Not I

by Joachim C. Fest

  Hardly anyone, added my father, took his pleas seriously, and of those he knew a little better only the Rosenthals and the eldest son of Herr Lausen paid heed. He suspected, however, that Aby Lausen had emigrated to England less because of the warnings about the Nazis than because of an early love interest who had already gone there the year after the Nazis seized power. Another frequently put argument was—after the anti-Semitic campaigns of Stöcker, Fritsch, and others had come and gone—who was going to run away from mere hooligans? Wolfgang asked who was being talked about, and the conversation went from the Handbook on the Jewish Question11 to the copious anti-Semitic pamphlet literature and the idea of the “national community.”

  My father persisted; he was without any social snobbery—his own background precluded that. The idea of the national community, which had had passionate advocates on the left as on the right, had always seemed to him to be quite offensive. He would never want to have anything in common with the SS man Henschel, who lived opposite, or with the Communist leader Teddy Thälmann, never mind Franz von Papen.12 On other occasions he talked about the war, love of the Fatherland, or what the words “the bosom of Abraham” meant. Wolfgang and I found such instruction no less exciting than football matches at the Oberschöneweide Sports Club, which we often went to and sometimes even continued talking about in bed—until one day it all became too much for my father. He suggested other conversations we might have: about the best book we had read; the difference between the Benedictine Order and the Jesuits; the origin of some popular Berlin sayings; the history of building on Schwanenwerder Island (in the River Havel in Berlin), and other more appropriate themes.

  Twice every summer the family traveled “to the west” on a weekend, which usually meant to Potsdam, or Prussia’s Arcadia, as my father always put it in a tone of voice which, regardless of his frown, I called his “devout Prussian irony.” I had picked up the expression from Hans Hausdorf, a close friend of my parents. He loved everything about the idyllic royal town, from Frederick the Great’s showy New Palace to the Dutch Quarter where we often stopped for lemonade. But his favorite places were less obvious: Glienicke Palace, the Belvedere on the Pfingstberg—Pentecost Hill—or the Italian-style villas with their towers built by the architect Persius, which could be encountered everywhere in Potsdam.

  And above all the Church of the Redeemer at Sacrow. As we approached the campanile on the winding paths along the river, inevitably the dark “rathole” would be mentioned, which one had to recognize as a reference to Theodor Fontane’s Travels. My father thought the union of early Christian modesty and Prussian industriousness that was realized in the building was especially successful. Nowhere else, he said, expressed more vividly that the world of Prussia was not just a matter of riding crops, the cane, and regimentation. Instead it could also reveal itself as relaxed and even charming, once the somewhat rough “Prussianness” had received a suitable polish.

  I have never forgotten the remark my father made later on, shortly before I left Berlin, that really the landscape of the Mark Brandenburg around Berlin displayed in every direction the same melancholy poverty. But around Potsdam the art-loving Prussian rulers had placed, here and there, a church, a little temple, once even what looked like a mosque, and much more amidst marsh, sand, and pines. And wherever that had happened, what had been a mere “district” had been transformed as if by a magic hand into a “landscape.” Arcadia, in short. To him it was (as he liked to explain in his schoolmaster’s manner) a kind of proof that the always somewhat shabby Prussia, breathlessly stumbling through history, not only served the well-being of its subjects through conquest but also in humane ways. And on one of our last excursions “to the west,” I heard him say of Sanssouci Palace, alluding to a quotation from Frederick the Great, that in the end Prussia’s history, despite all the not unjustified objections, had indeed been a “rendezvous with glory.”

  He could never get enough of the light effects on the pink and bluish glazed bricks of Sacrow church. Occasionally, he would express his annoyance if we could not properly appreciate them, and found the frogs hopping into the water from the paths at our approach or the crayfish, which we sometimes brought up whole handfuls at a time, to be far more entertaining. From Sacrow one could look along the “passages of light,” as my father put it, to the steam-engine house13 and Babelsberg Castle, built by Schinkel, as they lay in the dusty sunbeam veils. They were touching attempts—already marked by an uncertainty of style—to conceal the cool ugliness of advancing modernity.

