November 17, 1957 was cold, with a mix of snow and rain. We East Prussians said at home: it’s slushy. I rode my bike to our small neighboring village in the Odenwald to do some shopping, hunched over under the snowflakes falling from the tall fir trees along the way, and that’s when I saw - half hidden in the gray-brown leaves at the roadside - a little bird sitting there; its back color was hardly distinguishable from that of the autumn ground. I leaned my bike against the other side of the road and approached the little one very carefully. You poor thing, what are you doing here in the cold? It didn’t fly away. I slowly put on the gloves that were still dry in my pocket, so as not to scare it with my human hand, gently picked it up, saw that it was a little robin with an injured thigh and probably a concussion, placed it in my open shopping bag, and thought: I wonder if I...