I have lived almost 100 years and I am approaching the long night of nonexistence, but I am not afraid because I have survived much turmoil: the Great Depression, the second world war, the cold war, the deaths of friends and also the hardest blows to my spirit, the passing of my beloved wife and middle son. But now, as time dwindles down like a clock with an ageing battery, my heart still beats strong, content and free of rancour because of one single event that changed my life and forged a thousand moments of joy for me.

Citizens of Hamburg going about their business in the streets, surrounded by bomb sites and a wrecked building with smoke still pouring from it in about 1943

‘When off duty, I stumbled through the ruins of Hamburg, overwhelmed by the hunger, the dirt, and the simple despair of ordinary folk.’ It was there I met the woman who became my wife 70 years ago on August 16, 1947 in the shadow of that shattered German city.