Grand Duke Friedrich August von Oldenburg was already in the sixth year of his reign when Alex Goldschmidt arrived in town in 1906, determined to fashion a life for himself far beyond the stables and pastures of Sachsenhagen. From his base in Oldenburg, he made business inquiries in the Lower Saxony cities of Hildesheim, Delmenhorst, and the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, about thirty miles to the east of Oldenburg. Alex began spending more time in Bremen after making the acquaintance of Toni Behrens, the daughter of the well-to-do coffee importer Ludwig Behrens. Toni was nearly nine years younger than Alex and a few inches taller, a slender woman with short dark hair and a love for books, art, and music. She must have seemed to Alex the very antithesis of his former rural existence, a civilized and stable foundation on which to establish a happy marriage and a secure, prosperous home. Alex and Toni were married in Bremen on March 6, 1908. They took the train to Oldenburg and moved together into Alex’s apartment overlooking the Pferdemarkt, Oldenburg’s horse market.
A month later, Moses died and Alex and Toni traveled to Sachsenhagen for the funeral. Alex returned home determined to acquire larger living quarters, a desire that only quickened after Toni gave birth to their first child, Bertha, in October 1909. In a little over a year, he made his move, purchasing the property at the corner of Schüttingstrasse and Achternstrasse that would house his Haus der Mode. Alex moved his family into the two floors above the store. There, on November 17, 1913, my father was born. He was named Günther Ludwig Goldschmidt, in honor of Toni’s father.
Only three photographs of my grandfather have survived; the earliest one dates from this period in his life. Taken in the spring of 1914, shortly after Alex’s thirty-fifth birthday and about six months after the birth of my father, the photo shows the young family posing in front of a window in an unknown interior. The beginnings of a smile seem to play around my grandmother’s lips, my aunt’s face is nearly beaming with a five-year-old’s joy, and even my father looks moderately pleased with his circumstances. But Alex, in stiff high collar and proper suit, is solemn, serious, dignified; this sitting for the photographer represents to him a formal declaration of what he has achieved: his wife, his children, his hearth. I see pride in his face and in the set of his mouth and strong chin, a confidence that he will be able to meet and overcome whatever challenges life may send his way. He may need to shake an extra hand to make a sale or treat a city council member to a schnapps to get a favorable ruling on an expansion plan, but for Alex Goldschmidt every problem has a solution, if you think about it long and creatively enough and then take action.
Just a few months later, Alex joined the German army to participate in that hideous blunder known as the Great War. He fought for more than four years, first on the Belgian front and later in Russia. Miraculously, given the unspeakable carnage all around him, he was never wounded. For his bravery, or perhaps just for surviving, he was awarded the Iron Cross, First Class. He returned to his home above the shop in January 1919, just days after his fortieth birthday. Toni had run the Haus der Mode in his absence and run it well. Their men might have been up to their knees in the mud of the trenches, but the women of Oldenburg had continued to shop for clothes and accessories during the war. With the resumption of peace, Alex decided to add a line of wedding furnishings to his offerings, and business really boomed. By the autumn of 1919, things were going so well financially that he felt comfortable acquiring one of Oldenburg’s prime pieces of real estate. In October, he purchased from Friedrich Otto Graepel, a minister in the new republican government, a splendid house at 34 Gartenstrasse. It came equipped with a cook and a housekeeper. By any measure of material success, the Goldschmidt family had arrived.
The young Goldschmidt family—Alex, Toni, Bertha, and Günther—in 1914.
The house was grand, a dream of well-crafted beauty and security. The main floor contained a large living room, a formal dining room, an expansive library, an enormous kitchen, exposed wooden beams on the ceiling, and a cozy glassed-in veranda looking out to the green gardens in back. Upstairs were five bedrooms and a spacious bathroom with gleaming fixtures of polished nickel. Downstairs were the servants’ quarters and a room kept pleasantly chilled for the bottles of wine that lay neatly in wooden racks. A gardener appeared once a week in spring and summer to care for the apple and peach trees, rosebushes, and rhododendrons, and to tend the spacious lawn. And there was a spot in the backyard given over to a strawberry patch, the special province of Alex himself. Tending it was a singular pleasure: preparing the bed in springtime, tending to the earth in the growing season, and gathering in the rich red berries at harvest time.
