Though rather imperfect, the ouster of Nazis allowed dedicated anti-Fascists and bourgeois democrats to be appointed to lead the reconstruction. Due to the connections of the Communist underground, Hans-Harald Schirmer’s father was put on the city council of the sleepy town of Wolfenbüttel. For a few weeks Gertrud Koch’s mother served as mayor of a small village in the Swabian Alps before returning to Cologne. The Americans had actually prepared a “whitelist” of reliable anti-Nazis and non-Nazi specialists to whom they entrusted such offices. Working for the British military government, Frank Eyck was happy to find that the father of his friends the Schmidts had survived, a man of “wide and varied industrial experience as director of the Deutsche Bank, and yet with an ethical outlook on life deeply rooted in Christianity.” While the Soviets did not entrust Dr. Schmidt with any important task, he became close to the circle of Konrad Adenauer, the first postwar chancellor of West Germany. Similarly, Bettina Fehr’s father was appointed public health official for the city of Essen at the Ruhr, because he had been discriminated against by the Nazis due to his half-Jewish wife.62
This reversal of power relationships triggered a wave of opportunism in which Nazi collaborators changed sides and embraced the ideology of the occupying powers. Cultivating good relations with the victors could prevent the loss of a job and make it possible to take over the property of denounced neighbors. Joachim Fest’s father was astounded “that suddenly the country was full of people who had always been ‘against them.’ He did not want any part of it.” Horst Johannsen was appalled by “the Nazis who speedily no longer want to be any.” When listening in on conversations, he was disgusted with previously fanatical supporters of the Führer who “regretfully claimed never to have wanted the war and its consequences, to have been forced into the party and not to have hurt anybody.” Hans Tausch was likewise “astonished with what nonchalance the mass of captive officers now abhorred a system and repudiated an ideology that had motivated them to the greatest sacrifices and achievements during the war years.”63
The rebuilding of a largely destroyed country was an enormous task, requiring an endless succession of small steps that gradually restored a semblance of order. Local governments organized the removal of the rubble; debris piled up in veritable mountains at the edge of cities such as Berlin. Urban authorities also sought to repair water mains and restore power lines for washing, cooking, and heating. Even before the fighting ended, private citizens had begun to fix the bombing damage to their roofs and nail windows shut until they could get new panes. With horses dead and farm machinery out of fuel, hungry urbanities had to volunteer to dig up crops such as potatoes in return for a small share for their own consumption. Workmen scoured destroyed factories for any tools or raw materials that might be used to resume production, while railroad and road crews repaired tracks and highways in order to get transportation going again. Out of innumerable individual and collective initiatives, a miraculous reconstruction (Wiederaufbau) eventually emerged.64
Often forgotten in the depictions of “mountains of reconstruction work” is the concurrent process of the “intellectual rebuilding of Germany” through a revitalization of its values and institutions. Minorities in both Christian churches had resisted Nazi pressure. Their spokesmen, such as Bishop Hanns Lilje, provided spiritual orientation for disillusioned veterans who were in search of a moral compass by distinguishing between positive patriotism and destructive nationalism. Though even more tarnished by collaboration, the nation’s universities also offered intellectual guidance by uncompromised professors, such as Friedrich Meinecke in Berlin and Alfred Weber in Heidelberg, who sought to nourish the “spiritual hunger” of former soldiers. Helped by émigrés such as Frank Eyck, the occupation authorities also reconstructed the licensed media as a democratic public sphere, free of Nazi lies and distortions. Erich Helmer was delighted by the appearance of the newspaper Braunschweiger Nachrichten as a reliable news source and “first step towards normalcy.”65
