From The Peopling of New York City

Mark Brandt

Mark Brandt is an 84 year old man who lives in Richmond Town in Staten Island. He is a quiet and peaceful man who loves to help people around him. He came to this country over 50 years ago in 1948 from his home town of Altena, looking for a better life. Altena is in West Germany, in the British zone of occupation after WWII, and did not come under the control of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. He came here with his younger sister. Originally, he had no intentions of starting a family, but he knew one day he would. He genuinely enjoyed explaining his expedition into the country. While we were talking he had explained that his family was quite wealthy back home even through WWII, which he said left a horrific memory. He had determined that he would never go back to Germany after what he had seen there. When questioned about political oppression he might have experienced, he choose not to discuss that subject. Staten Island was not his first choice of living. Although he did not want to live here his verbal language helped indicate that he is happy here now. He came to this country hoping to find the "American Dream", as he put it, and sought to live in a more democratic country. He spoke of all the great things on the island such as German restaurants. He also spoke of how he tries to preserve German tradition and be part of the German-American community in Staten Island by celebrating German holidays and and traditions with his family here, by cooking German food, and by going to German restaurants. When he came here, he had high hopes of finding a well paying job and then to start a family, he did not want to start any type of family until he knew that he was able to financially support them. He still talks to his family from time to time in Germany but he said that they lost most contact, though he has a brother in Idaho. He depends on the friends he had made throughout the years in the neighborhood to take care of him and enjoy life with. He said that the immigration process was very long and unnecessary. It took him days to get here and on a boat with other people, it was so congested. He had gone through Ellis Island and finally found an apartment in Staten Island to get started. Now Mark is currently retired looking for some type of hobby which he said is most likely going to be gardening.

Subject Number 2

Subject number 2 chose to remain anonymous and declined to have any photographs or recordings taken.

She is 75 years old and immigrated from East Berlin in 1955. She initially moved to Brooklyn. She had lived there since before the bridge was built, when she moved to Staten Island in 1962. She met her husband in Berlin and he immigrated in 1951. He came back three years latter, when they got married. She then had to wait for my visa because she lived in the communist sector of Berlin. She eventually moved to Staten Island because she wanted to buy a house and have more greenery.

In the Russian Sector, where she lived, life was difficult, the western sectors had oranges and bananas and abundance which she didn’t have it. There was still a shortage of food, there was still rationing. She herself had little food, with no relatives on farms. In school, she was forced to take Russian weather she liked it or not. If you did not make you’re grades in the Russian’s Political Science, you did not pass, no matter how good you were in other subjects. You could never trust your neighbor, she could not risk revealing her real political ideas and had to go along with what they told her to. There was no freedom.

When she came to the US, she understood that the streets were NOT “paved with gold”. She knew she had to work hard, she went to school every night to learn English in Brooklyn. She also went to the movies a lot because it had air conditioning, it cost only 50 cents, and it helped her get used to English sounds. She had no contact with Americans before she arrived, because she lived in the eastern zone. In eastern zone, they checked and censored letters, with most of it blacked out.

Her husband was the youngest brew master in Germany, and he thought there were good work opportunities, or so he was told because he lived in West Germany. So he set out to come to the US to find a better life. However, he couldn’t find a job when he went here, he knew too much, the unions were too strict.

She never wanted to live in a German community when she came here. She wanted to find out the ways of American life, not how be like how she used to live. She has never belonged to a German club, though she went several times to a few but never liked it. She has German friends, though.

She tries to preserve the German culture by listening to German music and cooking German food (not omm-paa-paa music), she likes to follow up on the news from Germany, and preserve the language. She says that many people come here and after a few years claim they don’t speak German, but she states you never loose your mother tongue. She says she has a brother like that, and she feels he is being silly. She still reads and writes German perfectly. She cooks German food on occasion; but she can also cook Italian, American, and even Chinese food, and frequently does.

She does not regret anything about coming here. She is very happy. She became a citizen after 5 years. She feels she no longer fits into German culture in Germany, she thinks “American”, as in abstract, and not “German”, as in thinking in the box.