Marburg An Der Lahn, 1972

Transcript -
The final assembly of every Christmas and summer school term always included a rendition of the school song, 'Forty Years On'. As I mouthed the words for the very last time, I had little interest in looking backwards or forwards twenty, thirty or forty years.

Instead my thoughts were focussed on a plan, almost a year in the making and now only some six weeks away from fruition. My first foreign holiday, to Germany.

The plan was a simple one. By bus, ferry and train to Marburg An Der Lahn (a journey of just over twenty six hours in 1972*) and then, with luck, a trip to see the Olympics in Munich, although that part of the plan had always been a little sketchy. And as it transpired, we never moved more than twenty miles or so from Marburg.

We stayed on a street called An Der Haustatt on the outskirts from and quite a climb out of the town. The suburb was a fairly new one and quite unusual. inasmuch as the housing stock was predominantly that of detached housing, whereas most Germans apparently lived in low- rise apartment blocks. The town hadn't been heavily damaged in the war and appeared to have remained unchanged for many hundreds of years.

Although I had used a still camera since I was about nine years old, I decided that such a momentous undertaking deserved the use of a new medium and I pressed into service my father's 8mm Bolex Palliard cine camera. In the tradition of the true amateur I rejected the notion of testing either the camera or my technique, which goes some way to explaining why half of it was consigned to the rushes bin! What I'm left with is a four minute film, all of taken in the last two weeks of August 1972.

Even from a distance of forty years, I'm still confused as to whether Germany was a totally different culture to that from the one I grew up in or remarkably similar.

The town itself, it's buildings, the university and student life were similar to that I had already experienced as a small child in Oxford and later growing up in Birmingham. The endless trains carrying new VW's we saw on our train journey across Germany were as familiar as watching the loading of Mini's at Longbridge.

What was different, to me at least, was a sense and feeling of the town's timelessness and conformity. Coming from somewhere which redevelops its city centre every twenty years or so and where no two buildings share any characteristics' with those around them Marburg seemed 'odd'.**

The cost of living was also totally different from what I had expected. My first job at Kalamazoo was paying £660 per annum. I had taken £30 with me to Germany*** and by the beginning of the second week my companions and I had all exhausted our apparently meagre funds. Not for the first time in recent European history, Germans came to the rescue with a short term loan to carry us through.

One of the things that I remember most about Germany was the tune 'Popcorn'. Whereas Alice Cooper and Rod Stewert filled the airwaves of the UK that month with such classics as 'School's Out' and 'You Wear It well', only one tune pervaded the air in Germany. Every pub, club restaurant and party played it. Again and again and again.

I've visited Germany on a number of occasions since then, but never returned to Marburg. I did though finally make it to Munich, the stadium and the Olympic swimming pool in December 2009. Better late than never.

* By bus from Birmingham to Dover via London. Ferry to Ostend. By bus to Dusseldorf via Brussels. By train to Marburg.
** My comments on Birmingham and its building policy can be found on the notes of my other YouTube offering 'Green Meadow Primary School, Northfield, BIRMINGHAM UK. Sports Day 1964' .    • Green Meadow Primary School, Northfie...  
*** I left King Edwards Five Ways in early July and had worked for about four weeks at Kalamazoo before taking my holiday.


Words to the song 'Forty Years On'
Forty years on, when afar and asunder
Parted are those who are singing today,
When you look back, and forgetfully wonder
What you were like in your work and your play,
Then, it may be, there will often come o'er you,
Glimpses of notes like the catch of a song --
Visions of boyhood shall float them before you,
Echoes of dreamland shall bear them along,
Follow up! Follow up! Follow up
Follow up! Follow up
Till the field ring again and again,
With the tramp of the twenty-two men.
Follow up! Follow up! etc...
Notes on the film.
This was originally an 8mm film. The original quality wasn't great (the camera is a manual focus, manual exposure model). Although the film was stored in a cool dry place for most of the last forty years it hasn't stood the test of time very well. In the mid --nineties, I had a number of films copied to video tape and later from video tape to DVD. My photographs, 1967 to the present, can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/21498924...
(most of the older 35mm and 6x6 photographs from the late 60's / 70's, towards the back)