  The other summer excursions I remember were to Neuruppin, the “Mark Brandenburg’s town of genius,” as my father ironically called it, because both the architect Schinkel and the writer Fontane were born in the “eternally wretched little place”; to Gransee Lake, associated with Queen Luise of Prussia; to Stechlin Lake, where we waited in vain for the geyser to erupt; to Rheinsberg with the Friendship Obelisk; and to Lehnin Abbey. Somewhere at the sandy edge of a wood, by ranks of slim pines drawn up as if on parade, the tablecloth was brought out and the picnic basket opened. Usually, there were Kiel sprats from the market hall (a small wooden box cost one mark) or dried fruit (likewise packed in a wooden box and costing the same), which was praised as “good German Cameroon banana” from the former colony. These would be combined with thick slices of bread and afterward an apple. I found the mixture unspeakable and for years wondered how it tallied with my sensitive mother.

  Once Dr. Knessel, who wanted to show off his new Horch to my parents, drove us out to Potsdam.14 He had his pretty daughter Sophie, who was about two years older than me, with him. My mother’s impression was that she was much too flirtatious: the girl was indignant that Wolfgang was allowed to sit on the separate passenger seat next to her father; we all knew that she had her eye on Wolfgang. On the long straight highway to Glienicke Bridge, while the adults were talking about the charm of the Marble Palace (Marmorpalais), she had, out of pure boredom, pulled faces. Then, just before we reached the Town Palace in Potsdam itself, she had, without warning, sat on my lap and pretended to kiss me; she merely laughed at the grown-ups’ protests that she should stop immediately. On the drive back, when I summoned up my courage and, more or less in revenge, sat on her knee, she didn’t fend me off, but instead embraced me and began to smooch in a way I took to be passionate. After some futile warnings Dr. Knessel stopped at the side of the road, tore open the door, and said sternly, “Sophie, I must ask you to behave!” But the girl was not so easily put down. “My misbehavior here,” she retorted naively, “is the same as yours in your bedroom in the morning.” Clearing his throat, Dr. Knessel took his place at the wheel again. “This isn’t the end of the matter,” he rebuked his daughter. My father, too, was clearly going to have a word with me.

  The reproaches I was subject to at home were at first milder than I had expected. My father went over my recent “misdeeds” and accused me of coming to enjoy the role of the rowdy. Then earlier instances of bad behavior were brought up, such as my kidnapping of the Deeckes’ tomcat in my school satchel; I had released it far beyond the racetrack to find out whether it knew its way home as well as our carrier pigeons. And ages before—with my friends Ecki and Hoppi Scholz—I had shouted at the windows a couple of cheeky verses we had made up. Were things going to go on like this? And now today, just to cap it all, I had sat on Sophie’s lap … I interrupted him with all the fury of a bad conscience, because of the misdeeds which had been dealt with long ago: “Today, I had to do it! You can’t let Sophie get away with what she does! I can’t anyway! At some point you’ve got to show someone like Sophie that enough is enough!” When my speech of vindication was finished and when, after the subsequent exchange of words, my father was still looking bad-tempered, it was my mother, surprisingly enough, who sat down beside me on the settee. “You’re right, my boy!” she said and then, turning to my father: “Don’t take everything so seriously. Children his age do sometimes squabble. Apart from which Sophie did start it. One doesn�
��t just sit on a stranger’s lap.” In the family ever after that the incident was called “the lap-squabble story.”

  Our excursions to the west usually took place on Sunday, in order (as my mother put it) to avoid the snooping of Block Warden Fengler. She had the impression he particularly liked to call on her household, to see whether she had the monthly “Sunday hotpot” on the stove, an austerity measure already decreed shortly after the Nazi seizure of power. She hated him and his way of talking about how hard it was to track down all that suspicious behavior, especially as on each of these inspections he was also responsible for collecting two marks fifty for Winter Aid. Once when my mother summoned up her courage and observed during the “pot test” that his labors about which he complained so much were conducted with great zeal, he retorted that he performed every task with “unreserved commitment.” She didn’t say any more, but she had yet another reason to loathe “the little man with the big mouth,” as she once called him with unusual sharpness. The fellow almost made her doubt God, so that at her next confession she had two sins to admit: hate and weakness of faith.

