Post by Dirk it up on Feb 22, 2010 20:19:59 GMT
Great app, you built a great depth to your character, even before she was born, I'm happy to bestow the rank of Leutnant unto you 
-JT
Account E-Mail: Same e-mail as the other accounts belonging to Mariaaah
Name: Dirk Riedel (Friederike Wolterman)
Nationality: German
What Army Will Your Character Serve Beneath? Wehrmacht
Character History:
Berthold and Lara Wolterman belonged to the lower classes of German society in the suburbs of Hannover, having united their underprivileged families in what seemed to have been a marriage of blessed poverty and unnecessary decency. Berthold was a blacksmith and Lara worked in a bomb factory, working ridiculous hours for ridiculous incomes; they did not, however, believe that work was a humiliating factor and chose to ignore the higher circles of German elite whenever they would come to Hannover for weekend trips and arrogantly sneer at these ‘plebeians’. Their unwavering belief of the decency in one’s work was with such strength of mind and perseverance of character established among the Wolterman family that to have a child submitting to the sirens of slothfulness and debauchery was, indeed, a condemnable fact. Lara’s first labour as early as 1910 was a stillborn son; it was an experience whose sharpness she never quite managed to soften throughout the years, for despite her often harshness of conduct and tough exterior, she had a sensitive woman’s heart that always strived to face hardship through decency, self-respect and strength of mind, something she would teach her children later on.
Friederike was born in the waking hours of 31st January in 1915, at 04:42 in the morning, quite unexpectedly, as Lara and her husband had gone to the forest in search of Dryopteris, for it was said the plant was able to cure the pregnancy pains from which she suffered on a daily basis; unable to get some sleep, Lara woke her husband, feeling ill and feverish – amidst dream and reality, between life and limbo, she had lived through a most strange dream, a hallucination perhaps from the high fever: her husband had sealed up her womb with a seal engraved with a lion. Berthold absolutely refused that Lara should accompany him, but the fierce woman scoffed his fears away, supporting how she was merely on her seventh month, that she was too impatient, tense and hyperactive to stay home, and that she did not want him to go to the woods alone at such an hour. Berthold was aware of her obstinacy, and yet was only persuaded when she assured him the pain had began to fade away, and she was perfectly able to walk, even run if she felt like it; it was, of course, a blatant lie, but Lara loved her husband too much to leave him by himself.
By the time they had travelled through the dense forest, and with Berthold becoming progressively more anxious over not finding the therapeutic plant anywhere, the large pains seized all of Lara’s body, and she fell hard on the ground; the throbbing grew to be insufferable, as she was screaming in pain and gnashing her teeth, tearing at her skin and growling in pain, her legs and arms spread-eagled, soaked in sweat and blood, in unbearable agony, feeling her guts ripped out. Berthold had rushed to her side, spoke to her words of courage and might, grabbed her hands and gave her strength despite the fact his own hands were trembling, just as his heart, dreading he might lose both Lara and his child, and without any human presence within close proximity, he helped her in every possible way he could. With a last shriek of horror that pierced the night, the child was born, not without the greatest toil and trouble, amidst distant wolf cries from the hills. Berthold took the child, turned it upside down and gently slapped it on its back for the first breath to come – by the time the slightest cry was heard, drowned in the howling, he realized his wife had fallen unconscious, having lost a dangerous amount of blood. Not knowing what to do, he wrapped the baby around his thick winter coat, making sure it was well protected from the coldness, and considered taking both back home, which was a quarter of an hour’s journey as they had, gratefully, not had the time to walk through the depths of forest when the labour pain had began – but then the local hunter found him, having come out during the early hours of the morning on his usual walk around the region in search of dead animals and carcasses, and led him to his home. There, Lara and the baby were both taken care of by the hunter’s wife, a wise old woman; despite her loving care, however, Lara did not wake up for the next hours, and once she did, she truly felt the excruciating pain in her southern region – and wished she was dead.
Considering how easy it was for women to die in or after labour those times, even in the comfort of their homes, so much more in the forest, Berthold grew restless over his wife’s deteriorating condition; the hunter, however, easily cast his fears away with a knowing laugh, stating how his own wife, who was treating Lara daily with herbs and ailments, had given birth six times in horrible circumstances, and was still his lovely iron woman! Due to the severe conditions she had given birth to, the next few weeks found Lara often going unconscious with a scorching fever that seemed never to abandon her. Berthold, in his attempt to cheer her up and reduce her agony, often teased her on how indigenous religion forbade Katang women from giving birth in the house, instead demanding a delivery in the forest. He believed that would lift her mood, and though Lara appreciated his efforts, she needed time to heal the wounds, often thinking she was going to die, often wishing she were dead, at which Berthold lost his temper and reprimanded her, for he knew what a strong woman she was and how she could survive through the hardest of circumstances, proceeding to remind her in a particularly sharp tone of every unfortunate situation they had lived through ever since they had been married, and ascertaining how the labour had in fact not been the hardest, which was a blatant lie, but a necessary one.
Though a long time passed before she was able to walk on her feet, Lara survived through the shock of that labour eventually, and believed since she had been through such an earth-shattering, to her, experience, that there was nothing else to be afraid of, unless it naturally involved the well-being of her children. Due to the great toil of her labour, she became rather bonded with her daughter, whom Berthold affectionately referred to as ‘his little man’, due to having survived through the harsh conditions in which she had been brought into this world. Friederike, the feminine version of a name belonging to emperors and rulers, a name meaning a peaceful ruler and associated to power, turned out to be, indeed, a strong and relentless mind, a wild nature, a spirited heart and an untamed soul, obstinate, fierce, loyal and protective. Berthold absolutely loved his daughter, and the relationship he established with her was a unique one between a father and daughter. Her mother was often harsh with her in an attempt to teach her about obedience and prevent her from becoming a meek, silly girl – the latter she need not have worried about, for Friederike proved to be anything but that, but as far as the former was concerned, Lara never managed to tame her daughter’s wild spirit.
