Inge Behrmann
On January 18, 1948, Inge Behrmann, then Thiel, arrives by train in Bremerhaven. A burden has been lifted from her, she says today, more than 70 years later, when asked about her first impression of Bremerhaven. She remembers nothing of the long train ride that took her from Coburg in Bavaria to Bremerhaven – she slept through the entire journey. It is a catch-up on sleep – the night before, the sixteen-year-old, along with her mother, crossed the border between the American and Soviet occupation zones near Coburg, irregularly, of course. With the young border helper, to whom Inge’s mother handed over all her remaining money, they succeeded in achieving what had failed at the end of 1947: the escape to the West. In Coburg, Inge sees her father for the first time in three years. Informed about the escape plan, he came from Bremerhaven, where he has accommodation and work, to pick up his wife and daughter and take them north. The last time the three of them had seen each other was in their hometown of Balga in East Prussia, in January 1945. At that time, the frontline had already moved very close to the town at the Frisch Haff. Inge’s father, who served as a sailor in the war engaged in salvage operations of sunken ships, urged the family to go with him to his deployment area in Northwest Germany. Yet, Inge’s mother could not bring herself to leave the house in Balga. Only in early February was there no other way to escape the war actions – accompanied by her mother’s three sisters and their children, they set off on the run with one of two horse-drawn carts. Through winter cold across often fragile ice, the eight fugitives made it to Gdansk – where they failed to get on a ship heading west. Thus, they had to witness the struggle for Gdansk with all its horrors. After the city was taken by the Russian army, further escape to the west was no longer possible. To avoid hunger in the occupied city, the group decided to return to Balga. After ten days of marching, they arrived at a completely destroyed town. Inge Behrmann still keeps a stone from their house, which was a victim of the heavy fighting. Months of hunger and illness began in Rosenberg and Heiligenbeil. Sometimes, they had to eat ‘what one could find on the ground.’ Inge’s mother managed to procure meals for herself and her daughter by working as a seamstress. Inge, who, due to several serious illnesses, was emaciated to the bones, summarized the time with the words: ‘We all made it through because we had such mothers.’ The time in Heiligenbeil ended abruptly: at the end of 1946, the remaining Germans had to gather at the train station with luggage from one day to the next to be taken by train over Königsberg to Erfurt. In Erfurt, Inge experienced what felt like normal life for the first time again: she lived with her mother in an assigned apartment and began an apprenticeship as a saleswoman in a jewelry store. Nevertheless, the two of them felt drawn away from Erfurt: in Bremerhaven, their father and husband were waiting for them… It would take almost a year before the three would finally see each other again in Coburg. In Bremerhaven, Inge initially lived on Moltkestraße with her parents. Soon she met her husband Werner, with whom she moved in after their wedding. In 1962, the couple moved into their own house in Leherheide with their three children. There, alongside many photos and prints, is a painting made from a photo of Inge Behrmann’s childhood home in Balga. ‘I still occasionally think of my home from before,’ she says. Home, her homeland, has always remained Balga at the Frisch Haff. But in Bremerhaven, also a place ‘by the water,’ she has always felt at ease – from the very beginning. It has become the place that, as she says, allowed her to ‘become a normal person again.’
A portrait of Inge Behrmann is one of the faces displayed on the facade of the new German Emigration Center since June 2021. Before the opening of the extension building with its artistically designed facade, the Nordsee-Zeitung introduced the individuals behind the faces. You can watch the corresponding film portrait of Inge Behrmann here.