Not I

by Joachim C. Fest

  And our beloved uncle could do no more than shake his head when I once asked him whether in winter he did nothing more than carry out the necessary repairs. Good-naturedly he responded, “Why? Of course, there’s nothing else!” At that I retorted that then he should understand that we had our winter in the summer; that’s how it was in the city! The long holidays were our repair time, as it were. So he shouldn’t be always forcing us to work. There was a long pause. Then my uncle tugged at the tips of his mustache and grumbled, his arms outstretched on the table, “That’s going too far for me!”

  My parents usually stayed only a few days, and later I asked myself whether it was only after their departure that we began to “run behind the barn.” During his stay on the parental farm my father worked too, and showed that he still knew how to handle a scythe and a pitchfork, whereas my mother appeared rather lost in a world that was foreign to her. Our greatest love as children was the smithy, in which the horseshoes were made. As soon as the fire was kindled we were allowed to blow air into the embers until the charcoal in the middle of the forge began to glow deep red. Then the iron was placed in the fire until it too glowed, and then, blow by blow on the anvil, it was shaped to fit the horse’s foot. Hammer raised, my uncle stood in front of the hearth and was surrounded by the smell of burnt hoof when he nailed the shoe to the patient animal. And once, in the course of the holiday, usually toward the end, a pig was slaughtered, a process we followed with a mixture of horror and fascination.

  The three brothers in 1933 at the Berlin Zoo: (left to right) Joachim, Winfried, and Wolfgang

  Despite the constant running battle with my uncle, the Walken was the carefree, much loved playground of our early years. Packlitzsee, by which the farmstead was picturesquely situated as if placed there by the hand of an artist, was a modest stretch of water a couple of hundred yards long and broad. Since its surface lay a little below the woods around it, I remember it as a dark, smooth lake, rippling and glittering only at the edges. I shall never forget the gentle, bluish light above its surface, the scent of the pine woods behind us, and the fine white sand at the bathing place, which always got stuck between our toes. In addition, the sounds of the summer afternoon heat: the gurgling of the waves, the woodpecker hammering away somewhere, the splashing of the leaping fish and a little further on the cries of the diving birds, which at every call dipped head first into the water. It was as if time stood still. Only the myriad mosquitoes that feasted upon us disturbed the feeling of never-ending holidays.

  The greenery of the beeches, birches, and weeping willows which lined the shore of the lake, and whose branches at points trailed in the water, was only broken on the opposite shore. This was particularly evident in the early evening sun. Then the glowing yellow facade of a baroque monastery with two towers stood out. It had been founded in the thirteenth century by Cistercians and later rebuilt in the Silesian Baroque style. With its bright magic it spread an atmosphere of silence and solemnity, which ever since I have associated with this style. The small village behind the monastery, hidden by the trees, bore the name which for each one of us has since that time represented the ideal interplay of natural and architectural beauty: it really was called Paradies—Paradise. It was, indeed, ours.

  The other Eden, which began to open up for me at the age of eight or nine—as if at a secret “Open sesame!”—was the world of books. Like more or less everyone else, Heinrich Hoffmann’s Struwwelpeter had been read to us before we started school, and we could recite by heart some of the morally intimidating verses. Later, to our insatiable pleasure, came Wilhelm Busch; I remember that his verse stories and pictures—Pious Helene, Fipps the Monkey, and above all Max and Moritz—were the first texts that I read before starting school, initially with the help of my finger. We knew nothing, of course, of Wilhelm Busch’s Schopenhauerian pessimism, which sooner or later become obvious to every knowledgeable reader, yet some of his verses still make me happy today, and certain lines took on almost proverbial stature in our family. At every stage of my life, as soon as I set eyes on one of these parables, written and drawn with such a masterly, malicious wit and knowledge of human nature, I have involuntarily read on.2

  That was, apart from my father’s goodnight stories, the other literary pleasure of my early years. No Dr. Doolittle, no Germanic sagas, no Uncle Tom’s Cabin could match the verses of Wilhelm Busch. Reading became more demanding, also more time-consuming, when, after dinner one evening, Wolfgang told me I now had to read “Kamai.” He was, meanwhile, on the third volume, and Hansi Streblow claimed he had already read five. When I asked how many books there were by this “Kamai,” and heard something about sixty or seventy titles, I was close to having nothing to do with him. But then I read The Treasure of Silver Lake and instantly became so addicted that within a year I went on to read Winnetou and about twenty other books, only once interrupted by one of Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking volumes, which, however, despite the numerous explanatory drawings, I found boring, even silly.

