the Rhine and finally the current FLS vocational high school in Wiesbaden, also on the Rhine. My career in the construction industry began - after a short time in Mainz on the Rhine - in Munich on the Isar at one of Germany's most important construction companies, Held & Francke Baubauaktiengesellschaft (Berlin Cathedral, Memorial Church, ZDF Administration and Broadcasting Center Mainz, Olympic Stadium Munich and many tens of thousands of other buildings over more than 100 years). At Held & Francke, as I said, my path led from Mainz to Munich and then from Würzburg on the Main to Frankfurt, not on the Oder, but on the Main, where at the age of 26 I became the youngest commercial manager of a branch of this company in Germany. A list of the buildings during my time would go beyond the scope of this article. There were subways, traffic tunnels, university and hotel buildings, large bridges, radio towers, missile positions, housing developments, simulator buildings at Frankfurt Airport, as well as airfield runway work and airfield hangar renovations at the American Rhein-Main Air Base, shopping centers, extensions for the automobile industry, urban development measures, district heating and cooling systems, gas pipeline networks and gas storage facilities, long-distance water supply lines (up to DN 2000), dam renovations, etc. etc. I experienced German reunification very closely - a good friend of mine, a building contractor in the far east of Hesse and close to the border with the zone, set an example on the night the wall fell: he called his workers together, started up his asphalt mixing plant and drove to the zone border with a convoy of builders and equipment. From the border kilometer zero east he had a dilapidated GDR road to the neighboring town in the east asphalted, his gift for reunification. Erich is no longer with us, but "his" street is a symbolic sign of the path to freedom. The change not only brought a lot of work in the second half of his career behind the office door, but also a rethink for the very successful execution of many construction projects and their financing in the subordinate branches over almost 20 years: in Jena on the Saale and (again) in Frankfurt am Main, in Erfurt on the Gera river, in Gelsenkirchen on the Emscher, in Kronach on the Haßlach and in Zwickau on the Zwickauer Mulde. A lot of work in many federal states - simpler: I did not work in the following 4 of 16 German federal states, namely Hamburg, Bremen, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Saarland - you can't have everything, but you can gain a lot...
But the reunification of Germany also meant mobility, Wiesbaden had long since become my traditional place of residence, which I did not give up for the journey to the East - the tasks involved in the market-based restructuring of a considerably large construction company in the East required my presence on site - more than three years living in a hotel in Weimar and in Jena, almost 20 years living in total with an apartment on a whole floor in Wiesbaden and a large maisonette flat in Jena - no time to clean windows by myself. Also a life in the car, well over a million kilometers on business and privately in just under 20 years - you have to question which freeway kilometers you haven't driven...
From commercial manager and strategic manager to authorized representative like an CAO/procurator: an indescribably challenging path through professional diversity. Reconstruction and alignment of a large East German construction company to the requirements of the market economy and increasing personnel and material resources to almost double as well as achieving profitable sales in the East and at the same time in the West, which only a few Eastern companies managed to do. You can be proud of that.
And more than 10 years after the reunification of Germany, the switch to the euro from the German mark, a currency survived. And experience how a world changes: from the Bakelite telephone to the telex, survived, to the fax, survived, the hand-cranked adding machine and the typewriter as early as 1980 with the personal Computer survived, the smartphone cell phone replaced the massive radio telephone from the B and C network in the company car, survived. Time sign, my preference for analogue watches changed due to age to a watch that can also write an ECG for me.
But the human aspect was not left behind: different construction contracts in different places with different employees always meant different clients, we negotiated with each other, we built together and we shared the success with each other. There was one thing I would not have been able to do: sell the same bar of chocolate at the same price to the same people in the same retail chains all my life.
About my time after German reunification, there is a saying from my cousin Peter Pehlemann's mother, my aunt Erika Pehlemann. "...yes, how is Wolfgang (note: me), is he still in the Russian zone?" - my dear aunt was allowed to ask that in her old age. The young among us no longer realize that Germany was once divided by the Allies after the war into a Russian zone and then into an American, an English and a French zone. My birthplace, the cigar town of Bünde, belonged to the British occupation zone.
And another event took place after the turn of the millennium. I met a young man with his beautiful, young, snow-white husky girl, called Fatima. "I'll take the husky straight away," I said. The answer came immediately: "You'd sooner get any girlfriend from me than you'd ever get Fatima." In January 2002 I got Fatima, but not his girlfriend. For ten years, Fatima gave me indescribable joy. She experienced all the beautiful places in Germany with me, and not only there, but also in Europe. A lot of trips in the company car, on trips in a motorhome, in a caravan, in a Cessna plane, and also on the ship. She knew that she was photogenic, so it was a lot of fun to take tens of thousands of photos of Germany in which the white husky girl staged herself in the motif, laughing and grinning, and preferably always a few steps ahead of me. Only when gliding high up in the silence of the skies was she not allowed into the confines of the glider cabin, as there was too great a risk that she would uncontrollably block the control mechanisms of the glider. – Fatima, for ten years. Thank you.
