Already as a boy I had a special relationship to wood and wood-work.

At home we had a fretsaw and so I made small fretwork pieces. I developed for weeks with precision work a wooden box for wool and handicraft paraphernalia for my sister. This ability was very useful for my family and me in the period after the war. As a 14 – year old I accompanied my mother on one of her “foraging trips”.

At that time food was only available using coupons and was incredibly limited. Particularly the people in the towns were starving. On the foraging trips one tried to exchange with the farmers in the surrounding areas household articles of all descriptions for food.

On this day I had been working for weeks on a wooden horse with cart, in the hope that a farmer would give us something to eat in exchange for it. We had luck, it appealed to a farmer’s wife as a toy, which she wanted to give to her grandchildren. There was immense excitement when she gave us a coupon for 20 kg of bread.So my work added to the comfort of the family. Later I learned the trade of a carpenter.

Unfortunately I no longer had time for fretwork. But one can say: Wood is my life.