The Girl from Berlin--A Novel

by Ronald H. Balson

  “Herbert Kleiner, an overly aggressive corporal with the SS. His father is very influential in the party and has him fast-tracked under Heydrich. He also has a cousin in the orchestra. A month ago, his father asked me to give Herbert four tickets for the concert. Herbert is a nasty fellow and I don’t like him. He’s hanging onto Heydrich’s coattails, trying to climb the Nazi ladder.”

  I followed Dr. Kritzer out to the front of the stage where Heydrich was waiting. His blond hair was slicked back. He stood tall and looked striking in his uniform. He was very handsome, but his steel eyes sent chills up my spine. He took my hand, bowed slightly and kissed it. “I have never heard the concerto played more elegantly,” he said. “And to think, it was so masterfully played by a fifteen-year-old girl. Young lady, you have a starlit career waiting for you, and I, for one, will be delighted to watch it rise.”

  I was humbled. I didn’t know what to say other than, “Thank you, sir.”

  “I would love to hear more of your music,” he said. “Please let me know whenever you are scheduled to solo again.”

  While Heydrich was talking to me, Kleiner stood by his side, eyeing me up and down. He had a snarky smile on his face. Then he leaned over to whisper in Heydrich’s ear. Although he cupped his mouth, I could still hear. “General, I’m sorry, but you obviously didn’t know that this girl is a Jew. She should be barred from performing in this building, not praised. My cousin plays the trombone in this orchestra, and he’s the one who told me she’s a Jew. I wouldn’t be so quick to shower this Jewess with praise.”

  Heydrich took a step back. He was clearly put off by Kleiner’s impertinent interruption. “Do you now suppose it is your prerogative to tell me who I should praise?” Heydrich said. “Is that what corporals do these days? Did you hear this girl play? Was she brilliant?”

  Kleiner shrugged, nodded and then shrugged again. “I don’t know if she’s brilliant,” Kleiner said. “I know she’s a Jew.”

  Heydrich was furious. “Well, I am telling you that this girl is brilliant, you ignorant idiot. I am praising her artistry because it is well deserved. Can a simpleminded asshole like you understand that?”

  Kleiner swallowed hard and stuttered, “B-but sir, J-Jews are being removed from orchestras all over Germany. It’s the law. How could she possibly have a starlit career?”

  Heydrich pushed Kleiner away from him like he was a stray cat. “Do not presume to correct me ever, Corporal. You’re way out of line. You have the manners of an uncultured boor. I am sorry I accepted those tickets from your father, and I regret I am in your company tonight. I assure you that I will not make that mistake again. Now, get out of my sight.” Then to me, he said, “I apologize for this man’s disrespect. You played beautifully tonight.”

  As Kleiner was leaving the stage, he stopped. He looked like a beaten dog. His jaw was quivering, and he stared at me with cold, hate-filled eyes. Though I had neither said nor done anything to offend him, I was sure I had made a mortal enemy.

  ELEVEN

  Berlin, December 1934

  A year had passed, and as well as my career had progressed, as comfortable as I had become with my music and my education, I was distressed to see how Berlin was changing. Like all of Germany, it was becoming intolerant, irritable, mean and, from my point of view, frightening. Goebbels, through his propaganda ministry, had seized control of all artistic disciplines. In September, he formed the Reich Culture Chamber, which controlled music, theater, literature, fine arts and the radio.

  Goebbels used his position to infuse Nazi policies and ideology into the arts. He called it Gleichschaltung—synchronizing—but to me, it meant that the bull was in charge of the china shop. Goebbels fancied himself a writer and had tried for years to get published. Failing at that, he wrote two plays that remained unsold. As the self-proclaimed “culture minister,” he set about implementing Nazi principles, burning books, banning composers and excising from the arts Jews and other “undesirables.”

  As was bound to happen, in late 1934 Goebbels finally locked horns with Uncle Wilhelm. Paul Hindemith’s compositions were scheduled to be performed by the Philharmonic. Hindemith’s music was a bit avant-garde, racy and sexually charged. His new composition, Mathis der Maler (Matthias the Painter), concerned the plight of artists in a politically oppressed environment. The public loved Hindemith. Uncle Wilhelm appreciated the work’s artistic value. He was also a friend of Hindemith.