The woman was disappointed by the fact her daughter was not feminine enough, not in the sense that she should be a weak creature of the time succumbing to men’s power, but in the sense she should not forward such masculine authority as Friederike was often prone to do. Lara believed a woman should create a family, have children, and live decently, and seeing her daughter disinterested in what were generally considered ‘womanly issues’, such as family, children, dolls, dresses and female friends made her grow apprehensive over her daughter’s future. If she were not feminine enough, no man would wish to marry her, and then the thought of her only daughter ending up an old spinster, laughed and mocked at by society, was dreadful to her. On the other hand, Lara was pleased to realize Friederike’s strength of character, and often cherished having such a hard-working daughter, and when other women commented on their own daughters and their ‘girly’ manners, Lara would secretly smile sadly at them. The fact was, a woman like Lara Wolterman did not often show extreme affection to her daughter, not wishing to spoil her, but instead brought her up with strictness and sharpness of conduct, always with the best interests at heart. When Friederike would be asleep, Lara would secretly enter her bedroom and kiss her on the forehead; only the dog, sleeping in Friederike’s feet, was a witness of such a sign of fondness.
Five years later, in 1920, the first son was born, Julian, while the family had been to a trip in Magdeburg. Though at first Friederike considered him, always in sisterly affection, a bit of a retard, he proved to have a sensitive soul, a love for the arts (and literature in particular) and delicate, soft features as would warrant the description of being a ‘pretty boy’ rather than a handsome man, even as he was to grow older. Friederike was the blatant opposite of him; she was a logical creature, practical, able to solve problems with the use of her mind rather than the heart, always down to earth, no-nonsense, realistic and sensible; she wasn’t terribly fond of the arts, and instead preferred more masculine pastimes, over which her mother would lament to her father about. Berthold, however, would laugh warmly at his daughter’s tomboy nature and praise her for not being like all the other girls; he loved her dearly, and accepted her for who she was, and Friederike adored him, for he was loving, compassionate, and perhaps, if such a thing can indeed be said, perhaps she loved him just a little more than her mother. He hated shouting at her, and when he did, it was only because his wife insisted so; of course, Lara, had absolutely no problem in shouting at Friederike, it was almost a daily ritual within the Wolterman house, but the girl did not care. She held her tongue, shared a covert but meaningful glance with her father, whose eyes were smiling at her, and then went away with a secret smile shared with her father to do her homework, or fix her bicycle. Lara’s sharp tongue and practical skills were often reflected on Friederike, but the girl had a stronger and independent mind.
Lara was disappointed at her son’s lack of masculine authority, and wondered what on earth would become of him once he grew up and had to face true hardship; he was obviously too gentle to occupy himself with farming, carpentry or factory work, and the prospect of making a living out of writing was simply ridiculous; he would waste away his years, torturing his mind, receiving two Reichsmarks on his books, and live his life as an impoverished nobody. Then, a hundred and fifty years later, some other impoverished nobody would skim through some torn apart, yellowed pages of literature and discover the works of some Julian Wolterman, proceeding to publicize them; if Julian were lucky enough, he would be nationally acknowledged as a gifted man of the arts. At best, there would be more admirers visiting his grave with flowers, at worst he would have the grave filled with rude graffiti’s, and because neither outcome seemed alluring enough to Lara, she wished to make very clear to him he ought to keep his mind not in the clouds but down to earth, just like his sister. In times like these she did appreciate Friederike’s example.
Lara had many reasons to bring up a fight with her daughter. At the age of fifteen, the Headmistress of the college Friederike was attending called her parents to her office, and with disgust in her voice narrated the events which led to the girl punching in the face her female classmate twice that rainy day, a fight which ended with both students rolling around in the muddy-brown ground of the school’s courtyard, with Friederike having naturally dominated the struggle with comparative advantage. Lara had been utterly shocked to see her daughter’s face and clothes washed in mud and covered with stains of blood here and there, while Berthold remained silent. Once explanations were given, during which Friederike stood outside the office on the corridor chair, Lara exited the room, gave her a look of sheer disgust and reprimand, and then walked away; her father stayed behind, looked at her closely for three seconds in a serious expression, to which she returned a somber gaze, but then, once the Headmistress had shut the door closed, he chuckled under his throat, and she smirked, as they walked together out of the school. The only reason she was not expelled from her school during that occurrence was because the teachers always commended on her aptitude of mathematics and sciences; however, she did receive her punishment accordingly, no leniency was to be offered in that respect, but she took it with a laugh. She had more important things to worry about.
The years of the Great Depression had crushed Germany’s economy which, having been built on foreign capital, proved vulnerable to the disastrous effects from the Stock Market Crash of 1929. The NSDAP party came on the surface in 1923, unemployment rates hit the country at 30% by 1932, American loans as forwarded with the Dawes Plan (1924) and the Young Plan (1929) to assist in the 1923 hyperinflation immediately ceased, and extremism having seized the political system. Germany was, as Gustav Stresemann had put it, “dancing on a volcano.” The difficult years had weighed down on her family as well, and Friederike had proposed to her mother assistance in the factory; Lara absolutely refused, but once Friederike did secretly follow her, dressed as a boy – not being allowed access to the factory, however, she roamed about town and from that occurrence she eventually ended up helping Hartmann with his work for four Reichsmarks per day; he had a form of garage and repaired trucks, a job which her mother met with some disconcert once more, but they had no other choice at any rate. Friederike learned, therefore, the hardship of earning a living quite early in life.
By the age of sixteen, her love for metal cars was obvious, and her father decided to teach her the arts of being a blacksmith and how to drive the family’s truck, much to her mother’s grumbling disconcert. Lara bought her for her seventeenth birthday a pretty dress, nothing expensive, and one which socialites of the elite circles would certainly laugh upon, and though Friederike appreciated her mother’s gesture, she really found it awkward wearing dresses, being mostly used to wearing trousers and getting them torn apart while climbing trees, chasing animals out in the forest, or helping her father with his work. She only had to wear the school’s uniform which was comprised of a white shirt, a black tie and a grey, knee-length skirt, and that was the only clothing she could be comfortable in. She promised her mother to wear it, but the dress began to grow dust inside her wardrobe for the next few months until, at the age of eighteen – the year when her father was diagnosed with the Alzheimer’s disease – she decided to wear something eye-pleasing when she went outdoors one warm May’s evening with a male friend of hers, Edmund. It was the first time she had agreed to go out with someone on such terms; she had had no female friends throughout her childhood and teen years, not being able to tolerate them and their silly female hearts, instead playing outdoors with a group of boys her mother often referred to disapprovingly as the ‘vagabonds’. The boys would call her ‘Dirk’ for short whenever they roamed about in the fields, and accepted her as an equal – a name which her mother also disapproved of. Friederike had, however, developed an interest for Edmund, and thought she would try to be more feminine for the first time in her life; but the evening turned out to be a spectacular fiasco. On the return home he told her he was interested in someone else, and in a painfully straightforward manner laughed at her for thinking he might like her, someone with such a masculine disposition as her; she became angry, threw a punch, he cowardly returned the warm gesture, and the fight continued for several minutes afterwards, ending with Edmund throwing a stream of invective at her, and Friederike swearing like a sailor at his endless stupidity.
