German Kitchen Schrank
Price: $1,000.00

Purchased by a military family in ________, Hesse in what was then West Germany.

The shop was in an old rail station in the village of ________; a shop and store that we had been visiting for over a year - spending more of our time in the project room than the retail floor. The first piece of this Schrank, pronounced Shrunk, we saw was one of the lower doors - the carved gargoyle intrigued us greatly but our German was not good enough to strike up a conversation over it. At the time it was under restoration. The shop owner was a very tall thin German of a quiet demeanor. It was also clear that politically he was on the left side of the spectrum and a member of the Green Party - ironically founded by an American living in Germany.

We followed the restoration of the piece and on one of our last visits (we were returning to Virginia) we found it whole and knew we wanted it. We negotiated the sale and returned to Giessen, where we were stationed, to accomplish the necessary paperwork to be relieved of the very steep Value Added Tax (Mehrvestauer) when you buy on the German economy. We obtained the paperwork and the Deutch Marks necessary to pay for the schrank.

We returned the following weekend in a VW bus to pick up the piece. The shop owner was outside on the loading dock and along with a number of his friends, was painting up protest signs to be used in an anti-American demonstration somewhere in Germany - probably Rhein Main Air Base in Frankfurt about 80 miles or so to the South. Now it was not that they were against Americans, they just objected to the presence of the American military in their country and the pollution that often meant. He took a break from sign painting and handled the transaction as efficiently as one could hope for and treated us with nothing but respect. That he was a protester did not bother us and that we were American military did not bother him at all!

The piece was imported into the United States in June of 1988 and it has been in our kitchen ever since.

It is fair to ask why we are parting with it. The wall where it sits in going away in a kichen remodel and there is nowhere else it could sit. It was meant to be in a kitchen or dining room and any place it might fit is occupied by something we value more.