The magnificent house at 34 Gartenstrasse that Alex purchased in 1919, as seen from across the street.
My father’s chief domestic responsibility was a chicken house and run that extended along the north side of the house, a realm inhabited by a rooster and a dozen hens that provided the family with fresh eggs every morning. But Günther’s dearest memories from those happy days on Gartenstrasse stem from the many hours he spent playing with his sister Bertha and a family friend named Elsa Boschen. They would gather at the chicken run after school and then scurry the few hundred yards to the entrance of the glorious Schlossgarten. There they established an imaginary country called the Anemonen Reich, or “Anemone Kingdom.” The children took turns serving as the country’s monarch, issuing decrees, ordering executions, granting pardons, and launching fierce wars against the enemies of the Anemones. But the kingdom had its pacific side as well, and Günther, Bertha, and Elsa spent many idle hours together in the park reading their storybooks or lying on their backs at the edge of the pond, looking up into the blue skies and wondering where the clouds came from and where they went.
Perhaps encouraged by their splendid and spacious new home, Alex and Toni decided to enlarge their family. A second daughter, Eva, was born in June 1920, and then fifteen months later, on September 14, 1921, came a second son, Klaus Helmut. Eva entered the world with a club foot and had to undergo surgery, a delicate operation that was performed at the university hospital in Göttingen, about 170 miles away. The operation was considered a success, but Eva continued to walk with a slight limp for the rest of her life. My father remembered his younger sister as a quiet and sensitive girl, “full of poetry and dreams.” Both Eva and Helmut began their schooling at home under Toni’s tutelage, but after each turned ten, they entered Oldenburg’s school system, Eva at a girls’ academy, the Cecilia School, and Helmut at the prestigious Altes Gymnasium.
As the 1920s neared their end, Alex Goldschmidt’s fortunes continued to grow. The economic shocks of the early ‘20s, many stemming from the severe financial penalties imposed upon Germany as part of the Treaty of Versailles, gave way to a sustained recovery. After years of deprivation, the women of Oldenburg were once again able to indulge their desire for attractive clothing, and the Haus der Mode was eager to assist them. Business was so good that in 1927, Alex unveiled the first outdoor neon sign ever seen in the narrow winding streets of downtown Oldenburg. It read: “Alex Goldschmidt Spezialhaus für Damenkonfektion und Kleiderstoffe,” or “Specialty House for Women’s Ready-to-Wear and Dress Material.” The Haus der Mode had become a retail landmark, like Macy’s or Starbucks. C. A. Will, who ran a shoe store, put an advertisement in the newspaper identifying his store’s location as 47 Achternstrasse and added, as a helpful hint, that it was right next door to Goldschmidt’s.
The prosperous Goldschmidt and Behrens clans gather for the sixtieth birthday of my great grandmother Jeanette Behrens on March 24, 1923. Grandfather Alex, resplendent in evening wear, stands at the top left. My grandmother Toni stands four persons to his left; Jeanette sits at the center of the photo; and my father Günther, aged nine, sits to her immediate right.
At the end of the decade, either by design or by happenstance, Alex entered into negotiations with Oldenburg’s city council to alter the dimensions of his store just as the city’s chief engineer began to advise the council of the
need to widen Achternstrasse at the corner of Schüttingstrasse. In early February 1930, the Oldenburg Nachrichten published the minutes of a discussion held during the council’s most recent meeting.
The topic was the Goldschmidt company’s building plans and a related proposal for the relief of traffic congestion in the inner city. The council debated a recommendation that “the merchant Goldschmidt shall cede about twenty-one square meters of his property in order to widen the Achternstrasse” and that “the merchant Goldschmidt shall receive compensation amounting to twelve thousand Reichmarks [RM] and a mortgage of twenty thousand Reichmarks at 8½% interest.” The properties at 48 Achternstrasse and 34 Gartenstrasse would be held as collateral for the mortgage.