As soon as she reached home, she run up the staircase angrily without greeting anyone, her parents looking worriedly at each other; once she reached the bedroom, she banged the door closed, tore the dress apart with an angry growl, kicked things around, and wore her daily clothes, trousers and shirt. She exited the room in the same aggressive manner and went downstairs. Grabbing the keys from inside the drawer, she quickly left the house, as her mother’s eyes widened and turned to Berthold for an explanation before she realized what her daughter was about to do. She screamed, and rushed after her (while Berthold remained in his place silently, knowing once his daughter got going, nothing could stop her), but Friederike had already started the engine; no matter how much Lara had barked after her daughter to come back right that instant, Friederike drove the truck across the dark fields that night, with progressively dangerous acceleration. It was the only time she had felt the need to cry, and that she did; with her eyes fiercely looking at the plains before her with a passionate glare, and her hands tightly holding the steering wheel to the point where her knuckles whitened, and her foot determinedly glued to the gas pedal, as the wheels stormed across the dark roads with the wind slapping her face from the purposefully open window, she swore inside her head at everyone and everything. The norms, society, stupid men, stupid women, brainlessness. She felt the pressure too high, and she was not certain, strong though she may be, whether she could go through that this time; being in the middle between a man and a woman, laughed at for being different, for being strong-headed, rejected always for not fulfilling the criteria of who and what she was expected to be, and that combined with her father’s growing illness, it was perhaps too much for this young soul to bear. Though she easily scoffed away anyone who did not like her ways, years of doing so had finally culminated to this point, when she no longer wanted to associate herself with people, when she no longer cared to show she did not care; when she simply wanted her family to be spared off the troubles that always found them, being poor and underprivileged. She was sick of all the prejudice, the scorn from the upper classes, sick of life always throwing evils down their threshold.
She drove manically, venting out all her anger, through the wide plains and inside the dense woods, drove for hours, not knowing what else to do, how else to react, drove until the bitter tears had dried on her face, drove until a wild scream escaped her throat, and she determinedly trashed the truck, and for a moment wished to trash herself as well. The next days found her in her bedroom, her wounds being taken care of by her mother (who had decided barking her shock and anger at her was best suitable for another time, although she did shout at first, she could not go against her nature), while her father had grown absolutely worried about her; he never blamed her for having trashed the family’s truck, although Lara cold not help but be reproaching every now and then. When he entered the bedroom, he sat by her, stroked her forehead and looked at her fondly; she allowed herself to cry in his chest, holding him firmly, letting out all her frustration and fears. He always had this magical ability to spare her of everything troubling her mind within the second, with courageous words and a warm embrace, and everything was all right again. She did not want to lose this.
But she lost it. At the age of nineteen she was encouraged by her mother to live with her aunt, Regine, and her family in Ansbach to work in a bomb factory; she stayed with them for around two years, returning to see her family during summers or Christmas, and bitterly discovering her father’s condition was deteriorating; he had stopped working, being completely incapacitated, and Lara had needed to find another job, while also sending Julian to work as an assistance to a local carpenter (which did not go very well …) Friederike worked hard, however, and earned a living that way. By the time she reached twenty-two years of age, her father could hardly recognize her, often asking his wife (whom he also often forgot, but whose daily presence served to remind him of her identity) who this strange female was; that broke Friederike’s heart, and for the next years she had to live with that burden weighing down on her soul. To have someone so dear to her not even remember her, not even recall her face, it was insufferable – it was ridiculous! And so she decided to run away, return to Ansbach, and swallow her worries and anguish with alcohol, cigarettes, and a ridiculous amount of work, often not sleeping for days, ending up with black circles underneath her bloodshot eyes, and though tired she may be, it at least served to push her pain in the corner of her mind. And then she regretted it, and returned back home, determined never to leave him alone, determined she would walk that painful road to torpor with him, for she would never let him walk it alone.
There was no cure for that disease, but her presence did not serve to cure him, either. Day by day she watched him deteriorate. “Who is it?” he would gently ask whenever she would knock on his bedroom door to bring him his supper. He had always been such a kind, warm-hearted, amiable man. And she would always respond in a monotone, with her heart wounded, her eyes bloody and her face dark and hardened, “It’s no one, Papa. It’s no one.” And she would close the door quietly, and rest her body against the wall, slowly allowing herself to fall downwards, hiding her face in her hands and breathing with difficulty, the headache throbbing inside her mind. The only one who could have caused her to behave in such a sensitive way had been Berthold. But one day, when a flash of remembrance went through his head like lightning, he went to his workshop and attempted to be useful in any way, hating to see his family (whenever he remembered) suffer; being useless, however, resulted to an accident, as an iron grill pierced through his liver and he was immediately led in the house by Lara and Friederike. With no money to call a doctor, a local neighbour with medical knowledge came by, briefly examined him and offered them some medicine to ease the pain, but there was no chance. When Friederike approached his bed that cold night, and stroked his forehead tenderly, just as he had always done with her, just as he had always drove her troubles away, she sat by him, and kissed him lovingly on his forehead, and stayed with him until the end. And she could have sworn that when those kind eyes looked at her for the last time, she saw through those black irises, and understood that for that final second he knew. He knew who she was.
Over-protective by nature, she would never allow anything to happen to her brother and from that period in time onwards, she became even fiercer than she was before; though they had been constantly fighting as children, and she was always shouting at him, she had been the one to protect him from all the bullies as he returned home, the one to have punched any smart-arse who wished to make a fool out of Julian, who always let him slip inside her bed whenever he had a bad dream, stroke his hair and rid him of his fears, holding him tightly and assuring him she would never allow anything to happen to him, getting him off the hook in every circumstance, often lying to her mother whenever he ruined something or did something the wrong way, instead receiving the punishment and shouting herself. Their bond was quite strong, and though she was angry whenever his head was up in the clouds, she admired his free-spirited soul, his romantic heart and fragile ways, for she had none of these. When the Fatherland called all men for inscription, she grew immensely worried, for he was completely unsuitable for the army. That combined with a desire to join the military made her walk to his bedroom one night in early 1939, and characteristically tell him in a low tone, “I have a plan.”
