Josef Paul

* 1937

  • "The facade of our house in Lobzy is falling a bit. We even had the chance to look inside once, it was a great experience. I was there with my aunt then, we returned after decades. Internally, it shook us immensely. When I come to Lobzy now, it doesn't do anything to me anymore, I have distance. Maybe if we stayed home, I wouldn't have stayed in Lobzy anyway. But it's the homeland where I was born and where I spent several years, so I'm interested in what's going on there. My mother strictly refused to go back. The grandparents never had the opportunity, their grandmother died of stomach cancer in 1949 and their grandfather in 1959. It was difficult for them, this generation suffered through a lot. My aunt and I went home often, and she had a distance, too. We mostly agreed that we were happy to be able to return to our new home, Bavaria.”

  • "The war ended on May 8, 1945. American soldiers came to us from the northwest, and I saw a colored soldier for the first time in my life. The soldiers settled into beds at my aunt’s and at the neighbors in boots and ordered eggs to eat, because they wanted to be sure we wouldn't poison them. But they only stayed one night and then moved on. They belonged to the unit of General Patton, there is his memorial in Pilsen. I have to admit, it was a relief to see them. It had been clear for several months that Germany would not win this war, and everyone just wished it was gone. "

  • "I remember this much of Köthen - that the food was on the tickets, there it was scarce and that the winter of 1946/1947 was especially cold. As a child, I had to walk in line with an aluminium can to get soup with sausage or whey. It took very long. Otherwise, it was also common to go pick the field, collecting spikelets that remained lying there, knocking grain out of them and thus having flour. It was a big shock for my family, especially for the older generation. My grandparents survived the First and Second World Wars and now had nothing here. At home they had a farm around which everything revolved, thirty-nine hectares, now they had nothing at all. My grandfather found a job at the railway, so he brought some coal home.”

  • "Historians have this one motto: Sine ira et studio. This means that history should be judged without anger and exaggerated haste and on the basis of getting acquainted with them. I now have enough distance, I will not live long and I also got information that we did not have before. At a distance, one sees things differently. "

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    Rehau, 16.09.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 01:15:11
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the expelled Germans born in the Karlovy Vary region
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Our common culture still draws me to Bohemia

At home, around 1941
At home, around 1941
zdroj: Archiv pamětníka

Josef Paul was born on April 25, 1937 in the village of Lobzy, which is now part of Ošelín (Tachovy district). His family belonged to the local farmers. During the First Republic, the witness‘s grandfather was the mayor, politically belonging to the German Agrarian Party. In September 1946, the Pauls were displaced to Köthen in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany. In May 1949, they managed to move to the village of Trasching in Bavaria, where Mr. Paul‘s aunt, Rosa Paul, worked as a very popular teacher. Thanks to her, Josef Paul managed to graduate from the universities of Munich and Erlangen with a focus on teaching Latin and German. Between 1969 and 2000 he worked at the grammar school in Burglengenfeld, later also as deputy director. With his wife, who comes from Podkrkonoší (Western Sudetes region), he is very interested in Sudeten German topics and Czech-German relations.