The relationship between my parents was one of loving respect and mutual understanding. Yet I never remember any display of tenderness; but at the same time I never heard them exchange an angry word. While my two sisters, who were four and six years younger than I, were very affectionate and were always hanging about their mother, I had always, from my earliest years, fought shy of any sign of tenderness, much to the regret of my mother, and of all my aunts and other relatives. A handshake and a few brief words of thanks were the most that could be expected of me.
Although both my parents were devoted to me, I was never able to confide in them the many big and little worries that from time to time beset a child’s heart. I had to Work all my problems out, as best I could, for myself. My sole confidant was my pony, and I was certain that he understood me. My two sisters were very attached to me, and were perpetually trying to establish a loving and sisterly relationship. But I never wished to have much to do with them. I shared in their games only when I had to, and then I would nag at them until they ran crying to my mother. Many were the practical jokes that I played on them. But despite all this, their devotion to me remained unchanged and they always regretted, and still do to this day, that I was never able to have any warmer feelings for them. They have always been strangers to me.
I had the greatest respect, however, for both my parents, and looked up to them with veneration. But love, the kind of love that other children have for their parents, which I myself later learned to know, I was never able to give them. Why this should have been I have never understood. Even today I can find no explanation.
I was not particularly well-behaved, and certainly not a model child. I was up to all the tricks normal to a boy of my age. I played pranks with the others and took part in the wildest games and brawls, whenever the opportunity came my way. Although there were always times when I had to be on my own, I had enough friends to play with when I wanted to. I stood no nonsense, and always held my own. If I were the victim of an injustice, I would not rest until I considered it avenged. In such matters I was implacable, and was held in terror by my classmates. Incidentally, during the whole of my time at the grammar school I shared a bench with a Swedish girl who wanted to be a doctor. We always remained good friends and never quarreled. It was the custom at our school for the same pupils to share a bench during the whole time they were at school together.
When I was thirteen years old, an incident occurred which I must regard as marking the first shattering of the religious beliefs to which I adhered so firmly.
During one of the usual scuffles that took place at the entrance to the gymnasium, I unintentionally threw one of my classmates downstairs. He broke an ankle as a result. During the years, hundreds of schoolboys must have tumbled down those stairs, I among them, and none had ever been seriously hurt. This particular boy was simply unlucky. I was given three days’ confinement. It was a Saturday morning. That afternoon I went to confession as I did every week, and I made a clean breast of this accident. I said nothing about it at home, however, as I did not wish to spoil my parents’ Sunday. They would learn about it soon enough next week. My confessor, who was a good friend of my father’s, had been invited to our house that same evening. Next morning I was taxed by my father concerning the accident, and duly punished because I had not told him about it straight away. I was completely overwhelmed, not on account of the punishment, but because of this undreamed-of betrayal on the part of the confessor. I had always been taught that the secrets of the sacred confessional were so inviolable that even the most serious offenses there confided to the priest would never be revealed by him. And now this priest, in whom I had placed such implicit trust, to whom I regularly went for confession, and who knew by heart all the ins and outs of my petty sins, had broken the seal of the confessional over a matter as trifling as this! It could only have been he who had told my father of the accident, for neither my father nor my mother nor anyone at home had been into town that day. Our telephone was out of order. None of my classmates lived in the neighborhood. No one, other than this priest, had visited us. For a very long time I brooded over all the details of this incident, so monstrous did it appear to me. I was then, and still remain, completely convinced that the priest had broken the seal of confessional secrecy. My faith in the sacred priesthood had been destroyed and doubts began to arise in my mind for the first time. I no longer went to this priest for confession. When he and my father took me to task on that account, I was able to make the excuse that I went to confession’ in our school church, to the priest who gave us religious instruction. This seemed plausible enough to my father, but I am convinced that my former confessor knew my real reason. He did everything to win me back, but I could no longer bring myself to confess to him. In fact I went further and gave up going to confession altogether, since I no longer regarded the priesthood as worthy of my trust.
I had been taught at school that God meted out severe punishment to those who went to Holy Communion without first making their confession. It might even happen that such sinners would be struck dead at the communion rail.
In my childish ignorance I earnestly beseeched our heavenly Father to make allowances for the fact that I was no longer able to go to confession, and to forgive my sins which I then proceeded to enumerate. Thus did I believe that my sins had been forgiven me, and I went with trembling heart, uncertain as to the Tightness of my actions, to Communion in a church where I was unknown. Nothing happened! And I, poor, miserable worm, believed that God had heard my prayer, and had approved of what I had done.
My spirit, which in matters of belief had up to then been so peacefully and surely shepherded, had been severely shaken and the deep, genuine faith of a child had been shattered.
The next year my father died suddenly. I cannot remember that I was much affected by this. I was perhaps too young to appreciate my loss fully. And as a result of his death my life took a very different turn from that which he had wished.
The war broke out. The Mannheim garrison set off for the front. Reserve formations were created. The first trainloads of wounded arrived from the front. I was hardly ever at home. There was so much to see, and I did not want to miss anything. I pestered my mother until she gave me permission to enroll as an auxiliary with the Red Cross.
Among all the crowded impressions of that time it is now impossible to recall exactly how I was affected by my first contact with wounded soldiers. I can still remember the gory bandages around heads and arms, and our own field-gray uniforms, and the prewar blue tunics and red trousers of the French, all stained with blood and mud. I still hear their stifled groans as they were loaded into hastily prepared tramcars. I ran hither and thither, handing out refreshments and tobacco. When not at school, I spent my whole time in the hospitals, or the barracks, or at the railway station meeting the troop transports and hospital trains and helping with the distribution of food and comforts. In the hospitals I used to tiptoe past the beds on which the seriously wounded lay moaning, and I saw many who were dying, or even dead. All this made a strange impression upon me, although I cannot now describe my sensations in any greater detail.
The memory of these sad scenes, however, was quickly dispelled by the unconquerable barrack-room humor of the soldiers who had only been slightly wounded or who were not in pain. I never tired of listening to their tales of the front and of their firsthand experiences. The soldier’s blood that ran in my veins responded. For many generations all my forebears on my father’s side had been officers; in 1870 my grandfather had fallen in battle, as a colonel at the head of his regiment. My father too had been a soldier through and through, even though once he had retired from the army his military enthusiasm had been quenched by his religious ardor. I wanted to be a soldier. I was determined at all costs not to miss this war. My mother and my guardian, in fact all my relations, did their best to dissuade me. I must first pass my matriculation, they said, and then we would talk it over. It had been decided in any case that I was to be a priest. I did not argue, but went on trying by every means to get to the front. I often hid in troop trains, but I was always discovered, and in spite of my earnest entreaties was taken back home by the military police on account of my age.