She did not tell her mother of the plan; no one was to know but the two of them. Lara would assume her poor son was sent to the military, and her daughter had vanished off in search of a job that was closest to her masculine needs. Indeed, Friederike could not be useful in any other way; she was not feminine, she could not go out in society and pretend to be a damsel in distress, she could not get married and settle down, that did not interest her whatsoever – her untamed soul craved for something she had not yet experienced. For many weeks her mind was racing, and she crafted a plan on how to best protect Julian while replace him with herself, instead. She was never going to allow him the dangers of fighting in a war, knowing he was as suitable of being a soldier as a one-legged hunting tortoise of hunting down a fox. She created a new name for herself, and from that point onwards Friederike Wolterman, for all anyone cared, was dead. Dirk Riedel, a muscled, strong and tall young man in his mid twenties freshly appeared officially in documents, having employed a contact (her fierce and determination made her care not of the decency of befriending such people, if it served to accomplish her needs; the end satisfied the means, most certainly in this case) in providing her with paperwork that verified this person’s existence – a person of unquestionable ethics belonging in the bureaucratic circles of the government, who was to be later on executed by the Nazis on dim reasons that were never quite specified or publicized. She told Julian to appear in the health inspection (and the rest of the examinations) with these documents; he barely passed them, of course, what with his meek and weak body, but his admission in the army was a given fact, and an unquestionable one at that. With the documents officially signed and everything in order, she found him a non-return ticket in some village near Wolfsburg. No one would notice the difference at this early stage, not to mention how Julian had made no friend during such inspections, his mind thinking over Schiller quotes than attempting to befriend fellow men. Dirk appeared in the army amongst the hundreds of other German soldiers, ready to fight for the Fatherland, fight for her home, for her people, for her father, for everything she loved, and finally find her place in the world. A world of men.
Military Rank: Oberfeldwebel
Writing Sample:
Water … water.
Her lips were dry, her eyes were bloodshot, and she felt something moist running down her face, which for a moment gave her life, but then she realized it was only the taste of mud. Her eyes flickered, she blinked; she opened them, and looked around her. Desert. Her neck was hurting, she could feel the blood trickling down her fingers, and breathed heavily, motionless, She coughed unexpectedly, and turned over, feeling a pain in her shoulder as though a bullet had hit her, but instead she found a sharp metallic tag having somehow found its way through her flesh, droplets of blood staining her gray-green uniform across her arm. She swore inside her mind, but then she was too tired to speak, too thirsty to waste her saliva on useless words that were not going to be heard by anyone, her forehead aflame with fever, her neck hurting, and her gun filled with sand. And it was just … so … hot. The sun was laughing at her from above, as sweat was trickling down from her face to her neck, jesting with her, mocking her, challenging her to show some masculine authority, resilience if she dared, openly judging her lest she should show female weakness.
But she would not. She had come a long way just to be jested in such a ridiculous manner, years and years of fighting in this war, earning wounds, and with each wound earning trust; she had walked too far and faced many dangers to simply give up now; she stood up with a growl, coughed some more, and looked around her slowly, with the observation rate of someone who has just been hit on the head with a bat. She smacked her forehead with the edge of her palm in an attempt to unblock her mind, but no matter how hard she tried she simply could not tell where she was. All she was thinking was, water. She could feel the dried rim of her tongue glued to her teeth, and closed her eyes, as she fell back on the sand with a loud thud, her right hand holding the MP40 tightly, while her left one circled around her neck, feeling her throat dehydrated, and the rest of her body numb from the pain and the heat. There was silence. She slowly rolled around, coughing out sand, and with difficulty crawled alongside the hot sand, trying like a reptile to move her body and reach the small hill of sand behind which, she knew, around one kilometre to the West, lay the German frontlines. Her mind was racing, and yet she was so thirsty, it was impossible to concentrate on the frontlines too long without feeling the ultimate need to drink something, anything. She desperately started digging the sand with her fingers, feverishly, her mouth half-open, half-closed, her eyes widening with false anticipation, sand slipping through her nails, but there was nothing to be found there. An animalistic sound escaped her hoarse throat, and her head felt heavy.
At that time she heard a gun being cocked, and she stood motionless, unable to think, unable to act, wounded, bloody, with her right foot limp and shot, and sweating profusely. She did not turn her head around; she did not even understand the words spoken, but the foreign language let her know her minutes were bleak and numbered. All the road she had walked so far, laden with thorns and pricks, had been for nothing, then – but had life ever been fair to anyone? This was war, she knew something like this was going to happen, she had always been prepared for it – she had always been fearless at the thought of death, but she would at least never surrender. Fight until the last moment, she would never beg, she would never desert her beliefs, never betray her loyalties and her country, but with her teeth always bared, and a mocking laugh, she embraced her complete weariness, but her knuckles whitened as her hand pressed tightly around the gun, the other one dipping into the ground and filling her fist with sand –
A shot pierced the silence.
“Sie nehmen meinen Feldwebel mit Ihnen, Feigling nicht,” a familiar voice was heard, and Dirk turned her head around, but she had no more strength, and allowed her body to fall on the ground noisily, burning in fever, drenched in blood, her mind dominated mercilessly by hallucinations and endless voices coming from somewhere she did not know. The German Corporal kicked the other man’s dead body aside with a hateful glare, and rushed towards her. “Wir suchten nach Ihnen seit den letzten dreißig Minuten,” he told her, as he rolled her aside and quickly examined her condition. He threw his bag on the ground, and pulled a flask from it. “Sorgen Sie sich Feldwebel nicht, ich werde Sie zur Basis zurücknehmen, und Sie werden so gut wie neu sein. Hier...” he said, and helped her drink from the flask, holding her head from his right palm while leaning the rim towards her lips, reviving her. Then, after he pulled a piece of clothing tightly around the wound in her leg and made certain the bleeding had stopped, he pulled her up and threw her on his strong shoulders, taking both back to the base. Her eyes flickered once more, and then she went unconscious.
Translation
You’re not taking my Feldwebel with you, coward.
