by Kulin, Ayse
Gerhard placed a hand on Hirsch’s shoulder. “Professor, are you okay?” he asked.
“Am I okay? Me?” Hirsch’s voice trembled with emotion. “I—a man dismissed from his professorship and forced to leave behind his work, his home, and his homeland, despised for being a Jew, called inferior—am standing here now in a splendid palace on the edge of Europe, where I have been invited as a distinguished guest. Yes, I’m okay. In fact, I’ve been reborn.”
Gerhard swallowed hard. Tears of gratitude swam in his eyes, too, as he watched the colored lights playing on the dark sea. Life had presented him with a mysterious wrapped box, and out of that box had emerged a country called Turkey. From the moment he had set foot in this land, it seemed as though all he touched would turn to gold.
Not only had he been treated with the utmost respect and consideration, but every scientist and academic he had approached in Europe had accepted, with minimal negotiations, the positions on offer. The only person who had needed time to consider was the one standing here now, counting his blessings. Hirsch was torn between a position in Amsterdam and the offer from Istanbul, and he had been the last to decide. But he had opted for Istanbul and, within a mere three weeks, Gerhard had fulfilled his promise to the Turks of recruiting candidates for every single position. In doing so, he had distinguished himself in his father-in-law’s eyes, made his wife proud, and been gratified to overhear his mother-in-law singing his praises to her friends over homemade ginger cake and tea.
Gerhard’s personal business, too, had gone off without a hitch. During his second visit to Turkey to have the contracts signed for the doctors recruited by the Ministry of Health, he had managed to rent an apartment as well.
Having braced for a life in which he fed his family by tutoring students in their homes, he was instead given a position teaching pathology at Istanbul University Medical School. The salary was sufficient for a rental within walking distance of St. George’s, the school his son would attend.
His new landlady, who wanted time to get the apartment freshly painted and cleaned, had asked when he expected the ship bringing his furniture to arrive. Gerhard hadn’t wanted to say he’d left everything behind.
“I’ll get everything we need here.”
“You’ll have to get started at once. You won’t find ready-made furniture in Istanbul. And craftsmen take time.”
“We’ll do it as soon as my wife gets here. We can always sleep on mattresses on the floor at first.”
“You can’t live like that! I’d suggest staying at a hotel, but there are four of you. It would be a terrible inconvenience, especially with a baby.” The landlady, an elderly Armenian he addressed as “Madame,” the title Turks used for non-Muslim women, was muttering to herself and barely audible.
“Don’t worry, Madame Saryan. We’ll manage.”
“Forgive me for poking my nose in where it doesn’t belong, but my tenant on the ground floor, Monsieur Sarfati, passed away a couple of months ago. His only child, a daughter, moved to America ten years ago. When he died, I wrote and asked her what to do with Monsieur Sarfati’s possessions. In her reply, which I received just last week, she instructed me to distribute to charity whatever her relatives here didn’t want. Two days ago, the relatives took away the last of the silver, the paintings, and the bibelots. They left all the furniture, though. The truly poor would have no space for those enormous dining and sitting room sets, and the bed is huge as well. They’re all still there, downstairs. You’re welcome to take whatever you like.”
Scavenging through the furniture of a dead stranger! It was a distasteful idea. Still, Gerhard knew his landlady meant well.
“I’ll have a look,” he said, mainly so he wouldn’t appear ungrateful.
They descended two flights of stairs and entered a stuffy, dark apartment. Swatting at the dust particles whirling in the shafts of light that snuck through red velvet curtains, Gerhard walked through the sitting room, the kitchen, and the bedroom. The antique furniture was exquisite. The relatives must not have appreciated its value. The worn sofa and armchairs could be reupholstered. The oak table and chairs could be polished. The finely crafted nightstands and wardrobe would need only a good dusting.
He felt like throwing his arms around Madame Saryan’s neck. How lucky could a fellow be?
