My year in Paris was almost over. The scholarship had run out and the Federal Insurance Agency had stopped my disability payments, arguing that by now my health should have improved to the point where I was “in a position to carry out light work”. They were right, of course. If somebody can bring a difficult course of study to a successful conclusion he must be in a position to support himself and his family. After all, the pension wasn't being paid so I could study, but because I was ill. So I had to make some new decisions for the future – no more excuses.

While I had been opening doors to new knowledge and to the world so I could broaden my horizons, Friedel and the children had been stuck in cramped conditions in the provincial town of Butzbach. Friedel was completely absorbed by her role as mother of four children, who were especially in need of her protection because of their heritage. She did everything she could to fulfill that role. I, on the other hand, the husband and father, was not there most of the time thanks to my work, my illness, my studies. I would turn up occasionally, and always quickly found a good reason to be off again. At any rate, that's how they saw it, and from their point of view they were right.

On top of that our family circumstances had meanwhile changed in other respects. Friedel's father had reached retirement age. The People's Republic of Poland and the Federal Republic had signed an agreement in 1957 which stipulated that ethnic Germans could make a formal application to leave Poland to join their families. We had made an application, although the Butzbach housing bureau had told us that they couldn't provide new accommodation for an extended family; it would be up to us to find some place to put our relations.

Albert Franke and his second wife, Marie, Friedel's stepmother, and their son, Johannes, who was just a couple of months older than our son Roy-Peter, arrived in Butzbach in December 1958, after long exchanges with the Polish authorities.