  The works of one other author interrupted my reading of the adventure stories of Karl May (as I now realized he was called).3 Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn now became the other great literary experience of those years. For some time I considered the author of Tom Sawyer to be at least the equal of Goethe, who was admired everywhere as the world’s greatest poet, whereas I maintained that the correct order was in fact: Wilhelm Busch in first place, far ahead of all the others, then Mark Twain, closely followed by Goethe.

  Later—I must have been about thirteen or fourteen—I read Moby-Dick, the story of the white whale, which Wolfgang had recommended to me. I had to get away from my father’s collection of bourgeois literary treasures, he said, and although I angrily disagreed, I soon began to read the heavy volume. There was much that I hardly understood, yet the tension of this mysterious book did not let me go. The drama of Ishmael and the grim, one-legged Captain Ahab with the dark scar on his face, as if struck there by lightning, and the harpoon baptized with the name of the Devil, restlessly traversing the oceans of the world, is something I have never forgotten. I realized for the first time that my father’s taste was not everything, and that in addition to the legends and calendar tales whose endings were always certain, there was a strange and sinister world. Melville opened the gates wide.

  At that time it offended me that, like my brother, given the circumstances, I got only ten pfennigs a week pocket money, and the only way of earning more was to learn poems by heart, because my father had offered a one-mark reward for every ten poems recited without a mistake. So I learned Goethe’s “The Erl-King,” Schiller’s “The Pledge” and “The Cranes of Ibycus,” and numerous other ballads; above all to please my mother, I gradually moved on to nature poetry and reflective verse, and finally to Rainer Maria Rilke and Stefan George.4 When, returning to the classics again, I could recite “The waters rushed, the waters rose …” by Goethe,5 my father recommended Gottfried Keller’s ballad “Seemärchen” (A lake tale), which even today I think of as a continuation. It is at once brilliant and slides into the demonic, while Goethe’s contemplative verses only have a suggestion of threat at the end. The penny-dreadful literature by John Kling or Tom Shark and the rest, which was so popular with friends and schoolmates, passed me by, oddly enough. One day I started a book with the title The War of the Miami. I got bored, however, and then began a novel set in the empire of the Incas, The Divine Sacrifice, which was no better, so I went back to Karl May. But it was different with Hans Dominik, whose novels opened up vistas of a highly technological future, filled with shiny machinery.

  At the beginning of 1938 I saw our neighbor Herr Hofmeister draw my father into the hallway and reproach him in a subdued voice for being too contrarian. He told him he should open his eyes at last! At the evening meal, when I asked my father why he put up with something like that, he conceded that basically Hofmeister was right. Things really were better than they had been. The seven or eight million unemployed ha
d disappeared, as if by a conjuring trick. But the ten million or more Hofmeisters didn’t want to see the means by which Hitler achieved his successes. They thought he had God on his side; anyone who had retained a bit of sense, however, saw that he was in league with the Devil.

  Wolfgang asked if that was more than conjecture and whether there really were pacts with the Devil—and what was the theological explanation for it? We frequently came back to this topic, which had a strange fascination for us. Of course, my father soon brought the conversation around to the historical Dr. Faustus and attempts by the medieval alchemists to produce gold, jewels, or the philosopher’s stone in their laboratories, then he regularly concluded with Goethe’s great play, Faust.