One member of the council complained that the figure of 12,000 RM was too generous. Another member agreed and proposed reopening negotiations with Herr Goldschmidt. At that point, the mayor rose and declared that several planning sessions had already taken place and that Herr Goldschmidt had acceded several times to the city’s requests. Furthermore, said the mayor, building materials are expensive, the 12,000 RM figure had been painfully arrived at, and he was convinced that Herr Goldschmidt would not profit from the exchange. The city engineer testified that widening Achternstrasse was critical to the effort of easing downtown traffic, and two other council members declared their support for the recommendation, agreeing that traffic congestion had become an urgent matter. With that, the council voted, and the recommendation passed.
Indeed, Alex’s planning was already under way. A month earlier, he had taken out an ad in the Nachrichten announcing a clearance sale. Suits, dresses, skirts, blouses, silks and other fabrics, decorative arts—all would be emptied from the Haus der Mode to make room for an exciting new venture. On February 22, following the approval of the city council’s resolution, Alex placed another ad, announcing that soon the Goldschmidt name would be associated exclusively with the purveyance of fine coats. Meanwhile, the special clearance sale would continue with everything sold at rock-bottom prices! During remodeling, the Haus der Mode would remain open, although the main entryway would now be “a private entrance” on Schüttingstrasse, the doorway to the family’s former apartment above the store. Hurry . . . everything must go!
The Easter-themed advertisement for Alex’s House of Coats that ran in the Oldenburg Nachrichten on April 14, 1930.
On March 31, another ad declared that remodeling had been finished and that the new store—Mantelhaus Goldschmidt, or Goldschmidt’s “House of Coats”—would be opening in a few days. Then a week later, on April 7, Alex announced, “The remodeling of my House is complete. My new store will now be a special House of Coats. By concentrating on a single special line, I will be able to be even more competitive. My famous good quality, which was already inexpensive, will become even less expensive. The selection will be even greater! Grand Opening tomorrow, Tuesday, April 8, at 10:00 a.m.”
One week later, in an ad framed by images of bunnies, lambs, blooming lilies, hatching chicks, and romping children, Alex announced a “Great Easter Sale At Very Low Prices”: “We have received a brand new shipping of the smartest spring and summer coats. The selection surpasses everything you have seen so far . . . every size, from Girls’ and Teenagers’ coats to extra wide and long Ladies’ coats in all modern fabrics. Come and see for yourself how competitive we are!”
By June, Alex was proclaiming that his exclusive stock included “Fur coats, light-colored fleece coats, gabardine coats, leather coats, coats of English-style fabrics, Macintoshes, modern coats for travel and sport, practical, comfortable, durable, and inexpensive, in all sizes, extra large and extra long. Mantelhaus Goldschmidt is in a class of its own, the premiere house for coats in all of Northwest Germany!”
Alex’s customers, many of whom had patronized his House of Fashion for nearly two decades, faithfully followed him to his House of Coats. He encouraged their enthusiasm with a steady stream of hearty advertisements, demonstrating almost daily that here was a man who knew how to move the merchandise. Despite the effects of the worldwide Depression, business remained good.
But buried in the minutes of the same city council meeting that had granted Alex the authority to proceed with his new plan were six lines of testimony offering a chilling preview of the fate that was slouching toward the Mantelhaus and, indeed, toward all of Germany and the world beyond. One of the council members complained that Herr Goldschmidt had already been planning his renovations for some time and questioned why the city council should subsidize his business venture. This councilmember was Carl Röver, representing the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.
The Nazi Party had emerged from the ruins of German pride in the aftermath of Germany’s defeat in 1918 and out of the desperation caused by the economic calamities of the early twenties, when runaway inflation rendered German currency practically worthless. On November 9, 1923, a thirty-four-year-old Austrian who had served as a corporal in the German army during the Great War and who, like Alex Goldschmidt, had been awarded the Iron Cross, First Class, attempted to foment a national revolution from the speaking platform of a beer hall in Munich. The putsch failed and the young revolutionary landed in jail, but Adolf Hitler’s campaign for National Socialism had begun.
Within five years, bolstered by a relentless repetition of charges that the German army—and by extension, Germany itself—had been “stabbed in the back” by the “November criminals” who surrendered at the armistice, and by inveighing against the undue influence of Jews and Communists in the economic world order, the Nazi Party had won a small but committed group of followers. In the elections of 1928, the National Socialists attracted 9.8 percent of the vote in the state of Oldenburg, earning them a seat on the Oldenburg city council. The Nazis chose their regional leader, or Gauleiter, Herr Röver, to represent them. His vote against Alex’s plans in February 1930 was not enough to derail them. But his day would come soon enough.