Towards the end of almost 50 years of professional activity, I can look back on successes, but I will not order a gravestone with the inscription “authorized representative” – I did not want to think about a gravestone when I retired. First I wanted to think about where I would retire, the Rhine and Ruhr or the Moselle? There were enough rivers in my life. My retirement vision was: proximity to the sea, the preferred Greifswald in East Germany, near Rügen and Usedom, became something else, Steinberg on the Geltinger Bay and the Baltic Sea, only 2800 meters from the front door to the beach – my home since November 1st, 2011, in time for the start of my retirement on March 1st, 2012.
Oh yes, your job is usually not everything in life. What does a man have to do in life? I followed the words of the British David Hume: a man should plant a tree, build a house and father a child in his life. And I have wondered all my life why, in these three important values, a woman never appears in these same quotes? Well, I have never stuck to a set order or anything like that in life. I have planted many trees (myself), I have fathered two children (as far as I know) and I have built more than my neighbors (who are retired) put together. And there was still no mention of a woman? I have had more than two wives, two wives, one after the other, of course. With my first wife, from the Netherlands, I can look back on a family. 14 years, with two daughters, for the period from 1970 to 1983, with a Calvinist departure and the return of my wife (with children) to the Netherlands.
At this moment I have to add a family detail here. Just as I have a wedding ring from my grandmother, it was naturally given a traditional Pehlemann family coat of arms signet ring to me as a son out of the family. Following the example of such an elementary family piece, I had a goldsmith in Weimar make a similar signet ring for my daughter Beatrix Astrid Marianne Pehlemann in 1999, with a coat of arms in the classic Lagenstein, and of course I also had a nestled golden side ring made for it, with two diamonds, logically because it was the second daughter. This had to be done in Weimar, because it would be pointless if such family pieces came from a store in Duisburg, no, never.
Weimar, because Weimar has that certain something and because German history was written there in 1918 with the Weimar National Assembly, while the Pehlemann family has been writing history since 1622 long before. And this signet ring a must have from Weimar also because I lived in the suite of the Hotel Kaiserin Augusta above the city of Weimar ffor almost one year. An unforgettably wonderful time.
And to have the honor of wearing a family signet ring, you have to be 25 years old. That also applies to a daughter. I stick to tradition. Ergo another one: for my 75th birthday in 2022, this daughter also received my old coat of arms signet ring. Because I wanted to see it passed on. After my death, it would no longer have inspired me with joy.
Regarding my second marriage in 1985, I can testify that it was neither enough to conceive a child nor to spend a whole year together. A civil engineer friend of mine captioned it as: "Congratulations on your self-chosen fate." From a different direction, a trusted construction director of a client tried to encourage me: "Other fathers have pretty daughters too." It is said that I have had stuck to these words. I don't need to go into any more detail at this point. Since 2015, I have even been said to have an affinity with Holland? I am enjoying my retirement (with a little restlessness) with a woman from Amsterdam who is accompanying me...
I have not yet mentioned my father Bernhard Richard Peter Friedrich (Pehlemann), not the first child of the landowner Erich Pehlemann, but a later son born during the First World War, and in the old Prussian tradition of landowners - by inheritance to the first son - he had to become a lawyer, judge or officer. And the latter is what he became. A young officer in the army in the unfortunate Second World War, then a career in the German armed forces up to the rank of colonel and an early end with a sudden death at the age of 53. But... But it should be noted that my father in the armed forces received an appointment and promotion certificate from every Federal Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany and every Federal Minister of Defense from 1956 until his death in 1969. There is much to report. So let's write about it elsewhere.
I also have a connection to several German chancellors. I share with Chancellor Konrad Adenauer his goal-oriented cunning. I share with Chancellor Ludwig Ehrhardt a certain working in the market economy. I share with Chancellor Helmut Schmidt a preference for the quantity of cigarettes smoked. I share with Chancellor Helmut Kohl a certain preference for blue suits and a membership of the CDU from 1973, although this was preceded by a membership of the CSU from 1965. In my 18 years of active political activity, a small incident occurred with the former Federal Minister of Defense Dr. Franz-Josef Strauß - I had invited him to one of my major events, in the Frankfurt Palmengarten, and he had agreed. After his generally politically oriented speech, I thanked him and took him to the door to his official car, where I asked him to leave his autograph on my current CDU ID card. He laughed loudly and asked: "My dear Pehlemann, as CSU boss, I'm not allowed to write that on your CDU ID card, am I?," he said, did it anyway and drove off. My way back to the Palmengarten to my podium place was stopped by security: I had left my event ID on the podium - some event participants smoking outside the door helped and cleared the way for me back.
This anecdote may be more appropriate than going into arduous political activities here, which would take up too much space.
