I was born in 1949 near Brunswick and moved several times because of love – as you would call it. Although I have been happily divorced twice I kept the name of my second and hopefully last husband, as nobody is able to pronounce my birth name not to speak of writing it.
My childhood wasn’t rosy at all. My father was addicted to drugs and alcohol and always stalked me. My grandfather as well was never averse to please me down there. From time to time I was also lent to strangers. Therefore my family was rewarded by a new carpet, a coffee set or other useful things. Only when I didn’t fit into the dating rules of these gentlemen anymore, I had my peace.
After my secondary school leaving certificate I started an apprenticeship for insurance sales woman, but that didn’t make me really happy; I was permanently stalked there as well. After that I did an education for child care worker to spare other children a similar fate as I had had to suffer. However I had to realize soon that a woman who uncovers child abuse is not very popular. I was cautioned more than once for that reason. Frustrated about my failure I opened a natural foods store and had to realize again that the highly praised natural nutrition is not able to accomplish anything against child abusers.
After my painful second divorce I allowed myself a wonderful vacation in Switzerland. There I seemed to make a very lonely impression on one of the hotel staff. Just to dispel my boredom she called my attention to an old lady I in fact met later.
Renata Komanetschy told me the whole story of her life and on the second day I started to take notes to remember everything of it.
As I have always been an avid reader I took the chance and visited the book fair in Basel. As I was already in Switzerland it would have been a sin not to take advantage of it. Brunswick was far away and I didn’t know whether I would come to Basel again at all.
At the stand of a famous publisher there was a man talking about transsexuality. I was interested and kept standing there. He informed the many spectators without any taboo. After he had finished he was surrounded. Many people had him give an autograph into his newest book ‘The true dream of freedom’ or they asked him questions. Without really realizing it I had stood in line as well and suddenly stood face to face before him. What should I say now?
Hans Georg van Herste looked at me in a friendly and questioning way. After I had beat around the bush for a few moments I told him about Renata Komanetschy. He listened and asked me questions; the bottom line is that he encouraged me to make a book out of it. Me and a book? Reading yes, writing much too silly.
Well, someday I sat down and wrote and wrote. I sent him my scribbling not hoping to be taken. But it turned out differently. ‘Renata Komanetschy – my colorful life’ was not only printed but also often sold
From this moment on the spell was broken and I was listening here and there to hear more stories. The story of a woman from a god-fearing family who was more or less married off and has to fight against her very strange parents in-law and finally finds her great happiness moved me as well as the story of the poor girl waking up at the beach not knowing what had happened to her and later founds a hotel dynasty or the young woman who after a stroke turns her life upside down and with much energy and diligence mutates to a happy woman.
Well, thus the books ‚The changing point of my life‘, ‘My wide view onto the sea’ and ‘The sweet fall of life’ came into being. All books were able to climb the Top 100 at Amazon and even were staying there. I am very pleased that there are still readers interested in true stories.
The sweet Fall of Life
Michaela grows up near Bremen in a surrounding where domestic violence is daily fare. She is brought up to serve the men in the house. At the age of fifteen she has a young man plonked in front of her and is told this would be her future husband. Only a few months later her first daughter was born. Four more children follow in short intervals.
As she hadn’t learned it any better, she completely sacrifices herself to her family. She often feels overworked, but ignores each sign of exhaustion. After having taken one of her children to a party, she suffers from a stroke. Although hard-hit she quickly rises up again. Due to intensive talks to a nurse she starts to question her life so far.
Hardly released from the hospital, she turns her life inside out. She broke it to children and husband to pitch in the household. This leads to frictions but not to a change of her attitude.
During a vacancy in Spain she becomes witness of a phone call which will change her life basically. She understands that her husband is going to leave her. After singing the blues for some time she gets started with much energy and becomes an old people’s nurse. Now she earns her first own money and with some delay succeeds in becoming a happy woman near the small town of Rotenburg at the River Wuemme.
My Sweeping View onto the Sea
In the morning, while Gertrud is having breakfast in her cot, somebody suddenly knocks at the door. A blooding girl covered in scratches stands before her hut. Gertrud doesn’t think for long and takes the freezing young girl into her house.
Gertrud is very poor herself but brings through herself and her fosterling by sewing work and palm healing. Katharina learns much and helps in the garden.
Someday a hobby painter stands before her door and asks for a guest room. As there is nothing like that in the small house, they offer the visitor an old army tent. The visitor lives there for two weeks and pays well. This incident gives the two women the idea to professionally rent to vacation visitors. From a wooden hut built as a small vacation house soon become two and three.
The rush is so massive, that they build more and more huts and eventually even a hotel. Katharina rises from a poor beach girl to a hotel owner.
My Sweeping View onto the Sea is a thrilling life story written with much humor showing that everybody can manage not only to overcome his or her poverty, but prove prejudices wrong and become happy.