  These discussions came to an abrupt end in March of that year, when German troops crossed the border into Austria under billowing flags and crowds lined the streets, cheering and throwing flowers. Sitting by the wireless we heard the shouted Heil!s, the songs and the rattle of the tanks, while the commentator talked about the craning necks of the jubilant women, some of whom even fainted.

  It was yet another blow for the opponents of the regime, although my father, like Catholics in general, and the overwhelming majority of Germans and Austrians, thought in terms of a greater Germany, that is, of Germany and Austria as one nation. For a long time he sat with the family in front of the big Saba radio, lost in thought, while in the background a Beethoven symphony played. “Why does Hitler succeed in almost everything?” he pondered. Yet a feeling of satisfaction predominated, although once again he was indignant at the former victorious powers. When the Weimar Republic was obviously fighting for its survival, they had forbidden a mere customs union with Austria and threatened war. But when faced with Hitler, the French forgot their “revenge obsession,” and the British bowed so low before him that one could only hope it was another example of their “familiar deviousness.” The Weimar Republic, at any rate, would probably have survived if it had been granted a success like that of the Anschluss.6

  Nevertheless, my father continued, the union brought with it a hope that Germany would now become “more Catholic.” It was only a few days before he realized his error. Already at the meeting with his friends, which had been brought forward, he learned of the persecution of the Jews in Austria, heard dumbfounded that the admired Egon Friedell, whose Cultural History of the Modern Age was one of his favorite books, had jumped out of the window as he was about to be arrested, and that in what was now called the Ostmark there was an unprecedented rush to join the SS. “Why do these easy victories of Hitler’s never stop?” he asked one evening after a pensive listing of events. And why, he asked on another occasion, was this mixture of arrogance and hankering for advantage breaking out in Germany, of all places? Why did the Nazi swindle not simply collapse in the face of the laughter of the educated? Or of the ordinary people, who usually have more “character”?

  So there were ever more occasions for that conspiratorial feeling that bound us together; at least that’s how my father interpreted the course of events. During the summer several members of my father’s “secret society,” as Wolfgang and I ironically called it, visited us: Riesebrodt, Classe, and Fechner. Hans Hausdorf also came regularly again, and brought us children “presents to suck” and, as always, a pastry for my mother. His center-parted hair was combed down flat and gleamed with pomade. We loved his puns and bad jokes. And, indeed, Hausdorf seemed to take nothing seriously. But once, later on, when we took him to task, his mood turned unexpectedly thoughtful. He said that human coexistence really only began with jokes; and the fact that the Nazis were unable to bear irony had made clear to him from the start that the world of bourgeois civility was in trouble. He went on to say that he, at least, had the impression the bonds were loosening. Once, as Hausdorf was leaving, I heard my father complain that for the foreseeable future nothing was changed for him by the regime’s relaxation of pressure. He had always kept a hospitable house, but that was no longer possible: at present his means allowed him at most to invite friends to a modest supper once a month. In truth, not even that. For that reason he had started to invite people for afternoon tea; he could still afford that.

  David Jallowitz (known as “Sally”), who dealt in suitcases and used to call occasionally, now came more frequently than before, and examined the pots in the kitchen in front of my indignant mother. Once when she grumbled about the heat, thirty degrees C. in the shade, he gave her the “good advice” simply not to stand in the shade, and Jallowitz laughed when she said the joke was stupid and inappropriate.

  Other visitors were Walther Rosenthal and his wife, who, according to Wolfgang, was as “sensitive as a teenage girl,” but always listened with a serious, melancholy expression, and had intractable frizzy hair, which stood up at the side.

  Sonja Rosenthal hardly ever said a word, and so it was especially surprising when she once contradicted her husband, of all people, and his assertion that the world had never before been so brutish and violent. He was mistaken, she interrupted gently, absolutely mistaken. Because there had never been a different world, different people, and more peaceful conditions than today. Life had always been quite unreasonable, extremely cruel—and she had hardly finished before she fell back into her alert silence, quietly examining the guests around her.

