In Germany it’s the custom to have small fields next to the farmstead and those were used for the most valuable crops. Hay fields, a cheap crop, are located a good distance away where the land is not as fruitful and cheaper, often land with no other good economic uses. They didn’t need them for grazing as no one had big herds of livestock; these were small family farms in pre war Germany and pretty much still in the present day. There are no big industrial ranches like in the States.
Today we are taking an excursion crossing over the big bridge to the other side of the Memel River and past the floodplain by Russ (Rusne). First we cross a small bridge in Heydekrug. This is the one where Mom and her co worker, Erna, used to take walks on their one hour lunch. They did this even in the winter, all bundled up with fancy boots and a fur muff.
We head over to the hay fields, where the entire Redetzki family traveled in the summer to harvest hay. This high bridge over the Memel River is not the one Mom remembers, the old bridge having been destroyed in the war. Up and over the bridge I drive, then a sharp turn to the left and down the steep embankment into the city of Russ. This city looks much older than anything I’ve seen so far, but it also looks abandoned. At one time this city was actually larger than Heydekrug, and historically more significant. It is located on the estuary, so took advantage of the river traffic centuries ago.
On the 1939 topographic map, this area is packed with houses even though it is mainly swampland. My mother tells me that fisherman shacks crowded this area. The land is right near the water and lays very low. Now there is nothing but fields and woods where once huts stood tightly together lining the roadside. There is not even any house in sight along this road.
In the center of Russ stands a very large, dark, brick Lutheran church. This village is laid out with a green common area in front of the church, surrounded by buildings pressed up tight against the roads. Several large trees around the church make it very dark in settings that are usually wide open and bright. So if the other old villages were still standing would they look like this? There is no formal front entrance to the church, which seems unusual – no path, no steps to the doors, just a worn footpath worn through overgrown grass. A clock is built up high into the brick work on each of the four sides of the tower. The architecture is typical of churches in East Prussia; very unornamented, just a plain square tower with a narrow spire. The base is massive covered with stucco painted white.
The houses surrounding the common are grey stucco all built right next to the road. I stop the car and we walk around the church grounds. I realize it is midweek, people probably at work, but the quietness seems unnatural. No children playing, no people walking, no car traffic. This is very different from Heydekrug. Russ is the oldest settlement in the area with the first historical mention in the 14th century. Parts of the village actually are below sea level so it’s surprising anything stands intact. This Lutheran church was built in 1809.
We see a sign for an ethnographic museum just on the outskirts of town. When we get there we find an open-air museum of restored fisherman’s cottages. This looks interesting. Let’s take a look. They just haven’t been a whole lot of tourist sights so far. And it’s the next best thing to trying to invade the home of real Lithuanians.
The primary residence is a small one story, thatched roof house. There are no guidebooks or signs to explain anything to us. Inside a small group is getting a tour, but not in any language we speak. So we wander from room to room and I use the guide I have right at hand – my mother. I ask her questions and she talks about what they had in her own home. These rooms are tight, dark and damp. There is no fire going which would provide some warmth. The rooms are furnished with what would have been used in the early and mid 19th century. No electricity and no indoor water closet.
Most interesting to me is the kitchen which is very different from anything I’ve seen. The hearth is about three feet above the floor which means you wouldn’t have so much bending to do cooking and baking. Wonder if I could get this in my kitchen? However, that may not have been the original intent for this design. There is no counter or shelf space. Inhabitants would have had some sort of cabinet or table in the room to work on. My mother talks about her work at home in a kitchen much like this. This seems to be as close as I’ll come to seeing what her home was actually like.
We leave the museum and drive out further on the country roads. Absolutely no homes are left in what used to be a densely populated area. Lonely trees line the sides of the road. Back in her day the area was called Klein Berlin. Pre WWII the area inhabitants were very poor. I have a VHS of early films from the 1930’s created in Germany to present a lovely picture of life in East Prussia. It was possibly made for tourist promotional purposes. The fishermen and their wives and children all smile at the camera. Occasionally you see teeth missing in their smiles. Gaily they go about their daily chores and the narration describes their idyllic live. The sun is shining, they are all happy and the children are all blonde. In reality weather was cold and damp, they scrapped out a living and it was not desirable to live there.
The German bigot who incurred my wrath at Emilijia P.’s B& B was from Skriwiet, one of the villages long since disappeared from these roads. He’ll be gone soon, too, and forgotten. The absence of villages, or of even any sign of a community, continues to perplex me. How can everything be so totally purged and all evidence of human occupation gone? Were so few people left behind by the ravages of the world that they were unable to repopulate the area? There is so much empty space in this country that used to be densely populated. The rest of the world got more crowded and this place got emptier?
High summer is the time for hay harvest. It would be very hot, but you had to get in the hay for animal feed that would take them through the winter. Back at the farm, some 15 kilometers away from these hayfields, the horses were hitched to the wagon and the family climbed on for the long trip out across the river. All the girls, mother and father went along. They needed the workers. Mom hated this work just as she disliked all the hard, backbreaking work associated with farming.
A scythe was used to cut the hay. I have a scythe that I bought at a country auction. It actually is the most useful implement for cutting tall weeds and my raspberry canes. A weed-whacker tears up the long grasses and shoots green juice all over your legs. It also leaves ragged cuts in the stalks ends which are propelled violently through the air, smearing everything within a ten foot reach with that green goo. On the other hand, a scythe cuts cleanly and leaves cuttings that can easily be raked up and used for mulch. Just have to keep your own legs and the legs of wandering dogs out of reach of that long sharp blade. But it is really hard work to keep up that slicing rhythm for any length of time. My shoulder muscles scream before I’ve cut much at all, and my heart pounds from the effort. I can’t imagine doing a whole field . They must have had very callused hands and muscles of iron.
