A Woman in Berlin : Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary

by Marta Hillers

  Late in the afternoon someone knocked on our door, calling for me. I was amazed to see one of the figures, now practically forgotten, from our basement-past: Siegismund, believer in victory, who’d heard from somewhere that I had connections to ‘higher Russians’. He wanted to know if it was true that all former party members had to report voluntarily for work or else risk being lined up against a wall and shot. There are so many rumours flying about, it’s impossible to keep up with all of them. I told him that I didn’t know anything and didn’t think anything like that was planned, that he should wait and see. It was almost impossible to recognize the man. His pants were bill owing loosely around his emaciated body, his whole person looked miserable and crumpled. The widow gave him a sermon about the dangers of fellow travelling, how he surely sees for himself what that can lead to. Siegismund - I still don’t know his real name - swallowed it all meekly, then asked for a piece of bread. And he was given one, too, which caused a family row as soon as he left. Herr Pauli fumed and shouted that it was outrageous for the widow to give that man something - after all, he was responsible for the whole mess, and the worse off he was now, the better, they ought to lock him up and take away his ration cards. (Pauli himself was always against; he has a contrary character- dissenting, negating, a Mephistophelian ‘spirit that always denies’. From what I’ve seen there’s nothing on earth he’s in complete and unreserved agreement with.) At any rate no one wants to hear another word about Siegismund and the man, he doesn’t dare show himself in the house. Everyone would give him a tongue-lashing; no one wants to have anything to do with him, especially not those in the same boat. He must find it all bleak as well as baffling. I also gave him a piece of my mind, which bothers me right now. Does that mean that I, too, am following the mob? From ‘Hosanna!’ to ‘Crucify him!’ - the eternal refrain.

  Half an hour ago, in the evening twilight, sudden shots. Far off, a woman’s scream. We didn’t even look out of the window. What for? But reminders like that aren’t a bad thing - they keep us alert.

  SATURDAY, 12 MAY 1945

  This morning the entire community of tenants - as we are again officially called - gathered in the back garden, which I had at one point pictured as a cemetery. We were there to dig, all right, but only a pit for the building’s garbage, which was towering over the bins. People were eager to work and had funny things to say. Everyone felt relieved, happy to be able to do something useful. It’s so strange that no one has to go ‘to work’ any more, that we’re all on a kind of leave, that the married couples are with each other from dawn to dusk.

  After that I mopped the living room, scrubbed away all the Russian spittle and boot polish and swept the last crumbs of horse manure off the floor. That left me good and hungry. We still have peas and flour. The widow has rendered what she could from the rancid leftovers of Herr Pauli’s Volkssturmbutter and uses it as fat.

  The apartment was sparkling when our guests arrived from Schöneberg. They’d come together, even though Gisela had never met the widow’s friends. All three were cleaned up, neatly dressed and their hair nicely done. They took the same route we did and saw the same thing - that is hardly anyone except the occasional Russian, only silence and desolation. We showed them lavish hospitality: thin coffee and bread with a little fat for all of them!

  I took Gisela into the living room for a chat. I wanted to know what she was thinking of doing. Her predictions were dire. She sees her world, the western world steeped in art and culture, as disappearing - and it’s the only world she finds worthy. She feels she’s too tired to start all over. She doesn’t think that a discriminating individual will have any room to breathe, let alone do any kind of intellectual work. No, she’s not thinking of taking Verona! or some other poison. She intends to stick it out, even if she has little courage and less joy. She spoke of trying to find ‘the divine’ within her soul, wanting to be reconciled with her innermost self and finding salvation there. She’s undernourished, has dark shadows un d er her eyes, and will have to go on being hungry, along with the two girls she’s taken in, whom I think she’s feeding out of her own portion. Her small store of peas and beans and oats was stolen from of her basement - by Germans, before the Russians invaded. Homo homini lupus. (Man is a wolf to man.) As she left I gave her two cigars that I quietly lifted from the major’s box, which Herr Pauli has already half consumed. After all, I’m the one responsible for that gift, not Pauli; I deserve my share. Gisela can trade them for something to eat.

