Brown Babies: Deutschlands verlorene Kinder

Another interesting program on the ARTE channel (from the same source as the potty special), this one dealing with the so-called Mischungskinder, children who were the offspring of African American G.I.s stationed in Germany and German women after World War II. The program follows four different people who were placed in orphanages by their German mothers and adopted by black American families in the 1950s.

As part of the documentary, these people (three women and one man) in search of their biological heritage, and with that, their identities,travel back to Germany to discover these aspects of themselves. Two of the mothers have already died at the time of filming, but the two alive got to meet their daughters, and one, currently living in the United States with her more "acceptable" white husband, gave an on-camera interview.

The mothers, all women around my own grandmother's age, coming of age in Nazi Germany, were of course products of their time and culture. Yes, this was still the time in the South when a white man and a black man could not eat their sandwiches at the same lunch counter, had to drink from separate water fountains, use separate restrooms. African-Americans were treated not only as second-class citizens, but were terrorized in their own home towns and just had to bear it. In fact, Hitler once said off hand (probably off the record, too) that he got the idea of Jewish segregation from the American model of segregation. Separate but equal? Not exactly.

Europe, on the whole, got a good reputation for being more liberal and accepting of other cultures when American G.I.s were stationed there during World War I, and to this day it still has somewhat the same reputation. Famous examples are black American expats Josephine Baker and Richard Wright, who settled in Paris. And, according to the documentary, the African-American G.I.s stationed in France and Germany during and after the war were treated better than they had ever been at home. Mostly this had to do with their relative novelty, the fact that there weren't a lot of black people in Europe at the time, and what lady can resist a man in uniform?

Well, unfortunately, the G.I.s (and not just the black ones, all American G.I.s) were expected not to fraternize with the enemy - which Germany still was at the time - and certainly not to pick up German girlfriends. The women who ended up having affairs with black G.I.s (or relationships, or marriage proposals) and subsequently became pregnant, had a double burden: not only was the father gone (in many cases, the U.S. Army purposely relocated the men after finding out about illegitimate children), but her baby was a Mischungskind - a "mixed baby" that stuck out like a sore thumb and ruined the whole Aryan race concept. Many women kept their children and were stigmatized, or gave them up for adoption to lead "normal" lives with German husbands.

In the United States, pamphlets circulated trying to send these "brown babies" to black American families, where they would "fit in better." This was the fate of each of the four people followed. Sometimes they were treated well, sometimes they were treated poorly, but they always knew they were adopted - always knew they didn't belong. Henriette, one of the women who was lucky enough to find her mother alive, visits her frequently in Texas where the old woman lives. Speaking in a thick Bavarian accent, she tells the camera with tears in her eyes, "It was the hardest thing I ever had to do, and maybe the worst mistake of my life." Owing that, it still turned out well for them, thanks mostly to Henriette's interest in genealogy.

It's amazing to think that that was just two or three generations ago. Nowadays mixed-race couples are completely free to get married, have children, and live full and happy lives together, without the social pressures terrorizing them. Of course, there are still differences among individual families, but in most of the Western world, it's easier than it's ever been to love whomever you choose. It's come a bit late for all the "brown babies" but hopefully they can rest knowing not only a bit more about where they come from, but that their grandchildren or great-grandchildren will not be put up for adoption based on the color of their skin.

Auf's Klo: "Nichts Menschliches ist mir fremd"

universal sign for toilets

This popular quote by the poet Terence (c.190-158 B.C.), "Nothing human is alien to me" has a new, slightly anal meaning to me, after watching one of the weirdest - and incredibly Austrian - TV shows I've ever encountered. Namely, a documentary on the potty.

The 45 minute show, part of the Panorama series on ORF (the "educational" network...sort of like Austrian PBS) went through a number of topics related to the toilet: the history of the water closet and indoor plumming; the artistic value of public restrooms in Vienna; the lives of Austrian sewage workers; and the biographical account of a woman-janitor who made her living cleaning toilets.

I must admit, it was educational. I learned all about the Nachttopf (chamber pot), the invention Wasserklosett, WC or Klo for short (the indoor plumbing part), and the bidet - originally much more a status symbol than a hygiene apparatus. Also, I had no idea that public toilets could be considered works of art. I suppose Hundertwasser was, after all, Austrian.

Hundertwasser's We Live in Paradise

My favorite quote from the show - an interview with one of the sewage workers:

Interviewer: "Was ist am schwiereigsten in Ihren Beruf?"

                 {What's the toughest part of your job?}

    Sewage worker: "Schaufeln."

{The shoveling.} 

And there you have it - a particularly disgusting revelations was "Italian Week" where the sewage workers (shoveling the human feces out of the underground system) pointed out all of the spaghetti still visible through several breakdown processes - I don't need to go into them specifically. All I can say is 1) GROSS!!! and 2) Austrians totally have anal fixations. Perhaps this is where we get Freud's claims about the human psyche...he was right about one thing: his research demographic!