Remembering the first years of German Primary School 1938-1941
I supppose most of the things I am telling about were, more or less, the same in other European countries.
I really don´t remember much of my first school years. It is especially the first year I remember most.
We beginners were called the “I kids“, as the letter i – up, down, up, a little point above – was the first letter we learnt. It was the easiest letter of the Sütterlin writing, a German writing, which was very popular in the XIXth century, but which was abolished in the early forties of last century, being replaced by the Latin writing. That´s why we first had to learn the Sütterlin writing and later on the Latin writing. I no longer could write in Sütterlin, but I am still able to read it, which is quite useful when reading the ancestors´letters and documents.
We went to school with a leathern back pack, from which was hanging a little sponge, attached to a small blackboard that was inside the back pack, together with a wooden pencil case and a few small books.
We girls wore aprons of different design and had short hair, sometimes “crowned“ with a big bow of ribbon. The classmate who was sitting before me, didn´t have any big bow, but several lice, walking on her very greasy hair
-rubbing the hair with butter was said to be an efficient louse treatment -.
Several days later I got the lice , too. Their treatment – without butter –
was much more complicated than it is nowadays.
When entering the classroom in the morning, we had to pass by the teacher´s desk and show our fingernails. If they were dirty, we got some slashes on the fingers by a little cane that was lying on the teacher´s desk. But our young teacher was very kind. He hardly ever used a stick. He prefered other punishments. I still remember a little boy standing at one of the classroom´s corners, with his face towards the wall and a little “pipi lake“ between his shoes, for being scared. What did he do?
One day the teacher told us to go running to the playground, as a big zeppelin was flying over the school.
We didn´t have central heating. There was an iron heater where the teacher roasted apples in autumn.
During the break we sang in a ring, about the Sleeping Beauty or the walking chimney sweeper, we skipped and we hopped.
The second school year I changed school, because of my parents´moving to a new house. This time I had a female teacher, a nice teacher, too. She quite often had to console her timid pupil, when, in the morning, she entered the classroom weeping, as a boy had prevented her from going ahead or had pulled her plaits – in the meantime plaits had replaced the girls´short hair. While my classmates had to practise reading, I already did quite well, I was enjoying the nice books the teacher had given to me.
One fine day we stopped writing on the little blackboard and started writing with a pen. It was no longer the grandparent´s goosequill. It was a steel pen of different sizes, put into a slot which was on the top of a kind of pencil. All desks had a round hole where you put the inkpot. Dipping the pen in the ink, allowed writing a few words, then you had to dip the pen again; but attention! Dipping the pen too deep might produce, instead of the first letter, a big ink stain, much bigger than the great many tiny stains you made when pressing the pen too much. A real mess! But slowly, slowly, we managed pen writing, maybe partly due to the subject “Writing“ – in German “Nice Writing“.
Later on, when I already had left Primary School, the inkpots disappeared at school. The fountain pen had been invented. The inkpots just remained at home as the fountain pen had to be filled from time to time. Then the inkpots disappeared at home, too, thanks to the ink cartridges. Still another thing had been invented. The ballpoint pen, the Biro, the most used means of writing, if there is still somebody left writing!
But let´s return to my Primary School. During the 3rd and 4th school term we sometimes didn´t have school in the morning, as we were on the fields and in the woods. A modern kind of teaching biology and of introducing pupils to the environment? Maybe that was a side effect, but the real reason was helping the Fatherland by collecting medicinal plants and voracious beetles. Picking up beetles was much more fun than collecting plants. There was the May beetle that left the trees without any leaves. Today it is a protected animal, which nearly doesn´t exist anymore. Where it still exists is in Germany where it is, made of chocolate, part of the Easter decoration.
Still more voracious than the May beetle, was the potatoe beetle, the Colorado beetle. There was such a lot, that the Brits were said to throw them over the fields from their planes!
I don´t remrember the subjects we were taught, but I still remember what might have been a sportslesson at the school´s gym: I was lying, face down, on a stool, doing breaststroke. Quite an unusual way of teaching swimming without water! When, after the war, the swimming pools opened again, I could be seen swimming in the water, after having been helped, just three days, by a safety belt. Some time later, I got the certificate of being able to swim three quarters of an hour in one go. Praised be the teacher for his imaginative swimming lessons!
No more memories, that is the end of my stories about my long gone by first school years.