For the younger members of the Weimar cohort, another part of normalization was their ability to complete the schooling that had been interrupted by Nazi anti-intellectualism and wartime manpower needs. Now the authorities created special remedial courses for veterans that tried to cram the missing academic content into a year or two. Sitting at a school desk and memorizing Latin verbs was not easy for youths such as Erich Helmer who had been Wehrmacht officers. Students of technology and the natural sciences had to relearn the basics of mathematics, physics, and chemistry even if they, like Karl Härtel, had already practiced such skills in the military. But in spite of destroyed classrooms, lack of textbooks, and untrained teachers, the resumption of schooling generally proved “a happy time.” Ursula Baehrenburg and other youths “went to school with enthusiasm: nothing was more fun than to be allowed to learn.”66
After passing the difficult Abitur college preparatory examination, many youths were finally able to throw themselves into studying at the university. For the first postwar cohort, this was not the romantic student life of carousing in fraternities, but rather a bitter struggle against hunger, cold, and inadequate facilities. Older veterans such as purser Hanns Stekeler had “to study pretty hard” in order to learn the complicated regulations to obtain a law degree. Robert Neumaier remembered that only “a determined will to persevere and good comradeship helped us get through.” In spite of the harsh conditions, these students were animated by “a sense of new departure” into a better future. They resolved not to repeat the disastrous mistakes of their elders. Budding theologians such as Erich Helmer wanted “to champion the truth and freedom of the Gospel.” Even engineers such as Heinz Schultheis hoped to help society to “build a future democratic state out of the useless materials of intellectual rubble.”67
The completion of their training finally allowed the Weimar children to advance from temporary jobs into permanent careers. Even without the appropriate school certificate, some resourceful and energetic youths managed to become journalists, as Gerhard Baucke did, or traveling salesmen, like Rolf Bulwin. Those who had completed an apprenticeship and passed the required tests could become secretaries, like Anneliese Huber, seamstresses, like Ingrid Bork, or technicians, like Horst Johannsen. If they had received additional specialized training, they might enter an occupation such as forester (Horst Andrée), schoolteacher (Ursula Baehrenburg), ship’s captain (Hermann Debus), or bank employee (Paul Frenzel). Only if they had finished their university studies could Erich Helmer and Martin Sieg become theologians or Horst Grothus, Robert Neumaier, or Heinz Schultheis engineers.68 Although their professional development was long delayed, these young men and women showed an impressive will to catch up.
Another dimension of normalization was encounters with modern culture that offered impulses for self-reflection and coming to terms with terrible experiences. “I have never again in my life been so starved for cultural events as I was then,” Ursula Mahlendorf recalled. She loved the paintings of abstract expressionism that had been denounced by the Nazis as “degenerate art,” finding Franz Marc’s blue horses simply “glorious.” Joachim Fest thought the “first concert for which I obtained a ticket” rather memorable: Wilhelm Backhaus played Beethoven’s fifth piano concerto, offering consolation amid the ruins. Friends introduced him to the authors of the “inner emigration” and later expanded his horizons to philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre in other languages. Erich Helmer was “swept away by the weekly Bach cantatas” because “they let us forget” the rubble and hunger for a while.69 With these encounters, the skeptical youths recovered older traditions that were less corrupted by the Nazis and got to know the forbidden works of international modernism.
Disillusioned due to their betrayal by Hitler, the young adults of the postwar period tried to find political and moral orientation that might give their lives a new and better direction. Erich Helmer remembered that they “all searched for an answer to the unmastered past, looked for something to hold onto in a chaotic world.”
