The Weimar Triangle (3 page)

And there was also the flamboyant, red-haired Cella Lubescu, born in a village near Bucharest. She sold tennis equipment in a sporting goods store in Bockenheim. At one time she had been a roommate of Hildy’s. Cella had a loud voice and a strong Romanian accent. Jay could understand only half of what she said, in German or in English.

What a contrast to the gorgeous, soft-spoken Nicola Wenzel, a radio producer at the Hessische Rundfunk, with sparkling blue eyes and a gentle, velvety voice. She had a daily afternoon show, with all kinds of interesting guests. He found her immensely attractive. Since she knew many people, professionally and privately, it was most flattering to him that she liked him, too, although only
—
so she often announced publicly
—
because of the shape of his ears. She explained that she always judged men by their ears.

The third time he took her out, on a Sunday evening, they had dinner at a small Italian restaurant in a side street off the Bockenheimer Warte. It had a pleasant garden at the back and was frequented mostly by people from the university, only a few blocks away.

By now Jay had told her quite a lot about himself but he had not yet mentioned the Littmann Bank. When he eventually did he discovered that she knew quite a lot about it.

“It was the second biggest bank in Frankfurt until the Rothschilds came along,” she told him. “When Napoleon retreated from Russia in 1813 he couldn’t decide whether to spend a few days to relax and recover at the Bethmann Bank or at the Littmann Bank. Both had secluded residences outside the city and both had sent him invitations. They were in hot competition, about this and everything else. The defeated emperor stayed with the Bethmanns. The Littmanns never forgave him. They are still sulking about it.”

“Is that the only thing that’s on their mind?”

Before Nicola could answer, a jovial, middle-aged lady came over.

“May I butt in?” she asked.

Nicola said she was delighted and introduced Jay, a friend from Canada.

“No doubt you had him as a guest on your afternoon show,” the lady said, pulling up a chair and sitting down,. “I’m sure he told you all about snow and ice and Eskimos. Don’t believe a word of what he says.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t,” Nicola assured her. She turned to Jay. “This is Gisela Hanauer, who does occasional book reviews for me. Gisela, Jay is a friend of Hans’s.”

“How fortunate you mention Hans,” Gisela said. “I called him this morning and left a message. I have something that may be just up his alley. I think I discovered a goldmine.”

“Hans likes goldmines,” Nicola observed.

“I was thinking of his
Premonitions.
This may be the beginning of something just as good. Maybe even better. I don’t know whether I ever spoke to you about my grandparents.”

“I don’t think you did.”

“They left Frankfurt in 1935 and went to America. My grandfather Hermann Geisel was a lawyer who was in the black books of the Nazis because he had made a name for himself as a relentless researcher of the misdeeds of the Weimar judges, who grossly favoured all those early Nazi murderers. It didn’t help that my grandparents were Jewish. My grandfather died in New York in 1939, just after the war broke out. My grandmother Hanni survived him by ten years. She was an amazing lady who was a great hostess in her day and played the violin. She also wrote very well and had literary ambitions. By the way, my grandfather played the cello and collected Expressionist paintings. Yes, they were quite a couple. They had a lovely house on the Untermainkai that was destroyed during the bombing.

“Now, it so happens that I found a little brown leather case among the books they left behind. It contained Hanni’s diary from the year 1927, and a few loose photographs. Her handwriting was terrible! But there was also an extraordinary typewritten story that she probably hoped to publish. No idea why she left these things behind. Maybe because she wanted to make a clean break with the past. The story is quite amazing. There may be all kinds of reasons why she didn’t want to take it along.”

“Amazing?” Nicola asked. “Why?”

“It’s about the beginnings of a love affair. Written in the third person. A love affair with Erwin Herzberg, a prominent journalist and film critic who later became very well known as the author of
From Fritz Lang to Leni Riefenstahl.
But it’s not hard to guess that it’s really about herself.”

“She could easily have torn it up. Or burned it.”

“Maybe she secretly hoped that one day it would be discovered.”

“As it has been.”

“How long had your grandparents been married?”

“Nearly twenty years.”

“How old was your grandmother in 1927?”

“Let me see. Not so young any more. She must have been about forty-five. The same age as my grandfather. They had two teenage sons, Karli and Tommy, Karli being my father, who died five years ago. If he knew anything about a love affair of his mother’s in 1927 he never mentioned it. My father was one of the few refugees who came back after the war, while his mother stayed behind in the United States. He could easily have got a job playing the trumpet in any American orchestra but he came home to play the trumpet at the Frankfurt opera.”

“And never regretted coming back?” Nicola said.

“Not as far as I know. Anyway, he couldn’t very well say so because the real reason he came back was to marry my mother.”

Gisela turned to Jay.

“When you see Hans, will you please ask him to call me?”

Jay promised he would. They spent the rest of the evening listening to Gisela’s stories about her guests, one of whom, a writer, had been in Toronto to attend the annual festival of authors.

The following morning, Jay and Hans met Gisela for coffee. Without barely saying a word, she handed Hans the little brown leather case. He read through the 1927 diary and the accompanying short story with lightning speed and ever-accelerating excitement. He seemed to have no difficulty deciphering the handwriting. Soon he was convinced the diary and the short story had to become the core of another
Premonitions
. They revolved around the International Exhibition of Music in 1927 in the Festhalle and “The Summer of Music,” the first occasion after 1918 when Germany was allowed once again to play a role in the world’s cultural life, occasions that had now been totally forgotten. Yes, these documents simply had to be published. Moreover, an extramarital love affair lurking in the background made the story absolutely irresistible. But would these documents stand up by themselves? Would they not raise too many unanswered questions?