Gerhard’s thoughts were interrupted by Hirsch, whom he could barely hear above the orchestra and the murmur of hundreds of guests.
“Pardon?” Gerhard said.
“I might seem a little overwrought, but to have suffered so much and to have ended up here, of all places—”
“I know how you feel. Only half a year has passed since I fled Frankfurt. Yet here we are in a new country, charged with a sacred mission. As the minister of education told me at our first meeting, we, the scientists of Europe, are expected to convey our knowledge and our methods to the youth of this country. We are expected to play an instrumental role in shaping the young minds of an entire generation of future leaders. It’s as daunting a task as it is inspiring.”
“It certainly is,” Hirsch said. “Ah, look who’s over there! Let’s go say hello.”
On the evening of October 29, 1933, it was with great optimism that Ernst Hirsch and Gerhard Schliemann made their way to greet Professors Neumark, Löwe, and Kosswig. The five compatriots toasted their good fortune and their new lives, none of them aware of just how rocky the road ahead would be.
A Tangle
February 24, 1934
Istanbul
Dear Mother,
It snowed again this morning. Through the window, I can see the lovely sight of a city muffled in white. If only it weren’t so difficult to heat our home.
In my previous letters, I wrote all about how beautiful Istanbul is and how friendly and helpful the Turks have been. Sadly, but perhaps inevitably, there is a less pleasant side to life here, one I’ve slowly begun to see. You’ll remember the red velvet curtains belonging to the deceased tenant downstairs and how I decided that getting them cleaned would be more bothersome than simply ordering new ones? Well, the curtain maker failed to deliver on the agreed day. The children’s rooms face east, and the sunlight wakes them up early every morning, so I hung sheets in their windows. It was still too bright. I was forced to go out and buy blue roller blinds and install them myself. Then, the very next morning, the curtains I’d ordered arrived! This was my first lesson in avoiding needless expense. In this country, deliveries are never made on the promised date, but they do arrive eventually.
Furthermore, I was rejoicing in the sunny weather, which extended well into November, when winter struck out of nowhere. In the gloom and chill, everything seems much less pleasant. It’s impossible to find anything in this city. I wanted to knit sweaters for the children, but the wool is stiff as a board. The thread is poor quality and keeps snapping. The soap doesn’t lather. The bread is soft and white, with little nutritional value, and Peter won’t eat my homemade brown bread. I have to carry our washing through several neighborhoods to get to the nearest laundry. This is a miserably poor country. But I mustn’t complain, for if nothing else, we needn’t fear for our lives here. We must be thankful for our blessings!
I’ve even grown accustomed to a different day of rest, but Peter still hasn’t adjusted to school. He misses his old teachers and his old friends. Because he is a native German speaker, he was placed in an advanced class and finds the lessons difficult. We help him with his homework and try to be understanding. The poor boy is also struggling with Turkish, which is as perplexing a language as any on earth. Luckily, several boys his age live on our street. On the weekends, they all play ball together in a nearby vacant lot or, now that the weather is so bad, visit one another’s homes. Thanks to them, his Turkish is improving.
Young Hanna is becoming more irresponsible with each passing day, and I wish you hadn’t insisted we bring her with us. I won’t deny that I enjoyed her amusing company on the long train ride. She was also a great help with the ho
usework during our first weeks in Istanbul. Then, something came over her. She won’t listen to me. When she should be cleaning or cooking, she sticks Susy in a stroller, clambers up the steep hill to the main street, and goes window-shopping for hours on end. Gerhard has stopped scowling over my having brought Hanna without consulting him, but I don’t dare complain to him about her. I’ll have to handle the situation myself. When we come visit Zurich over the summer holidays, I intend to leave her there. If she weren’t so useless, there would have been no need for me to hire a local woman to clean four days a week. This woman, Fatma, also makes delicious pastries and local dishes. Mother, I know you’re frowning at the extravagance of my having two domestic helpers, but wages are so low here, and Fatma is also helping me to improve my Turkish.
