Not I (15 page)

That was, apart from my father’s goodnight stories, the other literary pleasure of my early years. No Dr. Doolittle, no Germanic sagas, no
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
could match the verses of Wilhelm Busch. Reading became more demanding, also more time-consuming, when, after dinner one evening, Wolfgang told me I now had to read “Kamai.” He was, meanwhile, on the third volume, and Hansi Streblow claimed he had already read five. When I asked how many books there were by this “Kamai,” and heard something about sixty or seventy titles, I was close to having nothing to do with him. But then I read
The Treasure of Silver Lake
and instantly became so addicted that within a year I went on to read
Winnetou
and about twenty other books, only once interrupted by one of Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking
volumes, which, however, despite the numerous explanatory drawings, I found boring, even silly.

The works of one other author interrupted my reading of the adventure stories of Karl May (as I now realized he was called).
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Mark Twain’s
Tom Sawyer
and
Huckleberry Finn
now became the other great literary experience of those years. For some time I considered the author of
Tom Sawyer
to be at least the equal of Goethe, who was admired everywhere as the world’s greatest poet, whereas I maintained that the correct order was in fact: Wilhelm Busch in first place, far ahead of all the others, then Mark Twain, closely followed by Goethe.

Later—I must have been about thirteen or fourteen—I read
Moby-Dick
, the story of the white whale, which Wolfgang had recommended to me. I had to get away from my father’s collection of bourgeois literary treasures, he said, and although I angrily disagreed, I soon began to read the heavy volume. There was much that I hardly understood, yet the tension of this mysterious book did not let me go. The drama of Ishmael and the grim, one-legged Captain Ahab with the dark scar on his face, as if struck there by lightning, and the harpoon baptized with the name of the Devil, restlessly traversing the oceans of the world, is something I have never forgotten. I realized for the first time that my father’s taste was not everything, and that in addition to the legends
and calendar tales whose endings were always certain, there was a strange and sinister world. Melville opened the gates wide.

At that time it offended me that, like my brother, given the circumstances, I got only ten pfennigs a week pocket money, and the only way of earning more was to learn poems by heart, because my father had offered a one-mark reward for every ten poems recited without a mistake. So I learned Goethe’s “The Erl-King,” Schiller’s “The Pledge” and “The Cranes of Ibycus,” and numerous other ballads; above all to please my mother, I gradually moved on to nature poetry and reflective verse, and finally to Rainer Maria Rilke and Stefan George.
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When, returning to the classics again, I could recite “The waters rushed, the waters rose …” by Goethe,
⁵
my father recommended Gottfried Keller’s ballad “Seemärchen” (A lake tale), which even today I think of as a continuation. It is at once brilliant and slides into the demonic, while Goethe’s contemplative verses only have a suggestion of threat at the end. The penny-dreadful literature by John Kling or Tom Shark and the rest, which was so popular with friends and schoolmates, passed me by, oddly enough. One day I started a book with the title
The War of the Miami
. I got
bored, however, and then began a novel set in the empire of the Incas,
The Divine Sacrifice
, which was no better, so I went back to Karl May. But it was different with Hans Dominik, whose novels opened up vistas of a highly technological future, filled with shiny machinery.

At the beginning of 1938 I saw our neighbor Herr Hofmeister draw my father into the hallway and reproach him in a subdued voice for being too contrarian. He told him he should open his eyes at last! At the evening meal, when I asked my father why he put up with something like that, he conceded that basically Hofmeister was right. Things really were better than they had been. The seven or eight million unemployed had disappeared, as if by a conjuring trick. But the ten million or more Hofmeisters didn’t want to see the means by which Hitler achieved his successes. They thought he had God on his side; anyone who had retained a bit of sense, however, saw that he was in league with the Devil.

Wolfgang asked if that was more than conjecture and whether there really were pacts with the Devil—and what was the theological explanation for it? We frequently came back to this topic, which had a strange fascination for us. Of course, my father soon brought the conversation around to the historical Dr. Faustus and attempts by the medieval alchemists to produce gold, jewels, or the philosopher’s stone in their laboratories, then he regularly concluded with Goethe’s great play,
Faust
.

These discussions came to an abrupt end in March of that year, when German troops crossed the border into Austria under billowing flags and crowds lined the streets,
cheering and throwing flowers. Sitting by the wireless we heard the shouted
Heil!s
, the songs and the rattle of the tanks, while the commentator talked about the craning necks of the jubilant women, some of whom even fainted.

It was yet another blow for the opponents of the regime, although my father, like Catholics in general, and the overwhelming majority of Germans and Austrians, thought in terms of a greater Germany, that is, of Germany and Austria as one nation. For a long time he sat with the family in front of the big Saba radio, lost in thought, while in the background a Beethoven symphony played. “Why does Hitler succeed in almost everything?” he pondered. Yet a feeling of satisfaction predominated, although once again he was indignant at the former victorious powers. When the Weimar Republic was obviously fighting for its survival, they had forbidden a mere customs union with Austria and threatened war. But when faced with Hitler, the French forgot their “revenge obsession,” and the British bowed so low before him that one could only hope it was another example of their “familiar deviousness.” The Weimar Republic, at any rate, would probably have survived if it had been granted a success like that of the Anschluss.
⁶

Nevertheless, my father continued, the union brought with it a hope that Germany would now become “more Catholic.” It was only a few days before he realized his
error. Already at the meeting with his friends, which had been brought forward, he learned of the persecution of the Jews in Austria, heard dumbfounded that the admired Egon Friedell, whose
Cultural History of the Modern Age
was one of his favorite books, had jumped out of the window as he was about to be arrested, and that in what was now called the Ostmark there was an unprecedented rush to join the SS. “Why do these easy victories of Hitler’s never stop?” he asked one evening after a pensive listing of events. And why, he asked on another occasion, was this mixture of arrogance and hankering for advantage breaking out in Germany, of all places? Why did the Nazi swindle not simply collapse in the face of the laughter of the educated? Or of the ordinary people, who usually have more “character”?

