Ersatzkaffee looked black like coffee but tasted like hot dirt. It was not made from coffee beans—there was not a grain of coffee in this Ersatzkaffee—but there were other things in it, like chicory or, even worse, burnt wheat grains. The Ersatzkaffee never had the aroma you expected to have with a pot of brewing coffee either, nor did it have caffeine. Muckefuck is the name we gave it, and it was a funny name, and we said it jokingly and with a smile on our faces. Everybody had it, and because everybody had it, it didn’t feel so bad. No one had caffeine, and so everyone was “in a bad mood,” as Mutti put it. “It’s just the way things are now.”
Mutti did her best to provide for the family—she’d get a bag of potatoes and cook a soup with them, or beets and try to do the same—but I wasn’t grateful for her efforts. I was a young girl who wanted her freedom, and besides, my Mutti had become my enemy since I turned fifteen. Hadn’t she failed to defend me all those times when Karl Spaeth held his cane up against me? Hadn’t she stood by, watching? Gloating, even, as if she were getting back at me? “Why am I being beaten?” I would ask. “For what?” And he would answer, “Because it’s time again.” And she? She just looked on and had her own answers. “Because you’ve become a woman” may have been one of them. Because I was a woman and she was growing old. Perhaps that was why, but I stopped caring about what she thought and hated her instead.
Then there were the clothes Mutti bought for me. Those too were rationed, with each family having enough “points,” supposedly, to provide adequately, but they were never adequate. Our clothes were always too small or too large or very ragged, and our shoes never fit. The points that were allotted were enough for one pair of shoes per child per year, according to Mutti. And only enough for one outfit per child per year. So, Mutti decided, my clothes had to be “unisex” so that my brother would be able to wear them after me. My sweaters should be brown, and my blouses buttoned down the middle. My shoes stayed on my feet until well past being too small, and these, too, needed to fit Dieter when I was done with them. My toes grew crooked, my feet always hurt, and the shoes were brown.
IV.
No one really noticed, or, I should say, we tried not to notice the changes. They came slowly, and as Berliners have a certain Berliner sense of humor, we tried to laugh our way through them, believing these conditions would last only a short time.
Across the street from our home and to the right was a restaurant with a Biergarten behind it, a patio of sorts, where the men in the neighborhood would sit and drink a Krug of beer during their lunch hour in times past. Herr Stichler—perhaps that was his name—owned the restaurant, but I should really call it a tavern, because it was a place where everyone came to sit and talk and have a drink and maybe some food as well. Herr Stichler was a particularly amusing man, always laughing at something funny he had just told a guest, and he always had a kind word for me.
On an evening when Karl would want a Krug of beer for himself or a bottle of wine for the family at dinner, he would ask me to run over to the tavern, and I would do it happily, as Herr Stichler would always make me laugh. “Na, so was?” he would say, acting surprised, every time I came into his tavern. “What do we have here? Fräulein Margarete again?” And he’d smile broadly, taking Karl’s Krug, the pewter mug with his Bavarian family crest painted into the porcelain finish, and, lifting the top with the thumb handle, he’d open the tap and fill it for me. And on days when my assignment was to fetch a bottle of wine, he’d say, “Ach ja! Again a festive night at the Spaeths!”
Herr Stichler had a thick mustache that hung low over his mouth and always made him look like he was about to sneeze. His eyebrows, too, hung low over his eyes, and I thought he looked like St. Nikolaus with his white hair and red-checkered shirt and round red cheeks like Christmas balls. His wife, Frau Stichler, stayed small and quiet most times, but she too would come forward with a joke or two if she saw the opportunity.
In the days before rationing, Papa sometimes asked me to fetch a Bauernplatte from the tavern. This “farmer’s plate” was served on a wooden board, which was piled high with whatever meats and cheeses the restaurant had that day: sausages, Schmierwurst—a soft sausage, much like liverwurst—and cheeses from Holland, like Edamer, or even that stinky one from the town of Limburg. And there were pickles and capers and mustards. This is what we would have for our dinner on many nights. Oh, if I’d known how I would miss having a Bauernplatte for dinner!
