"After 1945, the voices of the Lipnice communists were heard again. Now I am going to talk about things that were always presented very negatively in our family. My parents told me that the biggest problems after the war were caused by denouncing the Germans by Germans who were former residents of Lipnice, who were joining communists. They believed that in the new Czechoslovakia they would secure advantages by denouncing them. On this occasion, however, I must add: In 1945, Antonín Rýdl became the new mayor of Lipnica. The family of this Czech came to Lipnice before the World War I. My sister told me that he played a very important role in the life of our family. He tried to make sure that all denunciations of Lipnica residents by other Germans were honestly investigated. My parents knew him for many years. I think my father was friends with either him or his wife. They spent their free time together, played cards. Antonín Rýdl arranged that my sister, who was already a teacher at that time, was not sent away completely, which was common for young girls at that time and was bad enough for them. Instead, she was allowed to stay in Lipnice and was given the task of looking after the local library."
"When you brought up the subject at school or even later, the locals were not very understanding. My best friend at grammar school, when I mentioned it to him, argued that it had turned out well. So then one didn't talk about it much. It was smoothed, but the mental problems were not discussed. Even if one is later perhaps successful at work, life is not just about career and material things, but also about family stories. That belongs to everyone's life, to their identity. And that is why it is necessary to be able to talk about such stories, even if they are sad. It wasn't sensitive from my friend at the time, but still, he continued to be my friend. I think many would find it helpful to hear a general statement that the expulsion was an injustice. But they are just waiting for that generation to die out. Of course, many have already died, but the memory will endure on as long as there are books about it. And there are many. There are and will always be people who are interested in the subject, and therefore the memories will not die out."
"The Ramsau priest taught us religion at school. He was an extremely conservative Catholic clergyman, very reactionary. He had old ideas about education. If we didn't pay enough attention at Mass - or so he thought - he would call us into the sacristy after the service and beat us with a whip. Certainly many suffered innocently. That was on one hand. On the other hand, he was involved in integrating the exiles and refugees. I can illustrate this with the following example: we had religion and were preparing for Palm Sunday. The custom on Palm Sunday is to go through a procession commemorating Christ's arrival in Jerusalem. The faithful carry with them what are called palm branches, tied willow catkins. Normally only boys whose families own a house and farm carry them. The palm branches are consecrated in the church, after which a part is placed on the family grave, another part in the gable of the house, and the last one goes in the holy corner of the room. I remember him saying to me, 'You will go with the branches too', but I replied, 'We don't have a grave here, we don't have a house, we don't even have a field!' And he repeated: 'You will go with the branches too.' And that was a revolution. A revolution in the sense that it had been a tradition before, but then the refugees came and everything changed. Or when First Communion was celebrated. It was common for all the children to be tried which one would go forward and say the prayer. He tried them all, but he chose me. Supposedly, I was the first child of the exiles to be given this task. This priest kept in close contact with my mother for a long time afterwards. He told me that he liked to go to her because he liked the Sudeten German delicacies. My mother used to make poppy seed cakes and suchlike."
Wilfried Heller was born on 8 May 1942 in the now non-existent village of Lipnice in the Sokolov region. When he was four years old, his family was expulsed to Ramsau in Bavaria. Because his father was seriously ill, his mother had to earn the family´s living. He started attending the local primary school and graduated from grammar school in Berchtesgaden. He then went to Heidelberg (partly also Erlangen) to study history, geography, German studies, philosophy and pedagogy. In 1969 he received his doctorate in geography and subsequently worked in the department of geography at the University of Göttingen. He completed his habilitation in 1978. From 1979 to 1982 he worked on the reform of universit education at the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Arts. He then returned to academic career again and focused mainly on social, cultural and economic geography at the Universities of Göttingen and Potsdam. Although his research focused on migration processes in Central and Eastern Europe, he deliberately avoided research in (and about) Czechoslovakia. It was not until the late 1990s that he revived his relationship with his original homeland. He wrote, among other things, a monograph about his birthplace Lipnice, a village that disappeared in the 1970s as a result of lignite mining.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
