Irmgard's apartment in Munich was still standing. although the house next to it was burned out and in ruins. Two couples were living in the three-room flat. On my next trip to Munich I went to the housing authority of the city and told them that we were now married and needed to move back into our apartment on the third floor. But there was no way to move even one party out of a room, not to speak of two couples. Besides one room could only be reached by entering through the front room. One couple was willing to put a stove into their room and do all the cooking there and give us the kitchen to use. Until now the other couple had the two connecting rooms at their disposal. I could convince them to be satisfied with the back room and the balcony if I would pay for putting a brick wall between the rooms and put a door in the wall so they could enter through the hallway of the adjacent apartment. After long negotiations with them and pressure from the city housing authority, the difficult job was accomplished in two months, and we had one room and a kitchen for ourselves. Of course, the gas supply for cooking was still unavailable. The bathroom was used by both parties. The toilet was separate. We could move now from Diessen as soon as the father of the two children, Irmgard's brother-in-law, got remarried and took Renate and Hanns-Jochen back to his house in Munich.

Every other day Irmgard and I went into the woods to look for mushrooms. It was one of the few foods which did not require any ration card. With a maximum of 1,800 calories per day we needed every berry and mushroom we could find to be able to do all the hard work which was required in those days.

Again the forestry department in Diessen had assigned one large tree in the forest for each family. We took a trip into the woods to see what we had to do to harvest the assigned tree, which was marked with a red band. It was about a quarter of a mile from the highway on a dirt road where we found the tree. It measured about one-and-a-half-foot in diameter. On a not too hot day in July Susi and Irmgard boiled a large pot of potatoes together with some carrots and mushrooms. We armed ourselves with two borrowed axes and a large saw and went to work. After two hours of our sawing and a few hits with the ax, the tree fell with a loud crash in the right direction. Now we had to remove the branches and cut the tree into small pieces so we could transport the wood with the handwagon, which the chimney sweep had lent to us. It took two days to saw all the wood with the dull saw. On the second day we were finished with our tree.

I had Irmgard and Susi look around to give me a warning in case a forester should turn up. Then I tackled a smaller tree next to our big one and felled it also. Susi and Irmgard could hardly lift the saw any more to cut it apart. My arms also felt like pieces of lead. It was important to get rid of the stump of the small tree so the forester would not notice we had felled two trees. The next few days we made numerous trips with the wagon attached to the our bicycle and picked up our treasure. I spent several days splitting the wood into small pieces. A distant relative of Susi, who also had come to our wedding, had given us a small cooking stove with a tiny opening on top. That was the only place one could put more wood into the hearth. Since we planned to move soon to Munich, it meant that we had to take all the wood, piece by piece, into Munich on the train, trip by trip, so we would not freeze in the winter.

The postwar food situation in Germany had become extremely critical. Many people who claimed that they could never lose any weight slimmed down. The ration cards were very strictly enforced, and restaurants always required several sections of the ration card, depending what kind of meal they served. For instance, only one quarter pound of meat was allowed per week. One could get a ticket for a pair of shoes every six months. The farmers withheld most of their food from the open market because they could get so much more on the black market.

Imrgard had inherited some money, but I had only what I could sell on the black market out of my duffel bag. In July we received the first package with food from Frau Sieg. It contained canned food, staples and some chocolate, a welcome gift for our scanty table. In the long letter which accompanied this surprise she wrote that she was divorced from her first husband and had married a Mr. Zschischang. They had moved to Auburn in California. Did we wish to come to the U.S.A.? Her husband, Arthur, would sponsor us. From then on packages from the U.S.A. came with regularity. Arthur and Friedel were devout church members and had asked the congregation in Auburn to donate food and clothing for us "poor Germans." I suggested what would be valuable for barter trading with the local farmers. They sent us many packages of saccharin. One of the packages had twenty pairs of women's shoes and a carton of cigarettes. Looking over the accumulated amount of our treasures, I said to Irmgard:

"Irmgard, we are living almost exclusively on beans and potatoes. The ration cards for the week are used up; let's make a trip to the country and barter some of our goods."

"That sounds good. If you can get a bicycle tire for my old bike, then we can go together on the trip." she replied.

There were no bicycle tires for sale in the stores, so I had to take two packs of my hoarded American cigarettes and go to the black market area where I could barter for a new tire in exchange for the cigarettes. The next day was a Sunday. Irmgard got two knapsacks and my duffel bag ready and put all the shoes, saccharin and my American woolen long johns into it. We took our bikes and went to the Munich railroad station. The train was to depart at 9:00 a.m.

"Irmgard, here is some money," I said " Can you get the tickets? I will have to run with the two bikes to the baggage car. I will meet you somewhere in the first car." "O.K. The train might be full," Irmgard warned me. "I will find you somewhere."