I supppose most of the things I am telling about were, more or less, the same in other European countries.
I really don´t remember much of my first school years. It is especially the first year I remember most.
We beginners were called the “I kids“, as the letter i – up, down, up, a little point above – was the first letter we learnt. It was the easiest letter of the Sütterlin writing, a German writing, which was very popular in the XIXth century, but which was abolished in the early forties of last century, being replaced by the Latin writing. That´s why we first had to learn the Sütterlin writing and later on the Latin writing. I no longer could write in Sütterlin, but I am still able to read it, which is quite useful when reading the ancestors´letters and documents.
We went to school with a leathern back pack, from which was hanging a little sponge, attached to a small blackboard that was inside the back pack, together with a wooden pencil case and a few small books.
We girls wore aprons of different design and had short hair, sometimes “crowned“ with a big bow of ribbon. The classmate who was sitting before me, didn´t have any big bow, but several lice, walking on her very greasy hair
-rubbing the hair with butter was said to be an efficient louse treatment -.
Several days later I got the lice , too. Their treatment – without butter –
was much more complicated than it is nowadays.
When entering the classroom in the morning, we had to pass by the teacher´s desk and show our fingernails. If they were dirty, we got some slashes on the fingers by a little cane that was lying on the teacher´s desk. But our young teacher was very kind. He hardly ever used a stick. He prefered other punishments. I still remember a little boy standing at one of the classroom´s corners, with his face towards the wall and a little “pipi lake“ between his shoes, for being scared. What did he do?
One day the teacher told us to go running to the playground, as a big zeppelin was flying over the school.
We didn´t have central heating. There was an iron heater where the teacher roasted apples in autumn.
During the break we sang in a ring, about the Sleeping Beauty or the walking chimney sweeper, we skipped and we hopped.
The second school year I changed school, because of my parents´moving to a new house. This time I had a female teacher, a nice teacher, too. She quite often had to console her timid pupil, when, in the morning, she entered the classroom weeping, as a boy had prevented her from going ahead or had pulled her plaits – in the meantime plaits had replaced the girls´short hair. While my classmates had to practise reading, I already did quite well, I was enjoying the nice books the teacher had given to me.
One fine day we stopped writing on the little blackboard and started writing with a pen. It was no longer the grandparent´s goosequill. It was a steel pen of different sizes, put into a slot which was on the top of a kind of pencil. All desks had a round hole where you put the inkpot. Dipping the pen in the ink, allowed writing a few words, then you had to dip the pen again; but attention! Dipping the pen too deep might produce, instead of the first letter, a big ink stain, much bigger than the great many tiny stains you made when pressing the pen too much. A real mess! But slowly, slowly, we managed pen writing, maybe partly due to the subject “Writing“ – in German “Nice Writing“.
Later on, when I already had left Primary School, the inkpots disappeared at school. The fountain pen had been invented. The inkpots just remained at home as the fountain pen had to be filled from time to time. Then the inkpots disappeared at home, too, thanks to the ink cartridges. Still another thing had been invented. The ballpoint pen, the Biro, the most used means of writing, if there is still somebody left writing!
But let´s return to my Primary School. During the 3rd and 4th school term we sometimes didn´t have school in the morning, as we were on the fields and in the woods. A modern kind of teaching biology and of introducing pupils to the environment? Maybe that was a side effect, but the real reason was helping the Fatherland by collecting medicinal plants and voracious beetles. Picking up beetles was much more fun than collecting plants. There was the May beetle that left the trees without any leaves. Today it is a protected animal, which nearly doesn´t exist anymore. Where it still exists is in Germany where it is, made of chocolate, part of the Easter decoration.
Still more voracious than the May beetle, was the potatoe beetle, the Colorado beetle. There was such a lot, that the Brits were said to throw them over the fields from their planes!
I don´t remrember the subjects we were taught, but I still remember what might have been a sportslesson at the school´s gym: I was lying, face down, on a stool, doing breaststroke. Quite an unusual way of teaching swimming without water! When, after the war, the swimming pools opened again, I could be seen swimming in the water, after having been helped, just three days, by a safety belt. Some time later, I got the certificate of being able to swim three quarters of an hour in one go. Praised be the teacher for his imaginative swimming lessons!
No more memories, that is the end of my stories about my long gone by first school years.
