On a typical morning of shopping with Tante Möller, I would watch with fascination as a tailor sat cross-legged on a table near the window of his shop while sewing a suit, a blacksmith inside a smoke-filled smithy nailed new horseshoes onto the hoofs of a giant brewery horse, an iceman unloaded huge slabs of ice from a truck in front of a tavern, and a soot-covered, top-hatted chimney sweep balanced precariously on top of a roof while lowering a weighted brush at the end of a cable down a chimney. Occasionally, the alternating sounds of horns and bells would signal the approach of a fleet of fire engines manned by helmeted firemen. Bordering Stückenstrasse, our street, was the main thoroughfare, Am Markt, which bustled with squealing streetcars while clanking elevated trains, called Hochbahn, passed overhead. Unaccustomed to noise at all hours of night, my mother and I would awaken every time an el train thundered by, but within a few weeks we had become so accustomed to the sound that we became totally oblivious to it.
Among the more intriguing neighborhood events was the occasional sighting of a siren-blaring police paddy wagon, nicknamed Grüner August because of its dark green color. Tante Möller, with her penchant to exaggerate, had explained that its purpose was to haul criminals to jail. In reality, the “criminals” delivered at the nearby precinct were, for the most part, hard-working and law-abiding men from the neighborhood who, after a few beers too many at their pub, had become a bit boisterous.
Directly across from our home was the rear exit of the Europa Palast, the neighborhood movie theater, which was soon to become my favorite weekend hangout, thanks to its Sunday matinees. Half a block up the street stood the Waffelfabrik, an old, ugly-looking, four-storied red-brick building that, despite its unprepossessing appearance, was held in high esteem by the children of the neighborhood. I soon learned that after I ascended a flight of stairs and rang a bell, a little window would open through which, in exchange for five pfennig, an old lady would hand me an enormous paper bag filled with delicious waffle scraps. Within a few years, the old waffle factory would assume an entirely different, largely sinister importance for the neighborhood and me. But like so many other things I encountered during those wonder years, it had an innocence and charm that I would later see with different eyes.
Since daily shopping for food was a necessity, I not only learned to put up with Hamburg’s notoriously cold, drizzly, and foggy weather, but actually learned to like it, which is a trait that sets Hamburgers apart from the vast majority of people and animals on the globe. Via Tante Möller’s kitchen, I also became hooked on such Hamburg delicacies as smoked eel; boiled rice topped with a mixture of sugar and cinnamon; pear soup; pig snouts and feet; flounder fried in bacon; fried, raw, and smoked herring; and Rote Grütze, a red fruit puddinglike dish. Because of Tante Möller, I learned to think and feel like a Hamburger, and if she taught me anything, it was that people born and living in Hamburg were blessed with the most beautiful, the most exciting, and the most desirable hometown on the face of the earth.
About once a month, Tante Möller would take me shopping downtown via streetcar Linie 6 where we would visit big department stores like Karstadt, Toedt, Epa, and Woolworth, the recent import from the United States, and look at the colorful window and indoor displays. Invariably, we would conclude our excursion with a visit to the elegant Alster Pavilion on Jungfernstieg (Hamburg’s answer to New York’s Fifth Avenue) or the roof garden of Karstadt to sample a variety of confectionery delights. Occasionally, we would take the Alster ferry instead of the streetcar home, where I would give a detailed report to my mother about all the things I had seen and heard. Unfortunately, these downtown excursions came to a sudden halt after Tante Möller, who was getting up in years and a bit feeble, lost her grip while stepping off a streetcar and fell. The incident caused a big commotion, with people standing around us and staring while a policeman helped her back on her feet. Although she was not seriously hurt, she lost her nerve for venturing and never rode the streetcar again.
