Heinz Höne was born in Sendenhorst above his parents’ colonial goods store on the first day of the year 1929. He so vividly immerses the reader into his childhood and adolescence, the atmosphere of days long gone, that we almost feel we can hear the clacking of wooden shoes on cobblestones and the cries of children as they play rough and tumble. Urged by his teacher the fourteen-year-old changed schools and went to “Lehrerbildungsanstalt Wadersloh”, a National Socialist elite school, from which he enlisted into the Wehrmacht with all his school comrades in 1944. His experiences both at this school and during the war turn him into a unique witness. 

After this episode soccer aids his return to the local community and into a “normal life”. He visits a high school from Münster temporarily set up in Sendenhorst, due to the severe bombings in the city, and earns his school fees working as a construction laborer, in a brick factory and peddling moonshine. 1952 he became the Munsterian Soccer Champion with his soccer club Sendenhorst. 

His ambition is not weakened by sport but propelled him, now father to three children, to leave the security of his civil servant’s job and pursue self-employment. 

Höne, Heinz: Einwurf. Ein Sendenhorster erzählt Geschichte(n).
ISBN 978-3-937772-26-4, paperback, 174 pages, 14,90 EUR

“To grow up in a house with a store is something quite special. When I was a young boy the salesroom with all its smells, conversations and my mother behind the counter exuded a huge gravitational pull. I almost preferred it though when it was empty and no one was minding the lolly jars, all bright and colorful and placed neatly waiting for the next customer…”

Subtly and continuously Ruth Damwerth contextualizes Heinz Hönes memories. The reader is given a unique insight into the perfidious strategies of the Nazis…

Westfälische Nachrichten, 01.25.2014, on “Einwurf. Ein Sendenhorster erzählt Geschichte(n)“