It was Sylvester, the last day of 1939. New Year’s Eve, and the war was already four months old. Germany had defeated Poland and the Sudetenland was back in our hands, and we were now bound by a “nonaggression pact” with Russia. Everything seemed to be coming to an end. We all believed the war would be over very, very soon, and that we would have peace—and a life without food rationing—once again. No one lived as though the changes, the food shortages, and the automobile requisitions would last.
Our house was still red with the air of Christmas from a week before. Mutti had brought out all our Christmas tablecloths, which were fully embroidered in red, and little Swedish elves made of straw, called tomtar, with tiny red vests and red elf caps, adorned our mantel. And, as with every Christmas holiday, every room each evening was aglow with candlelight. In the middle of our parlor stood the tree, which, even though a week old, was still festive. It looked magical, this Christmas tree, with its angels and dwarves—Heinzelmännchen, we called them—made of gold and silver foil that hung from its branches, and when Mutti lit all of its candles each evening, it seemed to come alive.
Papa Spaeth decided we should have a party. It had been a horrific year and 1940 surely would bring better news, so it should be brought in with celebration. Our cousins, our Onkel and Tante, and all the neighbors from the building would come.
I was sent to the tavern across the street to buy red wine, four bottles of it, so Mutti could make her glögg. It’s called Glühwein in German and is made with red wine, a cinnamon stick, cloves, sugar, and lemon slices, peels and all. All this is heated to just below boiling and then served in mocha cups. Blanched almonds and a few cloves are placed in the cup before the glögg is poured, and when you’re finished with your cup, you can tip it up and eat the almond, which has now turned pink. You can imagine what it took for Mutti to have all these ingredients! But it was to be a great party, and only the best would do.
It had snowed hard that day, and it was desperately cold. I tied a scarf around my neck and put on my wool hat and mittens, my boots, heavy socks, and a big overcoat just to run across the street to the tavern for the wine. I held my scarf up against my face and ran quickly through the crunching snow.
Herr Stichler was, as usual, in a humorous mood and immediately made a joke about “what a lush this young girl must be to be running through such nasty weather just for some wine.” He smiled, and then he handed me the only bottles of wine he said he had. “Your Mutti told me about the Swedish wine, and I’ve been saving these for her,” he said as he reached under the counter and produced the bottles.
Only days earlier, all over Berlin, placards had been posted. Sure, I had seen them, but I had not paid much attention. Herr Stichler certainly had something to say about them, though.
“Can you believe this?” he exclaimed, mostly to himself, as there was no one else in the tavern, but he was looking me straight in the eye.
“What is it?” I asked, sure it was none of my business. He was an adult, after all, and I was still just a girl.
“Those placards we now have all over the city!”
Oh, yes, the placards. The ones that stated: no one shall be hungry. no one shall freeze. I asked him if those were the ones he was talking about.
“Of course!” And of course, Herr Stichler had something more to say about that. “Yes. Right. Now we’re not even allowed to be hungry anymore!”
I had to laugh. Things were desperate—we read in the paper that a man had been found frozen in the street, and coal was being rationed. But this man could stil
l be funny.
“Yes, true. I have seen them. And yes, now even that’s verboten!” We both had a good New Year’s laugh over that.
“Please pass along to your parents wishes for a very happy Sylvester evening,” Herr Stichler said then, winking. And while he did that, he reached under the counter once more and handed me yet one more bottle of red wine, saying, “Just because it’s time again!”
So the last night of the year 1939 was festive and full of laughter. The Schulzes and the Ahlbecks from upstairs, our cousins and Tante and Onkel, who took the train in to Berlin for the evening, and us, the Spaeths and the Doses—we all gathered to have what we never would have believed would be our last celebration together in that house.