In the resulting discussions between veterans and civilian students, “nobody was offended,” because “they got at the core of things.” Saving “every penny and sacrificing every free minute in order to escape the black hole of ignorance,” Martin Sieg found sympathetic company in the Protestant student circle at the Technical University of Hanover, where they wrestled “about a future in which the past would never be allowed to repeat itself.” By contrast, the younger Ursula Mahlendorf gained support at the Bremen America House, which “became for me more than a library to study in.” Such self-reflection drew upon the works of critical authors such as Carl Zuckmayer, Wolfgang Borchert, and Heinrich Böll.70
The postwar reorientation of these young adults, sometimes also called “forty-fivers,” was a laborious process that led to a range of competing outcomes. While the failure of the Nazi policies was self-evident, admitting the enormity of the regime’s crimes was another matter. Many young adults were unwilling to trust the shocking pictures of piles of corpses or walking skeletons shown in the newsreels by the occupying powers. Some self-critical Germans such as Martin Sieg still claimed that these atrocities “had largely happened without the knowledge of the mass of the population.” But “when the entire scope of the bestial state criminality became known and documented so it could be checked, I was deeply ashamed” of the “official and systematic murder” in a country claiming to be highly cultured. Even if confronting Nazi complicity remained painful, the Allies also took a more positive approach by providing young “Germans with an opportunity to educate themselves in democracy.” Ursula Baehrenburg explained what ultimately made the difference: “We experienced a lived freedom.”71
Discouraged by the extent of the destruction, some of the young Germans chose to leave their country in search of better lives elsewhere. They were part of the last great wave of emigration that propelled over one and a half million former perpetrators, bystanders, and victims of the Third Reich abroad. Some, like engineer Fred Flessa, tried to escape the material privation of Nuremberg. Others, such as Bavarian farmer Walter Lichti, sought to get a fresh start in distant places without any of their Nazi baggage. Some intellectuals, such as Irene Alenfeld, sought psychological distance from their tarnished home by idealizing another culture: she found a “second home” in France through study abroad and work as an au pair. Organist and composer Gerhard Krapf so enjoyed the warmth of his reception during his fellowship year at Redlands University that he decided to stay permanently in the United States. Because she felt “unwanted in Germany,” Ursula Mahlendorf wished to emigrate “anywhere” and accepted a teaching assistantship in German at Brown University.72
Former slave laborers and other uprooted people, called displaced persons or DPs, wanted to leave the country of their oppressors, but had difficulty deciding where to go. Overjoyed by their liberation, many of them “wanted to avenge themselves for everything that had been done to them before” and broke into houses, assaulted women, and plundered goods. In the chaotic transition, a few also helped other surviving victims, such as Lucy Mandelstam, with shelter and food. The Allied assumption that all of the more than six million DPs should be shipped back to their homes as soon as possible turned out to be mistaken: many East Europeans no longer had a country to return to because the borders had shifted, and they did not want to be under Soviet control. Moreover, former Nazi collaborators among them had ample reason to fear the retribution of the Red Army. Sonja Kolesnyk, for example, remained in Bavaria and married a fellow Ukrainian. Most of the rest waited instead until they could get an immigration visa to Australia, Canada, or the United States.73
Jewish survivors had ample reason to emigrate. However, a few of them stayed on in their former country even if all too many ordinary Germans had become accomplices to Nazi crimes. When there was no home to return to and their beloved family members had been murdered, the emotional ties ruptured. But, although her Jewish father had been killed, Ingeborg Hecht remained, for she had a son by a gentile soldier who had died in the war and she realized that “the invisible walls which had been erected between us and ‘the others’ could gradually be removed again. But it was not easy.” Living in a mixed marriage, Erich Alenfeld also stayed on with his wife and children, tackling the frustrating task of filing restitution cases. Similarly, Marie Jalowicz Simon decided not to leave, because she “had already emigrated from Hitler’s Germany to the Germany of Goethe and Schiller,” representing a cosmopolitan humanism. As “a German Jewish woman,” she continued to be attached to her home—for, among the murderers, “many Germans risking their lives, made great sacrifices to help me.”74
Most survivors of the KZ were, however, glad to accomplish that emigration for which they had wished so dearly. Unless they were as fortunate as Judith Magyar, who became engaged to an American captain, they had to find a way through “a maze of regulations and quotas” that was insensitive to their suffering. In spite of the positive reception in her hometown of Papenburg, Ilse Polak thought “it better for me, if I left the past behind me and emigrated to America.” This time around it was easier to find a sponsor, and in the fall of 1949 she finally arrived in New York Harbor. “It was a very emotional moment. I cried. It was as if I saw a new future before me.” Also impatient to leave, Ruth Klüger resented her mother’s decision to move to the United States rather than to Israel. The process took several years, making it necessary to complete her high school studies and start at a university in Bavaria. During this time she befriended a refugee and grew to understand that “memory connects us, memory separates us.”75 Unable to escape her cultural imprinting, she eventually taught German literature in America.