One day, not far from our home, Tante Möller and I encountered three dark-skinned, keen-featured women approaching. Their black hair was flowing in the wind while their long, colorful dresses were sweeping the ground. The three were followed by several kids who were taunting them the way I often had been taunted. But instead of the black chimney-sweeper chant that I had to endure, they were chanting something about a “Gypsy boy who shit in his pants.” When I asked Tante Möller who those strange ladies were, she whispered to me that they were Gypsies. She explained that while she didn’t approve of what the kids where doing, Gypsies really had it coming. “Gypsies,” she told me, “are very dangerous people. They never stay put or work and they steal anything that isn’t nailed down—especially little children.” I looked with terror at the three approaching women, and when they returned my stares with their dark, penetrating eyes, I nearly died of fear. I, too, became a staunch believer in the popular German myth that Gypsies steal children—especially blond children—and raise them as their own in order to bring “fresh blood” into their “tribes” and thereby avoid problems from repeated inbreeding. Although I realized that my black hair made me a less desired target of Gypsy kidnappers, I wasn’t about to take chances. I always made sure to keep as much distance between them and me as possible.
Eventually, Tante Möller let me venture into the street by myself and play with the kids, but with the stern admonition to stay within the audible range of her voice, which was roughly a two-block area bordered by Stückenstrasse, Am Markt, Haferkamp, and Langenrehm. This meant that as long as I returned home within a few minutes of being summoned by her from a window of her apartment, I was considered within bounds. The moment I strayed beyond hearing range or was too engrossed in playing to respond to her clarion call, “Haaaans-Jüüüürgen!,” I was considered at large and subject to being retrieved by the old lady herself. In that case, the inevitable punishment was not being allowed to go outside the next day, a sentence for which there was no appeal.
Tante Möller also instructed me to always keep on the lookout for Mitschnacker, a special Hamburg variety of male kidnappers who derived their name from their modus operandi of talking children into following them. Remembering the three sinister Gypsy women with spine-chilling vividness, I promised not to accept invitations to go along with strangers in general and Mitschnacker in particular.
If there was one thing I had learned in a hurry, it was to respect Tante Möller’s no-nonsense approach to discipline. Having reared three sons and a daughter to respectable adulthood by herself following her husband’s death in the famed World War I battle of Verdun in France, she had emerged as an expert at making kids mind. For my own benefit, she quickly disabused me of my long-held notion that I was the center of the universe. Nevertheless, she was a kind and soft-hearted woman who, although somewhat gruff in demeanor, never spanked me or in any way became physical when I stepped over the line. She didn’t have to. For those not altogether rare occasions, she had a handy deterrent that never failed to do the trick. Intoning the old German proverb “He who doesn’t listen must feel,” she’d reach into her broom closet and fetch her notorious Rute, consisting of a bundle of thin twigs tied together at one end, which, she claimed, Santa Claus had left behind for precisely such occurrences. Just waving this vaunted instrument of mayhem in my face was all she needed to do to make me return in a hurry to the straight and narrow path of righteousness.
QUALITY TIME
Although I really liked Tante Möller a lot and didn’t mind staying with her during the week, I always looked forward to evenings, when Mutti came home from work, and especially Sundays, when she didn’t have to go to the hospital and could spend the entire day with me. (Prior to World War II, Germans still worked a six-day week.) Following an old German custom, my mother would invariably dress me up in my Sonntagsanzug (Sunday suit) and we would head outdoors. Often we would walk to City Park at the edge of town, which on summer weekends buzzed with the activities of thousands of pent-up Hamburgers yearning to bre
athe free. People were rowing boats or paddling canoes, while others played soccer or tennis, flew kites, had a picnic, rode horses or bicycles, or swam in the huge outdoor pool. But most people were doing exactly what my mother and I were doing, simply walking and enjoying watching others at play.
When we got hungry and tired from walking, we would stop at one of the many wooden benches and tables and feast on the delicious sandwiches my mother had brought. For dessert, she let me buy a giant, double-scoop vanilla and strawberry ice cream cone for a Groschen (about a dime) from one of the ubiquitous tricycle vendors.
