Case File 25/A-08 \ A-015

VERSCHICKUNGSKIND

This jolly suite spans quite a few Wednesdays, and it took a year and a half to write and record. Here some background for the story: between the 1950s and 1980s, millions of parents in Germany sent their children to often industrial-sized children's homes, sanatoriums of sorts. The state-prescribed treatments there were meant to make German children healthy, happy and compliant. I have but a few recollections of those pitch-black summers, all of them random memory shards blurred by a lifetime, with all emotional edges taken off thanks to the experimental medication we were fed. Those shards welled up into my brain's RAM very recently only, and while googling as to what they might mean, I stumbled upon the word 'Verschickungskinder', meaning children that got sent away. Millions of them were. Between the age of perhaps five and seven, I stayed at two or three of those sanatoriums, and my darkest recollections are of a place that might have been Bad Dürrheim, run by a factual Nazi doctor called Hans Kleinschmidt. The vignettes in this merry little suite are the very few memory bytes that have survived - alas, not all of them reliably so, but the accounts of other sufferers make them plausible at least. If some things didn't happen to me exactly as I'm telling them (I don't think I was raped, and who knows, maybe it was lemon soup after all), it did happen to many of the other children. This testimony is not only mine, it is collective. Welcome to a trip with me down good old German memory lane.

Infos für Deutschsprachige: klickt hier.
For info in English, click here

LYRICS

track 08: Globulin Brine
My parents drop me off. First memory of the annual 6-week treatment: the daily bath in a wooden tub filled with murky brine, down in a sombre underground vault. Contact between the children was not allowed. Small plastic toy ships were provided to play with in silence.

"I lie in brine, windows above glow ashen
In tin-lined tub, play numbly with toy tankers
Bitter smell of rust, my sweat tastes of globulin
Dark sisters watching over us
Water drips and silence echoes
Water drips and silence echoes
Water drips and silence echoes
Water drips and silence echoes
Water drips and silence echoes
Water drops and silent echoes
Fall
Float, depersonalise
Stationary static
Stillness, unremember
Cease altogether
In the muddy grey
In the warm decay
In the muddy grey
The warm decay"

track 09: The Vice
We were given medicine every day at lunchtime, most likely sedative pills.

"Give us our daily pills
Anesthetise the tongue
Our eyes are wooden plugs
In our head inside a vice

Our beds side by side
Motionless in the dark
Don't play don’t speak don't cry
Don't talk don’t feel don't scream
Don't play don’t speak don't cry"

 
track 10: Bitter Lemon Soup
Another important aspect of the treatment was nutrition: the children were supposed to return home fattened, so all food had to be eaten up completely. And at all cost. I remember vividly and with great disgust an extremely bitter, bright yellow and unsweetened LEMON soup. I wonder what it was in reality. I've found many accounts of children being forced to eat up their vomit.

"At the long long table
In the watery light
Hard chairs are wooden
And the cutlery's
Blunt

It's the long long lunchtime
Clutter of plates
A hundred fearful faces
Of submissive boys and girls

Eat up eat up eat up
Spoon in, spoon in, don't gag
Food in, food in, food out
Lick the vomit from the floor"

track 11: Lie in Silence
Based on Brahm's Lullaby
In the evenings, horrifying make-believe nuns would patrol the dark corridors with a clangy small night gong, singing Brahm's Lullaby – the original lyrics of which mention 'Nägel', a German word that in the distant past also meant cloves (which back then must have meant something meaningul), but in modern times only means Nails, which at the time terrified me even further.                                                                                                                                             

"Let's close the shutters, close out daylight
Lie in silence, dare not breathe
In the darkness we'll sing for you
Sweet good-night lullaby

Adorned with angels, sweet sedation
Shut your eyes, shut your mouth
Dare not scream into your pillow
Flashlight finds you if you do

Dare not get up, dare not pee
Just you try, you will see

So God willing, come tomorrow
You'll awake again, you will behave
So God willing, come tomorrow
You'll awake once more in ... everlasting hell"

 
track 12: Lungs Unfold
One day I managed to escape and run away across the fields surrounding the home. Naturally. I got caught.

"Trapped inside the fog, my mind an echodrome
Why am I still here? Come and take me home
My belly and my arms, bruised by the older boys
Night-long silent screams. 'Hold still, you are our toy'

Gate opens, I run into the fields
Fly like an arrow, to furrows give birth
I run and I fly over the fields
Fly like an arrow over fragrant dark earth

You cannot catch me, I dart like a beam
The air all around is green and is grey
My lungs unfold, I laugh and I scream
The sky made of clouds and birds of prey ...takes me in

A hand like a vice
Clamps down my wrist
They're taking me in
Back in again"

track 13: Solitary
I was locked in a solitary cell and told that I was ill, so even more pills ensued. I hoped for my parents – or someone, for that matter – to come and save me.

"Sentenced and confined in solitary room.
A chair and a desk and four walls of doom

They've doubled my meds, time slows down.
I shiver and watch the courtyard below

For the black Mercedes to come.
I scream silence into the walls

Wait for my saviours to come, for mum and daddy to come
For them to take me along, wait for the saviour

Oh please, take me home

For mum and daddy to come, for them to take me along
Oh just take me home"

 
track 14: Calling All Saints (Music: Markham)
Solitary detention gave me plenty of ingrained Catholic time to reflect on my sins, while staring into the bleak courtyard below my small window, waiting for the weekend for my parents' car to appear.

"Saint Bruno, Saint Euphemia!
Time has stopped, time has stopped

What wrong have I done?
For I must have sinned
Oh save me, please save me
Saint Father and Saint Mother!
Saint Bruno, Saint Euphemia!
Save me, please save me
The courtyard below so dark
The door to my cell is barred
Save me, please save me
Holy Father, Holy Mother!

Time has stopped, time has stopped"

track 15: Cocoon
My parents rescued me eventually, but home was no salvation either, nor did my parents believe me.

"Mum: Let's go home, my boy, back to the cocoon,
Full of love and joy, we'll sing a happy tune.
Welcome back, my son. Mum, dad and sister heart
Await you in the sun, we'll never be apart.

Dad: What's that you say, it surely can't be true.
It was just a bad day, or a little flu.

Both: Welcome home, dear boy
Back in the cocoon
Full of love and joy.
Let's sing a merry tune.

Mom: Welcome back, my son.
Dad: Come now, be a man!
Mum: Mum, dad and sister heart
Dad: Make me proud of my son.
Mum: Await you in the sun
Dad: Show a manly smile
Mum: We'll never be apart.
Dad: That wasn't bile
Fred: It was lemon soup
Dad: It was lemon soup!

Mum:

Welcome home, dear boy
Back in the cocoon
Full of love and joy.
Let's sing a merry tune.

Welcome back, my son..."