The First Class of Fulbrighters - Fulbright-Kommission

A Year Spent Listening
by Delbert Barley
MY INTEREST IN EUROPE arose from an excellent
teacher of French in high school, followed by more French
and two years of German, plus a major in European history
in college. Immediately following the war I made a trip to
Gdingen, the port for Danzig, with a shipload of horses for
Poland. During the two-week stay a friend and I took a brief
look at Warsaw. On the return voyage we stopped in Copenhagen
for a week during which a chance acquaintance took
us up to the Elsinor castle of Hamlet fame. Back in the
States I signed up for a two year term with the AFSC
(Quakers) to establish a station for the distribution of relief
goods in Freiburg im Breisgau (1946-48). Our first European
contact with the project was in Paris in preparation for
the work (July-Sept. 1946). In Freiburg I married a student
at the Musikhochschule. By that time, I was determined to
learn more about Europe.
In the States again, I taught history and music for one
year in high school. I then decided to pursue graduate studies
and attempt to qualify for college teaching. The University
of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia
accepted me; three years followed
doing sociology, anthropology, criminology,
and demography. During the
summer at the end of this period I
read in the New York Times of the
beginning of the Fulbright program
for exchange with Germany. I applied
immediately and was accepted.
Our plan was in move to my wife’s brother-in-law in
the Black Forest where I would do field research on the
integration of refugees and expellees from the East. In a
demography seminar with Dorothy Thomas at Penn I had
already written a paper on that subject and had collected
considerable literature. Arrangements were made and tickets
for passage on the Arosa Kulm, a ship primarily for students
going to Europe, were secured. We were four with a
son and a daughter. We departed in June, 1953, landed
and then settled in St. Märgen, a small resort village 25
km from Freiburg at an elevation of 900 m. There, the
brother-in-law was Forstdirektor of a large area, and the spacious
Forsthaus provided rooms and access to boarding
facilities.
In September there was a meeting of the Fulbright
group in Bad Honnef. I remember little of the program
apart from a visit to Bonn, where some speeches, introducing
the students into Germany, were heard. One of them
was given by Staatssekretär Scheidemann, whom we came to
know personally many years later during several visits to a
community of artists in the Provence. I also remember sitting
together in Bonn with three other students during a
break. All three were new to Europe, listening intently to
my obviously “superior” knowledge of the country and its
customs. We ordered some wine and I could demonstrate
For many of the expellees I
was regarded as a confidant
to whom they could say
things that the local population
did not want to hear.
my acquaintance with the choice of Rhine wine. To tell the
truth that knowledge was anything but well founded!
In St. Märgen my first task was to plan the content of
interviews, first with expellees and refugees, and then with a
selection of the indigenous population. In the Gemeindeamt I
was given access to a list of all inhabitants of the Gemarkung 1
St. Märgen. According to this list there were 141 individuals
identified as expellees. These included family members, so
that the number of family units—some of which were single
persons—came to 50, all of which I was able to visit and
interview during the winter. I took notes during the sessions,
leaving details and comments for typewriting in the evening.
Since considerable numbers of expellees had been distributed
in isolated farms—cramped quarters were the rule—the work
involved long walks or, in the winter, skiing.
For many of the expellees I was regarded as a confidant
to whom they could say things that the local population did
not want to hear. There was general tension, especially for
the elderly, who had lost a more or less life-long status in
their previous homelands. With some
there was outspoken bitterness. It was
a fact that the local population had
problems of their own, including providing
housing for strangers, and did
not want to be burdened with stories
of extreme hardship; of being forcibly
expelled and then fleeing in the freezing
weather of the winter of 1945
from East Prussia, for instance, when some had to cross the
Kurische Nehrung on ice in sub-zero temperature. Other
refugees were from West Prussia, Silesia, Bessarabia, Transylvania,
Croatia, and the Sudetenland. Words and often tears
spilled out from overflowing emotion. For many of them,
Baden was the end of a series of temporary stops, starting
with Hamburg and northern zones of occupation.
I SPENT A SOLID EIGHT HOURS with one elderly
couple listening and questioning. They did not want to
let me go. It was perhaps the first time in ages that they
could “talk.” We were in an isolated farmhouse at some distance
from St. Märgen and for me only accessible with skis.
One elderly woman from Danzig, on the other hand, was a
good friend of my wife’s sister. She had been a librarian in
East Prussia and was an excellent conversationalist with
whom we also became friends. Most, if not all, of the
expellees were Protestant, now in a conservative Catholic
area, adding to their discomforts.
The interviews with local persons, several of whom were
also peasants at considerable distance from the village, were
less strenuous, often amusing, sometimes condescending,
sometimes understanding.
There was a group of expellees from Croatia, younger
and Catholic, that had been able to integrate and establish
good relationships with the local population. They were