So there were ever more occasions for that conspiratorial feeling that bound us together; at least that’s how my father interpreted the course of events. During the summer several members of my father’s “secret society,” as Wolfgang and I ironically called it, visited us: Riesebrodt, Classe, and Fechner. Hans Hausdorf also came regularly again, and brought us children “presents to suck” and, as always, a pastry for my mother. His center-parted hair was combed down flat and gleamed with pomade. We loved his puns and bad jokes. And, indeed, Hausdorf seemed to take nothing seriously. But once, later on, when we took him to task, his mood turned unexpectedly thoughtful. He said that human coexistence really only began with jokes; and the fact that the Nazis were unable to bear irony had made clear to him from the start that the world of
bourgeois civility was in trouble. He went on to say that he, at least, had the impression the bonds were loosening. Once, as Hausdorf was leaving, I heard my father complain that for the foreseeable future nothing was changed for him by the regime’s relaxation of pressure. He had always kept a hospitable house, but that was no longer possible: at present his means allowed him at most to invite friends to a modest supper once a month. In truth, not even that. For that reason he had started to invite people for afternoon tea; he could still afford that.

David Jallowitz (known as “Sally”), who dealt in suitcases and used to call occasionally, now came more frequently than before, and examined the pots in the kitchen in front of my indignant mother. Once when she grumbled about the heat, thirty degrees C. in the shade, he gave her the “good advice” simply not to stand in the shade, and Jallowitz laughed when she said the joke was stupid and inappropriate.

Other visitors were Walther Rosenthal and his wife, who, according to Wolfgang, was as “sensitive as a teenage girl,” but always listened with a serious, melancholy expression, and had intractable frizzy hair, which stood up at the side.

Sonja Rosenthal hardly ever said a word, and so it was especially surprising when she once contradicted her husband, of all people, and his assertion that the world had never before been so brutish and violent. He was mistaken, she interrupted gently, absolutely mistaken. Because there had never been a different world, different people, and more peaceful conditions than today. Life
had always been quite unreasonable, extremely cruel—and she had hardly finished before she fell back into her alert silence, quietly examining the guests around her.

Among other friends who came regularly was August Goderski, whom (despite his modest reserve) we called “the man with the lip,” because of a bulging growth at his mouth. At the beginning he was usually accompanied by his grown-up son Walter. It was also Walter who on December 6 appeared as St. Nicholas in our home.
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Year after year he repeated the Christ child’s interminable personal admonitions to me, and declared that after the boorish behavior of the past year a whole troop of angels would be keeping a watchful eye on me. Naturally, I promised to say the required prayers of repentance and to be exemplary henceforth, and accompanied St. Nicholas to the door with folded hands and many pious bows. But then I aroused general annoyance when, as he was still on the half-landing, I called after him: “And a Happy Christmas to you, Herr Goderski! And come again soon! We’re always pleased to see you!” I was eight years old at the time. Hardly was the door shut when my parents accused me of spoiling the St. Nicholas fun for my sisters Hannih and Christa with my cheeky remarks.

In fact, Walter Goderski’s visits were always a particular pleasure, because he was funny and a great joker. Even
today I still remember some of his “crazy” stories, as we called them; for instance, the one where a half-educated fellow rebukes his friend: “So you think yer ’telligent, Maxie? Let me tell you what you really are: Yer totally in-telligent!” Finally, also in my gallery of favorite guests was Dr. Meyer, who, whenever there was a pause in the conversation, talked about the books he was reading for the second, third, or fourth time. Among his preferred authors were Grimmelshausen, Lessing, Fontane, as well as, of course, Goethe, Heine, and—as he assured me with a smile, in answer to a question—“all the others, too.”
⁸

But then this apparently relaxed, increasingly close circle was struck by a virtual bolt from the blue. On November 9, 1938, the rulers of Germany organized what came to be known as Kristallnacht, and showed the world, as my father put it, after all the masquerades, their true face.
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The next morning he went to the city center and afterward told us about the devastation: burnt-out synagogues and smashed shop windows, the broken glass everywhere on the pavements, the paper blown in the wind, and the scraps of cloth and other rubbish in
the streets. After that he called a number of friends and advised them to get out as soon as possible. “Better today than tomorrow!” I heard him shout into the receiver once. But only the Rosenthals saw sense.

In April 1938 Wolfgang photographed the family with Aunt Dolly and Grandfather Straeter. In the foreground (left to right): Hannih, Winfried, Joachim, and Christa

It was at this time that, without notice, the only Jewish pupil in our class stopped coming. He was quiet, almost introverted, and usually stood a little aside from the rest, but I sometimes asked myself whether he always appeared so unfriendly because he feared being rejected by his schoolmates. We were still puzzling over his departure, which had occurred without a word of farewell, when one day, as if by chance, he ran into me near the Silesian Station, and took the opportunity to take his leave personally, as he said. He had already done so with a few other classmates, who had behaved “decently”; the rest he either hadn’t known or they were Hitler Youth leaders, most of whom had also been friendly to him, often “very friendly indeed,” but he didn’t see why he should say goodbye to them. As a Jew he would soon not be allowed to go to school anyway. Now his family had the chance to emigrate to England. They didn’t want to miss the chance. “Pity!” he said, as we parted, and he was already three or four steps away. “This time it is forever, unfortunately.”