Soon Jay was as involved in the documents as Hans, which put him in a difficult situation. He was, after all, in Frankfurt on business. He had a specific assignment, entirely within his range, and it was the sort of thing he was good at. Normally, he was relentless in pursuit of his objective, like a terrier, looking neither right nor left. He had made a reputation for himself
—
not as a mere detective, not as a mere diplomat, not as a mere problem solver, although he had all these skills
—
but as a hound dog. The problem was that hound dogs are not usually history buffs. As far as scholars can tell, they don’t even have private lives. They may sniff at the odd lamppost, but, generally speaking, they know only one thing
—
and that is to be a hound dog. Jay had an appointment with Pfeiffer on Thursday. The mental preparation for it should occupy all the spaces in his mind. Now this diary, and this story, evoking a fascinating moment in the Weimar Republic, came along. It was more than one little lamppost. It turned out to be the Holy Grail of lampposts.

“Why was the Weimar Republic called the Weimar Republic?” he asked Hans.

“Because of Goethe, of course,” Hans laughed. “The best Germany had to offer, even if he cheated Marianne out of immortality. Goethe left his native Frankfurt for Weimar when he was in his twenties and rarely came back except to see Marianne. Weimar was the reason why for a long time Germany was considered the land of poets and thinkers. Largely because of Goethe. And when in 1919 the politicians were looking for a suitable place to compose a republican constitution, after the flight of the Kaiser in 1918 and the revolution, Weimar seemed to be just the right spot, mainly for symbolic reasons.”

For Jay all this opened up another era, another universe, less than a century ago, full of new names, full of politics and, surprisingly, full of music, something he knew little about. It also gave him a crystal-clear impression of Gisela’s grandparents, Hermann and Hanni Geisel, and their role in Frankfurt society in the nineteen-twenties. The few photographs slipped between the pages of that leather-bound notebook of course helped enormously. Hermann was in good shape for a man of forty-five, although he had lost most of his hair. He had a wellsculpted, noble nose and an amiable mouth. As a socialist and pacifist, Jay learned from the diary, he held passionate convictions and devoted much of his spare time to documenting miscarriages of justice committed by parts of the mostly right-wing judiciary that had survived from the Kaiser’s days and opposed the Weimar Republic. He regularly published his findings in journals and books.

Hanni was elegant and attractive but far from beautiful. The diary mentioned that a visitor from Paris once called her
une jolie laide
, a plain woman who was good-looking. She was clearly a talented violinist and at one time considered becoming a professional. She was also a good writer. She hoped one day to publish a collection of her short stories.

Every Saturday, from one to four, she presided over one of Frankfurt’s most sought-after
déjeuners
. There, carefully chosen guests conducted lively, often heated conversations while enjoying dishes prepared by a former chef of the Frankfurter Hof and consuming vintage wines.

Hans asked Freddie to dig up a few press reports about the International Exhibition of Music in 1927.

He came up with these:

The task, which the organizers of the international exhibition [Music in the Lives of the World’s People] have set themselves, is very high — reconciliation through the power of music.

– Münchner Zeitung

The exhibition is one of the greatest events in the history of music.

– The New York Times

One should try to persuade all music-lovers to travel to Frankfurt. There they will find a unique exhibition and be able to listen to the best orchestras and concerts available anywhere today.

– L’Intransigeant
, Paris

Last Sunday thirty-five thousand visitors passed the gates of the exhibition. For some hours in the afternoon no additional people were admitted to contain the crowds.

– New York Herald

This is an international event as had not been seen since before the war.

– Luzerner Neueste Nachrichten

Part One:
Hanni’s Diary

E
NTRY 1:
S
ATURDAY
, M
AY 21, 1927

K
laus Gottschalk’s entirely forgivable little breach of confidence will not make history, but it certainly added badly needed spice to our
déjeuner
this afternoon. I had never invited him before but did so this time because the other evening at the Richters I heard him talk amusingly about his adventures in Paris as second secretary at the German embassy. I wanted to hear more. And I was sure the other guests who had not met him before
—
Liselotte Korf, the
succès fou
as Papagena at the moment, and the lively Doctor Herbert Loser from the Paul Ehrlich Institute and a few others
—
would enjoy him, too. Hermann could not be there, because he was working on a case.

Oh, to be a handsome young bachelor on the Left Bank! Klaus had confessed at the Richters’ dinner party that there was one spot near the Café de Flore that he could never pass without blushing. When we all insisted he tell us why
—
we could not imagine what could possibly make this worldly young man blush
—
he refused. He was absolutely adamant. No enticement we could think of, including a night with the opera ballet’s prima ballerina, could move him. But this time, on a very different subject, when it was only a matter of international diplomacy, he eventually yielded quite amiably to collective pressure. The incident that gave rise to it occurred last December. But now that there are only two weeks to go before the exhibition opens, it has become worth telling because the central figure
—
Édouard Herriot
—
will be the star at the opening ceremonies in the Opernhaus.