  In the evening I went to get water. Our pump is a fine piece of work. The shaft is broken and the lever, which has come undone many times, has been lashed on cumbersomely with yards of wire and string. Three people have to hold the structure up while two pump. This collective effort is now taken for granted; no one says a thing. Afterwards both my buckets are full of floating splinters and shavings from the pump. We have to strain the water. I’m once again amazed at the fact that ‘they’ went to such efforts to build barricades that proved useless but didn’t give the slightest thought to ensuring we had a few decent water stations for the siege. After all, they put cities to siege, so they had to have known. Probably anyone in a position of power who’d talked about pump construction would have been dismissed as a defeatist and a scoundrel.

  A quiet evening. For the first time in three weeks opened a book-Joseph Conrad, The Shadow-Line. But I had a hard time finding my way into it, I’m too full of images myself.

  SUNDAY, 13 MAY 1945

  A glorious summer day. Noises first thing in the morning- an optimistic clamour of beating rugs, scrubbing, hammering. Still there’s apprehension in the air, a looming fear that we’ll have to hand our apartments over to the military. The rumour at the pump was that troops will be billeted on our block. Nothing in this country belongs to us any more, nothing but ·the moment at hand. And all three of us chose to enjoy that by sitting down to a richly spread breakfast table, Herr Pauli still in his robe, but already halfway healthy again.

  Bells are ringing all over Berlin to celebrate the Allied triumph. Somewhere right now the famous parade is under way; a parade that doesn’t concern us at all. They say that the Russians have a holiday; that the troops have been given vodka to celebrate the victory. The word at the pump is that women should do what they can not to leave home. We don’t know whether to believe it or not. The widow shakes her head uneasily. Herr Pauli is again rubbing the small of his back, says he should lie down. I’ll wait and see.

  As it is, the subject of alcohol has been much on our minds. Herr Pauli heard about an order issued to retreating German soldiers to leave all liquor stores intact for the advancing enemy - experience shows that alcohol impairs the enemy’s strength to fight and slows their advance. Now that’s something only men could cook up for other men. If they just thought about it for two minutes they’d realize that liquor greatly intensifies the sexual urge. I’m convinced that if the Russians hadn’t found so much alcohol all over, half as many rapes would have taken place. These men aren’t natural Casanovas. They had to goad themselves on to such brazen acts, had to drown their inhibitions. And they knew it, too, or at least suspected as much, otherwise they wouldn’t have been so desperate for alcohol. Next time there’s a war fought in the presence of women and children (for whose protection men supposedly used to do their fighting out on the battlefield, away from home), every last drop of drink should be poured into the gutter, wine stores destroyed, beer cellars blown up. Or else let the defenders have their fmal spree, as far as I’m concerned. Just make sure there’s no alcohol left, as long as there are women within grabbing distance of the enemy.

  Onward. It’s now evening. The much-feared Sunday is over. Nothing happened: it was the most peaceful Sunday since 3 September 1939. I lay on the sofa; outside was full of sun and twittering birds. I nibbled on some cake the widow baked using a sinful amount of wood, and took an accounting of my life. Here’s the balance.

  On the one hand things are looking pretty good for me. I’m he
althy and refreshed. Nothing has harmed me physically. I feel extremely well armed for life, as if I had webbed feet for the mud, as if my fibre were especially supple and strong. I’m well equipped for the world, I’m not delicate - my grandmother used to haul manure. On the other hand, there are multiple minuses. I don’t know what in the world I should do. No one really needs me. I’m simply floating, waiting, with neither goal nor task in sight. I can’t help thinking of a debate I once had with a very smart Swiss woman, in which I countered every scheme for improving the world by insisting ‘that the sum total of tears always stays the same’ - i.e. that in every nation of the world, no matter what flag or system of government, no matter which gods are worshipped or what the average income is, the sum total of tears, pain and fear that every person must pay for his existence is a constant. And so the balance is maintained: well-fed nations wallow in neurosis and excesses, while people plagued with suffering, as we are now, may rely on numbness and apathy to help see them through - if not for that I’d be weeping morning, noon and night. But I’m not crying and neither is anyone else, and the fact that we aren’t is all part of a natural law. Of course, if you believe that the earthly sum of tears is fixed and immutable, then you’re not very well cut out to improve the world or to act on any kind of grand scale.

