{"id":3377,"date":"2026-10-07T08:10:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T06:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spreewald-dorf-lehde.de\/friends-for-half-a-century\/"},"modified":"2026-10-07T14:42:58","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T12:42:58","slug":"friends-for-half-a-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spreewald-dorf-lehde.de\/en\/friends-for-half-a-century\/","title":{"rendered":"Friends for half a century"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The mild October weather allows the friends to meet one more time before traveling to visit each other becomes too difficult. Although both live in Raddusch\u2014one, Christa Lamster, in Kaupen, and the other, Gerda Zierold, at the other end of the village\u2014there are two and a half kilometers between them. And then there are their age and health to consider: Both are 93 years old, both rely on walking aids, and often on support from their families as well. They tend to talk about their age in a casual way; they just accept it. \u201cGerda can run better than I can, but I can hear better,\u201d says Christa Lamster, summing up the current situation.<\/p>\n

Sitting in the autumn sun in front of Christa Lamster’s house, the two of them take turns telling “do-you-remember” stories. What one doesn’t know, the other makes up for. Yet they\u2019ve long been aware of the events that shaped their lives, but it\u2019s just \u201cso nice to talk about them,\u201d as Christa Lamster keeps emphasizing.<\/p>\n

Christa Lamster is from M\u00fccheln in Saxony, and Gerda Zierold is from Sch\u00f6nfeld, a town that no longer exists\u2014her family had to leave because of open-pit coal mining.<\/p>\n

Christa was sent to live with her grandmother in Bad Sulza for a while, and she started school there on September 1, 1939. \u201cIt was actually a wonderful and important day in my life, but the outbreak of war overshadowed my little celebration. A year later, I returned to M\u00fccheln.\u201d The rest of her life followed the path taken by many girls at that time: She had no plans to pursue vocational training, so instead she helped out at her father’s bakery. “You’re getting married anyway\u2014you don’t need a career for that!” her father dismissed her aspirations.<\/p>\n

She met her husband, Siegfried Lamster, while she was still living in M\u00fccheln, but he soon followed the call to move to the Lusatian coalfield with his young family. In L\u00fcbbenau, they were given a nice new apartment for their family of soon-to-be three children. Christa Lamster earned her certification as a preschool teacher and found plenty of work in the newly established schools.<\/p>\n

Gerda Zierold was spared the really big moves; she could have imagined spending her life in Sch\u00f6nfeld\u2014if it hadn’t been for the excavators getting closer and closer to the village. \u201cAs a young girl, I did some terrible things that I\u2019m still ashamed of today: I smuggled fox pelts\u2014120 in all\u2014into West Berlin! My father was a hunter, and in the GDR, they paid very little for a pelt. I guess I didn\u2019t look suspicious when I crossed the border with a backpack. But I was able to help my family with the money I earned in the West. Seen that way, what I did back then probably wasn\u2019t all that bad after all!\u201d she tells her friend Christa\u2014probably for the umpteenth time\u2014since the smuggling seems to still be on her mind.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Gerda had married Gerhard and built a house in Raddusch. That wasn’t exactly a given back in the days of the GDR, but the comrades allowed five homes to be built in Raddusch for their energy workers. Around 1970, the lives of the two families began to intertwine rather by chance, as both men were passionate anglers and hunters\u2014and boatmen. From then on, the families met regularly, and soon also at the Radduscher Kaupen, where Siegfried Lamster\u2014despite all the difficulties\u2014had purchased and renovated the oldest house in Radduscher.<\/p>\n

Gerda Zierold worked as a cook at the Raddusch preschool before she was recruited by then-Mayor Pudlowski to serve as town clerk. \u201cI still remember how he once came into the kindergarten, took the wooden spoon from me, and transferred me to the parish office\u2014cadre politics back then was incredibly simple,\u201d she recalls. Her bosses came and went, but she remained the parish secretary who knew everyone and everything until she retired.<\/p>\n

The two of them did have one \u201cdo-you-remember\u201d story up their sleeves after all: During a family boat ride, they must have rocked the boat a little too hard, and it ran aground. The location couldn’t have been better: It was right next to the Lamster House.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The mild October weather allows the friends to meet one more time before traveling to visit each other becomes too difficult. Although both live in Raddusch\u2014one, Christa Lamster, in Kaupen, and the other, Gerda Zierold, at the other end of the village\u2014there are two and a half kilometers between them. And then there are their…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3378,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kb_optimizer_status":0,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","slim_seo":{"title":"Friends for half a century - Spreewald\u00addorf Lehde","description":"The mild October weather allows the friends to meet one more time before traveling to visit each other becomes too difficult. Although both live in Raddusch\u2014one"},"_slim_seo_primary_term_category":0,"_slim_seo_primary_term_post_tag":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nicht-kategorisiert"],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":1,"label":"Nicht kategorisiert"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/spreewald-dorf-lehde.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/6915-021026C2A9PeterBecker-1024x780-0OFUG6.jpg",1024,780,false],"author_info":{"display_name":"sven-hofmann","author_link":"https:\/\/spreewald-dorf-lehde.de\/en\/author\/fad647f9b8fe3e7cfe8c0d3f5ff01100\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":1,"name":"Nicht kategorisiert","slug":"nicht-kategorisiert","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":1,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":285,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":1,"category_count":285,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Nicht kategorisiert","category_nicename":"nicht-kategorisiert","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spreewald-dorf-lehde.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spreewald-dorf-lehde.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spreewald-dorf-lehde.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spreewald-dorf-lehde.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spreewald-dorf-lehde.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3377"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spreewald-dorf-lehde.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3379,"href":"https:\/\/spreewald-dorf-lehde.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3377\/revisions\/3379"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spreewald-dorf-lehde.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spreewald-dorf-lehde.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spreewald-dorf-lehde.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spreewald-dorf-lehde.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}