Each Christmas season Biehl builds a candy house - some would say a gingerbread house - complete with lights, forest, candy fence, Hansel and Gretel and, of course, the wicked witch.
The house has thrilled school children from Seattle to Waco - and this year Moody. It was even part of this year’s Christmas festivities for the Central Texas chapter of Texas German Society.
But when Biehl and his family packed their anguish and disappointment and left their hometown of Essen, Germany, shortly after World War II, the candy house was just a dream. Christmas during the war was different.
“It was very subdued,” Biehl said. “There were no decorations on streets or houses - this was strictly forbidden.”
Essen was home to the Krupp factory, a major German gun maker that produced weapons for the war effort. As a result, the city was a regular target of allied bombing raids, so Christmas lights were especially out of the question, Biehl said.
“We would be woken up during the night by the sirens that would blow,” Biehl said. “We almost could set our clock by the sound of the Allied airplanes.”
The noise from the raids had such an impact on Biehl that he said it took him until 1953 - one year after he immigrated to America - to get over it.
“I went skiing up in the Cascade Mountains,” he said. “That’s when it was impressed in my heart, ‘Isn’t it nice to be in a nice peaceful place?’”
He said his reawakened feelings of warmth and happiness inspired him to start making candy houses at Christmastime.
As a teenager in Germany, Biehl said he often passed through shopping areas where there were bakeries with display windows. One evening, as the sun was going down, he said he stopped at a window and took in the sight of a candy house.
The city lights were out but Biehl said something burned in his soul and for a small moment, he said he felt at peace as he gazed at the baker’s art. Although still a boy, Biehl resolved that if he survived the war and was fortunate enough to have a wife and children, then he would make a house for them each Christmas, just like the one in the window.
It was years before he was able to follow through on his vow, but the Biehls are a family accustomed to persevering.
Biehl said his father wanted the family to immigrate to the United States in 1924, not long after he and his family were baptized. Two young American missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he said, had inspired the family’s spiritual rebirth.
“My dad tried quite eagerly to obtain visas, but we had five boys in the family, and we were all prospective soldiers,” Biehl said.
Not until 1949 - 25 years after hatching the idea - did a Biehl family member - a brother - immigrate to America.
Those who survived the war - two older brothers were killed on the Russian front - came to America one by one, he said.
“I remember seeing my homeland disappear,” Biehl said describing the beginning of his boat trip to America. “It took several hours until my homeland was gone for me.”
Although Biehl left Germany for good in 1952, he never turned his back on its culture.
The plywood house that, each holiday season, gets painted with a fresh coat of frosting and covered with more than 10 pounds of candy is evidence. Biehl used the same plywood house throughout the 35 years he lived in the Seattle area with his children.
When his youngest daughter married a seventh-generation Texan and moved to the Waco area, Biehl decided it was time to retire from his job as a print shop manager and relocate. He said he left behind his beloved candy house to his oldest daughter who still lives in Washington and carries on the tradition by decorating it for her children.
In 1998, during his first holiday season in Central Texas, he built a new plywood skeleton for a candy house.
“When I came down here, since this is Texas, I had to make it bigger,” Biehl said.
He has always been active in the German community. Biehl said he has published and edited German newspapers, conducted a German male chorus and performed countless times as a pianist and accordion player.
Those who know him best point to his music as his most defining characteristic.
“John has been an institution in the German community, in word and song,” said friend Doug Child in a 1998 memory book given to Biehl when he left Seattle.
While Biehl said he still has a love for all that is good from his homeland, he has also come to appreciate what it means to be an American. As he entered the New York harbor for the first time, he fulfilled a request from a missionary friend as he waved hello to the Statue of Liberty.
“I didn’t realize what (the Statue of Liberty and freedom) meant to (that missionary) until I went skiing in the Cascades,” Biehl said.
That is when Biehl said he felt what it really means to be free. And he has shown that he has the gift of conveying that feeling through music.
In Biehl’s Seattle memory book, Bob Bradshaw speaks of Biehl playing the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” with “fervor.” Another entry is from Roxanne Spring.
“The first time I heard you play, it was the national anthem in honor of (a young man) attaining Eagle Scout,” she said. “This stirred a sense of patriotism, the depth of which I’d not known before.”
Perhaps Biehl’s greatest contribution has been his ability to help others feel what he felt back in Germany in front of the baker’s window and in America high up in the Cascade Mountains.
Whether through music or candy houses or some other way, Biehl continues to give. And those who receive from him are changed forever.
--Email the writer at promer@temple-telegram.com
