One of Two Shells
Families and Their Impacts

• Text zum Nachlesen

  The Shell about Itself

  I am a shell – not the mussel, only the shell. But I was together with a mussel a long time. She carried me through the sea, and I protected her. Today, I say we were like a little family. But eventually, she died, and I was left helpless against the currents. I washed up on a beach littered with empty shells like me – and I thought, that‘s it then.

  But a woman, Martina, found me and took me home to her family, along with another shell, very similar to me – like a sister – and there she gave us a new purpose, a very special one.

  She placed me under a photo of her and her deceased father, in Germany. And she inscribed my sister shell with her father‘s name and birthdate, and hid it in an old oak. She placed it in a small crevice, large enough for a shell. And this oak stood in a field, right in front of her father‘s place of origin – in present-day Poland.

  This was where his family had come from. But as a child, he had to leave – under duress – and he never returned. His daughter had been troubled by this for a long time. But now, with my sister shell lodged in the oak and me lying beneath the photo, something seems to have changed there – in some very special way.

  Zusatzinfos

  Martina Kratzel‘s father spent his early childhood in Silesia, in the former Ludwigsdorf. However, when the state borders shifted as a result of World War II, this formerly German region became part of Poland, and he was forced to leave his hometown at the age of nine, under coercion and violence. With his mother and three siblings, he traveled by horse-drawn cart and train through the former Czechoslovakia to Wittgenstein. He often spoke about his childhood and the horrors associated with the expulsion measures.

  The Portrait of William I of Orange to the Shell

  I am a portrait painting, created to resemble a specific individual: in my case, that person is William I, Prince of Orange, Count of Nassau-Dillenburg. Because I closely resemble him, I have always thought about him a lot.

  You see, he was born not only into a family but also into a web of power interests. His own ideas and interests were secondary; his future was largely planned out for him. At the age of 11, he became a „prince“, and the Emperor determined who would educate him and how. Simply marrying whomever he wanted to was, of course, unthinkable.

  I understand the impact of a family. Now, knowing your story, I wonder how it is when one does not grow up in noble circumstances and inherently has a comparatively powerless position... Nonetheless, one is born with certain things one did not choose and must find a way to deal with them. Just like you, who simply grew up in the sea – and could still lie on that beach today just as well.

  To what extent were you shaped by your family? Were paths already set for you? If so, how did you deal with it?