We were looking for you for the past thirty minutes. Don’t worry, Feldwebel, I’ll take you back to the base and you’ll be as good as new. Here ...
-JT
Account E-Mail: Same e-mail as the other accounts belonging to Mariaaah
Name: Dirk Riedel (Friederike Wolterman)
Nationality: German
What Army Will Your Character Serve Beneath? Wehrmacht
Character History:
Berthold and Lara Wolterman belonged to the lower classes of German society in the suburbs of Hannover, having united their underprivileged families in what seemed to have been a marriage of blessed poverty and unnecessary decency. Berthold was a blacksmith and Lara worked in a bomb factory, working ridiculous hours for ridiculous incomes; they did not, however, believe that work was a humiliating factor and chose to ignore the higher circles of German elite whenever they would come to Hannover for weekend trips and arrogantly sneer at these ‘plebeians’. Their unwavering belief of the decency in one’s work was with such strength of mind and perseverance of character established among the Wolterman family that to have a child submitting to the sirens of slothfulness and debauchery was, indeed, a condemnable fact. Lara’s first labour as early as 1910 was a stillborn son; it was an experience whose sharpness she never quite managed to soften throughout the years, for despite her often harshness of conduct and tough exterior, she had a sensitive woman’s heart that always strived to face hardship through decency, self-respect and strength of mind, something she would teach her children later on.
Friederike was born in the waking hours of 31st January in 1915, at 04:42 in the morning, quite unexpectedly, as Lara and her husband had gone to the forest in search of Dryopteris, for it was said the plant was able to cure the pregnancy pains from which she suffered on a daily basis; unable to get some sleep, Lara woke her husband, feeling ill and feverish – amidst dream and reality, between life and limbo, she had lived through a most strange dream, a hallucination perhaps from the high fever: her husband had sealed up her womb with a seal engraved with a lion. Berthold absolutely refused that Lara should accompany him, but the fierce woman scoffed his fears away, supporting how she was merely on her seventh month, that she was too impatient, tense and hyperactive to stay home, and that she did not want him to go to the woods alone at such an hour. Berthold was aware of her obstinacy, and yet was only persuaded when she assured him the pain had began to fade away, and she was perfectly able to walk, even run if she felt like it; it was, of course, a blatant lie, but Lara loved her husband too much to leave him by himself.
By the time they had travelled through the dense forest, and with Berthold becoming progressively more anxious over not finding the therapeutic plant anywhere, the large pains seized all of Lara’s body, and she fell hard on the ground; the throbbing grew to be insufferable, as she was screaming in pain and gnashing her teeth, tearing at her skin and growling in pain, her legs and arms spread-eagled, soaked in sweat and blood, in unbearable agony, feeling her guts ripped out. Berthold had rushed to her side, spoke to her words of courage and might, grabbed her hands and gave her strength despite the fact his own hands were trembling, just as his heart, dreading he might lose both Lara and his child, and without any human presence within close proximity, he helped her in every possible way he could. With a last shriek of horror that pierced the night, the child was born, not without the greatest toil and trouble, amidst distant wolf cries from the hills. Berthold took the child, turned it upside down and gently slapped it on its back for the first breath to come – by the time the slightest cry was heard, drowned in the howling, he realized his wife had fallen unconscious, having lost a dangerous amount of blood. Not knowing what to do, he wrapped the baby around his thick winter coat, making sure it was well protected from the coldness, and considered taking both back home, which was a quarter of an hour’s journey as they had, gratefully, not had the time to walk through the depths of forest when the labour pain had began – but then the local hunter found him, having come out during the early hours of the morning on his usual walk around the region in search of dead animals and carcasses, and led him to his home. There, Lara and the baby were both taken care of by the hunter’s wife, a wise old woman; despite her loving care, however, Lara did not wake up for the next hours, and once she did, she truly felt the excruciating pain in her southern region – and wished she was dead.
Considering how easy it was for women to die in or after labour those times, even in the comfort of their homes, so much more in the forest, Berthold grew restless over his wife’s deteriorating condition; the hunter, however, easily cast his fears away with a knowing laugh, stating how his own wife, who was treating Lara daily with herbs and ailments, had given birth six times in horrible circumstances, and was still his lovely iron woman! Due to the severe conditions she had given birth to, the next few weeks found Lara often going unconscious with a scorching fever that seemed never to abandon her. Berthold, in his attempt to cheer her up and reduce her agony, often teased her on how indigenous religion forbade Katang women from giving birth in the house, instead demanding a delivery in the forest. He believed that would lift her mood, and though Lara appreciated his efforts, she needed time to heal the wounds, often thinking she was going to die, often wishing she were dead, at which Berthold lost his temper and reprimanded her, for he knew what a strong woman she was and how she could survive through the hardest of circumstances, proceeding to remind her in a particularly sharp tone of every unfortunate situation they had lived through ever since they had been married, and ascertaining how the labour had in fact not been the hardest, which was a blatant lie, but a necessary one.
Though a long time passed before she was able to walk on her feet, Lara survived through the shock of that labour eventually, and believed since she had been through such an earth-shattering, to her, experience, that there was nothing else to be afraid of, unless it naturally involved the well-being of her children. Due to the great toil of her labour, she became rather bonded with her daughter, whom Berthold affectionately referred to as ‘his little man’, due to having survived through the harsh conditions in which she had been brought into this world. Friederike, the feminine version of a name belonging to emperors and rulers, a name meaning a peaceful ruler and associated to power, turned out to be, indeed, a strong and relentless mind, a wild nature, a spirited heart and an untamed soul, obstinate, fierce, loyal and protective. Berthold absolutely loved his daughter, and the relationship he established with her was a unique one between a father and daughter. Her mother was often harsh with her in an attempt to teach her about obedience and prevent her from becoming a meek, silly girl – the latter she need not have worried about, for Friederike proved to be anything but that, but as far as the former was concerned, Lara never managed to tame her daughter’s wild spirit.
