Childhood
Born in 1927, Pawlik was regarded as a child prodigy, able to jump a single axel and do a large number of spins at the age of four. In her teens she would get up at 4 a.m. daily to run to the Vienna ice rink (Wiener Eislaufverein), for practice before going to school. Austrian skaters were impeded in the 1930s and 40s by the fact that there were no indoor skating halls and they were restricted to practicing in winter.
Nazi Germany's absorption of Austria in 1938 and World War II destroyed sportsmen's lives and careers. Pawlik, for example, was due to compete (aged 12) in the singles, in the 1940 Winter Olympics, and in the pairs with her later husband Rudi Seeliger. However, they could only take part in domestic competitions, becoming German youth champions, both individually and as a couple. In addition to that, they became the 1942 Austrian Pairs Champions (that were called Ostmark Champions at that time due to the fact that Austria did not exist from 1938 to 1945). Drafted into the German Army, Rudi Seeliger was captured by the Red Army and had to work as a slave coal-miner until his return to Austria in 1949.
Read more about this topic: Eva Pawlik
Famous quotes containing the word childhood:
“Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetime. A man at five and thirty should no more regret not having had a happier childhood than he should regret not having been born a prince of the blood.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“It is not however, adulthood itself, but parenthood that forms the glass shroud of memory. For there is an interesting quirk in the memory of women. At 30, women see their adolescence quite clearly. At 30 a woman’s adolescence remains a facet fitting into her current self.... At 40, however, memories of adolescence are blurred. Women of this age look much more to their earlier childhood for memories of themselves and of their mothers. This links up to her typical parenting phase.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)
“Childhood lasts all through life. It returns to animate broad sections of adult life.... Poets will help us to find this living childhood within us, this permanent, durable immobile world.”
—Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962)