Early Years
Born in Munich, as the second child of a butcher, Strauss studied German letters, history and economics at the University of Munich from 1935 to 1939. In World War II, he served in the German Wehrmacht on the Western and Eastern Fronts. While on furlough, he passed the German state exams to become a teacher. After suffering from severe frostbite on the Eastern Front in early 1943, he served as an Offizier für wehrgeistige Führung (Nationalsozialistischer Führungsoffizier (NSFO), political officer) at the antiaircraft artillery school in Altenstadt Air Base, near Schongau. He held the rank of Oberleutnant at the end of the war. In 1945 he served as translator for the US army and especially for Ernest F. Hauser, who was first lieutenant in CIC military intelligence. He called himself Franz Strauss until soon after the war when he started using his middle name Josef as well.
Read more about this topic: Franz Josef Strauss
Famous quotes containing the words early years, early and/or years:
“I believe that if we are to survive as a planet, we must teach this next generation to handle their own conflicts assertively and nonviolently. If in their early years our children learn to listen to all sides of the story, use their heads and then their mouths, and come up with a plan and share, then, when they become our leaders, and some of them will, they will have the tools to handle global problems and conflict.”
—Barbara Coloroso (20th century)
“An early dew woos the half-opened flowers”
—Unknown. The Thousand and One Nights.
AWP. Anthology of World Poetry, An. Mark Van Doren, ed. (Rev. and enl. Ed., 1936)
“It is now many years that men have resorted to the forest for fuel and the materials of the arts: the New Englander and the New Hollander, the Parisian and the Celt, the farmer and Robin Hood, Goody Blake and Harry Gill; in most parts of the world, the prince and the peasant, the scholar and the savage, equally require still a few sticks from the forest to warm them and cook their food. Neither could I do without them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)