1 PM or Decoding a 120-Year Extraction
Einbeck, December 2025.
I’ve been sitting with it all day. Or rather, it has been sitting on me.
It started with a modern spark—a request for a resume to work as a cook. It seemed like a “nothing” task, but as I began to trace my path to the kitchen, I realized I wasn’t just writing a resume. I was performing an excavation. I was digging through layers of “proper” laundry and “yummy” dinners to find the 120-year-old transmission system that nearly erased me.
When I look at my journal, the words jump out like ghosts: Mangeln. Zockeln. The rhythmic, mechanical labor of the sewing machine. The budgeting. The “Hard Skills” of a household. And then it clicked: the housekeeping school. She had always praised it for her cookery skills.
Again, I started digging into my mother’s past.
I did the math. My mother, born in 1944. She was fourteen in ’58. Right at the dawn of the German “Economic Miracle.” I looked up the curriculum of the Hauswirtschaftsschule (Housekeeping School) from those years. They were called Bräuteschulen—Bride Schools. It wasn’t just about frosting cupcakes. I thought them to be more or less only about everything to do with the household. What I did not realize until yesterday — It was state-subsidized indoctrination.
The syllabus was a blueprint for the erasure of female agency. It was broken down into "Social Behavior and Etiquette," focusing on manners, proper conduct, and the art of hosting guests. It dictated table etiquette and, tellingly, "Communication within marriage and family." These lessons weren't just tips; they reflected the rigid expectations of women as social representatives of the family. Then there was the "Civics, Morals, and Life Guidance" section, which hammered home family roles and marital duties. It was a moral education shaped by Christian and conservative values, with only the occasional nod to basic civic education. The underlying message was a locked door: it reinforced traditional gender roles and social stability at any cost.
In North America, you talk about the “Stepford Wives,” in Germany, it was codified in the law. Until 1977, a husband could legally quit his wife’s job for her, without her consent, if he felt her “domestic duties” were suffering. Let that sink in. That was the law while I was playing in the dirt.
The Root — Wilhelminian Black Pedagogy
The term Black Pedagogy may sound like some obscure academic theory—but for me, it was the air I breathed.
I wrote about that air in this
It originated in the Wilhelminian era of the late 19th century—Germany’s equivalent to the Victorian age. Long before the World Wars, Kaiser Wilhelm II ruled an empire built on militarism, hierarchy, and discipline. He was, notably, a grandchild of Queen Victoria.
And this lineage of iron passed not just through bloodlines, yet through schools, families, and the bodies of children. It was a philosophy of child-rearing designed to produce the “hardened” German subject. Its core tenet? The child’s will is a weed to be pulled out by the root.
The “dragons” who taught my mother were the keepers of this 19th-century iron. At school, the teachers demanded order and total obedience. At home, it was her grandmother who took over the “formation” of the young ladies—because her own mother, a war widow, worked all day.
This generation was born between 1890 and 1925. Girls under the Kaiser, adolescents during Weimar’s instability, young adults under Nazi educational doctrine. They were not neutral teachers. They were survivors of an imperial and authoritarian system. Even after the Nazi slogans vanished, their bodies remembered the posture of authority.
This is the fault line: the curriculum changed, but the people didn’t. Discipline was transmitted as nervous reflex. Authority was embodied—absolute and morally justified. Discipline wore the mask of care. Hardness was seen as love. Emotional restraint was praised as strength. Shaming and moral humiliation weren’t experienced as violence—they were believed to be necessary formation.
I wrote about shame last year
The Drama of the Failing Student
This is the part that is a bit hard to convey. My mother wasn’t just a mom; she was my teacher and I didn’t know it at that time. For her I was a “renitent” student—defiant, stubborn. I was her living nightmare. I was a non-binary tomboy before we had the words. I refused the dresses at age three. I wanted the pirate ships, the cowboys, and the creative chaos.
Because she couldn’t “order” me, she felt she was failing the state, the church, and her own “Dragon” teachers. So she escalated. She turned into a “House Dragon” herself. She would take a blanket, bundle every single thing that was not stored away properly and in order —my toys, my books, my clothes, my soul—and throw the whole bundle out the second-story window onto the front lawn and sidewalk.
All the while screaming “I will teach you order!”
It was her “pedagogical duty” to break me. She saw herself as a total failure because I didn’t “Spur” (function). She lived in a permanent state of shame, and she projected that shame onto me until I believed I was the problem.
The Collision of the Estates
And my mother was only one half of the collapse. Then there was my partner, Connie.
