Not I (5 page)

The bookshelves stretching up to the ceiling clearly reflected my father’s interests. Only above the desk was there a gap, in which—next to some family photographs and the silhouette of Goethe raising his finger in front of the young Fritz von Stein—hung an engraving after Raphael’s
School of Athens
, with Pythagoras and Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, one pointing at heaven, the other at earth, as our father (to our amusement) explained to almost every visitor, and at the right-hand edge of the picture Raphael had portrayed himself, as was repeated to us at least as regularly. Standing in front of the portrait of the Catholic scholar and reformer Görres on the opposite wall (above which there was a bronze bust of Dante on a pedestal), my father was in the habit of assuring listeners that all of his life he had wanted to be like Görres: rebellious in his early years, moving things forward in the middle of life, and from the age of forty preserving what was good.
¹⁴
But the times have to lend a hand. In his they too often got in the way.

My father often talked about the period after the First World War, in which he had been wounded early on and spent time in hospital. He had no problem adjusting to circumstances then. He had been full of hope and, in his view, despite the painful defeat, there had been a strong attachment to the republic. He attributed this to three
main causes, which, with the laconic brevity characteristic of his new hometown, Berlin, he summed up as: the war was over, the kaiser was gone, and the nonsense of the soldiers’ councils was at an end. Furthermore, a constitution had been debated and all of this combined had produced a widespread sense of a new beginning, which took hold of and united the middle classes and the workers.

“But even before the constitution was adopted, the heavens darkened,” he said. The first blow came with the Versailles peace treaty, but it was not its draconian exactions that weighed most heavily. It was the “humiliations” imposed on the German delegation that produced greater outrage, from the servants’ entrance by which its members had to enter the building in which the negotiations were held to the wounded men with serious facial injuries, who, in an act of calculated offense, were posted at the entrance to the conference room. These and similar theatrical flourishes, he said, were intended to legitimate Article 231 of the Versailles Treaty, which was formulated with the “unpleasant arrogance of the poor winner”: the assertion that Germany bore sole responsibility for the war. In truth, the victorious powers only proved thereby that “they didn’t measure up to their victory.” It was soon being said that the republic had returned from Versailles “wearing a fool’s cap,” and the phrase was repeated with contempt and bitterness.

My father talked a great deal about these setbacks. The weaknesses already became evident, he said, in summer 1919. Furthermore, the republic had not been inaugurated with any great act of foundation that stayed
in the memory, but instead (as a growing number soon thought) with a shameful defeat which was the result of treachery. Many allowed themselves to be persuaded all too readily that they were the good-natured victims of deceit and vindictiveness. In the early days of the new state, my father related, as he was going to the local branches night after night, he had repeatedly pointed out in countering the agitation of the right that the emergent republic had been dealt two stabs in the back: first by the “Hindenburg swindle”
¹⁵
and second by the victorious powers, France in particular, for whom he made no allowances. As a result Hitler was allowed to present himself as the advocate of so-called German honor.

“There was one other great moment,” he continued, when talk came around to the subject. That had been when the Kapp Putsch was launched in March 1920, and the young republic had even been granted a victory.
¹⁶
The coup d’état of the old “mustaches” had been thwarted not only by the workers’ general strike but also by the more or less united resistance of the broad majority. There the republic had its long-awaited founding act after all, as my father had declared repeatedly in his speeches, and the listeners had sometimes even risen to their feet and
applauded. But the republic had not known what to do with this gift. Nevertheless, he and his friends had celebrated the victory in the assembly rooms and larger pubs of Neukölln, Kreuzberg, and Charlottenburg. At last, so they had all believed, their cause was safe. The republic appeared to have stood the test.

It was around then that he thought for the first time—after a life which had for so long been filled with meetings and endless evening appointments—that he could devote himself to his private advancement. At the end of 1921 he moved from the lower-class district of Neukölln to Karlshorst and bought an apartment house in Hentigstrasse, in which, already with an eye to a future family, he occupied a whole floor. At that time he felt he had made a success of the first part of his life. Professionally as well as politically everyone predicted a promising future for him. In addition, he had made the acquaintance of an attractive, well-brought-up young woman from a comfortable background and for the first time thought of marriage.

He approached everything with great seriousness. After he had satisfied himself about this young woman, her family, and its circumstances, he began one day to acquire, without the least stammer, a fluency in French conversation and for a while preferred popular literature in that language with extended passages of dialogue. In this way, my father later jokingly maintained, he had prepared himself for the traditional suspicions of future parents-in-law. Because it did not seem impossible to him that the strict Straeters might embarrass him by suddenly, as if unintentionally, switching to French and
only after talking for some time apologize for the small discourtesy. He had not wanted to expose himself to that, he added with a laugh.

And, laughing, he also said that until that point his education had been all too greatly focused on the weighty themes; he therefore began to drape “garlands” on the “grand scaffolding,” as he called it, adding the handsome accessories which, even if only socially, were part of an education. Then he made the rounds of all the specialist shops in order to achieve sureness of taste, because he came from the country and (as one said in the big city of Berlin) from “modest circumstances.” He had already discovered fine-looking furniture and very pleasing craft work in the homes of friends and of political party acquaintances and formed an idea of how he wanted to live. When he believed himself reasonably well prepared he also went to the antique shops in the Hansaviertel district to form judgments with respect to furnishings, paintings, carpets, and whatever else belonged to setting up a home and corresponded to his financial possibilities. He even bought some pieces, mainly in old Berlin style. Meanwhile, from time to time, he sent a token of his intentions to the young miss in Riastrasse.