The woman was disappointed by the fact her daughter was not feminine enough, not in the sense that she should be a weak creature of the time succumbing to men’s power, but in the sense she should not forward such masculine authority as Friederike was often prone to do. Lara believed a woman should create a family, have children, and live decently, and seeing her daughter disinterested in what were generally considered ‘womanly issues’, such as family, children, dolls, dresses and female friends made her grow apprehensive over her daughter’s future. If she were not feminine enough, no man would wish to marry her, and then the thought of her only daughter ending up an old spinster, laughed and mocked at by society, was dreadful to her. On the other hand, Lara was pleased to realize Friederike’s strength of character, and often cherished having such a hard-working daughter, and when other women commented on their own daughters and their ‘girly’ manners, Lara would secretly smile sadly at them. The fact was, a woman like Lara Wolterman did not often show extreme affection to her daughter, not wishing to spoil her, but instead brought her up with strictness and sharpness of conduct, always with the best interests at heart. When Friederike would be asleep, Lara would secretly enter her bedroom and kiss her on the forehead; only the dog, sleeping in Friederike’s feet, was a witness of such a sign of fondness.
Five years later, in 1920, the first son was born, Julian, while the family had been to a trip in Magdeburg. Though at first Friederike considered him, always in sisterly affection, a bit of a retard, he proved to have a sensitive soul, a love for the arts (and literature in particular) and delicate, soft features as would warrant the description of being a ‘pretty boy’ rather than a handsome man, even as he was to grow older. Friederike was the blatant opposite of him; she was a logical creature, practical, able to solve problems with the use of her mind rather than the heart, always down to earth, no-nonsense, realistic and sensible; she wasn’t terribly fond of the arts, and instead preferred more masculine pastimes, over which her mother would lament to her father about. Berthold, however, would laugh warmly at his daughter’s tomboy nature and praise her for not being like all the other girls; he loved her dearly, and accepted her for who she was, and Friederike adored him, for he was loving, compassionate, and perhaps, if such a thing can indeed be said, perhaps she loved him just a little more than her mother. He hated shouting at her, and when he did, it was only because his wife insisted so; of course, Lara, had absolutely no problem in shouting at Friederike, it was almost a daily ritual within the Wolterman house, but the girl did not care. She held her tongue, shared a covert but meaningful glance with her father, whose eyes were smiling at her, and then went away with a secret smile shared with her father to do her homework, or fix her bicycle. Lara’s sharp tongue and practical skills were often reflected on Friederike, but the girl had a stronger and independent mind.
Lara was disappointed at her son’s lack of masculine authority, and wondered what on earth would become of him once he grew up and had to face true hardship; he was obviously too gentle to occupy himself with farming, carpentry or factory work, and the prospect of making a living out of writing was simply ridiculous; he would waste away his years, torturing his mind, receiving two Reichsmarks on his books, and live his life as an impoverished nobody. Then, a hundred and fifty years later, some other impoverished nobody would skim through some torn apart, yellowed pages of literature and discover the works of some Julian Wolterman, proceeding to publicize them; if Julian were lucky enough, he would be nationally acknowledged as a gifted man of the arts. At best, there would be more admirers visiting his grave with flowers, at worst he would have the grave filled with rude graffiti’s, and because neither outcome seemed alluring enough to Lara, she wished to make very clear to him he ought to keep his mind not in the clouds but down to earth, just like his sister. In times like these she did appreciate Friederike’s example.
Lara had many reasons to bring up a fight with her daughter. At the age of fifteen, the Headmistress of the college Friederike was attending called her parents to her office, and with disgust in her voice narrated the events which led to the girl punching in the face her female classmate twice that rainy day, a fight which ended with both students rolling around in the muddy-brown ground of the school’s courtyard, with Friederike having naturally dominated the struggle with comparative advantage. Lara had been utterly shocked to see her daughter’s face and clothes washed in mud and covered with stains of blood here and there, while Berthold remained silent. Once explanations were given, during which Friederike stood outside the office on the corridor chair, Lara exited the room, gave her a look of sheer disgust and reprimand, and then walked away; her father stayed behind, looked at her closely for three seconds in a serious expression, to which she returned a somber gaze, but then, once the Headmistress had shut the door closed, he chuckled under his throat, and she smirked, as they walked together out of the school. The only reason she was not expelled from her school during that occurrence was because the teachers always commended on her aptitude of mathematics and sciences; however, she did receive her punishment accordingly, no leniency was to be offered in that respect, but she took it with a laugh. She had more important things to worry about.
The years of the Great Depression had crushed Germany’s economy which, having been built on foreign capital, proved vulnerable to the disastrous effects from the Stock Market Crash of 1929. The NSDAP party came on the surface in 1923, unemployment rates hit the country at 30% by 1932, American loans as forwarded with the Dawes Plan (1924) and the Young Plan (1929) to assist in the 1923 hyperinflation immediately ceased, and extremism having seized the political system. Germany was, as Gustav Stresemann had put it, “dancing on a volcano.” The difficult years had weighed down on her family as well, and Friederike had proposed to her mother assistance in the factory; Lara absolutely refused, but once Friederike did secretly follow her, dressed as a boy – not being allowed access to the factory, however, she roamed about town and from that occurrence she eventually ended up helping Hartmann with his work for four Reichsmarks per day; he had a form of garage and repaired trucks, a job which her mother met with some disconcert once more, but they had no other choice at any rate. Friederike learned, therefore, the hardship of earning a living quite early in life.
By the age of sixteen, her love for metal cars was obvious, and her father decided to teach her the arts of being a blacksmith and how to drive the family’s truck, much to her mother’s grumbling disconcert. Lara bought her for her seventeenth birthday a pretty dress, nothing expensive, and one which socialites of the elite circles would certainly laugh upon, and though Friederike appreciated her mother’s gesture, she really found it awkward wearing dresses, being mostly used to wearing trousers and getting them torn apart while climbing trees, chasing animals out in the forest, or helping her father with his work. She only had to wear the school’s uniform which was comprised of a white shirt, a black tie and a grey, knee-length skirt, and that was the only clothing she could be comfortable in. She promised her mother to wear it, but the dress began to grow dust inside her wardrobe for the next few months until, at the age of eighteen – the year when her father was diagnosed with the Alzheimer’s disease – she decided to wear something eye-pleasing when she went outdoors one warm May’s evening with a male friend of hers, Edmund. It was the first time she had agreed to go out with someone on such terms; she had had no female friends throughout her childhood and teen years, not being able to tolerate them and their silly female hearts, instead playing outdoors with a group of boys her mother often referred to disapprovingly as the ‘vagabonds’. The boys would call her ‘Dirk’ for short whenever they roamed about in the fields, and accepted her as an equal – a name which her mother also disapproved of. Friederike had, however, developed an interest for Edmund, and thought she would try to be more feminine for the first time in her life; but the evening turned out to be a spectacular fiasco. On the return home he told her he was interested in someone else, and in a painfully straightforward manner laughed at her for thinking he might like her, someone with such a masculine disposition as her; she became angry, threw a punch, he cowardly returned the warm gesture, and the fight continued for several minutes afterwards, ending with Edmund throwing a stream of invective at her, and Friederike swearing like a sailor at his endless stupidity.
