Food was scarce but Josephine bought butter, flour, sugar and dark rye bread on the black market so that Inge and Horst would have Christmas and birthday treats. In these early days Inge developed her taste for bread-and-butter-and-jam, which may well have been her favourite food...( If you don’t count whipping cream and cake. And whipping cream. There was also the decade of the Woodwards chocolate eclairs, but again, mostly whipping cream.)

As a child Inge was drawn by the singing, marching and smart uniforms of the Hitler Youth. Instead of encouraging this, Josephine helped her develop a similar, but less deadly, interest - Theater, having good fun making great costumes for young Inge out of anything she could find. With her outstanding memory Inge was a natural for school plays and performed in many. She loved it and dreamed of being a big star like Hildegard Knef or Romy Schneider.

Inge was only 6 when she saw her father last but she remembered him always. (Until her 80s she remembered it was Wilhelm who gave her the name Inge.) He went to battle as a Nazi foot soldier in 1942 and was lost on the Russian front by 1944.  So, Josephine raised Inge and Horst alone.

As a manufacturing area, Essen was a target and sustained much destruction from bombing. So, probably in 1943, when Inge was about 7 and Horst 9, Josephine took them to Austria, with special family friend Frau Siedel and her brother. They walked! As Inge told it they slept in buses and on the countryside, eating stone soup if necessary. They found a small home to share in Austria where they lived until the last minute of the war.

A Nazi patrol went off course in Austria when retreating to Germany in 1945, at the conclusion of the war; they helped themselves to Josephine’s cooking one evening and she persuaded them to take her family back to Essen. They left within hours and made the long journey back to Essen in the military convoy, one of the last to make it across the border safely. Miraculously their store and home had survived, with damage. They moved back in and set up shop again as quickly as they could. (Some of Inge’s family still live in this much transformed area.)

It was often Inge's job to mind the shop, which she disliked and longed to be elsewhere, perhaps developing her taste for the Deutsch harliquin romances that filled their shelves at this time. Inge could also be quite cheeky and played at getting brother Horst into hot water, even though he was two years older. Sometimes, she reminisced about her many hardships like skiing to school using a broom handle for a ski poll. During Inge’s youth they had a couple of dogs. One, a cute little dachshund, would let Inge balance a treat on his nose and sit and drool until she allowed him to eat it. Her remarkable memory helped with her marks at strict German schools and she could also remember all the intricacies of high and low German so could fit in anywhere, especially since the lovely garments her mother made her did not reveal her social class.

After completing secondary school, Inge went to secretarial school and worked as an inventory clerk and a shorthand typist eventually saving enough to leave Germany and seek adventure in Europe, which she did in 1958 at the age of 22. She was a fashionable young woman who liked Elvis Presley and she wanted to learn how to speak English and French, which she did. with dreams of being a stage star or a simultaneous translator, out in the world. She tried several jobs in England, over a short time: a nanny, waitress, chamber maid, etc. while she studied English. She went back to Germany for a while to be a export salesclerk in Essen,

Along the way Inge made several friends and she liked to go to parties with them where she could wear her great clothes. It was during these years she worked for Krupp as a typist and met one of her best chums of all time, tall Helga, Helga Pannes. There was also short Helga, medium Helga, Gisela, Marlies and others. Helga and Inge were true fashion victims during some of the best fashion trends ever. Sunglasses, pointy shoes, trench coats - Tres chic. Inge got her love of fashion directly from Josephine and she got her accent from London so it was sometimes difficult tot tell she was German because she spoke English with a British accent.

Josephine had a sister, Anna. Inge's Tante Anna loved Inge and brother Horst. They were very close. Tante Anna married an artist. Onkel Albert was a painter (like his father before him) but during the war he designed textiles and the like. With the hyper-inflation caused by the war, the German mark was worth almost nothing and so the actual currency was little value and Onkel Albert was commissioned to design a single coin in the amount of 50,000 marks, as a way to keep up with inflation.

Tante Anna and Onkel Albert had a daughter named Ruth, who was Inge’s cousin. While still toddlers Inge, Ruth and brother Horst became the best of best friends, forging a bond that lasted eight decades sharing food, laughter and a lot of clothing. (Obviously Horst missed out on the clothes.)

Horst  became a miner like his father and toiled there without respite until retirement. They were brave and didn’t complain much, but you can imagine… Ruth had an impressive office career that suited her fine wardrobe.

There were other aunts, onkels and cousins who came in and out of Inge’s young life including Hienz, Hans, Irmgard, Ute and her lovely daughters, Carola and Kristina all of whom she was very fond.

On the other side of Inge’s family, the family of her father (the Rogges and the Burzeyas) were also favourites of Inge. Wilhelm’s sister, Klare (Tante Klare to Inge) was a feisty sweetheart whom Inge dearly loved and her son Klaus (who was Inge’s cousin) was close and dear to Inge all of his life. Klare was proud and strong and fiercely positive. Klaus was like silly sunshine, happy and generous to everyone. (They were first to visit and lend support to Inge whence moved into 58 Falcon in the 70s.)

There were several other special people in Inge’s young life, especially Frau Seidel (jJosephines close friend), affectionately known as Moop (sp?). Moop was a friend of Josephine’s who was of less than modest means but always looked after Horst and Inge and her younger brother Berndt. She was like an older sister or another aunt with a special place in her heart for Inge.

Helmi, Klare’s sister, seemed to have to devoted her life to caring for children of family. As one of these, Inge flourished with the love from Helmi. Inge was blessed with so many kind people in her life.