  Among other friends who came regularly was August Goderski, whom (despite his modest reserve) we called “the man with the lip,” because of a bulging growth at his mouth. At the beginning he was usually accompanied by his grown-up son Walter. It was also Walter who on December 6 appeared as St. Nicholas in our home.7 Year after year he repeated the Christ child’s interminable personal admonitions to me, and declared that after the boorish behavior of the past year a whole troop of angels would be keeping a watchful eye on me. Naturally, I promised to say the required prayers of repentance and to be exemplary henceforth, and accompanied St. Nicholas to the door with folded hands and many pious bows. But then I aroused general annoyance when, as he was still on the half-landing, I called after him: “And a Happy Christmas to you, Herr Goderski! And come again soon! We’re always pleased to see you!” I was eight years old at the time. Hardly was the door shut when my parents accused me of spoiling the St. Nicholas fun for my sisters Hannih and Christa with my cheeky remarks.

  In fact, Walter Goderski’s visits were always a particular pleasure, because he was funny and a great joker. Even today I still remember some of his “crazy” stories, as we called them; for instance, the one where a half-educated fellow rebukes his friend: “So you think yer ’telligent, Maxie? Let me tell you what you really are: Yer totally in-telligent!” Finally, also in my gallery of favorite guests was Dr. Meyer, who, whenever there was a pause in the conversation, talked about the books he was reading for the second, third, or fourth time. Among his preferred authors were Grimmelshausen, Lessing, Fontane, as well as, of course, Goethe, Heine, and—as he assured me with a smile, in answer to a question—“all the others, too.”8

  But then this apparently relaxed, increasingly close circle was struck by a virtual bolt from the blue. On November 9, 1938, the rulers of Germany organized what came to be known as Kristallnacht, and showed the world, as my father put it, after all the masquerades, their true face.9 The next morning he went to the city center and afterward told us about the devastation: burnt-out synagogues and smashed shop windows, the broken glass everywhere on the pavements, the paper blown in the wind, and the scraps of cloth and other rubbish in the streets. After that he called a number of friends and advised them to get out as soon as possible. “Better today than tomorrow!” I heard him shout into the receiver once. But only the Rosenthals saw sense.

  In April 1938 Wolfgang photographed the family with Aunt Dolly and Grandfather Straeter. In the foreground (left to right): Hannih, Winfried, Joachim, and Christa

  It was at this time that, without notice, the only Jewish pupil in our class stopped coming. He was quiet, almost introverted, and usually stood a little aside from
the rest, but I sometimes asked myself whether he always appeared so unfriendly because he feared being rejected by his schoolmates. We were still puzzling over his departure, which had occurred without a word of farewell, when one day, as if by chance, he ran into me near the Silesian Station, and took the opportunity to take his leave personally, as he said. He had already done so with a few other classmates, who had behaved “decently”; the rest he either hadn’t known or they were Hitler Youth leaders, most of whom had also been friendly to him, often “very friendly indeed,” but he didn’t see why he should say goodbye to them. As a Jew he would soon not be allowed to go to school anyway. Now his family had the chance to emigrate to England. They didn’t want to miss the chance. “Pity!” he said, as we parted, and he was already three or four steps away. “This time it is forever, unfortunately.”

  Not long after the beginning of the new year, in March 1939, my father called Dr. Meyer to ask why he had not come to tea for such a long time. Dr. Meyer replied that since the death of his wife he hardly went out at all, and also November 9 had seen his worst premonitions come true. He would never have believed how much malice dwelt behind the doors of the apartments around him. He had had to give up his practice. Now and then he still attended the events put on by the Jewish Kulturbund, but he even found shopping difficult, likewise going to the bank, to the postbox, or the post office. Toward the end of the conversation they agreed on afternoon tea for the following week.

  Dr. Meyer came to Karlshorst on an early spring day. Since it was warm he suggested taking tea in the garden; if one wore a coat it was comfortable outside. When he arrived I was in the garden shed cleaning some tools; at a signal from my father I brought the heavy stoneware crockery from the sideboard over to the table, while my mother made tea upstairs in the flat.