Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Dr. David Trobisch
I was born from a German father and an American mother. In school I had a teacher who told me that my father killed all the Jews. And another teacher told me that my mother killed all the Indians.
I went to kindergarten in Mannheim, Germany. We children played in an abandoned street, just next to the kindergarten. I remember the ruins of houses, the black streaks on burnt walls, four story buildings which had collapsed under American bombs.
My teachers were not wrong. On both sides of my family I am related to people who have done terrible things.
In the 1940's my father was fighting for his German Vaterland.
My father did not talk much about the war. Only once, during a summer vacation in France and Italy, did he pour out his heart. For one hour every day he would tell his three oldest children his story of the war.
He was seventeen when he was drafted into Hitler's army. He was one of the very few who survived the battle of Stalingrad, where more than 650.000 German troops and 500.000 Russian soldiers were killed in a single battle.1 Of the 850.000 civilians who once inhabited the city, the census after the war counted only 1.500. The overall loss of life amounts to about 1.5 million people. In one single battle.
Heavily wounded, my father was thrown on the back of a truck. The truck driver crossed through two enemy lines without being detected and attacked.
As soon as he recovered from his injuries my father was sent back to the Russian front. This time his platoon was surrounded. The only hope for these young soldiers was to run up a hill under heavy fire. For years my father had been a devout Christian and active youth leader. But it was then that he decided not to pursue his dream of becoming a theater director. If he survived, he prayed, he would study theology and become a minister.
I will never forget how he told us about the longest night in his life, running half a mile up that hill, under heavy fire. My father was the only one in the platoon to survive. For four weeks he walked west, traveling at night, hiding during the day, until he met with German troops again.
The next time my father was sent to the front, he was sent to Italy. On Christmas Eve an American grenade exploded close to him, sending splinters into his neck and upper arm. Until his death 35 years later he would pull little pieces of shrapnel out of his skin.
My American uncles, about the same age as my father, were fighting for America. My father and my uncles were shooting at each other. A family divided? At that time we were not a family not yet.
The house my wife and I had bought and lived in for ten years in Germany before we moved to Maine was an old house. More than a century old. The sandstone walls were two feet thick. On the outside there were marks from the splinters of a bomb, which had detonated in the little park across the street. The splinters had done little damage to the strong walls of our house. Our neighbors, an elderly couple, told us that only two bombs had fallen on this particular part of Mannheim. One in front of our house.
The other bomb, I knew, had hit the home of my Godmother. The house was completely destroyed. It had been a dark night. The city observed a complete black out. My Godmother's neighbor, however, had left a light on, and it was this light that had led the pilot to drop his fatal load.
I am a Lutheran. And as far back as the sixteenth century my family was Lutheran. My Godmother is very active in the local Lutheran congregation.
Several years ago my wife and I attended a church service in Missouri. We were introduced to a retired pastor who had made a fortune in the stock market. With this money he would buy lots in thriving suburbs and help local Lutherans to form new congregations, erect church buildings, and hire pastors. This was his ministry.
When he learned that we were from Germany he told us that he had been in Germany once before.
He seemed a little hesitant at first. But then he explained: He never put his foot on German soil, but as a young man, as a soldier in an airplane, he had seen Germany from above. Their mission was to drop bombs over Mannheim. But they had problems with one of the engines, decided to turn back early, and therefore dropped their bombs on the first target they could identify, a little light.
That little light led the bomb to the house of my Godmother.
My Godmother's house collapsed in a way that the emergency crews could not get to the basement. She, her husband, her mother, and her father were buried in rubble. During that night my Godmother witnessed the slow and painful death of both, her father and her husband. She could not move, lying under a heavy load of bricks, with a broken hip and shoulder, but she heard every word, every cry.
What is the difference between a German and an American? What is the difference between an Iraqi and an American?
I know enough of my father to see that he was not fighting in Stalingrad because he had a choice. And I know enough of my American uncles to understand that they were doing what they felt they had to do. And I know that my Godmother is a good Lutheran and the retired pastor, who bombed her home, is a good Lutheran as well.
We all have had our experiences and we all had to live and cope with the experiences of the generation before us. All of this forms the way we think and it forms the way we speak. And it informs the way we express God's presence in our lives.
When we came to the US one of the early lessons my wife and I learned, was that on this continent God speaks English. All our lives we had prayed to God--together with our families and friends--in German.
My father grew up in former East Germany, in Leipzig, in Saxony. The people there have a strong dialect. The expressions they use the way they pronounce certain words it sounds funny to other Germans. No matter, what they say, the way they say it makes us laugh.
My mother is American. The German she learned, she learned from my father.
After the wall had come down my mother visited her husband's hometown, Leipzig, for the first time. And what did she say when she came back?
"The people from Saxony are the only people in the world who speak German without an accent."
We all have an accent. And the accent betrays our "past". It tells those who me meet, who we are, and where we come from.
We do not speak God's language. God speaks our language. That is why God speaks with an accent as well. God speaks with our accent.
In my case, after living in the US for several years, God starts to speak English, with a German accent.
1 "When you tally the figures for the German 6th Army and its allied auxiliaries which supported the march to the Volga, the numbers are both impressive and distressing. The Germans lost about 350,000 men, the Italians, Hungarians and Romanians about 100,000 men apiece. The Red Army also must have lost at least 500,000 men in Stalingrad and the surrounding areas which were adjunct to the battle. But the most horrendous toll must have been on the innocent civilians who formerly lived in the city. Stalingrad was estimated to have had 850,000 residents in 1940. It isn't known how many of them may have escaped the carnage and vanished into the interior of Russia. But after 1945, a census showed only 1500 of these people remained in the pile of rubble that had once been Stalingrad." Source: http:www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/stalingrad/annihilation.aspx
Dr. David Trobisch
I was born from a German father and an American mother. In school I had a teacher who told me that my father killed all the Jews. And another teacher told me that my mother killed all the Indians.
