The Tale of the Family's Wandering Grandfather Clock

Thu. 22nd March, Spain. It's snowing! It's the first time in a decade that is snowed here in the mountains in March, according to my Spanish aunt. Fortunately, my mother couldn't get her tablet ready in time to photograph me as I stood enraptured on the veranda of the hillside house in my pyjamas, photographing the snow falling on the mountain, the black pines, olive trees and into the valley.

I missed the old clock, with it's faux pine cone weights. it was in for repairs with one of the rare true remaining clock makers in Madrid. For the first time, I learnt it was one of the very few family possessions dating back to my German Great-grandparents, and that it had a family story neither I or my mother had heard before. My 92 year old German uncle began the tale. 

In the late 1800s, Karl August Hermann Porrmann, traveled out of his home in Arnsberg (now Milkow, Poland) around Silesia, then in Germany, as journeyman gardener, learning his trade. In 1889, he became the gardener at the palace of Baroness Senfft, Schloss Kritz near Liegnitz. There, he meet the palace chamber maid, Karolina Pauline Emma Eitner. Love blossomed, and they married in 1892. The couple moved back to Arnsdorf where his wedding present, a weight driven wall clock, hung on the wall of their new marital home. It chimed on the hour and every quarter.

The clock saw the birth of four children. The eldest son Paul died at just 23 days of age. Robert caught TB and fought for his life - and survived. Two sisters, Clara and Seed followed, later becoming a midwife and Cook respectively. Karl and Emma, soon fell out and didn't speak with one another, though they loved their children. Life was hard and as the paltry Gardner's salary was insufficient, Emma took on work, first as a seamstress, then with washing and ironing. 

The clock saw Robert, my grandfather, dream of being a gardener Like his father, but, as he later said "Mother ironed me to be a teacher! " insisting on, and paying for his training. The clock saw The Great War, the interwar depression with its rampant inflation, and the rise of Hitler. Great-grandfather Karl passed away, aged 77, in 1939 and the second world war began, as the clock tick tocked on the wall. 

Like many German families, they were swept along in the tide of Nazism. It was only towards the end of the war that the reality of bombing and death set in, with son, grandson and granddaughter swallowed into the grim war machine. As the Russian front crept ever closer, the elderly, women and children, including my mother, her sisters and youngest brother, fled westwards, leaving behind the 82 year old Emma and the clock in the house in Arnsdorf, with those others who refused to leave their homes. 

The family had made the decision to return to Great-grandmother Emma's house once peace had been declared, irrespective of where they had been dispersed to. In 1945, they came back in dribs and drabs, to an village now occupied by the Poles, full of humiliation, dispossession, starvation and abuse for the Germans - the boot was now on the other foot. But only for a short while. The four powers had redrawn the map of Europe. Silesia was acceded to Poland and the Germans were expelled. 

The clock no longer hung on the wall, it was buried deep amongst the washing and escaped the general last pilfering of the refugees before they set off on the trek to the now westward new German border. It was the time of the greatest migration of peoples in Europe. 12 million Germans displaced westwards with half a million deaths as a result by 1950; just part of the 30 million people in general who moved west from central and eastern Europe. 

Emma traveled 117 km west to Bautzen to live with her spinster daughters Clara and Selma and the clock tick tocked in its new home in the Russian occupied zone. My grandfather Robert and family were relocated as refugees near Oldenburg, much further away in the British occupied West. As a former headmaster in the old regime, he went through the de-nazification process in the English occupied sector, working at menial jobs in agriculture for three years before he could visit his mother for the first and last time in the now Soviet occupied zone. 

By then, Emma was confused with age related dementia and repeatedly tried to walk back home to Arnsdorf, now Miłków in Poland, only to be picked up and taken back to Bautzen. She died aged 89 in 1952. The clock stayed with Clara and Selma. 

1952 was also the year that the iron curtain descended, restricting movement between the communist East Germany and the now united West Germany, created from the occupied British, French and American zones. With the building of the Berlin wall in 1961, it became practically impossible for the East Germans, and the clock, to cross into the West. Westerners could visit the police state but with possible negative consequences for their trapped family members. 

My Grandfather passed away in the 1960s and it was my uncle, the oldest son, who tried to regularly visit his ageing aunts with his Spanish wife. But they too passed away. 

Selma and Clara had specified that the wall clock should be passed on to the next Porrman in line, my uncle. It came into the care of cousins in East Berlin, in readiness for a secret handover. My uncle and his wife crossed over for a registered family visit. The wall clock was carefully placed in a floor compartment of their "Bulli" VW camper van. They drove to one of the few places where Germans could cross between East and West Berlin, Checkpoint Bornholmer Straße, over the Bösebrücke. 

East German guards were habitually rude and obstructive, specifically to Germans crossing. This is something I can personally vouch for when I crossed both the DDR/FRG and Berlin wall as a Brit with German friends; we were treated very differently. My uncles papers were rigorously checked and the guards began an initial search of the camper bus. At this critical moment, one of the clock's weights rolled into view. The search went into overdrive and the deliberately hidden clock was exposed. The grim faced commander was called. This was trying to smuggle out property of the communist state and the family clock was to be confiscated. Risking arrest, the couple argued against this, and luckily, a compromise solution was reached. They had to return the clock to the place they had collected it from before they would be permitted to cross back to the West.

Another Berlin crossing was out of the question. The clock was secretly moved to another relative in East Germany, my Grandmother's brother, who lived in Wismar, on the Baltic coast. Uncle and aunt arranged a visit in the autumn. It was the height of the Apple harvest and the apples from that region were renowned for their taste. The clock was buried in a box of apples and some family crockery was also loaded in the van separately and simply covered with a cloth. 

At the East-West border crossing, it loked as if this trip too would be doomed. They had immediately raised the ire of the border guards by stopping 50 cm over the line they were supposed to halt at. Such little incidents always gave the East German guards the excuse to be as obstructive as possible. I remember on my border crossing on a German school bus, our teacher was taken away because her hairstyle was different to that on her ID card and a new photo had to be taken so she could be identified if needed. In their predicament, Aunt and uncle were apologetic. They declared the covered crockery and my Spanish aunt gushed about the wonderful East German apples she was looking forward to turning into preserves. It worked, they were let through.and the clock was finally liberated! It now rick tocked on the wall in my uncle's house, in the rolling mountains near Siegen. 

When my uncle retired as a head teacher, he moved to another, more rugged mountain range, near Avila in Spain. And the family clock came with him. When it returns from being serviced in Madrid, the 125 year old family wall clock will continue tick -tocking, chiming the hours and quarter hours as it measures time towards some future family adventure.