MY EXPERIENCE AS A POST-WAR GERMAN AT TONBRIDGE SCHOOL BY PETER AHRENS I was born in the midst of World War Two in Germany’s Soviet Occupation Zone, or East Germany as it would later be known. As Russia’s Stalinist tendencies became clearer in our occupied zone, my family fled as refugees to West Germany in 1949. The post-war West Germany that we arrived in was also under military occupation and completely destroyed, but it offered us the prospect of relative freedom. Like the millions of other refugees, my family’s immediate challenge was to find shelter. We ended up in a small university town, Marburg an der Lahn, where my father opened a small textiles shop and began to rebuild our livelihood. Since my family had no money nor a roof over our heads, we lived and slept in the shop for a number of years; our tiny living quarters separated from the shop floor by a wooden wall. In 1948, the US-led Marshall Plan was enacted, fuelling economic recovery in Germany. Our own financial situation improved markedly and in 1955, my father was able to buy our first home. I was sent to a German boarding school aged 11, which provided both my parents the time and flexibility to relaunch their small retail and, later, department store business. My boarding school had been modelled largely on an English boarding school and it maintained relationships with a number of public schools in the UK, including Tonbridge. The US, Britain and France ended their 10-year military occupation of Germany in May 1955. My English teacher at the time, Kenneth Lander – a native Brit – decided to send me to Tonbridge School as an exchange 34
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student. I arrived in the summer of 1958 and was fortunate to spend an entire term at the school, placed in Manor House where Vernon Hedley-Jones was Housemaster. I shared a study with Michael Holman, who later became Professor of Slavic Studies at the University of Leeds. He was a talented linguist and fluent in a number of languages, including German. Michael and I remained friends for many years after we both left Tonbridge, and he even came to stay with us in Germany many years later. With WW2 hostilities having finished barely a dozen years earlier, I was admittedly a little apprehensive about arriving at Tonbridge. I had no idea how being German might be received by the other boys. Contrary to my worst fears, I could not have been made to feel more welcome by the boys, the masters and in fact everyone that I met during my three months at Tonbridge. I was impressed by the pride felt by everyone about Tonbridge’s centuries-old history and the many traditions that seemed so dear and important to everyone associated with the school, both past and present. Tonbridge also opened my eyes to embracing a much more international world; I remember how struck I was by the not inconsiderable number of boys at Tonbridge from Commonwealth nations. My life after Tonbridge initially took me back to Germany where I got married to my wife Karin in 1965. I started working in Japan for a German retail conglomerate in 1964 and my twin boys were born there two years later. We decided to return to Germany the following year where our third son was born in 1968. At the tender age of 29 I
I had no idea how being German might be received by the other boys. Contrary to my worst fears, I could not have been made to feel more welcome by the boys, the masters and in fact everyone that I met during my three months at Tonbridge.