The wagon had to be filled at the end of the day before they made the ride home. You took along a few meager refreshments and maybe something to eat. It was hot, dusty, hard work. Arms would ache, but you had to go on, row after row. Often by the time the wagon was full it was dusk, everyone exhausted. Now you hitched the horses up and made the long journey home. Watch that you didn’t doze off and fall off the wagon. Back over the bridge and Memel River, through town on out to the farm. It wasn’t quite as idyllic as those lovely pastoral scenes show in oil paintings. Only city people far removed from the actual work found it idyllic. And this was the routine as late as the 1930’s and 40’s! Probably later in the war devasted eastern provinces.
I understand now why my parents were never interested in those American museums that display farm implements going back to colonial times. It wasn’t that long ago for them that they actually used the tools that are on display as antique memorabilia. They also remember the back-breaking hard work that went with the tools. We nowadays reminisce on the simplicity of those bygone times – they remember the toil, the hunger and not having other options.
On the trip back to town we see a young woman walking along the roadside far from any settlement. All over the countryside we see people walking, some holding out the universal thumb, hoping for a ride. So often they would be in the middle of the open country, no buildings in sight for miles in either direction. I figured they must have already walked a great distance and clearly had a good distance yet to go. In this case I tell my mother we should stop and offer her a ride. The young woman gets in the car, looking a bit hesitant upon realizing we are foreigners. She doesn’t speak English or German and of course we have no grasp of Lithuanian. The situation was probably stranger for her than for us; at least there were two of us. I hoped to leave her with a positive impression of Americans, and I bet she could figure out that much at least. And like a good number of Americans, my mother and I talked and laughed. In retrospect I hope we didn’t scare her. It is our laughter that so many other cultures note about Americans. We are uninhibited in that respect, loud and boldly we laugh. How is it we do seem to find so much to be funny? We laugh at ourselves and at others. So many other cultures just don’t have a good sense of humor.
It might have been risky picking up a stranger along a lonely roadside. I hope the gesture helped her in some small measure and will cause her to extend a kindness at some future date. Generally I’ve found people to be very helpful and kind to foreigners throughout my travels. So I find it important to try to return this gesture when I can, both as I travel elsewhere and encounter foreigners at home.
We come to the city and our passenger indicates where she wants to get out. I stop, she leaves. Good bye!
As we crisscross the countryside on two land roads with little traffic I look for old houses. I try to find one that looks like the Redetzki house did. When we come upon a likely candidate I ask Mom, “It that like your house?” She says yes, but I think her criterion is looser than mine. Anyway, I stop the car and photograph it. Never see any people around any of the houses. The one that she tells me is most like her own house we find down near Kirlikcken, where my grandfather Julius’ parents lived when they died in the early 1930’s. This building has seen better times, and looks so old it might actually be 70 or more years old. And it is sort of like her family home, one story and four walls, and well, sort of like the old Redetzki house. But here too in this area the villages are all gone and the view open for miles.
On another of our excursions we go out to the Windenburger Eck, or Vente Horn. This is an ornithological station located on a little point of land that sticks out in the Kurische Nehrung. Here is a lighthouse that dates back to the 19th century. The keeper’s house has been converted into a birding field station and museum. This day was drizzly and not really good to being outdoors. We also were getting a bit tired of each others company; too much time in close proximity.
As we come down the narrow lane to the Lighthouse a big tour bus comes into view parked at the end of the lane. The scene across the lagoon is great, but the tour bus means a crowd. We‘ve been very fortunate in not encountering tourists, actually none at all, other than our first day at the hotel in Memel. And now here is a busload of Germans! Not more Germans – doesn’t anybody else come here? Once we got in the station is made for tight quarters, but they were already on their way out.
Even without hearing a language I would be able to tell these were Germans. It’s the same whether you see a tour group of Americans, or Brits, or Japanese. The dress, the movement, the actions – you know them before you hear them. They all have their own unique travel rituals and customs.
Odd is that we don’t see any birds. Have no idea why. Outside on the grounds large nets on tall poles are strung across the lawn. Do they actually leave these up all the time? It seems a bit of a cruel way to catch the birds. A lot of bird banding is done here and the birds are tracked to far flung places in their migrations. I have no idea how these things on done in America. Don’t they use transmitters on the birds? When the birding groups I know off need to count birds, they send out groups of volunteers who sit around with their binoculars and literally count. That’s how Audubon does the Christmas count and the backyard count. Maybe the big nets are a secret weapon.
It is time to eat, but the drizzle keeps us from sitting out on the lawn. In the car we huddle and drink a beverage, eat our bread, cheese and sausage. It tastes good, even in the confines of the car. But the mood is still a bit tense. I hope it’s not a sign of more tension as we are going to be together for several more days yet.
There is very little development on the small peninsula. A few solitary houses stand next to the road. There used to be several villages here, the largest being Kinten. It is mentioned frequently in church records I’ve looked at. It is the same scenario we saw going out past Russ – the old villages gone and no new development. Now, people have moved to the city and there aren’t many people to stay in the rural areas. Same story everywhere.
Boomerrang Blog 