I told you all about our neighbors in my first letter. The lack of a shared language has made it impossible to do much socializing, much as I like the Atalay family upstairs. However, there is a Jewish family and an Armenian woman in the building who speak passable French. For now, they are my closest friends. Have no fears about your grandchildren’s religious upbringing. Our Jewish neighbors observe all the holy days, even if I sometimes miss one. Two days ago, Peter was invited to a Bar Mitzvah. Here in Turkey, the holy days of all faiths are celebrated with great enthusiasm. Prayers and religious ceremonies are a major part of everyday life. On Christmas, which the Armenians celebrate in January, Madame invited all the children in the building to her apartment and had a present for each one under a fir tree set up in her sitting room. When our Muslim neighbors sacrificed a sheep for their holiday, they sent us a heaping plate of raw meat. We decided halal butchering wasn’t all that different from kosher, and Gerhard and Peter were happy to devour it. Of course, the happiest member of our family is Susy. She eats, drinks, sleeps, and is spoilt terribly by the neighbors. Turks adore children. The butcher shop, corner grocery, and patisserie where I do my shopping always give her little treats, and she’s grown quite plump.
But as I mentioned at the beginning of this letter, not everything is going well. Gerhard, who was so full of hope when he started at the university, seems quite distressed these days. I gather that some of the Turkish professors have not taken kindly to their new colleagues. And the Turks who lost their jobs when the old university was closed are openly hostile. They’re determined to make the Germans’ lives a living hell, and have gone so far as to spread false rumors to incite the students. They criticize the Germans for not knowing Turkish and claim they are unqualified, the accusation that wounds Gerhard the most. As you know, Gerhard helped to recruit the leading candidates in each field. It isn’t as though the Turks hired them out of pity! Gerhard warned me not to talk about this with anyone.
Another complication is that, right around the time I arrived in Istanbul, a new medical school opened in Ankara. But this time, the German government insisted on approving all the Germans hired to work there. At first, we assumed that the Gazi (that’s the title Muslims give to a great military leader, like this country’s founder, Mustafa Kemal) was trying not to antagonize the German government. Gerhard later learned that Hitler was furious when he found out that so many of the Jewish academics fired in Germany had been given positions here. He pressured the Turkish government to fire them all. When the Turks refused, Hitler announced that, from now on, only Aryan professors will be permitted to go to Turkey. That’s why Aryans have been hired at the new medical school in Ankara and at some other institutions. There are even a few of them at Istanbul University.
So, the faculty of Istanbul University now includes Islamist Turks from the old university who cling to the old ways, the Jews Gerhard helped to place, and the Aryans approved by Hitler, not to mention non-Jewish Germans who fled Hitler’s regime for political reasons!
As you can imagine, our social life has become complicated to say the least. When we attend official functions, we do all we can to avoid Hitler’s men, but we can still feel them glaring at us. It’s a tangled mess!
I try to look on the bright side. The variety and flavor of the fruits and vegetables here is astonishing. My Turkish neighbors have taught me to cook vegetable and bean dishes with olive oil. I’ll make some for you when we visit this summer.
I was thinking, Mother, why don’t
There was a loud banging on the front door, and Elsa ran to open it. A forlorn-looking Peter stepped inside, took off his coat, and threw it on the floor.
“Peter! What are you doing? We don’t throw our things on the floor. And you haven’t taken off your cap.” She followed Peter and tried to remove his woolen cap. He held on tight with both hands. When she finally got it off, she screamed.
“What happened to your hair?”
Peter, whose thick shock of blond hair had been clipped nearly to the scalp, was on the verge of tears.
“Who did this to you? Son, tell me this minute!”
“The barber.”
“Which barber? Why? Have you been punished for something?”
“Because of bugs.”
So that was it. Lice. Even so, how could they cut her son’s hair without her permission? In the morning, she would march over there and demand an explanation. She’d brought special shampoo from Zurich. There was no need to shave the boy’s head.
