Hermann Sehr

* 1938

  • "One must realize that Germany lost the war. The settlement of Boden had only ten houses, of which five farmers fled to Bavaria immediately after the war - they were afraid that they might be sent to work inland. My mother received one empty house as a replacement. There were suddenly three Czech farmers in the village, who took over the courts from the Germans, three local farmers and we, the children. I remember that there were about five or six of us together. Half Czechs, half Germans. The village was one big playground for us. Empty houses, we played there as children. We were curious what was happening where, so we went through the village like dogs. The bad thing was that the German farmers, who were afraid they would have to work inland, just left their animals and cattle there. My mother then listened to the cows roaring because no one had milked them. I remember that once she came with two big buckets full of milk, we had had enough. We couldn't even drink it anymore, we just licked the cream on top."

  • "It was something completely new, as you can imagine. I liked it there, even though most of them didn't want to join the army. I was learning music, I could just study music sideways, I had time for it and they still supported me. And we had beautiful performances with the orchestra, which I can still talk about today. I also had good colleagues. We were musicians, not militarists. "

  • "Conversations with the elderly were very interesting. My old violin masters were travelling in the world. They went through it all, they were making instruments or repairing them from Budapest through Vienna to Heligoland. Their horizon was different. You like to talk to people like that. They were able to recognize what was good and what was bad. They knew people. One could talk to them about anything, they were no fanatics. You could also talk to these people about what is beautiful and what is not beautiful. This was a big topic for us, the instrument makers. As a violinist you know it. When someone made a snail, it had to be beautiful. He could also mill it himself, the machine may do everything more accurately, but the hand will make it more beautiful. When someone painted a picture, you could say it's beautiful, it's not beautiful. Today, everything is beautiful in an abstract way. When we talked about music before, it was beautiful. It must have made sense to us."

  • "We looked at our former home across the border. Boden was only five hundred meters from the border. In 1950, the houses were still standing, even though they were all empty. The Czechs, who then took over the farmstead, moved inland again. The whole village was empty, only pigeons circled between the buildings. Later, they also went wild. So, I could compare how they became wild pigeons again. But I thought my life was there. In the spring, when the cherries bloomed, it was clear that there used to be a village where people lived. Where I used to live, but where I can no longer go. These are thoughts that come to my mind very often, they keep coming back.”

  • "I, a little boy from a Czech village, saw the whole world. I don't want to start counting all my journeys now, but as a military musician, I've really seen the whole world. And I'm proud of that."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Rehau, 13.09.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 01:31:02
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the expelled Germans born in the Karlovy Vary region
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

A Cheb musician by heart and soul

Hermann Sehr
Hermann Sehr
zdroj: Post Bellum

Hermann Sehr was born on June 8, 1938 in Bernartice in the Tachov region in western Bohemia. However, his parents lived in the Cheb region, first in Altalbenreuth (Mýtina) and later in the former customs house in Boden. Hermann had younger brother. In 1941, their father died in the war and their mother Barbara was left alone with the boys. After the war, they had to move to the settlement of Boden. On August 8, 1946, the mother and sons decided to flee to Bavaria because she was afraid of being deported to the Soviet zone. Until 1952, the family lived in emergency housing in Neualbenreuth. From 1952 to 1955, Hermann Sehr studied in a violin workshop in Bubenreuth, led by violin masters displaced from Luby near Cheb. Here he also learned to play wind instruments, which paved the way for his career as an army musician in the Bundeswehr. For his services, he received numerous honors, including the Golden Cross of Honor of the German Army in 1992. He is married and now also a happy grandfather.