The “most secret of wishes” was, however, getting to Eretz Israel, the homeland that, according to Zionists, promised to “end the suffering in diaspora.” After recovering from typhoid, Niza Ganor (née Anna Fränkel) made her way to southern France and registered with the Jewish Agency. As early as September 1945 she boarded a ship, arrived in Haifa, and sneaked on shore illegally. Also convinced that she “wanted nothing to do with” Germans, Lucy Mandelstam first lived in a series of UN relief camps in order to recover sufficient strength to travel. Joining a group of Jewish emigrants, she then started her voyage in a kibbutz in Germany and moved on to Italy. Only in 1947 was she able to get a space with 1,400 others on a rickety ship named Ghetto Fighters. But, trying not to offend the Palestinians, the British authorities sent the would-be émigrés back to Cyprus. After another trying year in a refugee camp, Mandelstam was overjoyed to enter the state of Israel in 1948, ready to “start a new life.” Similarly Ruth Elias was relieved when she at last got to Palestine: “For the first time after 2,000 years we finally have our home. Our land! Eretz Israel.”76
Those Jewish émigrés who had already arrived in the United States before the Holocaust integrated themselves further into their adopted country while drawing on the cultural capital that they had brought with them. If, like Fritz Stern or Georg Iggers, they had been too young to enlist, they went to college and obtained graduate degrees, involving themselves in liberal causes. Those who had fought in Allied uniform, such as Albert Gompertz, returned to their new homes, entered business, and became citizens as a reward for their military service. Some, like Tom Angress, also profited from the GI bill in order to get their college and graduate degrees. While quickly Americanizing themselves by learning the language and participating in US youth culture, they retained rather ambivalent feelings about their background. Having lived “through a small part of the German horror, but enough to feel and recognize its centrality,” quite a few studied European history and became a “second generation” of Euro-American scholars.77
While young adults in Germany were busy getting back on their feet, politics gradually intruded once again upon their lives by forcing them to take sides in the Cold War. Feeling betrayed by the Nazis and controlled by the occupation powers, many withdrew into a private realm, creating what sociologist Helmut Schelsky called a widespread “w
ithout me” syndrome. But because the victors needed local personnel to help them administer the defeated country and restore basic services, they appointed mayors and recruited technical administrators. To legitimize their decisions, they held the first elections as soon as 1946, allowing anti-Fascist parties to compete on the local and then increasingly the state level. The return of politics triggered endless debates between partisans of the “great hopes for Communism” in the East or defenders of the chances for “freedom” of the West. When Paul Frenzel consulted his two uncles about what to do, one advised him to join the KPD, while the other insisted that he become a member of the SPD.78
In the competition for the allegiance of young adults, the Communists—the more resolute enemies of the Nazi dictatorship—had a head start. In the East, they counted on the presence of the Red Army and the return of the “Ulbricht group,” KPD functionaries who had survived the purges in Moscow. In June 1945, the Communist Party issued its first public proclamation, promising to rebuild the country in a democratic and socialist fashion. To veterans such as Fritz Klein, this “appeared to be a grand vision, suitable as guidepost for a decided change of direction, demanded by history for Germany.” For critical spirits, the Marxist notion of the class struggle offered a coherent “theory which was able to provide orientation for future thought and action.” Other young intellectuals, Eka Assmus and Christa Wolf among them, also embraced this blueprint for building a better Germany. Only skeptics such as Erich Helmer saw that the compulsory fusion of the KPD and SPD into the “Socialist Unity Party” (SED) in the spring of 1946 would create “a ‘democracy’ under Russian rule.”79
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