Another popular destination for our summertime Sunday excursions was Blankenese, with its many miles of sandy beaches and packed beach cafés along the Elbe, which was less than an hour-long train ride away. In Blankenese we would join the thousands of sun worshippers on the beach, change into our swimsuits, build sand castles, watch the majestic ocean liners appear and disappear over the Elbe’s horizon, or simply lie on our backs, stare into the sky, and watch the clouds go by. Before starting our journey home, we would walk up the hundreds of zigzagging steps leading to the upper level of Blankenese and marvel at the quaint hillside homes.
Occasionally, we would attend special events, like the popular air shows near Hamburg’s airport. There we would join thousands of spectators to watch the legendary World War I flying ace Ernst Udet risk his life in breathtaking aerial stunts and parachute jumps. When, only a few years later, Udet emerged as one of the major architects of the vaunted Luftwaffe, the weapon that emboldened Hitler to embark on his conquest of the world, I often thought back to the carefree time I spent in Fuhlsbüttel under a cloudless sky, thrilled to the core by one of the first heroes of my early years.
The constant stares of people that followed us wherever my mother and I went didn’t bother me in the least. Since I was convinced that my mother was about the prettiest woman around and that I, too, looked absolutely spiffy in my neatly pressed suit and shined shoes, I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Only when I sensed that the gawkers’ curiosity was uncomplimentary, mean-spirited, or intrusive, as when someone pointed at me and laughed or used the hated word Neger, did I feel offended and angry. When that happened, I’d usually retaliate by sticking out my tongue at the person or tapping my forehead with my index finger, which is German sign language for Du bist verrückt (You’re crazy). Sensing my frustration, my mother never chided me for giving vent to my anger in this way, although she frequently told me that the best way to deal with ignoramuses was to simply ignore them, something I found exceedingly difficult to do.
“CULTURE SHOW” AT HAGENBECKS ZOO
One of the most popular attractions for Hamburgers, both young and old, was Hagenbecks Tierpark (animal park), the internationally famous zoo in suburban Stellingen. Named for its innovative founder, Carl Hagenbeck, it reputedly was the world’s first zoo where wild animals could be viewed in spacious outdoor runs patterned after their natural habitats instead of in cramped cages and behind bars. A confirmed Hagenbeck fan, I was in full agreement when Mutti suggested one day that it was time for another visit to the zoo. This time, she had arranged for a fellow nurse’s daughter, Ingeborg, a somewhat brattish but otherwise cute girl my age, to come along.
As soon as we arrived at the zoo after a lengthy streetcar ride, Ingeborg demanded to see the Indianer (Native Americans). My mother and I had never heard of people being exhibited at an animal park, but Ingeborg insisted that on her last visit she had seen real live “Indians.” When my mother asked a zoo guide whether there were any Indians to be seen, he told her they were fresh out of Indians but that there was an equally interesting African exhibit, just a few minutes’ walk away. The guide explained that the “primitive peoples” exhibits were part of Hagenbeck’s famous “Culture Shows.”
Ingeborg and I were disappointed, as we had looked forward to seeing Indians attired in resplendent feather headgear, but we agreed to settle for the African exhibit although none of us had the slightest idea of what to expect. I was totally unprepared for what we found. After walking past spectacular exhibits of monkeys, giraffes, lions, elephants, and other African wildlife, we arrived at the “African Village,” replete with half a dozen or so thatch-roofed clay huts and peopled, we were told, by “authentic Africans.” Like the animal exhibits, the “village” was bordered by a chest-high wooden fence to keep the viewers out and the viewers in. The only thing that distinguished the human exhibit from the animal exhibits was the absence of the deep, water-filled moat that separated men from beasts.
Except for their skin color and hair, the Africans on display looked nothing like my relatives or any of the Africans I had met at my grandfather’s house. All of the villagers were barefoot and dressed in tattered rags. Two women, draped in dingy-looking cloths, were rhythmically pounding a heavy wooden stick into a mortar. A guide explained that they were making corn flour in preparation for their dinner. The men were sitting around in small groups, intently watching the spectators while chatting away in an unintelligible language between puffs from short, primitive-looking pipes. It was difficult to say who was more interested in whom, the Africans in the Europeans or the Europeans in the Africans. Each group studied the other across the wooden fence with the same undisguised curiosity.