Her mother was the daughter of a Gutsverwalter (Estate Administrator) in Vorpommern. She lost everything fleeing the Russians. She lost her status but kept the DNA of Entitlement. She was a “Gutsherrin” (Lady of the Manor) who couldn’t even cook. She was thrown into the post-war world and told to swim.
My partner grew up in that shadow. She became the “Oberärztin” (Lead Doctor) in Tanzania, managing 15,000 births a year in a post-colonial expat bubble where “White” people were served by an invisible staff.
When we met, the two lineages collapsed into me. My mother’s “White Slave” training met my partner’s “Colonial Entitlement.”
I became the “CEO-Foreman.” I worked 15-18 hours a day. I fixed the “messed-up” finances of “Doctors” who lived like royalty while I am now drowning in their debt. I was the “Scapegoat Hero”—the one who kept the “Gentry” afloat while being blamed for the very leaks I was plugging. Like I had learned during my formative years with my mother.
I logged 220,000 hours in 35 years. That is four lifetimes of extraction. My hourly rate? €5.05 net.
I see now that for 35 years, I was in a “School of inherited atonement”—a permanent loop of trying to “make up” for being a failure. I was the lightning rod. I was the scapegoat. If the family crashed, it was my fault. And because it was my fault, I had to be the one to fix it. I was trapped in a “reparation loop” that never ended. I also was the hero trying to keep every single system member in balance. Carrying everything they wouldn’t or couldn’t.
The tragedy?
My mother never apologized. She couldn’t. She lacked the sense of injustice (Unrechtsbewusstsein), because for her, all of it lived under the label “normal.” She died never forgiving me for being lesbian, for being non-binary, for “damaging the family reputation.” In her eyes, I was a defective product she couldn’t return to the factory. And yes—she carried her own trauma. She was taught a curriculum no one could fulfil. She saw herself as a failure from the start.
I think many of us grew up inside some version of this impossible social curriculum, written by men who only understand top-down hierarchy. It’s sold as “character education,” though at its core, it’s conditioned survival logic.
My grandmother? She was different. Maybe war carved that difference into her. She had lived through collapse. When I came out to her, she simply said, “Kindchen, I’ve known that for a long time.” She had escaped the Dragon infection. After you watch the world fall apart, “proper manners” lose their mythic power.
But my mother? She was infected. And I know—I have to be honest—I have acted like her at times. I have used the same entitlement my partner carried. I have used the same fixed hand. We embody the morals we are fed.
And my partner? She was as traumatized as I was. Two survivors dissolving into a codependent blur, boundaries erased. Her husband, an experienced doctor, misdiagnosed her three times at the end of her life—a professional failure no one questioned because of his status. That error ended her life, and it handed me my freedom.
The Final Audit
I am standing here now, looking at the shards of my old life.
I am paying back the final €90,000 (approx $106,000) of debt by selling my share of the inherited family real estate to my brother. For the first time since I was eighteen—since the day my father died—I will be debt-free. It is a radical, painful cut.
I’m liquidating the factory.
I am finally returning the behavior to history, not to myself. My mother didn’t invent her cruelty; she inherited it. She formed me, yes—and she nearly succeeded. My self was in exile for 47 years. My body and my psyche suffered for it, and now I have finally liberated myself.
I have stripped away her beliefs, her expectations, and her values. I am done with the conditioning, the “manners,” and the performance of “decency.”
I am the one who stops the transmission.
The 120-year-old curriculum has been shredded. The €90,000 is the final “Tax” on my exit. When the last bill is paid, the “CEO-Foreman” and the “Scapegoat-Hero” are walking off the estate forever.
And, what comes next?
Will it be scary? Oh, yes. I will tell where I am now in my next essay. The one word that looms over it: UNCERTAINTY.
Nothing is clear, everything unsettled. I have no idea where I’ll head, by which means of transport or if I might revert to living in my car, because it will give me independence and might to the most cost effective way to still have a roof over my head.
I don’t know.
Plans and ideas I have, if they will be feasible, I will see.
That’s why that dear friend, who had heard about a job offering for a cook, sent me her message. Honey, you did open a can of worms there ! Boah! And they have not been very tasty. Still I want to say “Thank You for everything”, because that can for sure nourished my psyche.
I spent 58 years following a manual I didn't know I was holding. Looking back at your own family tree—your parents, your grandparents, the schools they attended—can you see the 'Source Code' they tried to install in you?
What part of that curriculum are you still accidentally following today?
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For the Smooth glide Tomorrow, as the Germans purr it: Einen guten Rutsch. Monty recommends landing paws-first, with dignity, curiosity, and snacks nearby.
