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AWhen Herbert Becker came home from intensive care three weeks ago, the first thing he did was throw away the walker. “I’m not going to walk through Zeppelinheim with the walker!” The 83-year-old yells indignantly. And his wife sighs: “He thinks he’s fit.”
Livia gerster
Political editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
Last year, Becker traveled by bicycle from Prague to Dresden. At the Czech border then “he fell flat on his face.” Some asked: Why does an 80-year-old man ride a bicycle so far? Gisela Becker: “Of course.” But Herbert Becker believes that Astrid Lindgren also climbed trees when she was eighty years old. And he also intends to climb mountains again, Corona despite.
Becker knows his way through his home country. In Neu-Isenburg he was mayor and city councilor, and made the Frankfurt airport and the Eintracht football club a little bigger. “But what is happening in the clinics is not even noticeable outside!” Becker exclaims, just when he really calls everything he says. That’s why he invited himself today. He wants to tell what he experienced in the hospital.
Herbert Becker is so big that he has to laboriously remove his little polo shirt. You live just a few minutes walk from the S-Bahn station, but it’s drizzling and guests are picked up. Half general, half rascal, reach out: “I’m clean!” You can tell that this test of bravery is a great pleasure for him.
Zeppelinheim, one station from New York
Becker is a man who walks around the car to open the passenger door. And that is immediately recognized by passersby during these three steps. “Oh, Mr. Becker!” A young mother yells, and Becker leans delightedly over his pram. “I was mayor here once,” he says apologetically into the starter. And then solemnly: “Welcome to Zeppelinheim. A stop before New York ”. Behind the windshield is the Frankfurt airport, and all that, Zeppelinheim, the airport and the whole world, that’s Becker’s life.
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To understand what he experienced at the hospital, Becker has to tell what it was like. Even if that is not so fancy. “I speak plain text,” he threatens with an R in Hesse and points to the air to describe his triple room at the clinic. Here the bed, there the toilet, “and suddenly you fall out of the bowl. And then a young man, perhaps Algerian or Egyptian in appearance, comes and picks you up. And a young woman, maybe 21 years old, says: Becker, I’ll clean you up. ” Pause. “You know where you are. Where you can no longer clean yourself.” Pause. And you have respect. In front of these young people. “
Mrs. Becker calls. The sausages are hot. There are knives and forks next to the plates in case the guest is unfamiliar. “Handkäs with the knife and the Frankfurter with the hand,” explains Becker. There are also hot rolls, mustard, and sour cider.
“You know, I have traveled all over the world through the airport. But as many nations as in this hospital! Czechs, Romanians, Bulgarians and then the entire Maghreb ”, says Becker. “Of course I always asked: Well, where are you from then? I come from Isenburg. “
Herbert Becker wrote down exactly who cared for him on his sickbed. So you can invite the doctors and nurses to dinner when you can. “It’s amazing how engaged, helpful and knowledgeable they are,” says Becker. “I really wonder what Germany would do if it didn’t have these people.”
“Frau Doktor, where are you from?”
In the handwritten note with the name, one is underlined in bold: Frau Doktor Tran, specialist in internal medicine. When she entered Becker’s room in his protective gear, he said that behind the mask he saw “no German faces” and of course asked again what his path is like: “Frau Doktor, where are you from? ” From Vietnam, he said. she. And Becker says slowly, “Isn’t that great?”
