Interview, Dec. 16, 2006

An Interview with Mathilde Apelt Schmidt, author of My Life on Two Continents (iUniverse, 2006). At the age of 85, Mathilde Schmidt has a lot of life to look back on: growing up in prewar Germany and life there during World War II; surviving bombings and becoming a prisoner of war; her dream, at last fulfilled, to go to university; and always the tug she felt to travel to America. As she writes in the first chapter of her book: “In 1928, when I was seven, we heard about plans to build a bridge across the Golden Gate strait in San Francisco and my father, who was very interested in everything that was happening in the United States, got a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge for my mother’s collection. This trinket became symbolic to me during my future life.”

My Life on Two Continents in many ways is a love story of a long life. It tells of a woman who held onto her dreams through war and peace, departures and homecomings, from youth on one continent to a full life many decades later on another.

Faith, Hope and Fiction: In the Introduction to your book, you noted that you began working on your memoirs in 1995 and had been toying with the idea of publishing it ever since. What gave you the idea of writing this book?

Mathilde Schmidt: It’s a long process. My kids always wanted me to write the story of my life. I finished one draft and had copies made. Then, ten years later, I thought, why not publish it?

FHF: Your book is a very personal memoir of your life, but yet you were witness to history, in particular in Germany during World War II. This made me think that all history, perhaps, is personal. Every event in our human history is made up of the experiences of all those who lived it. That made your book very special.

MS: Thank you for that. Even I had to wonder, how can I remember all of these details? I started writing a diary during the war. So I had these diaries to draw from, plus all the letters I wrote to my mother, and the letters she wrote back to me. I have all of these. When she died in 1982, I found that she had saved all my letters—all bundled up with the years on them. There were twenty bundles.

As for writing, it’s a matter of concentration. I had to write like I was in those times: as a child, as a teenager, and then as an adult, and those feelings I had at those times. Also, being quite old, I didn’t have little kids around the house to distract me! And my husband is still working, so I had the house to myself.

FHF: What was it like for you to write such a personal account of your life, knowing that it would be read by people who didn’t know you?

MS: My life really got involved with all the history in it. If not, I wouldn’t have written about it. Memories are not hearsay. I think the story was worth telling … for example, when the bombs were falling and then we were safe. It really was an extraordinary experience.

FHF: Looking back, what have you learned about life?

MS: I always crawled out of misery. I had a lot of misery at times, but I was able to forget about it, although not completely. I was able to get out of it and do something else. I did a lot of things in my life, when I was young, when I was older, and then older still. I have had disappointments, but I was never sick—just that one time when I was so sick I could have died.

FHF: That was a very dramatic part of the book, which you highlight in the Prologue. It was toward the end of April 1945, and you had scarlet fever. You had been in isolation with other patients and the Catholic nurses in their black habits who stayed with you, even though bombs were falling and the high windows in the room were crashing down. You recalled saying a prayer to your Guardian Angel that if you got out alive, you would never feel unhappy again. Throughout your book, with some great drama—including running (and sometimes escaping) from one end of the country to the other—you do not tell the story with any sense of vindication or anger.

MS: Anger is not necessary in life. That’s my philosophy. That is something I work on. I see too many angry people around me. It is absolutely unnecessary. Life is beautiful really. I can’t stand people who begrudge everything. Life is too short for that.

FHF: And you have seen your dreams come true—or should I say, you had the vision to make your dreams come true. You achieved a higher education, you came to America, and you had a loving husband and your children.

MS: I followed my goals and achieved what I wanted—with the exception of my inability to handle teenaged students. I would have liked to be a good teacher in front of those kids, but I never felt at home with them. With adults it was better.

Another dream I had was to have four children—two boys and two girls. We are a close-knit family and that is important too. Having the experience of almost losing my life—in the war, in an accident, and when a tree fell on our house and we could have been squashed like bugs—I know I have no reason to be unhappy. Sometimes maybe you get a traffic ticket or something, but that’s not worth being unhappy about because it will be over and forgotten.

FHF: I was very impressed with your tenacity when you wrote of your dream to go the university, even though your parents did not encourage you at first. But finally you went, and eventually your project to study the cotton industry brought you to America.

MS: I love to learn, but my parents were tired of sending people to school; so I had to give up my dream at that time, but I fulfilled it at last. Also my hometown (Bremen, Germany), did not give me what would make me happy. It was too socially uppity, and although I was from a high-standing family—I described it as higher middle class—I was not supposed to make friends with everybody. But I thought: why do I have to follow certain social rules? So I left. Here in America, I can make friends with everybody I want to. That’s a big plus.

FHF: What else drew you to America?

MS: First, looking at pictures. I studied the geography of America, and it’s so big. I was also sick of flat terrain. Also my older sister married a German American and is very happy here. Now I’m living in northern California in a real mountainous area—close to the coast, with lots of hills. We have a garden that goes up the side of a canyon, with many terraces.

FHF: So, what’s your advice on life?

MS: Don’t sweat the small stuff. Of course, someone else has said that already. It comes with age, which many young people cannot understand. It’s the day-by-day living. I go to bed early, sometimes at seven p.m., and then I’m up at two a.m., and I think, “I’m going to write more for my book. There is nobody up in my house to disturb me.” I work until it’s my walking time—which is six a.m., walk for an hour, then work in my garden, and sometimes I clean house. That’s some of the small things.

FHF: So, what’s next for you? You’ve mentioned that after writing this first book, which is non-fiction, you wanted to try your hand at stories.

MS: My next book is fiction. It’s called The Lake Dwellers. It’s about a group of people who come together at their vacation homes at a lake and they tell stories to each other. I wanted to write fiction because I am able to let my thoughts go wild. Still, it all has to make sense. I have participated in writing classes, and I have written several short stories that the members of the class helped to correct. So I had about ten stories already, and I added fourteen more (some of them essays and poems). All of these writings are different: some are serious, some funny, and so forth. Then I created a frame for all these writings. Since there are twenty-four stories, there are at least that many characters in the book, each having their own personality and style of storytelling.

FHF: Where did the characters come from?

MS: Some of the characters are parts of myself. Some are parts of people I know, and some are made up. Some are chatty, some are to the point. There are men and women, older persons and youngsters; even a cat is portrayed by a budding actress. Some of my readers have encouraged me to write more. So I have a little career going.

FHF: We look forward to hearing more about your adventures.