In 1966/67, Charles Hamilton from Michigan, USA, spent a year in Germany as a YFU exchange student. Since then, he has remained connected to YFU and Germany, and in May, he took a trip across the Atlantic, among other things, to meet his host brother in Cologne. In our blog, he writes about this reunion and reminisces about his exchange year, which significantly influenced the course of his life.
Dear Charles, you and your wife visited Germany this year after a long time. Please tell us a little bit about your trip.
My trip this year to Germany was at first going to be a trip for my wife Eileen and I to visit several cities and towns in Germany and, among other things, to listen to as many organ concerts and music performances in cathedrals and churches as possible, also including a visit with YFU host family member Kaspar Kraemer in Köln.
When I learned that Kalamazoo College was offering a tour of Germany for its alumni and friends, many of whom had studied a semester through the College as I had at a German University, I realized this would be all the more enjoyable, spending time with others mostly my age on a guided tour, and still including a visit at the beginning of my trip with Kaspar Kraemer and his wife Sybil.
This wasn’t your first time in Germany: In 1966/67 you have spent one year here as an exchange student: What motivated you to take such a big step as a teenager?
My motivation to become a YFU exchange student to Germany in 1966/67 was to experience German culture and become fluent in the German language by living with a host family and attending school. I had already developed an interest in all things German, having studied three years of German language in high school in Flint, Michigan and spent several weeks in the summer of 1965 working on farms in Steiermark through the Steiermärkischer Waldschutzverband based in Graz.
After a few weeks in Goslar you moved to the Kraemer family, who hosted you for the rest of your stay. Please tell us a little bit about your host family.
My host family, the Kraemers in Braunschweig, included Herr Professor Dr. Friedrich Wilhelm Kraemer, called “Pumpum" by his children and me, his wife Inge, called “Mammi" by all of us, sons Kaspar and Matthias, and daughters Annette and Sabine, as well as a cook and housekeeper named Elsbeth, and a gardener, handyman and driver named Herder.
The family was special for me in that they were very smart and culturally and internationally oriented. Pumpum in addition to being the head of the Braunschweiger Technische Hochschiule School of Architecture was at the time one of Germany’s most prominent and productive architects. He had survived a terrible head injury on the Russian front as an officer during the war. Having never joined the Nazi party he was soon after given a license by the British to continue building. Among his many works, he did a lot of reconstruction of damaged historical buildings. Kaspar also became an architect and is well known among German architects, having built numerous structures in Germany including the underground entrance and facilities of the Cathedral in Köln. He has also served several years as President of the German Association of Architects. He lives with his wife Sybil in Köln. Their daughter Luise recently completed her studies in München to become an architect as well.
As a family they had acquired English language skills having traveled to the United States and England, including a year by the oldest daughter Annette, as a YFU student in Ann Arbor, Michigan before me. As I was hoping to learn more and better German in their midst, they were hoping to learn more English from me.
Have you been in touch ever since?
We have remained in touch, mostly by exchanging Christmas cards and letters and brief visits together by Kaspar and brother Matthias in Boston around 1980, and a visit in 2007 by me and wife Eileen in Köln, meeting with Kaspar and Annette.
When you look back on your exchange year: What is your favorite memory of that time?
My favorite memory of that time was the “breaking of bread” together during early afternoon Mittagessen usually attended by everyone, and customary late afternoon teas, a favorite of Mammi. These were important times for sharing with one another.
I also remember practicing and expressing myself through improvisations in the piano room in the lower floor of their house. The Kraemers paid for me to take piano lessons from a well known local pianist and teacher. I also remember the freedom I felt as I was able to ride a bicycle to and from the Wilhelm Gymnasium and elsewhere to other events through all kinds of weather.
We often say that an exchange year can have life-changing effects: Would you say that’s true? And if so: How did that apply for you?
I was changed for life after a year with the Kraemers. I felt as if I had become more self-confident, more worldly, more aware of the difficulties of interpersonal and intercultural communication, and the importance of give and take in family. I was impressed by the rigor of the teaching and testing at the Wilhelm gymnasium I attended in Braunschweig. I came away with an intense desire to get the best possible higher education for myself, including an international dimension, when I returned home to Michigan.
You are still supporting YFU Germany on a regular basis and we are deeply grateful for your ongoing contribution to help us making a difference for many students all over the world. What motivates you to support the mission of YFU after all these years?
In particular I remember the support and advice I received from the German YFU leader in Hamburg Ulrich Zahlten, after my floundering beginning with the first family I lived with briefly in Goslar. In a way I feel as though I am thanking Ulrich for all he did for me and stood for then. But basically I believe wholeheartedly in the mission of the Deutsches Youth for Understanding Komitee (YFU) as a step in the right direction bringing young people together building bridges of trust and understanding.
Is there any advice you would like to pass on to our future exchange students or to those who are still thinking about going abroad?
The risks and rewards of being an exchange student are of course different for every student, but learning about oneself within the cocoon of a host family and another culture is a truly unique experience, and for most students an enriching and life changing one as it was for me.
Before deciding to be an exchange student, however, they should first think seriously about and understand the gifts that their host families and YFU are offering them. There will be give and take, but ultimately the burden of adjustment is on the student, not the family. Already the student’s host family has taken a major leap of faith and made a commitment to share themselves for a long period of time with a stranger of a young age.
When you visited Germany again this year, you took the opportunity to see many places and cities all around the country – including a visit to the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site.
I had a special interest in visiting Dachau, having become good friends in Boston beginning in 1974 with a Dachau survivor, Steven Ross. Born into a large family in Poland in 1931, Steven was caught spying on the Nazis for the Polish Underground in Krasnik in 1940, and survived living in concentration camps - including Budzyn, Radom, Auschwitz, Bietigheim, Veihingen, Unter-Rixingen, Neckarsulm and Dachau. He was rescued on April 29, 1945 by a member of the 191st Tank Battalion of the US 7th Army. He arrived in the United States as an orphan in 1948.
One of my take-aways from my trip to Germany this year is a better understanding of how Hitler managed to come to power, and how difficult it was for Germans to do anything about it once his reign of terror began shortly after he was appointed Chancellor of the Reich on January 30, 1933. I feel like we are facing, in some ways, an analogous situation in the US with Donald Trump and his quest for power.
Trump has aligned himself with reactionary forces opposing the cultural and human rights advances that began in the 1930’s with President Roosevelt's New Deal and Social Welfare measures which gradually evolved into the Black civil rights movement in the 1960’s led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as well as the women’s rights movement soon after.
I sincerely hope that the majority of my fellow citizens realize in this coming election in November that there is more that unites us than divides us in this world. Hatred and exclusion can never be the right path. The mission of YFU, to build bridges of understanding and trust, is more important than ever in today’s increasingly interdependent and ever so dangerous and conflicted world.
