After the Reich (42 page)

Dymshitz was a highly cultured man of Jewish origin from St Petersburg. He had grown up in a house with a Steinway and a library. He had spoken German, French and English from childhood and attended the German Reform School, the best in the city before the Great War. He went on to develop a fondness for the avant garde as a student in the 1920s. He had little rapport with the Anglo-Americans, but he had a certain amount of support from the French cultural boffin, Félix Lusset. When the Anglo-Americans outlawed Becher’s Kulturbund in their sectors, Lusset refused to follow suit.
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Like Göring, Tulpanov could tolerate satire provided he found it funny. He revelled in the performances of Günter Neumann, who was reviving Berlin cabaret at Ulenspiegel in Berlin. Like the Schaubühne in Munich, Ulenspiegel was a stage licensed to poke fun at the Allies. Even the Nazis had tolerated some small degree of satire in this form. As George Clare put it, Neumann lashed out at all the Allies, but without a ‘trace of German self-pity’. He poked fun at frat, and the desperation to which German girls were driven by hunger:

Johnny took me like a lady
And we traded - nothing shady,
Two pounds of coffee so I’d do it,
Fruit-juice cans so I’d renew it.
Hot we got with burning skins
For a couple of corned-beef tins
But for chocolate - Hershey bar
I went further much than far.

Carl Zuckmayer admired the Russian contribution to the arts at the time. The most prestigious theatre in the Russian Sector was the Admiralspalast, which had survived the bombing unscathed and now played host to the State Opera. Zuckmayer found the singers less impressive than their counterparts in New York, but on the other hand he was very struck by the talents of the young directors and artists who designed the performances.
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Of the Western Allies, only the American theatre chief Benno Frank came anywhere near him. He had been a prominent German Jewish actor and director before 1933. Their British counterpart was Pat Lynch, a Cork-man and one-time prepschool master with a fondness for Wagner. It was only much later that the Westerners learned by their mistakes and began to open cinemas and theatres in their sectors.
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Becher’s office as president of the Cultural Alliance was in Schlüterstrasse 45, just off the Kurfürstendamm in the British Zone. The honorary president was Hauptmann. When Hauptmann died and the Poles could finally dispose of his corpse, Becher, Tulpanov and Pieck travelled to Stralsund on the Baltic coast. Becher pronounced the obsequy over the late writer’s coffin: ‘According to your wishes, may you be laid to earth before sunrise, to become a symbol of German promise! May your decease become the turning point.’
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Schlüterstrasse 45 had an interesting history.
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After the Nazi cultural association, the RKK or Reichskulturkammer, had been bombed out of its premises in the centre of the city, it had moved here. The building still contained all the files relating to artistic activity in the Third Reich, and, in the basement, the painting collection of the Jewish community. Now it became the rallying point for the starving artists of the occupation who came to Becher for shelter and ration cards.
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In Becher’s time the house contained the ‘Spruchkammer’, a sort of Star Chamber where German artists were examined for their reliability by a panel composed of the four powers. It was headed by the British major Kaye Sely - born Karl Seltz in Munich.

Becher’s success was so great at this time that even Thomas Mann condescended to come to him to request a favour for one of his wife’s relatives, Hans von Rohrscheidt, who was being roughly handled by the Soviet authorities. In return Becher wanted Mann to bring his influence to bear in getting CARE packets for his writers. Becher was trying to bring them all home: Döblin had returned (he was in Baden-Baden, working for the French) but Anna Seghers, the Manns, Herzfeld and Feuchtwanger were all hesitating. It was the time of the well-publicised dispute between Thomas Mann and two writers who had stayed in Germany, Walter von Molo and Franz Thiess. Thiess had said it was natural to remain in Germany, and pointed out that it had been harder to remain than to enjoy a comfortable life in exile like Mann. Mann’s son Klaus called Thiess ‘repulsive’: he had come to terms with the Nazis and earned a packet working on film scripts. Becher tried to pour oil on the troubled waters, issuing another invitation: ‘Come home, you are expected.’ On 22 November 1945 he launched an appeal to the émigrés. He did not share Mann’s view that books published during the Third Reich were worthless, and refused to allow his writings to appear in a volume of exile literature. He saw no virtue in exile: it was ‘bitter necessity’, no more. It was an attitude that made him unpopular with those who had emerged from the concentration camps.
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With Becher at the helm, and with the backing of Tulpanov for the time being, the Soviet Zone took a pragmatic approach to denazification in the arts. Zhukov had not believed that Hauptmann had resisted the Nazis, but he had given him his entire protection, keeping both his own soldiers and the Poles off him while he eked out his last days. The Americans were after Furtwängler’s blood. He had been a Prussian state councillor under the Nazis - a wholly honorary position given out to a few cultural and intellectual worthies who toed the line.
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Furtwängler had taken refuge in Switzerland at the end of the war, partly as a result of his fears for his safety. He had been close to some of the men who were executed after the July Plot. As the war drew to a close the Swiss had turned on him and he had fled to Austria in the autumn of 1945. He was summoned back by the Russians in February 1946 to take over his old job at the Berlin Philharmonic. Up to then the reins had been held by Leo Borchard, and by the temperamental thirty-three-year-old Sergiu Celibidache.

