My name is Viktoria Grantz and I have just retired. My restless life is over now. I decided to take things somewhat easier in future, as I have permanently been on the move for years.
My childhood went so-so, sometimes a deep hole and sometimes an incredible height as it is common with pubescent teenagers. After my A-levels I wanted to become a doctor, but I didn’t pass the admission exam, because in the evening before I had taken a cup too much. In those days it was common that the examinees came up prim and proper. Ragged clothes is it is common today were not well received.
As young woman can be incredibly flexible as you know, and so was I, I interviewed with a travel agency. They appointed me in fact and I did an education for travel agent. After that I studied travel law, languages and a few more things. Then I got the chance to accompany a tester of hotels. I liked this job that much that I took over her job when she retired. From that day on I travelled round the whole world to examine the cleanness of the rooms, the hospitality of the staff and the real star level for great touristic enterprises.
During these journeys by train, ship and plain I met incredibly many people of course. When I had been in Thailand for a few weeks, I noticed that many single travelling men stayed at different hotel categories. I was dumb and naive enough to ask the gentlemen, but didn’t get a satisfying answer. A lady hotel boss told me later the gentlemen would come to Thailand to grab ‘fresh vegetables’. I took some time until I realized what that meant.
When I realized the whole scope of this catastrophe, I decided to do something against it. Of course my means were limited. Here they played in the top league of making money and all sorts of people profited greatly. There was no use in talking to the police. There were also many officers holding up their hands and keeping silent. Thus, pretending to be an absolutely unaware tourist, I hang around in corners I would have avoided otherwise. Even today I sometimes I feel the great horror when I think of what would have happened to me, if they had caught me.
After I had researched for a while my pale of notes had increased considerably. What should I do with all this stuff? I tried to publish my knowledge in newspapers, but I miserably failed as not one of the papers was ready to print anything about it. After many trials I changed my tactics and offered my scriptures to publishing houses. But they didn’t want to burn their fingers with this topic either nor stake their reputation.
Only one who had been dealing with victims of sexual abuse long before I did, was interested and published my book. ‘The end of the hunter’ was well sold but also brought me harsh criticism. Even women ascribed me to talk down men and their likes. Hans Georg van Herste my discoverer, promoter and editor again and again psyched me up and encouraged me.
As I gradually developed an open ear, I wrote the books ‘In 80 years around Hoernde’ ‘They gave me a second life’, ‘The sold Countess’, ‘The princess of the lighthouse’ and ‘Vera the moor woman’. I was very much pleased about the mostly positive feedback. Even today I love to present women in the proper light who scarred by a difficult childhood made the breakthrough and developed to happy personalities by great effort.
For they bestowed me a second life
As to bend their daughter to their will, her parents provide her with alcohol already in her preschool days. Hardly sent to school she is hired out the first time. At the age of seventeen bodily and mentally degenerated to a wreck she encounters a rich woman who basically changes her life. A thorny way into a golden future begins.
My Father the Deacon
Viktoria Grantz meets a woman on the motorway service area and listens to her story.
A deacon, bursting with holiness, sexually abuses his daughters and systematically conditions them. The mother of the girls not only allows this behaviour, but supports her husband in order to leave her alone.
On top, the „holy man” not only abuses the daughters of his church colleagues but offers his own ones to other men. At “holy purification rituals” in a nearby small wood the men pretend to release the girls from original sin, while the mothers are watching after having drugged them.
A shocking story based on facts happening in the middle of Germany in the 60ies and 70ies.
The sold Countess
Frederike, the daughter of a not very wealthy count is already squeezed into a corset in her early childhood. She has to learn what a daughter of a “high rank” has to learn and is urged to practise gymnastics daily. Additionally she wears extraordinary dresses. However, she is not allowed to have a mind of her own. Her wishes, her dreams do not count at all.
All inconveniences and expenses only serve the purpose to get her advantageously married. Although she is not considered the most beautiful girl, her father finds her a husband. However it is no question of love, because he merely is after the title of nobility.
Frederike is locked in and exclusively serves the continuation of the family dynasty. She has to endure many humiliations. However, some day she awakes, abandons all her fears, frees herself and starts a wonderful life.
Vera, the Moor-Lady
Peat cutters lead a miserable life in the 1930ies. Hard work and low wages belong to their everyday life. In these surroundings in 1936 a woman painfully bears a child.
Vera early learns that it is no bed of roses to be a moor child. She already has to share work at the age of five. A few years later her father volunteers to the Wehrmacht and her mother dies in a hospital from an obstruction of the bowels which was identified too late.
Now she and her six years older brother have to survive on their own. They struggle through the years, have a child and by their being different soon attract the envy of the village people. This leads to their decision that they pack their things and move to be able to make their happy life still happier.
Victoria Grantz retold the true story of a moor inhabitant in a fascinating and humorous way. The author again succeeded to carry off the reader into a world unknown to many people.