WEBVTT

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You haven't spoken about
your grandfather and mother yet.

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My grandfather originally was ...

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a farm worker from Mecklenburg,

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not too far from Lübeck.

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There he had been one of 
the first Social Democrats,

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and then he became
a factory worker in the city.

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He represented

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the solidity and
the belief in the future

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of the early labour movement.

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He wasn't able to guide me,
and this is no criticism,

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when it came to more sophisticated
intellectual and political ideas.

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But he knew everything
that had to do with the Party,

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and the trade union,

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and the Reichsbanner,

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which was the organisation set up to defend
parliamentary democracy.

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My mother was also born into

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what we called the labour movement.

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But I didn't live with her,
I just saw her once a week.

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Therefore, the close relationship
could not develop

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that normally exists between mother and child.

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But I loved them both very much.

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I was able to see my mother often
after the war.

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My grandfather felt such grief about
what happened in Nazi Germany

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that he committed suicide in 1935.