As soon as she reached home, she run up the staircase angrily without greeting anyone, her parents looking worriedly at each other; once she reached the bedroom, she banged the door closed, tore the dress apart with an angry growl, kicked things around, and wore her daily clothes, trousers and shirt. She exited the room in the same aggressive manner and went downstairs. Grabbing the keys from inside the drawer, she quickly left the house, as her mother’s eyes widened and turned to Berthold for an explanation before she realized what her daughter was about to do. She screamed, and rushed after her (while Berthold remained in his place silently, knowing once his daughter got going, nothing could stop her), but Friederike had already started the engine; no matter how much Lara had barked after her daughter to come back right that instant, Friederike drove the truck across the dark fields that night, with progressively dangerous acceleration. It was the only time she had felt the need to cry, and that she did; with her eyes fiercely looking at the plains before her with a passionate glare, and her hands tightly holding the steering wheel to the point where her knuckles whitened, and her foot determinedly glued to the gas pedal, as the wheels stormed across the dark roads with the wind slapping her face from the purposefully open window, she swore inside her head at everyone and everything. The norms, society, stupid men, stupid women, brainlessness. She felt the pressure too high, and she was not certain, strong though she may be, whether she could go through that this time; being in the middle between a man and a woman, laughed at for being different, for being strong-headed, rejected always for not fulfilling the criteria of who and what she was expected to be, and that combined with her father’s growing illness, it was perhaps too much for this young soul to bear. Though she easily scoffed away anyone who did not like her ways, years of doing so had finally culminated to this point, when she no longer wanted to associate herself with people, when she no longer cared to show she did not care; when she simply wanted her family to be spared off the troubles that always found them, being poor and underprivileged. She was sick of all the prejudice, the scorn from the upper classes, sick of life always throwing evils down their threshold.
She drove manically, venting out all her anger, through the wide plains and inside the dense woods, drove for hours, not knowing what else to do, how else to react, drove until the bitter tears had dried on her face, drove until a wild scream escaped her throat, and she determinedly trashed the truck, and for a moment wished to trash herself as well. The next days found her in her bedroom, her wounds being taken care of by her mother (who had decided barking her shock and anger at her was best suitable for another time, although she did shout at first, she could not go against her nature), while her father had grown absolutely worried about her; he never blamed her for having trashed the family’s truck, although Lara cold not help but be reproaching every now and then. When he entered the bedroom, he sat by her, stroked her forehead and looked at her fondly; she allowed herself to cry in his chest, holding him firmly, letting out all her frustration and fears. He always had this magical ability to spare her of everything troubling her mind within the second, with courageous words and a warm embrace, and everything was all right again. She did not want to lose this.
But she lost it. At the age of nineteen she was encouraged by her mother to live with her aunt, Regine, and her family in Ansbach to work in a bomb factory; she stayed with them for around two years, returning to see her family during summers or Christmas, and bitterly discovering her father’s condition was deteriorating; he had stopped working, being completely incapacitated, and Lara had needed to find another job, while also sending Julian to work as an assistance to a local carpenter (which did not go very well …) Friederike worked hard, however, and earned a living that way. By the time she reached twenty-two years of age, her father could hardly recognize her, often asking his wife (whom he also often forgot, but whose daily presence served to remind him of her identity) who this strange female was; that broke Friederike’s heart, and for the next years she had to live with that burden weighing down on her soul. To have someone so dear to her not even remember her, not even recall her face, it was insufferable – it was ridiculous! And so she decided to run away, return to Ansbach, and swallow her worries and anguish with alcohol, cigarettes, and a ridiculous amount of work, often not sleeping for days, ending up with black circles underneath her bloodshot eyes, and though tired she may be, it at least served to push her pain in the corner of her mind. And then she regretted it, and returned back home, determined never to leave him alone, determined she would walk that painful road to torpor with him, for she would never let him walk it alone.
There was no cure for that disease, but her presence did not serve to cure him, either. Day by day she watched him deteriorate. “Who is it?” he would gently ask whenever she would knock on his bedroom door to bring him his supper. He had always been such a kind, warm-hearted, amiable man. And she would always respond in a monotone, with her heart wounded, her eyes bloody and her face dark and hardened, “It’s no one, Papa. It’s no one.” And she would close the door quietly, and rest her body against the wall, slowly allowing herself to fall downwards, hiding her face in her hands and breathing with difficulty, the headache throbbing inside her mind. The only one who could have caused her to behave in such a sensitive way had been Berthold. But one day, when a flash of remembrance went through his head like lightning, he went to his workshop and attempted to be useful in any way, hating to see his family (whenever he remembered) suffer; being useless, however, resulted to an accident, as an iron grill pierced through his liver and he was immediately led in the house by Lara and Friederike. With no money to call a doctor, a local neighbour with medical knowledge came by, briefly examined him and offered them some medicine to ease the pain, but there was no chance. When Friederike approached his bed that cold night, and stroked his forehead tenderly, just as he had always done with her, just as he had always drove her troubles away, she sat by him, and kissed him lovingly on his forehead, and stayed with him until the end. And she could have sworn that when those kind eyes looked at her for the last time, she saw through those black irises, and understood that for that final second he knew. He knew who she was.
Over-protective by nature, she would never allow anything to happen to her brother and from that period in time onwards, she became even fiercer than she was before; though they had been constantly fighting as children, and she was always shouting at him, she had been the one to protect him from all the bullies as he returned home, the one to have punched any smart-arse who wished to make a fool out of Julian, who always let him slip inside her bed whenever he had a bad dream, stroke his hair and rid him of his fears, holding him tightly and assuring him she would never allow anything to happen to him, getting him off the hook in every circumstance, often lying to her mother whenever he ruined something or did something the wrong way, instead receiving the punishment and shouting herself. Their bond was quite strong, and though she was angry whenever his head was up in the clouds, she admired his free-spirited soul, his romantic heart and fragile ways, for she had none of these. When the Fatherland called all men for inscription, she grew immensely worried, for he was completely unsuitable for the army. That combined with a desire to join the military made her walk to his bedroom one night in early 1939, and characteristically tell him in a low tone, “I have a plan.”
