ABSTRACT

Has my life so far been a journey into sociology? It has probably been more of a journey into social problems with sociology appearing later as a way of finding answers. And what kind of social problems were those? Many different kinds, but they often had a view on the United States of America from a European perspective as the organizing principle. I am German, and to be German was extremely dangerous when I was young. When allied aircraft deposited their loads of carpet bombing over the city of Hamburg in July of 1943, they could have killed me as they did the other twelve women, children, grandmothers, and aging men who sat in the same cellar with my mother and me. The others died; my mother and I were dug up—strange coincidence? An early lesson in social problems? Why do these aircraft pilots want to kill me? Later, in 1981, I met Ken, a warrant officer in the U.S. Air Force. He had been ordered to bomb German cities in World War II, then was shot down, parachuted to safety, was made a prisoner of war in Germany in the forties, and became a friend of mine in the eighties. He died of cardiac arrest while exercising on his bicycle in the outdoors—one of those Americans brought up to be very strict with themselves?