‘Celi’ had taken over the Philharmonic just six days after Borchard’s death. He was even more obscure than his predecessor: an unknown Romanian who had arrived in Berlin in the mid-1930s to study composition under Heinz Tiessen. Before he was relieved of his post by the triumphal return of Furtwängler, ‘Celi’ conducted the BPO no fewer than 108 times. The Allies saw him as a ‘political virgin’ and, while disputes raged about all the other conductors who were to some extent tainted by Nazism, there was no argument about him.
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As the Philharmonie had been gutted, ‘Celi’ performed in the Titania Palast in Berlin-Steglitz,
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the Theater des Westens by the Zoo, the Radio Station and other intact buildings in Dahlem, Tegel and Wedding. He also performed in other German cities standing in for Furtwängler, who was the subject of particularly petty attacks by Allied officials - chiefly American. Before Furtwängler could perform in the Western Allied Zones, he had to receive his
Persilschein
- a clean bill of political health - in Vienna, Wiesbaden and Berlin. Vienna presented him with few problems, but at the American HQ in Wiesbaden they were reluctant to exonerate him. There was a persistent clamour from back home, especially from Thomas Mann’s daughter Erika. He could only proceed to the higher court in Berlin in December 1946. He was finally absolved in April 1947. During that time Celibidache stood in for him, but according to Furtwängler’s widow relations between the two of them were always good.
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Furtwängler returned to Berlin in a Russian aircraft on 10 March 1946, landing at the Adlershof airfield in the Soviet Zone. He was received in all pomp by Becher. The Russians provided him with the Pheasantry, his old grace-and-favour residence in the park at Sans Souci in Potsdam. His faithful housekeeper was waiting for him, and so was his piano. The West objected to his performing, however, and his appearance at the concert in the Radio Station had to be scrapped. That day the orchestra was directed by Celibidache.