  To summarize, I’ve been in twelve European countries. I’ve seen Moscow, Paris and London, among other cities, and experienced Bolshevism, Parliamentarianism and Fascism close-up, as an ordinary person among ordinary people. Are there differences? Yes, substantial ones. But from what I can tell these distinctions are mostly ones of form and colouration, of the rules of play, not differences in the greater or lesser fortunes of the common people, which Candide was so concerned about. And the individuals I encountered who were meek, subservient and utterly uninterested in any existence other than the one they were born to didn’t seem any unhappier in Moscow than they did in Paris or Berlin - all of them lived by adjusting their souls to the prevailing conditions.

  No, my current gauge is an utterly subjective one: personal taste. I simply wouldn’t want to live in Moscow. What oppressed me most there was the relentless ideological schooling, the fact that people were not allowed to travel freely. and the absolute lack of any erotic aura. The way of life just wouldn’t suit me. On the other hand I’d be happy in Paris or London, although there I’ve always had the painfully clear feeling of not belonging, of being a foreigner, someone who is merely tolerated. It was my own choice to return to Germany, even though friends advised me to emigrate. And it was good I came home, because I could never have put down roots elsewhere. I feel that I belong to my people, that I want to share their fate, even now.

  But how? When I was young the red flag seemed like such a bright beacon, but there’s no way back to that now, not for me; the sum of tears is constant in Moscow, too. And I long ago lost my childhood piety, so that God and the Beyond have become mere symbols and abstractions. Should I believe in Progress? Yes, to bigger and better bombs. The happiness of the greater number? Yes, for Petka and his ilk. An idyll in a quiet corner? Sure, for people who comb out the fringes of their rugs. Possessions, contentment? I have to keep from laughing, homeless urban nomad that I am. Love? Lies trampled on the ground. And were it ever to rise again, I would always be anxious I could never find true refuge, would never again dare hope for permanence.

  Perhaps art, toiling away in the service of form? Yes, for those who have the calling, but I don’t. I’m just an ordinary labourer, I have to be satisfied with that. All I can do is touch my small circle and be a good friend. What’s left is just to wait for the end. Still, the dark and amazing adventure of life beckons. I’ll stick around, out of curiosity, and because I enjoy breathing and stretching my healthy limbs.

  MONDAY, 14 MAY 1945

  Last night the noise of motors tore me from my sleep. Hearing shouts and honking, I stumbled to the window and lo and behold, there was a Russian truck full of flour. The baker already has coal, so now he’ll be able to bake, to accommodate the ration cards and numbers. I heard him shout for joy and saw him hugging the Russian driver, who was also beaming. The Russians enjoy playing Santa Claus.

  Then this morning at dawn I was wakened by the sound of chattering people queuing for bread. The line wound halfway round the block and it’s still there now, in the afternoon. Many women have brought stools along. I can literally hear the hiss of gossip.

  For the first time we have water from a proper hydrant, not far away at all. It’s a mechanical wonder, an automatic pump with three taps that deliver the water in a thick stream. Your bucket is filled in a flash. And you don’t need to wait more than a few minutes. That really changes our day; making our lives easier.

  On the way to the hydrant I passed a number of graves. Practically every front garden has these silent billets. Some are marked with German steel helmets, some with the gaudy red Russian stakes and white Soviet stars. They must have hauled along whole trainloads of these memorials.

  Wooden plaques have been set up on the kerbs, with inscriptions in German and Russian. One of them quotes Stalin to the effect that the Hitlers disappear, but Germany remains. Losungi - that’s the Russian word for such slogans, from the German Losung.