I ran toward the platform to deposit the bikes in the baggage car. People were already standing in the compartments and hanging on the steps of the train. I hoped that Irmgard would squeeze herself into the crowd, no matter what. When the train started, people could not move in any direction within the compartment. We had tickets to a village in the vicinity of Augsburg. It was the tenth station from Munich. At this stop I ran again to the baggage car and got the two bikes. I was glad to see Imrgard on the platform waiting for me.

"I have a hunch we will have great success today," Irmgard remarked as we bicycled through the village. "I am always optimistic."

We turned toward the first farmhouse and knocked at the door. A young women, probably the daughter of the house, opened it.

"Good morning. We have a lot of ladies' shoes for bartering. They are just imported from the United States. Do you think you could use some?" "Well, come in and let me take a look at the shoes." We were invited into the living room where I emptied the 20 pairs of shoes on the floor. The girl called her mother and aunt and they tried to find some women's shoes that fit. All three found a pair of shoes for themselves. When the husband came in, I offered him some saccharin. He was very eager to get six packages. Now it was my turn to barter for the things we needed. We settled for 50 pounds of potatoes and a large side of bacon. The next farm house was only a few hundred yards away. We exchanged more shoes and my warm underwear for butter, eggs and ham. After six stops we were so loaded that I had my doubts that we could make it back to the railroad station. With two full knapsacks, a bag of potatoes on the baggage carrier and a plastic bag hanging on each bike handle we made it back. We had a leisurely evening picnic as we waited for the train to arrive. The train was, as expected, so full that we had to squeeze ourselves with great effort into the nearest compartment. In the next station I saw a young woman running to catch the train, which had just started to move. Not being able to find an open door, she ran to the nearest window where two men were leaning out. They offered to pull her into the train through the window. They grasped her wrists and started lifting her up into the train. When only her two feet were still outside the window a man on the platform grabbed her shoes and pulled them off as the train gathered speed. We got off the train one station early to avoid a police control, which often took most of the food away from the passengers, since this type of bartering was illegal. There were no lights in the train. So, we had to tie our bags and knapsacks to a string in case somebody got off the train and tried to take our knapsacks with him.

In 1947 I was able to purchase two American Air Force parachutes on the black market. Apparently they were stolen from an Air force depot and found their way in to the black market. They consisted of pure nylon sewn together in a multitude of wedge-shaped pieces. Many American soldiers had won the hearts of their German girl friends with a pair of nylon stockings, a material totally unknown to the Germans. When I brought the two parachutes home Irmgard immediately saw the possibility that they could be converted in to women's lingerie. A girlfriend, a clothes designer, joined the project. In my spare time I carefully ripped all the seams apart, and Irmgard together with the her girlfriend created many blouses, panties, negligees and men shirts. I had no trouble to sell them at a good profit to keep our finances in the black.

To survive during 1946 to 1947 I had to engage in the black market business. That meant, for instance buying 11 pounds of butter for 350 marks and selling 10 pounds for 35 marks each so we could keep one pound for ourselves. On ration cards we could buy one-quarter pound of butter per week for one mark and 50 pfennig..The same thing happened with all valuable food, particularly with coffee. The price here was 500 marks a pound. Often I had to bring coffee by train from one of the outlying districts to our apartment. The freshly roasted coffee had such a tale-telling fragrance that the passengers were looking at the packages in the baggage nets trying to guess from which direction the smell came. One time I was to meet a black market dealer at a house in a Munich suburb to pick up 20 pounds of coffee with my bike. I had done business with him before and had trusted him. Twenty pounds were 10,000 marks on the black market. It took all my and Irmgard's capital to finance such a big deal. The person who was to get me the coffee said that he had to make the deal with the supplier inside the apartment house at which I had met him. I should give him the money and he would be right out with the coffee. Greenhorn that I was! I waited for over a half hour for him to return. But he never showed up. When I could not wait any longer, I went into the apartment house and rang the bell at every door. Nobody had seen the person. As I had worked my way up to the sixth floor, I noticed an open door toward the roof. Someone could have easily walked to the next house and left there unnoticed. I was out 10,000 marks. I had to take the 24-karat gold ring from South Africa that I had saved for such an emergency and converted it into money to stay afloat. This was a hard-earned lesson. There should have been an easier way to make a living.

At that time I was taking my final medical examinations. They comprised of fifteen different tests. Each had a clinical part and an oral examination. It took a total of two and a half months. Since I had studied for practically four years during my captivity for that examination, I passed every one of the fifteen tests with a straight "one," which is an "A."

I had requested Arthur and Friedel to ask their doctor in Auburn to collect the AMA journals from 1942 to 1947 and mail them to me. I was now the owner of a considerable library of medical literature. Since German medical literature during the war years was almost non-existent, the professors had great difficulty in giving medical students a scientific task to research in some medical fields. To be able to get a doctor's degree, one had to fulfill such research work, which generally took several months.

