Love Through a Barbed Wire

2nd July 1923 13:20 - 19.45

The Monday sun drifted lazily through the murky window of the maternity ward in Saint Josefs Hospital. Two women lay in beds next to each other, each of them gazing lovingly at their newborn children. Lena Fiedler was in the first bed, cradling her two hour-old daughter and first child, Kathrin. Mirjam Schneider silently thanked God for providing her with the son she had longed for, her husband vowed to leave her if she produced yet another girl, and no man in Backnang would want a unpure wife. Waiting for her at home were her four daughters, Heike, Ines, Birgit and Stefanie.  Jürgen would be pleased to meet his son, Fritz.

The mousey nurse guided Jürgen Schneider and Rudolf Fiedler into the neglected room to meet their new children. Jürgen glided over to his wife, his icy blue eyes gleaming in delight,and tore the glorious creature that was his son from his wife's tender hands. Jürgen was filled with ecstasy, he had wished for a son for many years, but his pathetic excuse for a wife had not bore him one, until now. Mirjam lay dejected, she longed for affection but was trapped in a loveless marriage, she started to resent her son,she no longer felt grateful to God, maybe, if her husband left her, she could leave Backnang and go to a city and finally find love, but no, she was bound to this vile man for the rest of her life and it was the fault of this boy, her son, she had nurtured him for 9 months, and now he had trapped her. She could only find solace in the form of her best friend, who lay in the bed next to her.

Rudolf Fiedler felt his body well up with joy, he had a healthy, beautiful child. Gender was not important to Rudolf, only happiness was. His beloved wife smiled blissfully up at him as she gingerly handed over their precious child. It had taken them six years to conceive a child, and four failed pregnancies. The love that would have been given to those four children was now going to be showered upon Kathrin. He stared deeply into his daughter's eyes, he noted how they were a delicate shade of shining bronze, inherited from her mother.

The Fiedlers left for their luxurious home on Wilhelmrstraße  while the Schneiders returned to their run-down home on Stiftshof. 

Rudolf and Lena gently placed Kathrin in her cradle which lay in the centre of her sumptuously decorated nursery, her nanny, Trudi went down to the kitchen to collect milk from the housekeeper, Brunhilde. Meanwhile, on Stiftshof, a arguing couple entered their squalid home. Cream paint peeled from the walls and four young girls ran amok across the grime encrusted carpet, each of them them filthy and naked.

"Girls! Get your clothes on you filthy schlampen!" came the aggressive voice of Jürgen, their father.

Mirjam placed the son she loathed for trapping her in this repugnant existence in a wooden shelf lined with a muslin cloth. 

Two lives filled with love, hate, peace, war, connection and estrangement had begun.