Ms. and Mr. Breitenbach, we are facing the change to the year 2023.

What year did you meet?

Sarah Obertreis

Editor in the “Society & Style” department.

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Erika Breitenbach: That was in 1955.

Kurt Breitenbach: No, 1956. We've been together for over 65 years now.

I read in the local paper about your iron marriage that you were matched.

Kurt B: Yes.

Karin was with us in the cycling club.

Erika, she said, is blonde and loves blue.

That's how it used to be done.

Then she brought a picture and said: Today Erika is coming to dance too.

It was carnival with us in Fechenheim.

Were you in disguise?

Erika B.: Yes, as a strawberry (laughs).

You didn't have any money back then, so I sewed strawberries onto a blue skirt made of red fabric and put little green hats on it.

Kurt B.: I went as a trapper and picked them up at the Ulrich Bridge.

With coat and hat.

Erika B.: I saw him and thought: Karin, are you crazy?

He wasn't my type at the moment, not at all.

But Mr. Breitenbach looked good.

Erika B.: It was too small for me and in the coat it looked like a closet.

That wasn't for me.

Kurt B.: It was February, it was cold.

Erika B.: The Main was frozen that year, it was so cold.

But was she your type, Mr. Breitenbach?

Kurt B.: Yes, yes, yes!

And how did your first meeting go?

Kurt B.: In Fechenheim there was always a carousel for such things.

Then the ship swing brakes were there.

When they came, it didn't take long for fights to break out.

I never did that.

That's why we left early that day, and she said: I have to be home by eight o'clock.

The next day I rode my bike over from Frankfurt to Offenbach and then stood downstairs.

Erika B.: In front of the house.

My aunt was visiting there.

She said to my grandma: What's the matter with her?

She's so nervous today.

I could tell my grandmother everything, she already knew about Kurt.

Then my aunt said: You can't just leave it down there in the cold.

Then we picked him up and my grandmother and my aunt questioned him, they knew everything afterwards.

Kurt B.: And then we saw each other more often.

You were very determined, Herr Breitenbach, when you let Grandma question you the very next day.

Erika B.: Let's put it this way: He stayed on the ball.

He was also the first person I danced with in the dance class who didn't want to kiss me right away.

That impressed me somewhere.

That was probably the crucial point.

(laughs)

And a year later you got married.

Kurt B.: Yes, because we had to.

But not because we were expecting a child.

Erika B.: I grew up with my grandparents.

My grandfather had already died, only my grandmother was there and she became seriously ill.

At the hospital they told me that she might not make it.

And we agreed from the start: We're getting married.

Otherwise I would have had to go to a reformatory.

Because I was only 16, and at that time you were only of legal age at 21.

Kurt B.: I turned 21 on July 29 and we got married on August 3.

And how was your wedding reception?