I had to do research in the early stages of the DNA discovery. After my rather devastating experience in organizing food through the black market, I placed a note on the blackboard of several medical clinics in Munich, in which I advertised: "If any medical student who has passed the state board examination has had difficulty finding a professor who will sponsor his doctoral thesis, he should contact me." Within several weeks five students came to see me. I wrote for each one a proposal for a research thesis and sent him to a professor who, I thought, would be interested in that particular field. I found in my American medical journals and recent medical books enough new material, as yet unknown to the German professors. Each of the five came back after a successful meeting with his professor. I charged 1,000 marks for this service. But then I had to help them with the literature search. In 1947 the Americans had opened a library in Munich which contained hundreds of medical journals. With the help of my journals and those in the library I assisted the students in their research projects. Irmgard then had to type the finished doctoral theses on our anemic typewriter. In this way we kept ourselves above the poverty level. Of course, from Arthur and Friedel we kept receiving monthly packages with valuable goods, mostly ones of the bartering type.

In 1948 the currency reform took place and every German could exchange five old marks for one new D-mark. Each person was permitted to exchange 500 old marks, but the rest of one's money in the bank was frozen. Suddenly one could buy anything on the open market. The black market dealers, since they had to prove how they had come to have thousands of old marks, tried to exchange them. They started to light their cigarettes with the old money.

I started my surgical internship at the university surgical clinic. Young doctors did not receive any remuneration. There were too many young doctors, so the city and state could afford to employ us without pay. After finishing my internship in the spring of 1949, the American Military Police was looking for an English-speaking physician to take care of their soldiers in Munich. They resided in the military housing unit not too far from our apartment. I enjoyed taking care of the American soldiers, who treated me with great respect. The Military Police had a well-equipped dispensary. The job required also making rounds with the American colleagues at a local hospital which they had taken over. They had a stream of consulting physicians coming frequently from the States to give the army physicians advice. This was always associated with a lecture. I could also purchase anything I wanted in the Army PX.

During weekends many soldiers went to Munich's "red light" district. The hookers usually took the soldiers to a room where, after sex, they got drunk. In the morning hours the girls disappeared and with them often the clothes and the money of the soldiers. When they woke up on Monday morning, they found themselves without their clothes or money. They came at seven o' clock with a taxi to the army post. Since the dispensary was next to the entrance and my job started at 6.00 a.m., they rushed into my office in their shorts or underpants and said, "Doc, I got rolled last night. Can you give me 20 dollars? The taxi is waiting outside. Next payday I will give it back to you."

I gave them the money to pay the taxi. This developed into a regular dollar-lending business. They always paid me back.

In late spring of 1948 Imgard surprised me with the news that she was pregnant. We figured that our new addition would arrive around the end of the year. Our life in Munich developed into a more quiet routine. My cousin Heidi was sent by her parents to Munich to attend a fashion-design school. But she did not like the school and its surroundings and spent almost every afternoon in our small kitchen. She had received a substantial amount of money from her father to get her through the first six months. But she quit after two months and invested her money in black market goods, which she brought to our apartment. Irmgard prepared great meals from the staples she brought back from the black market. After two months she went home to Cologne to start a new career in business and finance at the university.

During those 18 months I met interesting American medical officers and visiting American physicians. One of them I saw again during my internship at the Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital in 1950.

Rainer, our son, was born at the Munich Woman's Clinic on January 6, 1949. Imrgard had to stay in the hospital two weeks, which was the normal time after having a baby. She got a fancy baby carriage in exchange for a green suit, which was in one of the many packages we received from Arthur and Friedel. Uncle Walther, who was already 67 years old, had married recentyly a twenty five years young woman. They also had a new son a few days after Rainer's birth. The couple lived just a few blocks from our apartment. So Rainer and Irmgard had good company as the two mothers pushed the baby carriages through the streets and parks. As the first spring sunshine appeared in Munich, Irmgard and I took our bikes and made long weekend trips to the lakes around Munich. I pulled the baby carriage with one hand while riding my bicycle. At times we were held up by the city police, who suspected black market merchandise and wanted to see what was in the baby carriage. In the meantime Arthur had sent us his affidavit. In July 1950 we had to appear at the American Consulate in Munich for our physical examination and were told that we'd better arrange for our departure in the fall of 1950.

There is quite a difference when making the decision wanting to emigrate with your family to a foreign country and actually receiving the immigration visa which tells you: Now you have to burn your bridges, leave your friends and relatives and plunge into the unknown!

This decision, made for 300 years by millions of immigrants to the U.S.A., was facing us when we had the immigration visas stamped into our passports in October 1950.