Facade portrait: Helene Lauenburger

Helene Lauenburger

born Lena Schira

* 1989 in Alexandrowka, Omsk, Omsk Oblast, Russia

Immigration to Bremerhaven: 1992

During her school years in Bremerhaven, Helene Schira (now: Lauenburger) was regarded as Russian; nowadays, many of her colleagues know nothing about her background. However, Helene herself has no memories of her time in the small town of Alexandrowskij near Novosibirsk in Russia. Together with two older siblings, her parents, and grandparents, the daughter of a kindergarten teacher and a worker immigrated to Germany in 1992 at the age of three. There, in Bremerhaven, her aunt and family lived, who had emigrated some time earlier. After a short stay in Schöneburg, the family was housed in an empty barracks in Bremerhaven.

Helene Lauenburger

Later, the family was assigned a transitional apartment in a house of 130 square meters shared with two other families, and eventually, they were allowed to move into their own apartment on Ferdinand-Lassale-Straße, where many ‘late repatriates’ from the former USSR live. Helene’s grandmother attends events aimed at ethnic Germans in the Lukaskirche, while her father works on assignments. Helene attends secondary school in Bremerhaven, obtains her vocational high school diploma, and subsequently starts working at the district court in Bremerhaven-Lehe.

Helene, who was still called Lena in Russia, learns about her Siberian Russian-German family history gradually. Her grandparents were deported from the Volga region to Siberia. Her grandfather was handed over to a Kazakh family when his mother was imprisoned for stealing kolkhoz food for her starving children. The father spoke fluent German and Russian, as well as Kazakh.

Helene’s parents place great importance on learning the German language in Germany and try to refrain from using Russian at home. Today, Helene speaks German fluently but only has a fragmented understanding of Russian. Nonetheless, some elements of Russia still resonate in the family: not only does she cook Russian dishes, but the Protestant family also celebrates Orthodox Christmas on January 7, alongside Western Christmas and New Year. Her two children, aged six and three, love watching ‚multiki‘ – what animated films are called in Russian – at their grandparents’ house. Their favorite series is ‚Nu pogodi‘, the Soviet response to ‚Tom & Jerry‘, where a hare and a wolf play pranks on each other.

Russian is not the only language that Helena’s children learn alongside German in their daily lives. Their father, whom Helene has known since the seventh grade, is a Sinto. They learn Romnes from him and his grandparents.

Helene has visited her hometown twice. For her, it was an excursion into another world, where one could ride real horses but also had to pour extra brewed water into a tub for a bath, as there are no water pipes.