Reconstruction: The economic miracle in the early Federal Republic

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The “rich uncle from America” is as proverbial as it is unreal - almost always.

But for Katharina Rometsch and her children, this fantasy figure became reality in 1953: Johann Bruecker, her sister's older brother, emigrated to the USA in 1907, where he found considerable wealth with one of the world's first dry razors, the “Shavemaster” his niece.

The Danube Swabian who fled from Neu-Pasua near Belgrade ended up in Wels-Lichtenegg in Upper Austria with five children.

And right here, in the organized distress of the refugee camp, suddenly appeared “a tall, well-dressed American with a rather fat car,” remembers Katharina's son Hans in the documentary “We build up” by Jörg Müllner, which ZDF broadcast on April 1 December shows.

View over the Rhine in Cologne - and there are cranes on the Hohenzollern Bridge for the reconstruction

Source: ZDF and private recordings

With the help of the tracing service of the Red Cross, Bruecker found Katharina Rometsch and made sure that the six could come to Schönaich near Böblingen.

The family expected a kind of miracle: Johann Bruecker had houses built here for his relatives and other expellees.

He wanted to give those who had been badly hit by life a new home - through a foundation established at his own expense.

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For the first time, Müllner, who has already produced numerous impressive documentaries, is using a treasure for his film that was found more by chance in the Schönaich municipal archive: photo albums, slides and rolls of color film documenting Bruecker's work in the early 1950s.

But as true as Uncle Bruecker's fairy tale from America is, it was an exception.

For the vast majority of Germans lived in depressingly poor conditions in the first few years after the Second World War.

Almost all large cities and many other communities were in ruins.

Four million soldiers had died, and more than one and a half million more were still missing.

Almost 1.2 million civilians had lost their lives.

Dozens of millions of people were often completely impoverished.

Nevertheless, most Germans in the West went to great lengths to rebuild their own existence.

The people in the Soviet occupation zone were not allowed to do this - they had to submit to socialist ideology.

Central so-called planning took the place of private engagement, the consequences are well known.

The Mettenleiter family in 1948 shortly before the reopening of their café, which was completely destroyed in the war

Source: ZDF / private recordings

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What people are able to achieve who become active for themselves is shown by Müllner's extremely worthwhile documentation using various examples.

And always based on private films from the post-war period shown here for the first time, in a sense the prehistory of the economic miracle.

That is, for example, the Mettenleiter family of confectioners from Stuttgart.

Their café near the main train station was destroyed in 1944.

But father Johann Peter Mettenleiter is “busy”, that is, hardworking, and urges his relatives to do the same.

Just over a month before the currency reform in 1948, the family business was able to reopen in a new building that was mostly built by the owner.

The "Fürstenbad", a health resort in Bad Reichenhall

Source: ZDF / private recordings

Hildegard Mayer (left) and Maria Grünberger (right) brought the "Fürstenbad" back on track

Source: ZDF / private recordings

Or the Mayer family from the idyllic Bad Reichenhall, which was badly hit in a bomb attack on April 25, 1945.

Hilde Mayer ran the “Fürstenbad” spa facility - her brother, who was supposed to take over the family business, had died.

So the young woman, who was an avid amateur filmmaker and left more than 150 roles, seized the opportunity.

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Another woman helped her: Maria Grünberger.

She had been an employee in the “Fürstenbad” since 1919 and was loyal.

The two single women with sons of about the same age complemented each other and got the business going again.

Women entrepreneurs at a time when women were not yet allowed to open their own bank account without their husbands consent (if there was one) - that also existed in the post-war period.

Wilhelm and Marianne Emmerling in Madrid.

Despite his prosthetic leg, the two drove more than 7000 kilometers through Europe and to Morocco from 1951

Source: ZDF / private recordings

Just like the disabled - Wilhelm Emmerling, for example.

He had lost a leg in the war and did not return from a Soviet captivity until 1949.

At the beginning of the 1950s he bought a motorcycle with a sidecar for his wife Marianne and himself in order to travel through (Western) Europe to Morocco.

Always with him: his film camera.

And one task: He visits the families of comrades from captivity to tell them either that their relatives are still alive and that there is a chance of their return - or that the missing persons are dead.

In addition to the often fascinating private recordings, which are like a journey back in time to Germany in the mid-20th century, Müllner's 45-minute film also conveys how and, above all, why the previous crimes were suppressed in the course of the reconstruction.

As interview partners, the historian Ute Frevert and the social psychologist Harald Welzer explain the social processes that were probably the only alternative to bitter backwardness at the time.

Necessary for the reconstruction - and at the same time the reason why these years of contemporary history are still relevant and sometimes painful.

“We're building up”,

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