  The Reich Culture Chamber proclaimed Hindemith’s music to be “degenerate” and banned the Philharmonic from playing any of his compositions. Although not articulated, there was also a Jewish issue. Hindemith wasn’t a Jew, but he was married to one. Refusing to be bullied, on November 25, 1934, Uncle Wilhelm wrote a letter to the newspaper arguing the Philharmonic’s right to play Hindemith’s composition, Mathis der Maler.

  A nasty dispute arose over artistic autonomy. Uncle Wilhelm called Hitler an “enemy of the human race” and described the general state of politics in Germany as a “pigsty.” The acrimony increased and on December 5, Uncle Wilhelm abruptly resigned from the Philharmonic.

  The resignation was sudden and the consequences were harsh. Goebbels immediately seized the opportunity to Aryanize the Philharmonic and turn it into the Reichsorchester. All the Jewish players were immediately suspended, including my father. Goebbels set strict rules for composers and musicians—which compositions and which musicians were banned. Jewish composers, including Meyerbeer and Mendelssohn, were banned. Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of Uncle Wilhelm’s favorites and a yearly offering of the Philharmonic, was declared to be “degenerate.”

  Hitler and Goebbels sorely underestimated the great Furtwängler’s popularity. When he resigned, more than 30 percent of the subscribers canceled their season tickets in protest. University music students collected signatures calling for his immediate reinstatement. It was a public embarrassment for the Reich, and Hitler did not like embarrassments.

  Uncle Wilhelm, much in demand all over the world, was offered the post of permanent conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic, and he accepted! We were all dismayed. Now our hopes that he would patch things up and return to the Berlin Philharmonic had vanished. Papa told us that we should consider moving to Vienna as well. Papa felt sure that Uncle Wilhelm would always find a place for him. Austria did not have religious restrictions or intolerant culture ministers.

  The Junior’s winter concert was set for December 18, 1934, and I was once again to be featured as a soloist, though this time not in a concerto. I was to play Massenet’s “Meditation,” the symphonic intermezzo from his opera Thaïs. I loved that piece and it gave me the opportunity to play with emotion. Initially, I resisted the offer to solo. I told my father I didn’t feel that it was appropriate for me to play in light of the fact that he had lost his job and Jewish musicians were being dismissed from orchestras all over Germany. I thought it was disloyal.

  My father would hear none of that. “You will solo as requested. That is an honor. We will not let the Nazis silence your music. So far, the Junior Orchestra has been exempt from nazification. If a Jewish girl is given the opportunity to shine like the sun in the face of the Nazis, we must grab on to it proudly. You will play for those of us who can’t.”

  Once again, the Philharmonie was glamorously decked out for the seasonal event. Once again, there was not a single vacant seat in the hall, and though we were just a youth orchestra, our concert was a jewel in Berlin’s winter social calendar, coming the week before Christmas. My solo was next to the last number.

  As I walked from my seat to the front of the stage, Dr. Kritzer turned to the audience. “I am sure all of you remember Ada Baumgarten from her brilliant performance last year in the Mozart no. 3. Tonight, she will grace us with Massenet’s ‘Meditation.’” He nodded, tapped his baton and lifted his arms.

  After two measures of quiet string introduction, my solo began. Unlike the burst of rapid allegro fingering that initiates the Mozart, the “Medi
tation” was soft, slow and emotive with continuous vibrato. Massenet wrote it to be played poco a poco appassionato—little by little with much emotion. The piece runs just over six minutes, but it is so lovely, it can literally bring tears to the eyes of a listener. Once again, I was proud to be standing in front of my orchestra. This night especially, for I was a symbol. I was all the Jewish musicians who had lost their jobs and were banned from standing on this stage. I thought to myself, who knows how long before I will be banned as well?

  I gave the “Meditation” my all and it went very well. While I was taking my bows, I saw Brigadeführer Heydrich in a box off to the right. He was standing, and I believe I saw him wipe a tear with his fingertips. I nodded to him and smiled. He was a Nazi and a notoriously coldhearted official. But this night, I was an artist and he was a devotee and together we shared the emotion of the “Meditation.” That was a bond I cannot explain nor justify.

