My grandpa the breeder of racing pigeons
A refugee child from Bromberg, who first arrived in Berlin with his mother and brother. He was then sent further on. Final destination Demmin.
And what do you do as a teenager in Demmin, a town that had been nearly entirely burned down by the Red Army? You need a hobby.
Others played football, went to wrestling clubs or athletics. My grandpa however wasn't interested in any of it.
His passion was and still is to race pigeons.
When he was young, he kept them in the basement of his rented apartment on Bahnhofstrasse. Later and when he owned a piece of land with a house, he cobbled together one pigeon loft after the
other. In this loft he was and is still to be found today.
But it was not just to have fun. It was actually about tough competitions.
Almost every Saturday he drove to place the pigeon. Pigeon placement means selecting the best pigeons and then putting them in a (of course, self-made) wooden box ready for collection.
Punctually on the same or the next day (depending on the distance), a transporter loaded with hundreds of wooden boxes full of pigeons drove across the whole of the former GDR. Once the driver
arrived at the destination, the pigeons were released and, equipped with rings around their feet, should find their way home to my grandfather's pigeon loft as quickly as possible.
So on these racing days he looked up into the air nearly every minute, he waited with pure tension on their arrival. As soon as he spotted a pigeon, he would whistle a certain melody to lure the
pigeon into the loft, because he was only allowed to record the arrival time and ring number once the pigeon was in the loft. The fastest pigeon and its owner would then be crowned the winners.
Sometimes he won races, sometimes the whole season and the big results were then announced in the monthly racing pigeon magazine.
Grandpa also took part in pigeon shows to which I was often allowed to join him. He won several prizes, bought sacks of corn and all sorts of grains so that his special racing pigeon would win
the flight.