08.2 Hist 20 podcast: Hedda 1970-79

Hedda in the 8th decade of the 20th C

Transcript

University of California UCOP | Hist20 podcast 8.2

OK guys, not to bum you out, but Hedda turned 70 in August of 1970. She's not a spring chicken anymore. And a

lot of what we know about her is a distant memory to her as well. Or perhaps not a distant memory, but certainly

in her past. And this is the part of the story where what I know about Hedda, I largely experienced first hand, and

it's going to get problematic because the way I see my great-grandmother was not the way my grandmother

related to her. She was her daughter, and she saw her very differently. And it's also not the way my father

remembers his grandmother.

Memories and experiences are personal. And when one tries to do a personal history, or any history, it's really

quickly obvious just how much of what we think we know kind of influences what we're researching. And so, we

bias our research because of the emotional connections we have to either the subject, or the topic, or the people

in the research. I didn't live in Belgium during the 1970s. And so, my memories with my great-grandmother are

largely memories of her during our visits in the summer. When I was young, I lived in Brazil, and I lived in

Venezuela and Mexico, and I only visited Belgium in the summer. My father had inherited, I suppose by default,

the traveling or moving around gene that the rest of his family-- his previous generations had to essentially adjust

to under duress.

Hedda had lived most of her young adult life in Berlin. You'll remember she was sent away in 1916 to survive that

horrible cold winter in the Netherlands during World War I. And then in 1939, she had to leave again because of

World War II, or because of the not so much World War II as Hitler's policies towards Jews in Germany. And she

had her daughter sent to England. And they had all planned to emigrate to Australia and, in fact, ended up in

Belgium.

Now all this moving around under duress made them, for a while, nationless. They were no longer considered

Germans by Germany. They weren't citizens of Belgium. And even when they did become citizens, and they were

very grateful to Belgium for that, they were always citizens with an accent. And so they were obviously not from

there. And they were citizens with a memory that belonged to another place. And like many other refugees from

many other wars from many other parts of the world before and after my great grandparents, they would spend

the rest of their life belonging and not belonging. And that was something that was very palpable to me, whether it

was intentionally or unintentionally presented to me.

My grandmother grew up in this environment. She also had to flee Germany. She was younger at the time, and

she had a tendency to sugarcoat bad memories. And Ruth considered herself Belgian by marriage, but German.

And for the longest time, she remembered that house outside of Berlin that she left when she was 16 as if it was

the most amazing house in the world. And like many first generation refugees or expatriates, she elevated thehomeland, the memory of the place she was from, to some ideal it probably never was. And in fact, when she

visited Berlin, and she visited the old house many years later when she was 60, she was quite disappointed.

The result among her children, Ruth's children, my father's generation, who are Hedda's grandchildren, was a

significant lack of national connection. The children were all born in Belgium, but at least half, if not more, have by

now moved elsewhere. And they've lived in many places. And I think this has as much to do with the world as it

became in the 1970s, right? A world in which moving around is easy with airplanes connecting everywhere, where

moving is cheaper, and where leaving one country did not mean you'd never move back or could move anywhere

else. For example, my aunt lived in Mauritania and Germany before settling. Another aunt lived in England, and

ultimately ended up in the US. I have an uncle who now lives in Paris. I have another aunt who is constantly

moving between Italy, the south of France, and Belgium. And you know, the distances in Europe are small, but

there's a lack of settling.

And in all the history of all the family reunions that we ever had, especially when we still had family reunions with

all generations in the 1970s, I don't ever remember anyone referring to themselves as Belgian or expressing any

national sentiments for any country. It's just not part of the lore, and I think that's-- if you ask the diaspora

communities, there might be a connection to a land that they once belonged to, but the connection to the place

they're in is tenuous. It's articulated differently.

I remember that Hedda spoke to me in German, and she spoke in French to my father. And I remember her

smoking cigarettes until late in her life. It took me a while to figure out what cigarettes exactly, and you know, you

wonder why I care. But Ruth, my grandmother, smoked Dunhill Reds all her life, and she didn't smoke them

intensely. But she liked the smell of tobacco. Go figure. Hedda, as it turns out, smoked Benson and Hedges. And

she also didn't smoke them often. She probably also just liked the smell of tobacco. But I needed to know. I

haven't figured out why they smoked, what they smoked, and I suspect it's just a preference. But I've always

thought now that I know, I found it interesting that Hedda smoked an American brand. Does it matter? The details

really always do. When you're doing research about anything, the devil is in the details. So if you've got a question

that's itching your brain, follow it.

I also remember that Hedda did not treat me like a child, but she expected all of us, adults and children, to behave

when we visited her in the summer. She always had the table perfectly laid out, and everything was out just as she

liked it. When she spoke about my father, he was her grandson to her, not my father. And I remember her. She

was always standing by the window of the apartment, the one with the elevator, as we arrived. She watched us

get out of the car, and she was ready to ring the buzzer to let us in. So she was ready 10 minutes before we

arrived. And obviously, we always were on time.And this is when the myth of the deviled eggs was first revealed to me, these summer visits. Apparently when my

dad was younger, and they all lived in Brussels, once a week he'd have lunch with his grandparents. And often,

the special treat when the grandchildren visited during the week were the deviled eggs. And my father mentioned

the deviled eggs on a visit and how much he loved them. And in true Hedda fashion, and I just want you to sort of

imagine this woman, and you've got photographs of her in the portfolio, she brushed it off you know. She was like,

oh, please those eggs. Nothing special. From that moment on, every time we visited, she had made deviled eggs

for her grandson. She didn't make it for me. She made them very clearly for him. And every time we left her place

at the end of lunch at the end of the afternoon, eating at the table, and having adult conversation in her living

room, at the end of the summer when we left, Hedda would be standing at that window, that same window she'd

been standing and looking at us arrive, watching us leave. Maybe she waved sometimes. But sometimes, she was

just standing there looking at us leave. This is not my last memory of her yet, but I do want you to be ready that

we are nearing-- we're nearing the end-- we're nearing the end of this century. And we are nearing the end of

Hedda's life, but not yet. We've got one more installment Bye.