  Afterward, he came backstage to pay his respects. I knew by then that as head of the SS he had opened a prison at Dachau outside of Munich. Communists, socialists, professionals and so-called dissidents were being detained and tortured. Jews had been snatched off the streets under the aegis of the Reich, if not by its direct order. This night, Heydrich was fashionably dressed in his uniform, elegant in his bearing—Lucifer in formal attire. He walked backstage, a smile on his face. He had come to connect with a musician whose performance had moved him to tears. I was flattered in a manner that made me ashamed. I did not extend my hand to him.

  Heydrich bowed slightly and told me that he had never heard the “Meditation” played with such feeling. I thought Heydrich was giving me false praise because Yehudi Menuhin had performed it here three years ago, but I accepted the compliment. He asked what was next on my schedule, and the question hit me like a splash of cold water. I thought immediately of my father and the other Jewish orchestra members. What was next on their schedule? I answered curtly, “I suppose that depends on what the Reich allows me to do, Brigadeführer. My father, concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic, has lost his position because he is a Jew. And I am a Jew, just like him.”

  My father was stunned. One cannot talk to Reinhard Heydrich that way. He could shoot you on the spot. “Oh, Brigadeführer, please let me apologize for her,” my father said. “She is young and does not…” The smile never left Heydrich’s face and he held his hand up like a stop sign. He wagged his index finger back and forth like a windshield wiper.

  “She needs no assistance, Herr Baumgarten,” he said. “She plays what she feels and she says what she feels. I respect her for that. But she is right. Her professional career will not blossom here in the Reich. You would be well advised to pursue her magnificent future outside of Germany. As soon as possible. I’m sure you understand.”

  He bowed and left. Because I was sixteen, and because I was passing through the innocence of a young woman’s development, I accepted his praise and his defense of my honor. I felt proud, but badly conflicted. I was a teenager. What should I have thought and felt? In many ways, I look back now and realize that those years, my teenage years, should have been years of carefree innocence. But for me and young women of my age, our innocence was stolen from us by the Nazis.

  TWELVE

  Berlin, February 1935

  After two months of sitting around the house, my father went back to work. He returned to the Philharmonic! Not because national policies changed, but solely because Uncle Wilhelm resumed his post. He and Goebbels reached an accord. The great Furtwängler was promised artistic autonomy. “Within reason.” In exchange, Uncle Wilhelm promised to be “nonpolitical.” He would not write public letters to the newspapers, he would not call Hitler an enemy or Germany a pigsty, but he reserved the right to object to authoritarian regulations that ran contrary to his artistic values. There would be no swastika flag hanging behind his orchestra, no “Horst Wessel” anthem before or after the program and no Hitler salutes. Uncle Wilhelm would have the right to invite Jewish artists as guest soloists and to keep his Jewish members. To all intents and purposes, it seemed as though Hitler and Goebbels had totally capitulated, but that was naïve. Hitler achieved his goal. He always did. He retained his famous Reich orchestra and Europe’s most celebrated conductor, and he could showboat them to the world. It was all about outward appearances, and the Olympic Games were coming to Germany in less than a year.

  The first thing Uncle Wilhelm did was reinstate my father and four other Jewish members. My father was once again appointed concertmaster. Uncle Wilhelm did not relinquish his position as permanent conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic, but he would not be in residence in Vienna very often. He would do the majority of his conducting duties in Berlin.

  I was overjoyed, but Papa was sad. Only five of the Jewish members were rehired. Four had already left Germany, as had many of our friends. They had officially resigned with Furtwängler’s blessings.

  For Joshua Berne, the Philharmonic’s leading string bass player, his fate was tragically sealed last month. Joshua was about to enter the Freundliche Bäckerei on Beusselstrasse with his little daughter when a parade of Brownshirts passed by. As they marched, they scanned the sidewalks with the eyes of coiled snakes, scanning pedestrians and daring defiance. They shot their arms out in Hitler salutes, a command to bystanders that they had better do the same. It was common knowledge that a person foolish enough to ignore the command risked a brutal retaliation, a physical assault or detainment in one of the SA detention centers. Unfortunately, Joshua Berne did not return the salute. To Joshua, the Hitler salute was an abomination, an anathema. He casually turned the other way, looking in the window, pretending not to see. But the Brownshirts saw. An overzealous, muscle-bound Brownshirt jumped out of line, grabbed Joshua and carried him away.

