Club members have common bond: Germany

By Jo Anne Efird, Lifestyles Editor

Sunday, April 27, 2008 April 28, 2008 11:37 am

— They meet once a month at the Stanly County Senior Center, but they are not a center-sponsored group.
However, some of them do participate in other projects at the center and the center agreed to provide them a meeting place.
As a club, they have no agenda, no programs, no projects.
They just talk.
But hearing them quickly reveals the purpose of the club, or at least its focus.
They speak German.
They include German women and/or men who married Americans, German men and women who have moved here, possibly those who spent time in Germany and became fluent in the language, anyone who wishes to preserve the German language locally and speak with others in their native, or adopted, tongue.
Olga Throneburg, who is president, said they call themselves Stammtisch, which she says in German literally means “board on a stump,” bringing to mind a group gathered around an improvised table to talk about everything and nothing, whatever comes to mind.
They share German newspapers and magazines and stories about events in their native land, both recent and from their childhood.
They share the camaraderie of those who settled and became citizens of a land far from home and want to keep alive a little part of the heritage they left behind.
They reminisce and talk about old times. They discuss the amount of rebuilding in today’s Germany.
Hanna Smith and husband, Bill, moved here from Virginia Beach. There are German neighborhoods there.
They didn’t know anybody here.
Smith said her most memorable experience was when the Berlin Wall came down.
“East Germany was 20 years behind the West,” she said.
Berlin became the capital of Germany when it was reunited and in 1999 the German Parliament met for the first time.
Smith said East and West Germany are completely different.
“Where I grew up the border wasn’t very far away.” she said.
There is a lot of foot traffic, bridges, street cars, she said.
The club started out with eight or nine members; now more than four is a good meeting, according to Throneburg. There are usually three or four at a meeting. The day The SNAP visited, there were only three, Smith, Throneburg and Ray Schweiber.
“We are really Americans,” Throneburg said.
“We came to this country and this is our home now. I have been in America since 1955 and enjoy life here.”
When she came here her husband told her, “When you want to go home and we have the money you always can go home.”
The club has been meeting two years and would welcome others to join them.
They are always looking for new people to join.
Anyone who is German, who has spent time in Germany and wants to speak German “just come.”
“We would love to have more members,” Smith said.
Stammtisch meets the fourth Wednesday of each month at 3 p.m. at the Senior Center.

Contact Jo Anne Efird at (704) 982-2121 ext. 20.

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