Content Statement: This article includes mentions of World War II, Natzism and Hitlers Regime, the September 11 attacks and Drug and Alcohol use. 

For the week I was volunteering at the Gast House, the different shift workers would notify me if they saw someone they thought would be someone willing to participate in my project. Normally I had to give a thorough explanation on my project in order to ease the skepticism with some, but with Stewart, there was no need. With a huge grin ear to ear, he was excited to talk and we set up an appointment to speak the following days. I greatly appreciated Stewarts interview, because he not only does he describe his story, but his parents’ and how even through acquiring generational wealth, one can still end up in unfortunate circumstances.

His Parents Background:

“I’m now 60 years old. I was born a little bit away from here in a town called Barthropp. I got a twin brother and a little sister which is two years younger. My parents were.. they weren’t normal. Mother was born January 26[th] and father December 25[th]. In some way we got relief from war from [him being a] soldier and.. education to be a teacher. They got seemely a lot of scars from the war, and they changed their life. They met in the 50s, married in 58. They came from the same landscape, the so called yemelaun, which was in the east-est part of Germany near Lithuania and Russia and when hitler came..  and get it back and he was very popular. Most people who lived.. in the neighbor-land Coulixberg. They had problems the other neighboring states didn’t like them that much. It was a simple life, there were agricultural sights.”

To further guide the interview, I began asking questions about his parents background, and how that influenced his upbringing as well. “The way of my father was a soldier, a 16 year old boy, did the war and was in Leningrad.. Leningrad freed many peoples. My mother should have been educated to be a teacher in Russia when Germany had won the war. Quite interesting in the back look, I think they were Natzi’s. Not really Natzi’s, but they could have gained some, not fortune, but a better life; history showed it wasn’t so. Father got captured and I never told how long, I think or 3 years, not in prison but had to do labor. My mom got away to the eastern sea ships. At the beginning if the 50s, they took new horizons. My father was a farmer, he hadn’t learned any [skills] just soldier, he then started an education to work with finance. In the end, he did the financial things for.. an agency. Mother finished her education to be a teacher and in ‘51 she started.. in a little town in west Faille, near Hartford.”

“Hitler got spat, but all people had been pushed away after the war, which was necessary. They didn’t want them, they were displaced, and had to search for a new home. [This new home was found in a town of Caltrop,  a neighbor-town of here. 17 km around, great town, great drinking. They married. Father worked here in Dortmund, an agency [building] traffic construction. Mother was at a little town, and educated children and in 58 they married. At that time, the father of my parents were still alive. And 58, the father of my mother died, then they took to Caltrop and there [they] settled, built a home. Caltrop was a small town 20,000-50,000 people only and don’t know how he got rich in the war. I’ve never experienced how they built a great house and [got] this”.  

Stewarts Background

“I came from a rich family. My brother and me took career in grammar school, and gymnasium and sister and brother finished their studies. My sister is [now] a judge and my brother is an engineer. I don’t know if he’s still alive, [our] ways parted. My education was quite good but I never knew what I should achieve in life. Life seemed so endless and I just wanted to have fun. Things came easy to me, school, education. All work without hardship. And then I had a crisis at age 27. I did my army service, but I had no aim. I disliked society, some measurements and rules. I started a lot of drinking, smoking cannabis, crazy stuff…The way I did all the time, there was no aim, just running, collapsing with the wall.”

“I thought ‘I need to do something which is okay with society, which is in harmony with my corrector and gives me the position to exist in society’; and this was helping other people. I started education and did a special form of nursing, a house nurse and was the best time of my life. [I was] with the German Red Cross for 12 years and at that time, started at about 1990-2001, 11 or 12 years when the twin tower thing happened.” *This is in reference to the September 11 attacks in 2001.* “That day our big chief from Red Cross said ‘red cross will stop working that way ‘but [we] shouldn’t be afraid. No one should lose [their] job.’ They managed a miracle. They sold three-hundred patients, thirty cars, eighteen male nurses and we went to Diapoli”.

“There I managed a good farm as well and then I got ill. I took drugs as well. It was no problem working but it was culminating and there was no good aim. I did my work and I did it well but I got health problems and so I lifted my hand and said ‘I need help’. I got therapy, but the way inside with the work I did, I didn’t like the church. The church paid okay but they didn’t help the people. I didn’t agree with the policy and so I stopped working in 2005. Father and mother lived in that time, and I got a lazy bone then and just helped my mother. My Father was in an asylum and both died. Father in 2008, mother in 2013 and then I got real problems. I didn’t take help from the state. I got a house.” I clarified how he was able to acquire housing. “From when the parents died they provided the house. So I was really lucky. I was good. “

“For taxes, sometimes you don’t give it away by testimony, you present if the parents are alive with time, so you don’t get problems with taxes. I did so and paid my sister and my brother money I should’ve given them later. When my mother died, I got a problems with my finances. Two years later, I didn’t get get a fee from the state and I had no money. Part of the house [he rented out], but they didn’t pay the rent”. 

“In 2019, my own home I lived in for 25 years, I was put out. Just at the time when I was pulled out on the street, my house could be sold, but everyone took lots of money, so I got no money. After the time of starving, I wasn’t able to act clearly. It’s like a child who’s got no sucker..**like a child who can’t think clearly because they have low blood sugar or are hungry**. “It should last, but it went away, the money. I spent it, it’s crazy. I think it’s okay, I’m 60 and I see a lot of poverty, and people with problems with their health. I realize there are things in life you can’t buy health or friendship or morale. In this surrounding, *he gestures to the people in the guest house dining room* „there are so many in intelligent good people as well as gangsters, and real bad devils, but its all our archived, as well as male or female. We all take the same breath, the same air. Everybody should be everybody’s brother or friend. And now I’m here where poor people are treated in a wonderful way and I like it. If I were 20 years younger and knew what I knew now, I would’ve possibly changed my life and taken a profession like helping people and enjoying—”. He stops, recollecting his thoughts.

I clarified to him that he do that, helping people through nursing. A little“ he says. “But in physics there is a law. You watch how much energy you put inside and how much you get out. And for the health I had the wealth, the money I had, the things I achieved. I don’t mean I have no family, but I should have, with respect to my parents, I should’ve achieved a little bit more. It’s, I’m not content. I’m looking and if I got the chance to..” he gets interrupted and changes his thought. ‘ lets say it that way, my life is a confused, and I don’t know why everything has happened, but I’m content. I try to live on in a way, but I should’ve achieved better‘. Now I got a small apartment, but it’s so difficult to pay money for electricity, I’m not used to it. I forget it.“

I referenced the previous interview I conducted a few minutes before this about the doctor who grew up rich, but lost his passport and ended up in a similar situation. ”It’s crazy, I was well educated and I can read, but some kind of letters I push away without reading, it’s crazy”.