I went to kindergarten in Mannheim, Germany. We children played in an abandoned street, just next to the kindergarten. I remember the ruins of houses, the black streaks on burnt walls, four story buildings which had collapsed under American bombs.
My teachers were not wrong. On both sides of my family I am related to people who have done terrible things.
In the 1940's my father was fighting for his German Vaterland.
My father did not talk much about the war. Only once, during a summer vacation in France and Italy, did he pour out his heart. For one hour every day he would tell his three oldest children his story of the war.
He was seventeen when he was drafted into Hitler's army. He was one of the very few who survived the battle of Stalingrad, where more than 650.000 German troops and 500.000 Russian soldiers were killed in a single battle.1 Of the 850.000 civilians who once inhabited the city, the census after the war counted only 1.500. The overall loss of life amounts to about 1.5 million people. In one single battle.
Heavily wounded, my father was thrown on the back of a truck. The truck driver crossed through two enemy lines without being detected and attacked.
As soon as he recovered from his injuries my father was sent back to the Russian front. This time his platoon was surrounded. The only hope for these young soldiers was to run up a hill under heavy fire. For years my father had been a devout Christian and active youth leader. But it was then that he decided not to pursue his dream of becoming a theater director. If he survived, he prayed, he would study theology and become a minister.
I will never forget how he told us about the longest night in his life, running half a mile up that hill, under heavy fire. My father was the only one in the platoon to survive. For four weeks he walked west, traveling at night, hiding during the day, until he met with German troops again.
The next time my father was sent to the front, he was sent to Italy. On Christmas Eve an American grenade exploded close to him, sending splinters into his neck and upper arm. Until his death 35 years later he would pull little pieces of shrapnel out of his skin.
My American uncles, about the same age as my father, were fighting for America. My father and my uncles were shooting at each other. A family divided? At that time we were not a family not yet.
The house my wife and I had bought and lived in for ten years in Germany before we moved to Maine was an old house. More than a century old. The sandstone walls were two feet thick. On the outside there were marks from the splinters of a bomb, which had detonated in the little park across the street. The splinters had done little damage to the strong walls of our house. Our neighbors, an elderly couple, told us that only two bombs had fallen on this particular part of Mannheim. One in front of our house.
The other bomb, I knew, had hit the home of my Godmother. The house was completely destroyed. It had been a dark night. The city observed a complete black out. My Godmother's neighbor, however, had left a light on, and it was this light that had led the pilot to drop his fatal load.
I am a Lutheran. And as far back as the sixteenth century my family was Lutheran. My Godmother is very active in the local Lutheran congregation.
Several years ago my wife and I attended a church service in Missouri. We were introduced to a retired pastor who had made a fortune in the stock market. With this money he would buy lots in thriving suburbs and help local Lutherans to form new congregations, erect church buildings, and hire pastors. This was his ministry.
When he learned that we were from Germany he told us that he had been in Germany once before.
He seemed a little hesitant at first. But then he explained: He never put his foot on German soil, but as a young man, as a soldier in an airplane, he had seen Germany from above. Their mission was to drop bombs over Mannheim. But they had problems with one of the engines, decided to turn back early, and therefore dropped their bombs on the first target they could identify, a little light.
That little light led the bomb to the house of my Godmother.
My Godmother's house collapsed in a way that the emergency crews could not get to the basement. She, her husband, her mother, and her father were buried in rubble. During that night my Godmother witnessed the slow and painful death of both, her father and her husband. She could not move, lying under a heavy load of bricks, with a broken hip and shoulder, but she heard every word, every cry.
What is the difference between a German and an American? What is the difference between an Iraqi and an American?
I know enough of my father to see that he was not fighting in Stalingrad because he had a choice. And I know enough of my American uncles to understand that they were doing what they felt they had to do. And I know that my Godmother is a good Lutheran and the retired pastor, who bombed her home, is a good Lutheran as well.
We all have had our experiences and we all had to live and cope with the experiences of the generation before us. All of this forms the way we think and it forms the way we speak. And it informs the way we express God's presence in our lives.
When we came to the US one of the early lessons my wife and I learned, was that on this continent God speaks English. All our lives we had prayed to God--together with our families and friends--in German.
My father grew up in former East Germany, in Leipzig, in Saxony. The people there have a strong dialect. The expressions they use the way they pronounce certain words it sounds funny to other Germans. No matter, what they say, the way they say it makes us laugh.
My mother is American. The German she learned, she learned from my father.
After the wall had come down my mother visited her husband's hometown, Leipzig, for the first time. And what did she say when she came back?
"The people from Saxony are the only people in the world who speak German without an accent."
We all have an accent. And the accent betrays our "past". It tells those who me meet, who we are, and where we come from.
We do not speak God's language. God speaks our language. That is why God speaks with an accent as well. God speaks with our accent.
In my case, after living in the US for several years, God starts to speak English, with a German accent.
1 "When you tally the figures for the German 6th Army and its allied auxiliaries which supported the march to the Volga, the numbers are both impressive and distressing. The Germans lost about 350,000 men, the Italians, Hungarians and Romanians about 100,000 men apiece. The Red Army also must have lost at least 500,000 men in Stalingrad and the surrounding areas which were adjunct to the battle. But the most horrendous toll must have been on the innocent civilians who formerly lived in the city. Stalingrad was estimated to have had 850,000 residents in 1940. It isn't known how many of them may have escaped the carnage and vanished into the interior of Russia. But after 1945, a census showed only 1500 of these people remained in the pile of rubble that had once been Stalingrad." Source: http:www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/stalingrad/annihilation.aspx