  At the end of 1933, in order not to waste the unexpectedly empty time, my father began to brush up on his English and French, which he had learned while he was a student. He took classes at the Hartnack School on Nollendorfplatz, which (a great sensation at the time) made use of gramophone records for language teaching. Soon the languages he had learned years before were no longer enough for him; he took Italian and Russian courses. As a result he simultaneously expanded his circle of acquaintances to include several colorful, occasionally even bizarre characters. Of the French ones, I remember Roger Reveille, who was quick-witted and animated and seemed to have a command of almost every European language. Also among the new guests were three Russians, who had emigrated to Germany in the early 1920s, and Saverio Aprea, a counselor at the Italian embassy.

  From now on the sounds of unfamiliar languages mingled in our apartment or in summer around the garden table. What I particularly remember about the Russians is the lost-sounding “humming song,” which they struck up in their growling basses, usually at a late hour. From time to time they interrupted these solemn melodies with staccato sequences, but all this, to their sorrow, was performed only in low voices, in order not to annoy the neighbors, and in particular Herr Henschel, who repeatedly appeared on his balcony, a finger raised threateningly. Roger talked about Marcel Proust and then jumped to Clemenceau, the war, and his father, who in 1914 had been deployed close to the place where my father had been wounded.

  We developed the closest attachment—affection almost—to Signor Aprea, who possessed the unique Italian combination of knowledge of human nature, charm, and the craftiness born of an experience of dictatorship. What made him irreplaceable, however, were the tickets to events which he acquired thanks to his diplomatic contacts and passed on to us. For Wolfgang and me he obtained entry to two days of the Olympic Games, so that we weren’t just limited to “looking for Negroes” round about the Brandenburg Gate, but could watch Jesse Owens in his unforgettable long-jump duel with Luz Long. We were also able to go to several variety shows at the Admiralspalast, likewise to the six-day cycle races in the Sportpalast, where, as a token of the greatest expert knowledge, we learned to whistle Paul Lincke’s hit song “Das ist die Berliner Luft, Luft, Luft” (That’s the Berlin air, air, air), and finally, thanks to Saverio Aprea, we were able to attend free opera performances, as well as big shows like Menschen, Tiere, Sensationen (People, Animals, Sensations).15

  We had a factotum in the shape of old Katlewski, our “good household spirit.” He was short in stature, had cropped gray hair and a fat, turned-up nose. His face was at once sorrowful and traversed by laughter lines. By profession he was a house painter, but now long retired. Once he showed me his apartment, which was several streets away, and I remember the bedroom with the vast marriage bed, above which hung a framed print, in which Jesus, his hand raised half in instruction, half in blessing, walked through a cornfield with his disciples, and on the wall opposite St. George, mounted on his horse, in the act of plunging his lance into a hissing dragon. Old Kat, as he was called, was ready to help the family whenever any odd job needed to be done. “I think highly of yer dad for political reasons,” he said, “because I’m an old Socialist”; but, he added, “I’m a gentleman, too, and so I admire yer mother as a lady.” He repaired our bikes, and once even the seam of a friend’s burst football, trimmed the lilac bushes, stood on the tall wooden ladder to pick fruit, and from obscure sources obtained bags of chicken feed. For a church festival he wove garlands of daisies for my sisters and altogether was always at hand when help was needed.

  Katlewski also supplied us with the latest political jokes, regularly giving notice of them between tightly closed lips. As soon as he had made us sufficiently curious, he referred to the “huge trouble” he could get into for passing them on. But then, after about a quarter of an hour, Wolfgang and I had softened him up to the point where, there among the currant bushes or the pots of paints with which he happened to be busy, feigning annoyance, he gave way. “But not a word to a soul!” he began each of his jokes, thrusting a hoe or a brush dripping with paint in front of our noses. “Not to your brother and sisters, neither. Not even them.” One of the few jokes I still remember was about the stupidity of the Nazis as demonstrated by the Blockwart who showed up for a review wearing one black and one brown shoe. “Man, Larsunke”—Katlewski caricatured the commanding official in his best version of the Berlin dialect—“I’ve told you again and again that you must pay attention to your shoes. One black, one brown—what are you thinking?” Larsunke saluted and replied: “Yes Sir, Herr Kreisleiter! I don’t get it either. I have mulled it over and over but I don’t get it. Even my wife doesn’t know what to make of it because, you see, I have got another pair like that standing around at home.”