Unlike C. E. Walter Pehlemann, my contribution to the history of the family is not as comprehensive. I would like to mention, however, that in 1982, before my first Pehlemann family celebration, I managed to find out the names and descendants of our founding mother Eva Döhring by looking through many German pastor's handbooks in a very large library archive in Darmstadt. I am also proud of a small correspondence in the 1960s and 1970s with Lilian Olson in Canada and Clara Manchester in the USA, although I am no longer sure of the regional reference. However, the much later updates in the family tree based on the correspondence are not sufficiently secure. After my first marriage and the astonishing devotion of the family to my first wife (who all too quickly dropped the name Pehlemann in view of her underage daughters with that same name), I gave these letters, along with many other family documents, to Fritz-Wilhelm Pehlemann to keep for myself.
At this point, at the latest, I must say something about my mother Eva Dorothea Pehlemann, née Cygan, daughter of a rent collector and manager of a very large estate in Upper Silesia. I have already written about the hard times she experienced at the beginning. But they were not just times of hardship, no, there was also the flight from expulsion by the advancing Russian military during the Second World War. The family decided to flee, leaving behind a lot of material things, and what they took with them was partly lost along the way.
My family celebration in 1982, my family interests, someone who is not as enthusiastic about them as I am, someone I have not yet mentioned: my brother. He once enrolled in German, French and history at the university in Munich and Salzburg. And he wrote down his trips to the deserts, to other continents. And writing and the trips became a profession. A writer and photographer for a magazine and his own books, his whole working life, and also a love of motorhomes. His job led him to collect the beautiful continents (forgive me if there are less beautiful ones later on). Africa, America, Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, Australia, and of course Europe and a bit of the Middle East. There he collected what makes up the material for adventure travel - you get a feeling for it for life, I mean: for life. And anyone who has stood in front of lions in person is unlikely to go to the zoo for such a sight. As a brother of a brother, Europe is enough for me, I don't have to collect all the other continents.
Collected life? I'm not there yet. I didn't miss the automobile era, old and new cars, slow and beautifully fast, 30 cars from 4.07 m long to an impressive 5.45 meters, with oval rear windows or white and blue distinctiveness, from four rings to a star, two doors or more, even on a small RV, oh yes, and there was also enough for six "traveling" caravans. Feel free to take time for freedom on the wheels. I've collected 2,5 million kilometers, and that's probably not enough. I like it. Still. Greta Thunberg won't like it.
And that's where the hobbies coincide. Travel, travel destinations, photos, cameras. From the Agfa Clack when I was 12 to the Hasselblad later, holy cow! The Rolleis or my Japanese Zenza Bronica, which I defiantly bought somewhere else when such a complete set of equipment was bought out from under my nose. 35mm for great photos – I once waited two full hours at the large and very busy intersection in front of the Palácio Nacional de Mafra in Portugal for a single photo without people and without cars in the subject – it worked, a real highlight in life!
Processed countless 35mm films, yes, photography can be work. Or can be. With a replica of a Leica, with a whole range of Zeiss cameras, where I still say that Zeiss is the ultimate in lenses, even today, after analogue, on my digital SoNiCans. Excuse me?
That's what I call my Canons, many of them discarded, Nikons, even more in the cupboard, but two of the best Sonys with the icing on the cake of Zeiss lenses on the front for the active hobby. My collector's heart laughs and my photographer's soul rejoices. Yes, that's how I am too. Taking photos, on long or big trips, after the cathedral is before the cathedral, after the castle is before the castle, after the photo of the magnificent gulf is before the photo of the more beautiful real one, after the vintage cars is before the car museum, after the "please be very kind" is before archiving in my large photo fund with several hundred thousand photos - I told you, it can be work Photography and travel are addictive. No sermon here about the most beautiful travel experiences, just a look at my wanderlust map, the route led once or many times to the destinations and to the countries that are marked with colored flags (the black and white ones are not taken into account). For example, I know Koblenz without a cable car, Sintra without excessive tourism, Calella without any hotels, Aida in Verona and Rocco Granat's Marina down in the Sicilian grotto of Syracuse, I know the monkeys of Gibraltar at the top, wintry Athens still under a brown cloud of soot, and I have also experienced the fire-breathing Mount Etna up there and the donkey carts in the hustle and bustle of Tirana. And much more.
My conclusion? Life is too short to spend time at less beautiful travel destinations for bad impressions and poor photos...
click for a larger image
In my life I have made many journeys through all the countries and islands marked with colored flags, many of this countries and islands several times, and since I retired I have made journeys lasting two to three months every year: that's what I call touring countries.
But one thing can be said, all those who are on holiday in the hotel complexes near the beach, on cruise ships, on Mallorca, Ibiza, the Canaries, in other ghettos, etc., I would like to thank all of them for this - they don't get in the way of my lens anywhere else. I say this as a philosopher...
The young genealogists can add a little or more of the above to the family history as they wish when I am no longer here.
And the young genealogists can ask emphatically to receive more biographical information from the family. Papyrus Pehlemanus could last longer than the fading words of stories.
May 13, 2024
Wolfgang L. M. Pehlemann
