WEBVTT 00:00:01.200 --> 00:00:06.680 You haven't spoken about your grandfather and mother yet. 00:00:06.960 --> 00:00:10.400 My grandfather originally was ... 00:00:10.560 --> 00:00:13.280 a farm worker from Mecklenburg, 00:00:13.440 --> 00:00:15.800 not too far from Lübeck. 00:00:16.100 --> 00:00:20.920 There he had been one of the first Social Democrats, 00:00:21.080 --> 00:00:25.200 and then he became a factory worker in the city. 00:00:27.360 --> 00:00:29.840 He represented 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:33.360 the solidity and the belief in the future 00:00:33.500 --> 00:00:37.280 of the early labour movement. 00:00:37.440 --> 00:00:42.120 He wasn't able to guide me, and this is no criticism, 00:00:42.280 --> 00:00:47.520 when it came to more sophisticated intellectual and political ideas. 00:00:47.680 --> 00:00:51.000 But he knew everything that had to do with the Party, 00:00:51.160 --> 00:00:52.760 and the trade union, 00:00:52.900 --> 00:00:54.360 and the Reichsbanner, 00:00:54.500 --> 00:00:58.000 which was the organisation set up to defend parliamentary democracy. 00:00:58.300 --> 00:01:01.440 My mother was also born into 00:01:01.600 --> 00:01:05.500 what we called the labour movement. 00:01:07.000 --> 00:01:10.500 But I didn't live with her, I just saw her once a week. 00:01:10.800 --> 00:01:16.600 Therefore, the close relationship could not develop 00:01:16.700 --> 00:01:21.760 that normally exists between mother and child. 00:01:21.860 --> 00:01:24.640 But I loved them both very much. 00:01:24.800 --> 00:01:28.000 I was able to see my mother often after the war. 00:01:28.300 --> 00:01:32.740 My grandfather felt such grief about what happened in Nazi Germany 00:01:32.840 --> 00:01:36.000 that he committed suicide in 1935.