Memoirs of a German Boyhood

Book excerpt: Another Time, Another Place ... Once, in a dream I saw my mother and my father waltzing. She wore a long pink gown with a lace overskirt of white apple blossoms. She was smiling and my father wore a dark green tunic like a Prussian prince: red and gold braid adorned his collar. The cuffs of his sleeves were trimmed with red and gold braid. There was a dark-gold stripe on his gray trousers. His black boots had fur at the top. My sister was playing in the garden where the apple trees were in bloom; she was laughing and running with her dog. My brother and I were climbing the mountain in our shorts and when we ran back down the trail we giggled because there were pretty girls sitting near the lake. When we walked in the sandy shallow water it sparkled like diamonds as the sun warmed our feet and our legs. But it was only a boy's dream of my Fatherland - now I see clearly the way it really was because now I am a man. The grace and beauty of the Fatherland did not betray us: the truth did.