As soon as the bombs stopped falling some cultural life started again, so people played and watched theatre on empty bellies in the ruins of Berlin

During the Television Age only few of the millions of transmissions are culturally valuable, but there are some excellent films, for example those based on great literature, such as Shakespeare adaptations. So culturally there will not be much of a loss without television (especially all these commercials!). Great literature could also be read out or people could form theatre groups. I think that we could learn from our post-war activities in Germany when most of the resources had to be internal ones.

After the war I lived in a camp with people of different educational levels. A cultural life emerged where people formed a choir and where literature was read out in groups. Everyone brought their books to share the content with others. People danced to music improvised by an informal band composed of piano, accordion and violin. A ping-pong table was the activity centre for us school children, an adult having taught us the rudiments of the game and we spent hours and our whole holidays playing battle ball.

I personally enjoyed very fortunate circumstances, each of which was a real blessing: My father came back from the front and rapidly regained his health. We had a (very) small room to live in - so we had a roof above our heads - and even always something to eat. We experienced the end of the war in the Western part of Germany and that meant: some American tanks just rolled in and nothing bad/no evil happened. 

I think that if we studied how people lived in post-war Germany we might discover techniques for surviving physically and culturally in the post-oil era. One of the things I kept from my rather happy childhood - is that doing things by myself makes me happy: writing, sewing, knitting, doing pottery, reading and now, translating. I see with joy my granddaughter playing the violin and writing stories and my grandson painting, the two of them playing football in the neighbourhood and learning how to deal with a horse.

I think we all should - what in Germany up to now do only educated people - teach our children and grandchildren to be creative and happy in simple, inexpensive activities.