Marion Giebel is best known as a renowned classical philologist and translator in the field of ancient Greco-Roman literature. Now you have gotten to know the woman from Pullach from a completely different, private side.
Pullach
– Marion Giebel has given many lectures – including in Pullach, where she lives. As a rule, they went back to antiquity. At the seniors' afternoon in Heilig Geist on Parkstrasse, the classical philologist recently turned to a completely different topic. She told the around 30 visitors about her own growing up. Headline of her remarks: “With the teddy bear into the air raid shelter”. In doing so, she brought back some of those present's own memories; again and again an approving "mhm" could be heard from one of the tables, and people nodded knowingly at each other.
Early childhood in Vienna
Marion Giebel, born in 1939, was born in Frankfurt, but spent her early childhood in Vienna. Her parents moved there with her after it looked as if her father might get into trouble with the Gestapo. He had regularly shopped for a Jewish neighbor who, strangely enough, had not known about her Jewish roots before the Nazi era began.
Ludwig Müller, Marion Giebel's father, was an engineer. In Vienna he found a job as director of the gasworks in Simmering. They lived right next door, in a house with yellow bricks, which the author visited again a few years ago with her children. It still stands. “The gasworks has become the Gasometer, a mix of event venues and apartments.”
Return to Frankfurt
Back then, life in Vienna didn't stay quiet for much longer. The Allies soon began bombing the gasworks almost every evening; when fires broke out, they had to be put out with clay. At some point it became clear that, as a precaution, mother and daughter should at least return to the suburb of Frankfurt where their grandmother lived. To Neu-Isenburg, “that is as far away from Frankfurt as Pullach is from Munich.” The permits were not that easy to obtain; the contact person was Reich Governor Baldur von Schirach.
Many family members die in the war
And of course her teddy bear went back to Germany with Marion Giebel and her mother. The bear is pretty worn around the nose today and is wearing black dungarees. Of course, the Pullacher's childhood was no longer carefree. In Frankfurt, the mother found out that her brother had been killed. Her brother-in-law, in turn, was in Siberian captivity. Marion's mother's nephew, Marion's cousin, also gave his life for Hitler. Marion Giebel said in Pullach: “Back then I only saw women in black.”
Bombs dropped on children
Bombs also fell in Neu-Isenburg or at least near the town, and people there also regularly sat in the air raid shelter. “I always held my teddy bear close to me there.” Of course everyone was panicking, and once when they went out of the basement, the horizon was bright red in one place. “This is Darmstadt,” said Grandma. A man corrected her: “That was Darmstadt.” How a low-flying plane suddenly appeared above her and other children while they were collecting wood in the forest and even dropped bombs on them, the children, how “jaded” the adults all were when they said to each other if They said goodbye: “Stay left!” That her uncle was barely recognizable when he came home from captivity: Giebel told us all that that afternoon.
The father survives thanks to his friendship with a doctor
Her father was drafted into the Volkssturm toward the end of the war, and he only escaped captivity in Russia because he regularly talked to a Russian doctor about Russian literature and music. The two had become friends and the doctor, without Müller noticing, confirmed that he had a heart condition. He was then released. Marion Giebel started school a year late, in 1946. She learned to write on a slate, but her board was cracked, which is why she didn't learn to write quickly.