It was the only time I ever saw Papa Spaeth drunk. He joked till tears rolled down his cheeks, and someone began to sing a folk song and we all joined in, and before the last refrain we were suddenly all holding hands and dancing. We danced through the house, up and down the stairs, and around the spindly Christmas tree with its foil hangings and magical candles, Karl Spaeth in the lead. He was in such a good mood, making everyone laugh. How easy it was to be around my parents when everyone was happy and no one was concerned about things. No one scolding or telling us what we had done wrong.
Dieter and our three cousins, Hans-Hermann, Gerhard—Gert, as we called him—and Fritz, and I all sneaked back into the kitchen several times during that night when no one was paying attention, and we filled our own cups with the glögg. We probably filled them too many times, but why not, we said, we can celebrate just as well as they can.
Dieter was very good at showing off how well he could run the entire length of the hallway runner, stepping only on the flower patterns and never in the spaces in between. We all tried it and of course we were too drunk to succeed, and so we fell over and then tried it again, the next time trying to step on only the leaf patterns, which was even harder. Fritz kept falling, and we’d laugh some more.
When we finally tired of our game, and I finally managed the runner without falling, we returned to the front room to join the adults. We arrived just in time to see that our Papa Spaeth and Herr Schulz, the house manager, had decided that the Christmas tree, which was still standing in the middle of the room, should be removed, and it seemed they had been in a rather serious conversation about it for quite some time.
It was our stepfather who stood with his hands on his hips, then stepped over to the window and opened it wide to the street below. “Out!” he said, pointing. That was all it took for Herr Schulz to grab the top half of the tree while Papa Spaeth took hold of the trunk and the two of them half sang, half giggled the words, “Eins. Zwei. Dreiiii!”—and out it flew, candles and all. We children ran to the window to see where it had landed.
What a sight! Snowflakes falling so heavy you could hardly see to the street below, candles still burning, and a dead Christmas tree lying in the street like a corpse.
The next morning, Papa Spaeth and Mutti were still in a party mood, still talking about how fun the night had been, and suddenly Papa Spaeth, with a puzzled look on his face, exclaimed, “What happened to the Christmas tree?” There was a bare spot, still scattered with pine needles, where that tree had been. And then Dieter, grinning from ear to ear, said, “But, Papa. Look. Look outside!” He took Papa Spaeth’s hand and led him to the window and pointed down to the street.
“There. See?”
“How terribly odd!” Papa exclaimed. “How on earth did the tree get there?”
“But, don’t you remember, Papa? Last night? You and Herr Schulz threw it out the window.”
“No, no. That’s impossible!” He must have been pulling our leg, but he forever talked about that Christmas tree lying in the street as if it were a great mystery. He always ended his story with, “I can’t understand why there was a Christmas tree lying in the middle of the street!”
7.
THAT’S JUST HOW IT IS NOW
I.
As the spring of 1940 rolled into summer, food became more and more scarce, or strange. Sometimes there would be strawberries for days on end, but there would be no milk. There would be exotic new vegetables, but no bread. A time would come when we could remark once again, “Look at all the lovely jams. Real fruits!”—but not now, and not for six years yet to come. We called our jams “I.G. Farben,” the name of a famous German chemical factory, because there wasn’t really anything recognizable in them, just colors that looked more like chemical compounds than anything edible.12
The milk farmer still came around with his dairy truck whenever he could, and Mutti would tell me to run out to have our milk can filled or to purchase some cheese from him. But even his supplies were needed to go to the front first. Less and less, we heard the clip-clop, clip-clop of his horses’ hooves on the cobblestone.
II.
Dieter was now fourteen, old enough to join the HJ, the Hitler Youth. He was still a soft boy, young for his age, and his voice had not gone through the change yet. He wore glasses already, because, as Papa Spaeth said, he read too much.
And I was beginning to figure some things out: Hitler was not our ally, and the war was no longer making sense. We had invaded Poland, and no one seemed to know why. No one was ecstatic the way they were when we “liberated” Czechoslovakia and the Rhineland. Things were beginning to feel wrong and frightening, and all I could think and wonder was, Won’t this war be over soon? And my close friends felt the same way. We began to listen to the BBC, but this was not an easy thing. It was illegal, and we knew that. It had been outlawed at the start of the war to listen to any foreign station; to do so and get caught could land you in a prison, a work camp, or worse yet—dead.
