A little bit of green (Hope) provided by the Ponderosa pine tree and a sprinkle of red (Love) with courtesy from the rose hips go a long way to cheer up our hearts on a soggy, rainy winter day in the Kootenays. Temperatures 10 degrees above normal in April are quite common but not in January in our neck of the woods. I took the two photos 30 minutes before dark. Enjoy.
It has been a turbulent year-end for the Klopp family in the Interior of BC. One of our sons had to call off their visit. Just a few days before Christmas, he and his wife had come down with severe flu. I drove into the nearby town to buy a few extra groceries for the other son and family’s visit. The road was extremely treacherous. I had to navigate our car on the narrow tracks left behind by the vehicles before me. On the way home, I drove on a stretch of slush to avoid an oncoming vehicle. You probably guessed. Attempting to return to the tracks, I landed in the ditch and was stuck in one metre of deep snow. The insurance company wanted to declare a write-off. But in the end, it turned out that the damage was repairable. Some good Samaritans gave me and the groceries a ride home. I am so grateful that I was able to come home uninjured. After the accident, things were looking up, and we had a wonderful Christmas with our other son, wife and granddaughter. One of the highlights was the singing of German Christmas songs and playing the ukulele with our youngest son. Below is a brief excerpt of our mini-concert. We played Ihr Kinderlein Kommet.
Besides the Christmas tree with the symbolic meaning of hope through its evergreen quality, many other things are associated with the German Christmas tradition. One of them is the nutcracker that is often found under the tree. Another costum is the use of real wax candles to illuminate the tree and its ornaments. Perhaps a little less known is the ‘smoker’, das Räuchermännchen that usually resides on the festive table. Inside, you find a cone-shaped piece of incense. When lit, it burns and emits its aroma for about 15 minutes. During this time, it sends smoke through its open mouth. For a special effect, I attached the smoker to our Christmas tree and took a picture of the Räuchermännchen. The smoke went straight up. So I confess that I cheated a little with my photo editor and made the rising smoke curl for you. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all my blogging friends! I will resume my blogging activity, God willing, in the second week of 2023. Best wishes and blessings to you all.
On the weekend, my wife and I went into the snowy and chilly outdoors and located a beautiful fir tree under the power lines. Fortunately, the snow was not too deep to walk the 50 metres from the road. With a small hand saw, I had the tree cut in no time while Biene cheered me on. Yesterday, I brought the Christmas tree into our living room and decorated it with ornaments and lights. Later on, when the day was fading into darkness, I took a few pictures. One photo shows a shiny ornament, where later on to my great surprise. I discovered myself in its reflection.
I chose the title from the West German News Magazine as the heading for this post. It confirms what my father-in-law had described in a letter to a friend. The title reveals a dark chapter in the judicial system of postwar West Germany. The article, as quoted in the previous post and continued here, is an eye-opener for the legal battles Herr and Frau Panknin had to fight in their struggle for justice.
“Now the halls of justice were even staffed with judges who had once served on the Nazis’ People’s Court (Volksgerichtshof), which was set up in 1934 to handle “political offenses” and became notorious for the frequency, arbitrariness and severity of its punishments. Nevertheless, the civilian courts handling the de-Nazification process merely classified them as “hangers-on.” In 1953, at least 72 percent of judges on the Federal Supreme Court, Germany’s highest court for criminal and civil law, had former Nazi connections. The number increased to 79 percent by 1956 and, in the criminal division, it was at 80 percent by 1962.”
Now we understand the anger and frustration my in-laws experienced for more than five years. Poor Papa Panknin, having demonstrated and documented through his actions before and during WW2 his anti-fascist position, encountered, in an ironic twist of fate, one humiliating rejection of his applications after another. The former Nazi judges were back, making ideologically motivated decisions. In Papa’s correspondence, I found names such as Franz Schlegelberger – Minister of Justice (1941 and 1942), Hans Globke (he participated in drafting the Nuremberg race laws), and Theodor Oberländer – as an academic laying the foundation of the Final Solution. Many were found guilty in the Nuremberg trials, and some were sentenced to life imprisonment, then released after a few years, going into judiciary service or early retirement with a pension six times higher than the average worker in the Federal republic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Schlegelberger
The wood bridge is part of the Fauquier Golf Course and allows the players to cross Heart Creek to access one of the more difficult tee-offs. Now the golf course is inviting a few hardy individuals like my wife and me and the occasional gaggle of geese looking for the green stuff under the snow.
The Peter and Gertrud Klopp Family 