These were the eloquent love letters that my mother kept in a casket together with other mementos and buried in the garden in 1945 a few days before the Russians marched in. The evacuation order issued at short notice by the Russians prevented the little box from being recovered; to the lifelong sorrow of my mother it remained lost. There are even supposed to have been some love poems in it.

One day my father unexpectedly announced himself at the Straeters’. To his surprise the drawing room furniture was light in color. Decorated with flower vases and bright porcelain figures of courting couples, harlequins, and shepherdesses, the grace of the decor hardly seemed to match the stern image of my maternal grandfather. Certainly this visit (so my father thought) was full of possibilities for embarrassment; nevertheless, it passed more easily than feared. The future parents-in-law possessed French courtesy, and since they had worked out why the young man was calling on them, they first of all offered him a light liqueur and helped him in every possible way to cope with the situation. When, suddenly and without warning, he became formal and attempted to rise from his chair, they asked him to remain seated. The guest nevertheless responded that he was better able to say what he wanted to say standing, whereas for the sake of their well-being it would be better if they remained seated. After that the mood became more relaxed, so that my father was able to shed any stiffness and ask, without further ceremony, for the hand of their daughter Elisabeth.

A few weeks later the date of the wedding was set for the middle of 1923. When my father looked back he was able to feel a degree of satisfaction. He had been more successful than he could ever have expected; hints had been made recently that he had prospects of an appointment in the Prussian Ministry of Culture, Education, and Religious Affairs. And then things would continue. What could possibly get in the way?

1
Philemon and Baucis are an aged couple in Greek mythology, a classical example of enduring marital loyalty and love, used by Goethe in
Faust
and thus familiar to any educated German.

2
These are major German poets of the nineteenth century to whom Fest will refer repeatedly: Joseph von Eichendorff (1788–1857) and Eduard Mörike (1804–75) are regarded as prime exemplars of German Romanticism, while Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) is often seen as the more critical and caustic.

3
Schlaraffenland is the German equivalent of the Land of Cockaigne, an imaginary place of ease and luxury.—Trans.

4
The Zentrum party, established in 1870 and dissolved in 1933, was the political, conservative representation of German Catholicism in an essentially Prussian and therefore Protestant-dominated German Reich; it opposed the Nazis ideologically. After the Second World War the surviving members of the Zentrum founded and dominated the conservative Christian Democratic Union, including Protestants as well as Catholics. The first chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Konrad Adenauer, was the candidate of the CDU.

5
Hubertus Prince of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg (1906–84), historian, journalist, and prolific author of books and articles on German and ancient history, was an early and outspoken antifascist who had to flee Nazi Germany. In England and the United States he became an active anti-Nazi spokesman. He returned to Germany and German politics after 1946; he was active in both the FDP (Free German Party) and the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) and attempted to help bridge the gap between the Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches.

6
Advance Guard Black-Red-Gold: black, red, and gold being the colors of the republican German flag, as opposed to the black, red, and white of the imperial and Nazi flags.—Trans.

7
Frederick II, king of Prussia (1712–86), called the Great, is an icon of Prussian conservatives and advocates of German national greatness in the early twentieth century. In the Seven Years’ War, which he started, he fought all major European powers and established the kingdom of Prussia as a key player among them.

8
Eugenio Pacelli (1876–1958), later Pope Pius XII, was the Vatican’s diplomatic representative in Munich and Berlin from 1917 through the 1930s, when he gained the most coveted prize in Vatican diplomacy, a concordat with the German Reich. He later knew of but did nothing to mitigate the persecution and extermination of Europe’s Jews by the Nazis.

9
Heinrich Brüning (1885–1970) was the last democratic chancellor of the Weimar Republic; he died in exile in Vermont.

10
Bernhard Lichtenberg (1875–1943).

11
Franz von Papen (1879–1969) was a monarchist member of the Zentrum whose political machinations in 1932–33 significantly aided Hitler’s rise to the chancellorship and power in Germany. Ludwig Kaas (1881–1952) was the head of the Zentrum party from 1928 through 1933 and a major contributor to the Vatican’s concordat with Germany, Hitler’s first diplomatic success.

12
A
Bildungsbürger
is a member of that part of the German upper-middle class which comes from and aspires to middle- and upper-range positions in German society’s politically and economically dominant classes; she or he is highly educated and will typically hold an
Abitur
certificate and a university or graduate degree or its equivalent. She or he will also be widely read and traveled and show both knowledge and appreciation of European high culture and be conversant in several languages, including classical Greek and/or Latin. This class dominates German politics and society to this day and represents only a small portion of the total population. It is educated to be and thinks of itself as an elite.

13
Theodor Fontane (1819–98) is the quintessential Prussian novelist of the nineteenth century. His novels provide a critical image of Prussian society’s dominant classes; their realism is tempered by Fontaine’s famous reticent irony and obvious affection for the people and landscape of the Mark Brandenburg.

14
Johann Joseph von Görres (1776–1848), a politically active writer and early adherent of the ideas of the French Revolution. He suffered political persecution throughout his life and eventually became an activist Catholic who advocated a liberal constitution and a federalist Germany—precisely the odd mixture of revolutionary and conservative Fest favors.

15
Fest senior was presumably referring to the wartime financial policy of the Reich, which in the expectation of victory increased the money supply, so initiating the inflation which reached a climax in 1923, or possibly to the myth of the undefeated German army, summed up in the phrase “the stab in the back.”—Trans.