A young woman who travels to a foreign country to claim her beloved!
A trip through Germany during the last years of the war!
A priest who gets away with murder!
A mother who gets arrested in the middle of the night and charged with treason!
A jubilant description of the liberation of Denmark at the end of the war!
Are just a few of the many stories which fill the pages of this book by Flemming Behrend, written about the lives of the people in his family. The book takes you on a journey through times of peace and war. It gives you a close look at Europe during the the great wars, through the great depression and up until the end of World War II. It also paints a very personal picture of Copenhagen in the early fifties with all its charm and challenges. A must read for all with European roots
or interest in European history.
I grew up in an apartment in Copenhagen, Denmark. The street was old and, in my childhood, paved with cobblestones. Our house was right at the corner of a main street called Vesterbrogade, and from our windows we could watch the streetcars rumble by. One end of our street had villas and fine large apartment buildings, but my family lived in the “wrong” end of the street; the zip code belonged to the blue collar part of town called Vesterbro. We grew up surrounded by the sweet fragrance of hops and brown sugar, which is used to make malt beer. The famous Carlsberg Beer Brewery was located just one block away. Across the street from our building were a bakery and an upholstery business. Around the corner, the street had small neighborhood shops. There were butchers, green grocers, bookstores, etc. Our house was a five-story apartment building and the apartments were small and old. The stairwells were poorly maintained and the basement dark, cold and dirty. Growing up in the middle of a city, I spent the first half of my life with absolutely no understanding of nature. Change of seasons seemed like something that happened outside of Copenhagen. When it got cold, we changed into winter clothes and snow fell in the streets, then turned gray and slushy. The only animals I knew firsthand were the squirrels in the park and pigeons on our windowsills.
Unlike most families we did not have access to a community garden, which at that time was a popular family past time. Dagmar, my mom, hated gardening and viewed the community garden movement as a sign of belonging to the working class. She would frown at the people who had gardens and talk in a ridiculing manner, “These people spend all their weekends gossiping on their lots, drinking beer and being rude.” She would put extra force on the words “beer” and “rude” while sipping her morning coffee.
My mom’s voice didn’t match the idea of softness that is normally understood by the words “mother tongue.” This was because she spoke Danish using her native German intonation, which sounds different from the language spoken in my country. Danish can at times sound like a mumble; some call it “flat,” but it is definitely not harsh. This linguistic problem of hers made her sound much angrier than she probably really was.
Flemming Behrend grew up in Copenhagen, D e n m a r k < / S P A N >. He runs his own dental business in Olympia W a s h i n g ton. Flemming is married to Silvia Behrend and they have three grown kids.
My book “78 RPM” is based on the wonderful stories I was told in my childhood about my family. The tale takes you through the times in Europe before the First World War, through the occupation of < / S P AN> D e n m a r k < / S P A N > in the Second World War as well as the time of the early fifties of my childhood.