  Now a bulletin has been posted next to the door of our building: ‘News for Germans.’ The last word sounds so strange in this context, almost like an insult. You can read the text of our unconditional surrender, signed by Keitel: Stumpff, Friedeburg, along with reports of arms being surrendered on all fronts. Goring has been captured. One woman claims she heard on a crystal set that he cried like a child at his arrest and had already been sentenced to death by Hitler. A colossus with feet of clay.

  But there’s another sheet posted up, which attracts far more attention and sparks more debate. Evidently the Russians are introducing new rationing regulations with larger allotments, but allocated according to group - heavy labourers, blue-collar workers, white-collar workers, children and others. Bread, potatoes, concentrated foodstuffs, coffee substitute, real coffee, sugar, salt, even fat. Not so bad, if it’s true. In some cases the rations are more generous than we had lately under Adolf. This information is making a profound impact. I hear people say things like, ‘There’s another example of how our propaganda made fools of us all.’

  It’s true too: the constant forecasts of death by starvation, of complete physical annihilation by the enemy were so pervasive that we’re stunned by every piece of bread, every indication that we will still be provided for. In that respect Goebbels did a great advance job for the conquerers: any crust of bread from their hands seems like a present to us.

  This afternoon I queued up for meat. There’s nothing more instructive than spending an hour like that. I learned that trains are back up and running to Stettin, Küstrin and Frankfurt an der Oder. On the other hand our local public transport is apparently still shut down.

  One woman enjoyed telling the story of why the Russians chose to leave their building alone: on their first brief visit, they found one family poisoned in their beds on the second floor, and another, one floor up, all hanging from the transom of the kitchen window. The Russians took off terrified and never carne back and the residents keep everything the way it was, as a kind of scarecrow, just in case... Anyway I was able to get my meat without a hitch. All beef, no bones - that will help us out.

  ‘Tenants’ meeting in the basement - 4:30p.m.’ - the word went from door to door. At last the basement barricade is being dismanded. A good thing, too; we’ll be able to get to the rest of the widow’s potatoes. We formed a chain along the hallway. A small candle stuck onto a chair gave a faint glow as bricks, boards, chair and mattress parts passed from one hand to the next.

  The basement was a complete mess. The smell of excrement. Each person packed up his things. Unclaimed goods were supposed to be placed in the light well (despite this, the widow let some silk underwear that didn’t belong to her quietly vanish into her sack. Later she remembered the Ten Co
mmandments and put the piece of clothing, which had an embroidered monogram indicating the rightful owner, back where it belonged, claiming she had taken it ‘by mistake’.) But all notions of ownership have been completely demolished. Everyone steals from everyone else, because everyone has been stolen from and because we can make use of anything. So the only unclaimed goods were ones not worth the taking: threadbare slips, hats, a single shoe. While the widow kept poking around bitterly for the pearl tie-pin - she’d forgotten where she hid it - I lugged the potatoes upstairs and dumped them next to Herr Pauli’s bed. The widow followed me up and immediately started in like Cassandra with warnings of how we’d starve to death as soon· as we finished the last of their potatoes. Herr Pauli vigorously seconded everything she said. This makes me think that the household is beginning to view me as a burden, one more mouth to feed, that they’re counting each morsel I consume and begrudging me every single potato. Meanwhile Pauli is still happy to dip into my major’s sugar. Nevertheless I want to try to get back on my own feet, as far as food is concerned - only how?

  I can’t bring myself to be angry with the two of them. Not that I’ve had to, but it could well be that in their situation I wouldn’t be too happy to share my food either. And there’s no new major on the horizon.

  TUESDAY, 15 MAY 1945

  The usual tedious housework. Two roofers are stomping around in the attic apartment, which I entered for the first time since the Russians invaded. They’re getting paid in bread and cigarettes. I can tell that the Russians never made it up here because the floors are covered with a fine layer of plaster dust that shows every footprint, and it was untouched when I let in the roofers. Presumably I could have held out up here, if I’d had enough water and food - an undisturbed Sleeping Beauty. But I’m sure I would have gone crazy, all alone like that.