  I have forgotten most of Old Kat’s jokes long ago, though I remember him quoting Shakespeare with reference to Göring, saying a man may smile and smile and yet be a villain. “I got that from the Workers’ Educational Association,” he said.

  In summer 1937 it was time for me to go to secondary school, and since there was no classical Gymnasium in Karlshorst my parents decided to send me—as Wolfgang had been two years earlier—to the Canisius Kolleg, a Catholic school run by Jesuits, even though it was in Westend, on the other side of the city. Because of its excellent reputation it was inundated with applicants, and to limit the annual rush for places a difficult entrance exam had been introduced. Nevertheless, that same year the Education Ministry declared it had decided to close the school due to lack of demand. A few days after I discovered I had passed the test and been accepted for the school, another letter arrived to cancel the admission.

  That was one disappointment. The other was that in that same year the school caps with colored ribbons were banned. Wolfgang’s, as far as I remember, had white and shiny green ribbons. The braiding on the caps was graded according to year;16 now they were abolished in the name of national unity. Some compensation was provided by the briefcase, which my grandfather gave me as replacement for the ridiculous school satchel which I had carried to elementary school.

  So I found myself at the Leibniz Gymnasium, a huge reddish-brick building on the Mariannenufer by the River Spree, not far from the Silesian mainline station. For generations the area had been a gateway for the mass of immigrants from the east, like the Scheunenviertel by Alexanderplatz not far away. The classroom smelled of stale sweat, leather bags, and margarine sandwiches. During breaks and after lessons we played football in the schoolyard or practiced taking corner kicks, complicated passes, and, individually, even the high art of the backheel. We also enjoyed, three or four of us at a time, just keeping the leather ball in the air with headers, and we often spent whole afternoons on Hentigstrasse playing dodgeball with Hansi Streblow, “Kutti,” and Sternekieker. “Motte” Böhm, a somewhat older girl, who always had an inherited tram conductor’
s bag with a polished silver buckle around her shoulder, invariably took the part of the referee.

  It must have been around this time or a little later that my father returned depressed from one of the meetings with his friends. There were still nothing but defeats, he said. Mielitz had reported—and Classe, with his English contacts, had confirmed it—that Fleet Street from The Times to Lord Rothermere’s Daily Mail showed undisguised sympathy for the Nazis. The Saturday Review front page had recently been taken up with HEIL HITLER in large letters. All had agreed that next to nothing could be expected from Britain. Acknowledge the benefits of dictatorship was the message coming from the island, only a halfway civilized form of tyranny held the prospect of moving things on.

  He himself would never understand, continued my father, why everyone who opposed Hitler was inevitably, sooner or later, left out in the cold. There had been a long, sometimes heated discussion about that. Agreement was only reached when it was concluded that they had been hopelessly unprepared for the dictatorship. What had come out on top in Germany might occur in darkest Russia or the Balkans, but surely not in their law-abiding country. What had happened? That was the question raised on all sides, but no one had an answer. In this agitated atmosphere Krone had finally said that in critical situations leaving a question unresolved was the best means of sticking together. One just had to accept that there were no easy answers.

  Long-established bonds were not always equal to the pressures of the situation. Kalli Vaupel, one of my father’s close friends from his student days, had spent many years in the rural Uckermark not far from Berlin, and had failed to make the longed-for move to the capital. He was bald (to the degree that we called “polished”), had a wiry figure and an inexhaustible sense of humor, and even appreciated bad jokes. Later, he became less and less cheerful and began to drink. He couldn’t see a way out of the dark hole he was in, he said, yet he had to get it behind him; he just didn’t know how.