Suddenly, something happened that I had feared from the moment I caught sight of the exhibit. Despite the fact that I had carefully tried to stay in the background in order to see without being seen, one of the Africans spotted me in the crowd. All at once the entire village took notice of me. The two women stopped pounding and the men stopped puffing. As if they had seen a long-lost relative, they were all pointing and grinning at me.
Desperately, I tried to hide behind one of the spectators, but to no avail. Tipped off by the Africans’ finger-pointing, one of the zoo visitors spun around and, after realizing what the Africans’ excitement was all about, pointed his own stubby index finger at me. “Look!” he alerted his female companion. “Here’s one of their kids.” This set off a chain reaction among the rest of the spectators until everyone, both African and German, was looking at me.
Just when I felt that I would die from embarrassment for having been mistaken for one of “them,” Mutti grabbed me and Ingeborg by the hand and, over Ingeborg’s protest, quietly led us away.
Later that evening, after we were home alone, my mother told me that I had no reason to feel embarrassed at the zoo. The Africans we saw, she explained, were simple but good people from the hinterland who deserved to be pitied rather than ridiculed. She suspected that they had been tricked by somebody into leaving their homeland and appearing in the exhibit. Mutti made me understand that even if the Africans had not been taken by force to Germany, it was still terribly wrong to display human beings in a zoo behind fences and side by side with animals. “I can’t understand the mentality of people who let something like that happen and who see nothing wrong with it,” she said over and over.
As much as we both liked zoos, my mother and I vowed that evening never to set foot on Hagenbecks Tierpark again. I kept that vow for about fifteen years until after the war, when, as a young man, I obliged a young lady when she asked me to take her to Hagenbeck. The zoo was still largely the way I remembered it from my childhood, but, not to my surprise, the “African Village” had disappeared.
A COMEDOWN FOR A KING
To my frequent question, “When will Daddy be back?” Mutti always responded with a helpless shrug and the standard reply, “I really don’t know.” She was telling the truth. What she didn’t tell me was that she had received bad news from Liberia via Tante Fatima. It wasn’t until several years later that she let me read the letter. The gist of the letter, sent from Bern, was that my grandfather had failed in his quest for the presidency, that he was held on a trumped-up charge of embezzling postal funds, that my father and several of his brothers were in hiding among fellow Vai tribesmen in the Liberian hinterland and that my Uncle Nat was in jail on charges of having plotted to kill
the newly appointed President Barclay and overthrow the government. During his trial on sedition charges, Nat denied the assassination plot but admitted that a youth group he had helped organize was aimed at destroying the Americo-Liberian political monopoly and replacing it with a government by the aborigines.
Tante Fatima’s letter contained a lengthy explanation of the circumstances that caused the Massaquois’ fortunes to take a turn for the worse. It seems that President King and Vice President Yancy, faced with the prospect of Liberia being stripped of its independence and placed under League of Nations trusteeship because of the Fernando Po slavery charges, resigned on December 3, 1930. On that same day, Secretary of State Edwin Barclay was sworn in as president to serve out President King’s unexpired term. In an apparent attempt to destroy his strongest political rival and former close friend, Barclay immediately launched his anti-Massaquoi vendetta, which culminated in the jailing of both my grandfather and my Uncle Nat.
Fatima’s letter concluded that this was by no means all the bad news she had. The loss of his postmaster general’s post and the fact that he had mortgaged all of his properties in order to raise funds to mount a political campaign also meant that Momolu was financially ruined. Out of a job and out of political favor, he had no way of paying when the payments fell due.
For Fatima, it meant that she was suddenly financially dependent on the generosity of Momolu’s many European friends. For my mother, it meant the end of all hope that one day my father and grandfather would contribute at least in a small measure to my financial support.
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