Furtwängler had already been cleared by a denazification court in Austria and thought that the pardon would be granted automatically in Berlin. The Americans in the person of General McClure, however, were not prepared to give in so easily and they reminded the other Allies that Furtwängler needed an American licence to perform at the Philharmonie, which was in their sector, and that all Prussian state councillors had been banned from public life under Control Council Directive No. 24. This didn’t much impress the Russians, who offered Furtwängler the directorship of the Lindenoper, which lay in their territory. They even whipped up a press campaign to bring him back, embellishing their
Berliner Zeitung
on 16 February 1946 with the headline ‘Berlin calls Wilhelm Furtwängler’. The conductor refused to be wooed. Knowing that acceptance meant kissing goodbye to the BPO, he declined the offer.
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Furtwängler had never been a Pg, but there were plenty of conductors who had: Karajan, Knappertsbusch, Krauss and the chief conductor of the Berlin City Opera, the Austrian Leopold Ludwig. Ludwig had denied his Party membership on the
Fragebogen
and had been sentenced to a year’s imprisonment by the British Military Government. Ludwig was not only a Pg - like Karajan he had joined in Austria where membership was illegal.
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Knappertsbusch had actually been a protégé of Eva Braun’s, who was attracted to the conductor’s ‘boyish good looks’. Hitler had not held him in high regard, claiming he was ‘no better than a military band-leader’. The Führer did not like Karajan either, because the conductor did not use a score and failed to spot the errors of the singers. He would have pushed Karajan aside had he not been protected by Göring. Such was the Third Reich.
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The Russians ceased any pretence at taking denazification seriously for the arts scene. The civilised Captain Alexander Gouliga was replaced by an obstreperous Sub-lieutenant Levin who apparently did not even speak German. The Allied culture boffins had their last meeting with Gouliga in the House of Soviet Culture where a splendid feast had been prepared: goblets of Crimean champagne were served by two old German waiters with Hitler moustaches ‘who looked like a couple of ex-Gauleiters recently released from a Russian internment camp’. After the sparkling wine came vodka and beer. Salads were succeeded by smoked fish and caviar, caviar by stuffed eggs, cold meats and sausages - and those were just the
zakuski
. Bortsch and stroganoff and orange cream rounded off the feast.
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As far as opera was concerned, both the Städtische Oper and the Lindenoper had been outhoused due to bomb damage. Berlin’s City Opera was now in the Theater des Westens, while the Lindenoper was in the Admiralspalast in the Friedrichstrasse. Although the former was in the British Sector, the audiences for both opera houses were principally Russian. Neither was open to mere Germans. The night George Clare went to the Theater des Westens in 1946 there was a handful of British officers and two NCOs (himself and his friend), together with a ‘sprinkling’ of Americans and a ‘pride’ of Frenchmen. The rest of the audience was made up of Russians and their wives. The Soviets allowed officers to import wives and children, which was forbidden for the time being among the Western Allies - hence the need for frat.
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As ever, music had a powerful effect on the Berliners, who had braved the bombs to hear the BPO perform during the war. Margret Boveri remembered her first concert after the war. She heard a choral work of Bruckner’s in a ‘ruinous hall in [Berlin-]Zehlendorf’. It gave rise to floods of tears brought on by years of suppressed and concealed emotions.
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When after two years of trials Furtwängler received his
Persilschein
on 30 April 1947 and was able to conduct ‘his’ orchestra once again on Whit Sunday (25 May), the audience clapped for fifteen minutes, summoning him back to the rostrum sixteen times. It had been an all-Beethoven programme - the overture to
Egmont
, and the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies. Erika Mann carped: it was not the old Philharmonic, but the purged version that had survived the Third Reich, and even then it had been under-rehearsed. The conductor replied to her father, modestly pointing out that fifteen minutes’ applause was not unusual for Beethoven in Berlin.
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One Jew who wholeheartedly stood by Furtwängler throughout the crisis was Yehudi Menuhin. Menuhin, who performed the Beethoven violin concerto with the conductor on 28 September 1947, was anxious to break the boycott of Furtwängler in America. He demonstratively gave the conductor his hand, and was treated as a traitor in America as a result.
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Brecht, Eisler and Heinrich Mann looked on from their places of exile, but theatre prospered. Many theatres had been spared the Anglo-American bombing, and Berlin was in a position to put on plays from the start. Hilde Spiel was awestruck: ‘What remains is the world of the theatre. Only here do they [the Berliners] continue to eat and drink, love without worry and die without cause, swagger, croon, charm, laugh. Only here do the porters still strut about and the candles still flicker in ornate chandeliers, only here do the cigars glimmer and the wines flow.’
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The Hebbel Theatre performed the
Dreigroschenoper
from 8 August 1945. A few days later Ruth Friedrich went along to the ‘Saarlandstrasse, alias Stresemannstrasse, alias Königsgrätzerstrasse’ - her litany of purges did not include the last one: the Hermann-Göring-Strasse - and found an immense queue and the idea of ‘beggar’s opera’ right and fitting for the Berliners. The line ‘Grub first, then morality’ seemed particularly apposite to Ursula von Kardorff when she went at the beginning of October.
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The Hebbel Theatre also honoured the poets and writers of the ‘System time’ - as Hitler dismissed the Weimar period: Toller, Tucholsky, Brecht, Heinrich Mann, Erich Mühsam, Lion Feuchtwanger, Leonhard Frank and Ludwig Rubener.
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The Hebbel, however, was not all it seemed: it was in the American Sector. Brecht was not altogether kosher as far as the Russians were concerned. ‘Grub first, then morality’ did not suit them; they wanted it the other way round. It did not accord with notions of collective guilt either. Brecht would have to wait for his reconciliation with the Soviet authorities.
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