Talking with Henry Prommer: From Germany to Chicago
Henry Prommer was born in Slovakia but ended up in Germany during the turmoil of the World War II. It was there that he would train to become a shoemaker and pedorthist. In 1960, he immigrated to Canada. After many stops and trips, he finally found his professional and private home in Chicago. This is his life story, told by Henry himself.
At the age of 85, I belong to a generation that experienced the war years in Europe and whose lives were marked by flight from their homeland, homelessness, hunger, camp life, parentlessness and forced labor as a result of the turbulent and brutal circumstances at the time. Later, we were given the moniker „war children“. When I was ten years old, my family and I had to flee our homeland of Slovakia.
Threatened by partisans and bombing raids, we arrived in Lehrte, Hanover, after many detours during the final weeks of the war, where my mother and we children were assigned an attic room with sloping walls, two iron bunk beds with straw sacks and minimal furniture. It was an old agricultural barrack intended for seasonal workers. It belonged to a farm with stables and barn. Together with Russian prisoners and other refugees, we worked in the fields.
Apprenticeship as shoemaker
We had to travel to the village of Evern, about three kilometers away, to go to school with the other children. Due to a lack of classrooms and teachers, 60 to 70 students had to be accommodated in a single classroom. Lessons were often interrupted because of air raid alarms. After the war was over, our lessons were taught in shifts from 7 in the morning to 7 in the evening. After leaving primary school in 1948, I first worked in agriculture until I found out by chance that Master Shoemaker Karl Bücking in the village of Rethmar was interested in accepting an apprentice.
I applied and was accepted; thus began my three-year apprenticeship. During this time, I attended the district vocational school in Lehrte. One of our teachers, Wolfgang Thien, himself a refugee from Breslau, Silesia, sympathized with my missed schooling and helped me a lot. His understanding and support became something of a compass for me in my later life. After I passed my examination as a journeyman shoemaker, I immediately became unemployed, because Master Bücking did not have enough work for two people.
I had to earn my living doing standby work in the fields. There was clearly no future for me in Lower Saxony, so I went looking for work in Solingen, where I found a job at a veterinary instrument factory.
A return to the profession I had trained in
Since the currency reform of 1948, the Western occupation zones had seen an upturn in trade and economy, so after some time, I decided to return to the profession I had apprenticed in. In the evenings after work and on weekends, I attended courses in preparation for the Master Shoemaker examination administered by the German Chamber of Crafts, which I passed in Düsseldorf in 1958.
Later, I went from working in a repair shop to working in an orthopedic shop and registered for the orthopedics study program during the summer semester at the Deutsche Schuhmacher Fachschule („German Shoemaker Technical School“) in Göttingen, which ended in October. I successfully passed the Master Examination in Orthopedic Shoemaking at the German Chamber of Crafts in Hannover. During my semester-long orthopedics study program, I also took part in a chiropodist training course and received a diploma in chiropody. That sums up my vocational curriculum vitae in Germany.
With my practical experience, the necessary documents in my pocket and still being young, I decided that I wanted to see something of the world. I decided to immigrate to Canada. In the roughly six months until I received my travel documents, I supervised two orthopedic shoemaker workshops in Hagen and Remscheid until they were sold.
Journey to the New World
In September 1960, I arrived in Montreal by ship: From there, I took the train to Toronto. I didn‘t speak any English when I arrived: Employees of the Catholic Church asked me in German where I wanted to go. They helped me find a room and a job. That was on a Friday; by the weekend, I already had a room and board, and on Monday, I started working for an orthopedic shoemaker company. I learned the English language in evening classes four times a week. After three years, my wanderlust led me across Canada to Vancouver on the Pacific Coast. I also traveled along the U.S. West Coast to Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia and Brazil, then back to my old company in Toronto by way of Jamaica and Miami, Florida.
A job offer from a brace shop at a local hospital in Chicago reached me via a Chicago trade journal. I answered and moved after just a few weeks. Thanks to the improvement in my English language skills as well as the daily interaction with patients and medical staff, my professional horizons expanded considerably. I received an offer for more pay and greater responsibility from a private company, where I worked with patients requiring orthopedic and prosthetic treatment. I attended university in the evenings and, after a few years, obtained the necessary points for a certificate. This certificate allowed me to become a U.S. citizen and apply for the “Certified Orthotist” exam. I took the exam in New York in 1970.
The certificate opened doors in my professional career that would otherwise have remained closed to me. The reconstruction of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (R.I.C.) in 1974 presented me with the opportunity to establish a dedicated orthotics/prosthetics department. I accepted the offer and the responsibility to implement this undertaking and to manage the department. The scope of my activities at the R.I.C. was extremely diverse, as we had 150 beds and therefore a large number of inpatients to care for.
I was allowed to lead the department for 21 years before I retired in 1995, after almost 50 years in the business. For 44 years, my wife Angela and I have been living in our house on the outskirts of Chicago, which is also where we raised our now grown-up children. Over the years, we have had the opportunity to see all of the United States, whether thanks to vacation trips and or when traveling to trade fairs. We‘ve crossed the Atlantic 13 times during our visits to relatives in Germany, and have also taken the opportunity to explore several other European countries in the process.