She did not tell her mother of the plan; no one was to know but the two of them. Lara would assume her poor son was sent to the military, and her daughter had vanished off in search of a job that was closest to her masculine needs. Indeed, Friederike could not be useful in any other way; she was not feminine, she could not go out in society and pretend to be a damsel in distress, she could not get married and settle down, that did not interest her whatsoever – her untamed soul craved for something she had not yet experienced. For many weeks her mind was racing, and she crafted a plan on how to best protect Julian while replace him with herself, instead. She was never going to allow him the dangers of fighting in a war, knowing he was as suitable of being a soldier as a one-legged hunting tortoise of hunting down a fox. She created a new name for herself, and from that point onwards Friederike Wolterman, for all anyone cared, was dead. Dirk Riedel, a muscled, strong and tall young man in his mid twenties freshly appeared officially in documents, having employed a contact (her fierce and determination made her care not of the decency of befriending such people, if it served to accomplish her needs; the end satisfied the means, most certainly in this case) in providing her with paperwork that verified this person’s existence – a person of unquestionable ethics belonging in the bureaucratic circles of the government, who was to be later on executed by the Nazis on dim reasons that were never quite specified or publicized. She told Julian to appear in the health inspection (and the rest of the examinations) with these documents; he barely passed them, of course, what with his meek and weak body, but his admission in the army was a given fact, and an unquestionable one at that. With the documents officially signed and everything in order, she found him a non-return ticket in some village near Wolfsburg. No one would notice the difference at this early stage, not to mention how Julian had made no friend during such inspections, his mind thinking over Schiller quotes than attempting to befriend fellow men. Dirk appeared in the army amongst the hundreds of other German soldiers, ready to fight for the Fatherland, fight for her home, for her people, for her father, for everything she loved, and finally find her place in the world. A world of men.
Military Rank: Oberfeldwebel
Writing Sample:
Water … water.
Her lips were dry, her eyes were bloodshot, and she felt something moist running down her face, which for a moment gave her life, but then she realized it was only the taste of mud. Her eyes flickered, she blinked; she opened them, and looked around her. Desert. Her neck was hurting, she could feel the blood trickling down her fingers, and breathed heavily, motionless, She coughed unexpectedly, and turned over, feeling a pain in her shoulder as though a bullet had hit her, but instead she found a sharp metallic tag having somehow found its way through her flesh, droplets of blood staining her gray-green uniform across her arm. She swore inside her mind, but then she was too tired to speak, too thirsty to waste her saliva on useless words that were not going to be heard by anyone, her forehead aflame with fever, her neck hurting, and her gun filled with sand. And it was just … so … hot. The sun was laughing at her from above, as sweat was trickling down from her face to her neck, jesting with her, mocking her, challenging her to show some masculine authority, resilience if she dared, openly judging her lest she should show female weakness.
But she would not. She had come a long way just to be jested in such a ridiculous manner, years and years of fighting in this war, earning wounds, and with each wound earning trust; she had walked too far and faced many dangers to simply give up now; she stood up with a growl, coughed some more, and looked around her slowly, with the observation rate of someone who has just been hit on the head with a bat. She smacked her forehead with the edge of her palm in an attempt to unblock her mind, but no matter how hard she tried she simply could not tell where she was. All she was thinking was, water. She could feel the dried rim of her tongue glued to her teeth, and closed her eyes, as she fell back on the sand with a loud thud, her right hand holding the MP40 tightly, while her left one circled around her neck, feeling her throat dehydrated, and the rest of her body numb from the pain and the heat. There was silence. She slowly rolled around, coughing out sand, and with difficulty crawled alongside the hot sand, trying like a reptile to move her body and reach the small hill of sand behind which, she knew, around one kilometre to the West, lay the German frontlines. Her mind was racing, and yet she was so thirsty, it was impossible to concentrate on the frontlines too long without feeling the ultimate need to drink something, anything. She desperately started digging the sand with her fingers, feverishly, her mouth half-open, half-closed, her eyes widening with false anticipation, sand slipping through her nails, but there was nothing to be found there. An animalistic sound escaped her hoarse throat, and her head felt heavy.
At that time she heard a gun being cocked, and she stood motionless, unable to think, unable to act, wounded, bloody, with her right foot limp and shot, and sweating profusely. She did not turn her head around; she did not even understand the words spoken, but the foreign language let her know her minutes were bleak and numbered. All the road she had walked so far, laden with thorns and pricks, had been for nothing, then – but had life ever been fair to anyone? This was war, she knew something like this was going to happen, she had always been prepared for it – she had always been fearless at the thought of death, but she would at least never surrender. Fight until the last moment, she would never beg, she would never desert her beliefs, never betray her loyalties and her country, but with her teeth always bared, and a mocking laugh, she embraced her complete weariness, but her knuckles whitened as her hand pressed tightly around the gun, the other one dipping into the ground and filling her fist with sand –
A shot pierced the silence.
“Sie nehmen meinen Feldwebel mit Ihnen, Feigling nicht,” a familiar voice was heard, and Dirk turned her head around, but she had no more strength, and allowed her body to fall on the ground noisily, burning in fever, drenched in blood, her mind dominated mercilessly by hallucinations and endless voices coming from somewhere she did not know. The German Corporal kicked the other man’s dead body aside with a hateful glare, and rushed towards her. “Wir suchten nach Ihnen seit den letzten dreißig Minuten,” he told her, as he rolled her aside and quickly examined her condition. He threw his bag on the ground, and pulled a flask from it. “Sorgen Sie sich Feldwebel nicht, ich werde Sie zur Basis zurücknehmen, und Sie werden so gut wie neu sein. Hier...” he said, and helped her drink from the flask, holding her head from his right palm while leaning the rim towards her lips, reviving her. Then, after he pulled a piece of clothing tightly around the wound in her leg and made certain the bleeding had stopped, he pulled her up and threw her on his strong shoulders, taking both back to the base. Her eyes flickered once more, and then she went unconscious.
Translation
You’re not taking my Feldwebel with you, coward.
We were looking for you for the past thirty minutes. Don’t worry, Feldwebel, I’ll take you back to the base and you’ll be as good as new. Here ...
