HUMMEL-HUMMEL / Júlia Sarlós
Our mother’s cherished souvenir was a 7.5 cm tall metal statue called “Hummel”, the symbol of a German city, Hamburg.
The water-pipe system was introduced in Hamburg only after 1848. Before, water-carriers provided the city with water. One of them, Benz, happened to move into the flat of a deceased soldier, called Daniel Christian Hummel. The kids in the neighbourhood used to like the soldier very much, because he had told them stories. However, they were not very fond of the water carrier, so they mocked him and called him names, and these insults still survive among the people of Hamburg. Due to them, the water carrier’s figure has become the symbol of Hamburg.
My maternal grandparents came from a Jewish family background but did not lead a religious life. After the breakdown of the Hungarian Soviet Republic they fled from Hungary to escape the White Terror.
After wandering through Timișoara, Vienna, and Berlin, they finally settled down in Hamburg, where my grandfather founded a company, merchandising chemicals. My mother was already born there. After Hitler gained power, they had to flee again; they returned to Hungary. Our ten-year-old mother and her elder brothers did not speak Hungarian. Our mother did not understand the whole story, and she suffered from this migration until the end of her life.
When she could travel to Hamburg for the first time as an adult, she bought this little statue of the water-carrier. Placed next to her bed, it kept reminding her of her happy childhood. At her burial, my elder brother put the sculpture into the columbarium, and bought the “replacement statue”, which is now on display.