“How many children are infested?” she asked Peter.
“I don’t know. The barber came to the school and shaved everyone’s hair off.”
“What about the girls?”
“Them, too.”
“Don’t be upset, sweetheart. It’ll grow back thicker than ever,” she said. “In two months, nobody will be able to tell the difference. Now go wash your hands, change your clothes, and come to the kitchen.”
Elsa walked back to the little writing desk in her room and resumed the letter.
you and Father visit us here this summer? The sun would do you both good.
As I was writing this, Peter got home from school. He’s had all his hair cut off because of a lice infestation. The poor boy. He looks like a pumpkin.
Elsa stopped and read the last few lines. Deciding it was better not to mention the lice, she scratched out what she’d written and hastily concluded the letter so she could make Peter something to eat.
Peter got home from school, and Susy will be waking up from her nap soon. Duty calls. I will write to you again at the first opportunity. Take care of yourselves. You and Father are constantly in my thoughts.
Your loving daughter,
Elsa
Setbacks
With a fanfare of enthusiasm, goodwill, and optimism, Istanbul University had been officially inaugurated on Saturday, November 18.
As it turned out, however, the German-style discipline required to transform Turkish aspirations into daily reality was in short supply. The necessary departmental coordination and curriculum planning were incomplete. The German professors were unable to have their lesson plans translated in time. Chaos soon reigned over this new university of 3,500 students.
Nobody had had the patience to implement Professor Malche’s painstakingly prepared master plan, and the resulting disarray was particularly pronounced in the medical school. The school’s buildings were dilapidated, its laboratories undersupplied, and its equipment and supplies unusable. Horrified by the sight of the school’s thirty microscopes, Gerhard had shouted, “Send them all to a museum! Their value as antiques will be appreciated there.”
The new morphology institute had been completed, but the electrical sockets weren’t wired. Neither the deans’ nor the chancellor’s offices responded to the complaints and petitions the German professors submitted.
The hospitals run by the Ministry of Health were operating under what Gerhard considered wartime conditions, with two and even three patients to a bed.
Some of the shortcomings were understandable. After all, Turkey was a poor country recovering from years of war and upheaval. But something else was upsetting the German hospital administrators and professors: Turks resent
ed them. Surely, the émigrés told themselves, the Gazi has no idea this is happening. It was he who had invited them to Turkey and he who had allocated scarce resources to offer them professorships and implement their reforms. Now, with the Gazi focused on running the country, the chancellor and the deans were expected to run the universities on their own. In truth, the chancellor, who was also the Gazi’s physician, was an ineffective presence, a figurehead rather than a hands-on administrator. As for the deans, they showed up to work every day, but did very little. For them, the only measure of success was the number of budgetary pennies pinched.
Compounding the Germans’ hostile reception on campus was the campaign some newspapers had launched to sway public opinion against them. There were days when Gerhard found himself at the end of his rope.
It was on one such day that Gerhard met up with Hirsch at Koço’s Meyhane, one of their favorite haunts. Hirsch had taken his first sip of rakı and was contemplating the shimmer of late-evening sun on the still waters of Moda Bay when Gerhard stomped in, waved a rolled-up copy of Cumhuriyet under his nose, and said, “Will this backbiting never end? If only they devoted more time to science and less to mischief-making. Your Turkish is better than mine. Tell me what they’re saying today.”
Hirsch glanced at the headline and laid the newspaper on the table with a sigh.
“Why isn’t Elsa here?” he asked.
“We couldn’t find anyone to stay with the children.”
“What about Hanna?”
“Hanna! It’s a long story. I’ll tell you later. Now tell me what this says.”
“I can’t promise my Turkish is up to the task,” Hirsch said. Anxious not to upset his friend further, he tried to soften the journalist’s malicious tone. Foreign professors were accused of violating their contracts, of not having authored scholarly papers and books, and, in what was presented as the greatest failing of all, of not having learned sufficient Turkish to wean themselves from classroom translators.