Böll's childhood, from 1917-1928, was marked by Catholic education as already hinted. He was born as the eighth child of the master carpenter Viktor Böll and his second wife Maria (born Hermann) on 21.12.1917. The First World War (1914-1918) was over. Like his ancestors who had to emigrate from the British Isles to the religious persecution under Henry VIII, Böll’s entire life was also dedicated to the run. Bernd (1977: 284-285) painted the situation of Böll thus:
My paternal ancestors came from the British Isles for centuries, Catholics; the state religion of Henry VIII preferred to emigrate. They were attracted shipwrights, up the Rhine from Holland up, always lived in cities rather than in rural areas, were as far from the sea, carpenter. The maternal ancestors were farmers and brewers, a generation was wealthy and capable, then spent the next out the spendthrift until the last branch from which came my mother collected
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all the contempt of the world and the name became extinct.
Although Böll’s parents, were "made up of a social class, called petty bourgeoisie", Böll was himself born in modest conditions. The father founded a carpentry and sculpture workshop since 26 years, though had previously trained as a craftsman in woodcarving - in evening and continuing education courses. For his livelihood, he had made altars, statues and decorations. He had probably acquired this skill with wood from his father, himself a master carpenter. I believe Böll's version of feminism was strongly influenced by his roots. His grandfather, he described as "a very patriarchal man." His mother, Maria Böll, Heinrich described as very positive: "an intelligent, sensitive and passionate woman.”Henry’s sorrow for his mother was her tendency to Jansenism (16th -18th Century). In his interviews (1961-1978 Werke. Interviews1 1977:541) he narrated:
What an intelligent, sensitive, and passionate woman my mother was, what would she have become, so to speak, if not for this slavish religious education, which she imbibed from her mother? What would one not get from her, whether political or literary?
As said, Heinrich Böll was ab initio educated as a Catholic with a tendency to Jansenism. In some ways it was exactly, as always, when you get too fanatical. The parents later turned from their extreme devotion to an opposition stance against the church. Böll (Bernd 1977:363-364) has described this development as follows:
And yet I believe that my father and my mother were anti-church in a certain way: in a way, which I cannot explain. I had for long thought about it. I imagine that with my father, who has a lot of work for churches - he was wood carver and sculptor and has only made almost ecclesiastical affairs, with experiences and adventures related to clergy and religious institutions, yes and about my mother I still have to ruminate much, because she had a rebellious train, politically and ecclesiastical affairs concerning what was
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noticeable, but was not articulated as precisely.
Certainly that is again connected with education.
The dictum the higher you go, the colder it becomes was true more often in the encounter between clergy and laity, and also in people who often have contact with religious matters, too. Actually, the opposite may be true. Why had Viktor Böll and his wife Maria, as well as their children become anti-church, even though they had much to do with the church? Such issues were raised, without adequate answers: What had they in their meeting with religious structures experienced that they had to take such radical steps in the opposite direction? Heinrich Böll (Bernd 1977:363) tried to venture an answer. The official church had a terrible story. The scandalous and shocking side of the past and the current history of the religious structures confront one the closer one gets to the Church:
For centuries, there was dispute between Cologne and the bishop, battles were fought, lists devised, Anathema obtained in Rome, priests and sacraments withdrawn from the city, and it was mostly about money, property and privileges. Most Cologne bishops were more than Prince Bishop, and a prince almost always means: A debt-Prince. Only since the bishops are no more princes, compatibility exists between city and bishop and this compatibility is only one hundred and fifty years old, and not without a certain irony.
Moreover, one must not forget that in emergency situations of war people tend to react more aggressively than usual. Before the birth of Heinrich Böll, his father had already had to bury two children. Böll came to the world in the winter time during the war in the Nr. 26 Teutoburg Road in Cologne.
This terrible situation is described by Helm (2005:47) as follows:
Heinrich Böll was born as a subject of Kaiser Wilhelm 11th (1888-1918) in the worst famine of the First World War. Thousands of people died this winter, be it at home or from hunger at the war front. Both have been obscured by the supreme authorities and the
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public glosses [...]. But the longer the war lasted, the more the doubts of the Germans.
Böll was enrolled in the Catholic elementary school in Cologne-Raderthal.
He then moved to the humanist "Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gymnasium" in Cologne.
His Childhood memories were filled with destruction, military maneuvers and misery. He described his experiences himself as he reminisced the return of the endless columns of the front-line troops at the end of World War I (Bernd (ed.) 1977:285): '[...] gray, neat, bleak, they moved with horses and guns past our window; from my mother's arms, I looked out into the street, where the endless columns marched to the Rhine bridges. "The empire had to be dissolved; the Emperor was in exile in Holland, because the war was lost. Of course the winner demanded incredible sums of money as reparations. On 9th November 1918, the republic was proclaimed. A year after that followed the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. Henry and his contemporaries were born and raised in a failed society and government like most African children. The miserable situation, Heinrich in Die Angst der Deutschen und die Angst vor Ihnen. In: Böll, Heinrich, Einmischung Erwünscht (1977:339):
When I was three-four years old, I went with my dad, after breakfast, down the stairs to the front door, and from there he rode by bicycle to his workshop, and before he mounted the bike - he was an old-fashioned cyclist and he climbed through a pin that was mounted on the rear, from behind the saddle (almost like a rider on a horse) - he sometimes gives me a bill, with which I could buy a handful of candy or a candy cane in the morning in the opposite shop . I remember quite a few zeros on the bill, later learned that it had been for a billion or even one trillion, the equivalent of which I got for that 0-rich note today may have to be five cents. That was in the years 1921-22, where I turned a billionaire or trillionaire within one or two minutes in a morning.
So you could understand the background and the milieu in which Böll was born and raised. His birth and his childhood were marked by
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mismanagement and authoritarian government. Even the Catholic dimension of his enrollment should not be left out. He confirmed this fact in Heinrich Böll:Ich habe die Nase voll (I'm fed up), Bernd (ed.) (1977:171)!:
When I was a child growing up in a particular extremely Catholic confessional city, a complete Catholic education through high school, if you then said to someone: You're crazy, he said: No, I'm Catholic. If you said that to a Protestant, he said: No, I'm a Protestant. And the adults used to say, if one were told on another occasion: it is to be maddening.That means, It is to be Evangelical.
Since the sharp confessionality, propaganda and counter-propaganda, and the massive ideological indoctrination are not based on a true spiritual foundation, the whole process was bent to be ruined. Heinrich Böll and his numerous comrades and fellow citizens were proof that the believers were disappointed by this hypocrisy.
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