Family Heritage -- German Culture
My family represents a dichotomous social history that reflects simultaneous identification with and allegiance to two concepts that have a fundamental basis for potential antagonisms. That is because I am of German-Jewish decent. My ancestors date back to the town of Frankfurt am Main, a suburb of the German town of Frankfurt, as far as the middle of the 18th century. My grandfather fought heroically in World War I for the Keiser and largely without any conceptual understanding of the wartime international conflicts that took the lives of so many of his companions. Part of our family heritage was defined by his experiences as young soldier who survived the Western Front trench warfare. Throughout his life, my grandfather maintained the perspective of a military officer and the value of military service was instilled in all of the male children in my family from a very young age. On one hand, my grandfather later came to accept the fact that Germany and Austro-Hungary were responsible for the tragedy that befell Europe in the early part of the 20th century. On the other hand, he never managed to fully reconcile his heroism and that of his fallen comrades with the historical reality that he has since learned.
To some degree, that theme repeated itself in my grandfather's life a generation later and it helped him overcome resentment and animosity that many would say would have been appropriate...
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