Seven months later, in the elections of September 1930, the Nazis polled 27.3 percent of the Oldenburg state vote. In the ensuing months, they began to campaign even more heavily in the Northwest, appealing directly to the farmers who had been among the first in Germany to feel the full effects of the Depression. Their platform included calling for cheaper artificial manures, cheaper electricity, higher tariffs on imported corn and wheat, and lower taxes. They bolstered their appeal with mass rallies, fully staged extravaganzas featuring dramatic torchlight parades, dozens of distinctive black-on-red flags, and martial music designed to boil the blood and stiffen the spine. On May 5, 1931, Adolf Hitler himself traveled to Oldenburg for a rally in the Pferdemarkt, and a little more than a year later, on May 29, 1932, 48.4 percent of the voters in the state of Oldenburg cast their ballots for the Nazi Party. Though not an absolute majority, that number represented more votes than any other party had achieved. The National Socialists were constitutionally mandated to form a government, making Oldenburg the first state in the country to have duly elected Nazi leaders. The new president of the state ministry was Carl Röver.
Although it would be months before National Socialism would achieve the rule of law over all of Germany, Oldenburg would prove to be an able laboratory in which to cultivate its culture of violence and thuggery, not to mention its long-held antipathy to what it termed “the Jewish race.” The Nazi imagination was stimulated by a prurient vision of a Master Race that sprang from the sacred soil of Germany, a race of blond, blue-eyed bodies through which coursed uncorrupted streams of the reddest, purest blood. Years earlier, in 1920, the nascent party had clearly stated its views in its initial twenty-five-point platform. “Only members of the nation may be citizens of the State,” it declared. “Only those of German blood, whatever their creed, may be members of the nation. Accordingly, no Jew may be a member of the nation.” This need for “racial purity” was at the heart of the Nazis’ conviction that they alone possessed the secret and the will to create a superior national culture and a powerful st
ate that would last, in Hitler’s boast, for a thousand years.
Hitler spoke of the need to “cleanse” the German body politic of the “corrupt” influence of foreign Jewish forces and “to remove from specified positions important to the state those elements that cannot be entrusted with the life or death of the Reich.” Thus was born what came to be known in German as Arisierung and in English as Aryanization: a comprehensive expropriation of all social, cultural, and material possessions that belonged to the Jews of Germany, and their redistribution into the hands of the more deserving Master Race.
Aryanization was a fancy five-syllable synonym for state-sponsored theft. Among its earliest examples was the forced sale, in the late autumn of 1932, of Alex Goldschmidt’s beautiful house on Oldenburg’s Gartenstrasse, to a Nazi functionary named Heinrich Barelmann. The sale price was 26,000 RM, a sum that represented no more than a quarter of what the house was worth. The Goldschmidts sold much of their furniture, dismissed the cook, the housekeeper, and the gardener, and moved into a small apartment at 35 Würzburgerstrasse, near the railroad tracks a bit north and west of the Pferdemarkt. Having invested more than twenty years of hard work and determination to reach a level of achievement commensurate with the examples set by Levi and Moses, what must Alex have felt at this humiliating and infuriating confiscation of his house, the very symbol of the safety and security that he thought he possessed?
But it was only the beginning. On Monday, January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was sworn in as chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg, and the blows began falling one after another. On April 1, 1933, the now fully empowered Nazis staged a boycott of Jewish-owned businesses across the country, with storm troopers dispatched to stand outside stores with signs reading “Germans! Defend Yourselves! Don’t Buy From Jews!” Six days later, Hitler’s Reichstag passed the Law for the Restoration of Tenure for the Civil Service, legislation stating that “civil servants who are not of Aryan ancestry” were to be immediately dismissed. The response was ruthless, as Jewish government workers, police officers and firefighters, postal workers, librarians, museum curators, and artists who were employed by state-supported cultural institutions were summarily fired.
Alex's Wake Page 5