  Joshua’s daughter screamed and ran into the bakery. They sent for her mother and called the police, but as usual, the police were ineffectual. They would try to help when they found out where Joshua was taken. In truth, they did not know. Joshua had in fact been thrown into a detention center on Petersburgerstrasse, one of many such makeshift detention centers in Berlin.

  A week later, Joshua was released and made his way home, malnourished and badly injured. My father told us that Joshua had been interrogated and beaten. They accused him of being anti-Nazi, anti-Hitler and anti-Germany. Not only had he refused to salute, he had turned his back on the SA and everything they stood for. And he was a Jew. When his captors learned that he was a member of the orchestra and that Goebbels had barred Jews from performing in the arts, one of them suggested that they make sure Joshua could not violate the order. They stretched his fingers out on a board and smashed them with a hammer. It would be months before his hands were out of bandages, and my father doubted that Joshua would ever play again professionally. Uncle Wilhelm even told my father that he was worried about Joshua’s mental state. The suicide rate had been rising among Jews and displaced professionals.

  When he finished telling us about Joshua, Papa turned to me and clasped my hands. “Ada, I want you to promise me that you will never confront the SA. When they walk by, you will return their salutes, yell ‘Heil Hitler’ at the top of your lungs, jump up and down, do whatever they expect. If you are walking Mitzi, and if you see them, make sure you stand tall and salute. You don’t have to believe, you just have to stay alive.” I could see that his warning scared my mother half to death. Still in shock from her father’s ordeal, she cried and went to her room.

  THIRTEEN

  Pienza, Italy, July 2017

  “I THINK WE WERE supposed to turn there,” Catherine said, looking at her map. “We were supposed to take the second right at the roundabout.”

  “We did take the second right, the first right was a driveway.”

  “We should go around again; we’re on the wrong road.”

  “No, I’m sure we’re on the right road,” Liam answered in an unconvincing tone.

  “I’m looking at the map, Liam.”

 
; “Let’s try going down this road a little farther.”

  “What is the point of having GPS if you don’t use it?”

  “I have a great sense of direction.”

  “Not likely. Wait. There’s the turnoff. Strada provinciale. I’m sure that’s it. Turn right. She lives south of Pienza on SP18.”

  The narrow road wandered over gentle hills and down through verdant valleys, around olive groves and alongside mirrored lakes, until at last it came to a turnoff. There, at the end of a long dirt-and-gravel driveway, perched on a sunny hilltop, was Villa Vincenzo. Liam maneuvered the Audi into a small parking area in front of a raised veranda. A slender woman with shoulder-length brown hair and an apron tied around her blue cotton dress hustled out to greet them. “Buongiorno, buongiorno,” she said. “Welcome to Villa Vincenzo. I am Floria.”

  Floria waved them up to the stone veranda where a table was set with plates of cheese, charcuterie and bread and a cold pitcher of lemonade. “Prego,” she said. “Come and sit. It is a long drive from Roma. Franco will tend to your bags.”

  “This is lovely,” Catherine said. “Is Gabriella at home?”

  “The signora is sleeping. She suffers from time to time with chronic maladies. Regretfully, she is not as active as she once was. But”—Floria raised her eyebrows and smiled—“do not lower your guard.”

  Catherine stood at the edge of the veranda and took in the view. Nothing but an impressionist landscape as far as the eye could see. A warm southerly breeze tousled her hair. “How much of this belongs to Gabriella?”

  “Well, I suppose that is the question of the day, isn’t it?” Floria answered. “I would say all of it. Mr. Lenzini would say none of it.”

  “VinCo’s lawyer?”

  Floria nodded and twisted her lips into a sour expression. “A weasel of a man. He comes out here all the time to harass the signora. He takes great pleasure in the suffering of others.”