Peter Aachen was born in 1929. With the ”Black Friday” in New York (10/24/1929) a steep decline of the German economy began. The Nazi party blamed successfully the democratic parties for this. As a result, the NSDAP won some elections in different parts of Germany in 1929.
Peter was born to his parents Barbara (housewife) and Hans (undertaker). His sister Mia (Maria) followed in 1931. Later the whole family gained from a housing project in the newly built Vogelsang quarter. The houses there were constructed by the later users. Projects like this one combined two things: giving people work and helping them to feed the family by home-grown vegetables and fruits. Even goats, pigs or chicken were allowed. To qualify for this project the later inhabitants had to do a crash-course for this kind of ‘farming‘.
In this environment Peter had his first schoolday in 1935.
Few years later during WW2 Peter was drafted as a so-called “Flak-Helfer“: He had to assist at a flak artillery. Still more stressing was another task: Peter had to remove the dead from the Griechenmarkt quarter after the terrible air raides of 1944 and 1945. If there were too many deads in a cellar, chalk was thrown in and the cellars were bricked up. If the dead were recognizable, Peter had to send these corpses to the Reiterstadion in Muengersdorf. If the bodies were beyond recognition, they would be burnt. Imagine what a traumatizing task this was for a boy only 15 years old! Whenever possible Peter avoided the Griechenmarkt qarter after the war.
There is one more person to mention: Franziska Horsch, born in 1931 and growing up with 5 more siblings, dated Peter Aachen in 1949. They married in 1955, but were a couple long time before. Her daughter Birgit, my wife, was born in 1963.
