The Blue Flower

“The Blue Flower” My grandfather died when I was twelve years old. I was too young to realise the importance of having a grandfather telling me stories from the past. My father was born the same year WW2 ended and I grew up in the certainty that war would never personally affect me. Today my father is 72 years old and I realised, that I wanted to know and understand more about him. For that, I had to go back to history, back to his childhood as a post-war child and back to the man I never really knew. My grandfather. I knew that my grandfather was a engineer for airplanes during the war. In the Beginning he was a Soldier and later a scientist in the “top secret” Peenemünde Army Research Center. As a child I was fascinated that he know how to fly to the moon, when I grew up I started wondering: What was his roll? What did he see? Was he a supporter of the Nazi regime? My grandfather was a passionate writer and photographer, I went through his diaries, pictures and letters. I saw the past through the eyes of a 25-year old man, learned about his thoughts and feelings. I was relieved that I couldn’t find any evidence that he was a supporter of the regime, but neither did I find any signs of regret or reflection. He never talked about it with anybody, not even with his son. I think he coped with it on his own. Like him, a whole generation repressed these memories as they fought to survive after 1945.