Ilse and Hilde and I did it anyway. We hid in our basements and put a blanket over our heads and listened. They broadcast in German, but it was the British news, and it didn’t sound anything like what we were hearing on our German propaganda stations. The German radio played symphonies, which were lovely, and then schmaltzy polkas, which didn’t interest me in the least, and then the boring speeches of the Führer and of Göring about all the “victories” our brave German soldiers were accomplishing. But the BBC told us something very different. Britain was hoping the United States would enter the war against us, when we were still hearing propaganda on our radio stations that America was fully behind us!
Dieter often brought friends to our house—something I rarely dared. Somehow no one got angry with him, only with me, and my bringing a friend home would only cause trouble with Karl, or at least that’s what I believed.
One of Dieter’s friends was Otto Lippert. Otto told me one day that he wanted to become an insurance mathematician.
“Where did you get a crazy idea like that?” I asked. “There’s no such thing as an insurance mathematician!”
“You don’t even know what you’re talking about,” he said. “Of course there’s such a thing as an insurance mathematician!”
“Well, then, fine. I’d like to become a beautician mathematician,” I shot back at him, and we both had to laugh.
“Bakery mathematician!”
“Veterinary mathematician!”
“Musician mathematician!”
“Swim instructor mathematician!”
“Farming mathematician!”
“Butcher mathematician!”
“Street-sweeping mathematician!”
“Street-sweeping mathematician?”
Both of us stopped and looked at each other and held our sides for laughter.
“Street-sweeping mathematician? Right-o,” I said—something I’d heard on the BBC, and something I realized I’d better keep my mouth shut about. How would I know such a phrase? So I stopped myself, and we continued the banter.
“Of course. One must sweep just so, and pile the rubbish just so, and piles should be organized just so. And of course this must be done precisely at the right time,” and we drew out patterns in the rug as we joked. And every time we saw each other from
then on, we winked at each other as if to say, Yup, that’s the job for me: street-sweeping mathematician.
These boys were only a year younger than I, but they seemed so very innocent. And stupid, really. I would have arguments with them, and Dieter would take their side. “Can’t you see what’s going on around us?” I’d say, and they’d say, “Yes, of course we can see what’s going on around us,” and there was no end to it. They saw only good intentions, a quick end to the war, and a victorious outcome for our country.
I, of course, didn’t let them know that my friends and I listened to the BBC. Even to breathe a hint of illegal activity could bring trouble. A friend of Dieter’s, perhaps someone who really believed in our government or who was just dumb enough, could call the officials to report me. It was easy to do. You didn’t even need to identify yourself or have proof that the deed was actually done; you just needed to say you saw such and such. You just needed to pick up the telephone or walk into the government offices and report something you thought might be illegal.
A young Dieter in uniform.
Dieter came home one day with his new Hitler Youth uniform on, and I spotted him as he stood in the front hallway, observing himself in the mirror, so proud of himself. The brown shorts and the white kneesocks and a tie and, of course, the swastika emblem on his red armband. He looked up and noticed me in the reflection and said, “Margarete! Look at me. I’m one of our men now! I’ll finally be able to serve my country!”
I stood shocked. “Oh, Dieter, Dieter! You’re so wrong! You’re so, so wrong!” We never spoke at home about the politics of our country. We knew it was verboten, and especially because my Papa Spaeth was in the navy and was serving our country, verboten was the law in our house. But I was old enough; I could see very well what was going on around me, and I said to him in a very direct tone, “Don’t be so idealistic, Dieter! Don’t you see what’s happening? We’re at war! We’re invading countries we have no business invading! Food is being rationed, and who knows what else will come of this. Don’t be such a fool!”
Letters From Berlin: A Story of War, Survival, and the Redeeming Power of Love and Friendship Page 7
