Resistance Women

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  “It’s—that’s very generous, but I—I don’t know.”

  “The house is lovely,” he added earnestly, “and my daughters are sweet and good. I know all parents think their children are wonderful, but in our case, it’s true. You’d adore them.”

  Greta smiled. “I’m sure I would.”

  “Please tell me you’ll think about it. We desperately need the help, and I can’t think of anyone who would be better company than you.”

  Flattered, Greta agreed, more hopeful than she had been since the ill-fated Internationaler Theaterkongresse. She loved to travel, she needed steady work, she was tired of her cramped rented room, and she longed for the peace of mind that came from knowing where her next meal was coming from. A change of scene would give her a new perspective, help her choose a new direction for her aimless life. And it would also be a relief to put a few hundred kilometers between herself and Adam.

  As the New Year unfolded, cold, grim, and blustery, Greta mulled over Felix’s offer. Her list of the job’s advantages grew as the weeks passed, but she worried that if she went abroad without first establishing herself solidly in the Berlin theater, upon her return she would have to start all over again, making contacts, establishing her credentials, proving herself anew. Perhaps she would not be gone long enough to be forgotten and it would not matter. Perhaps the economy would improve while she was away, and she would return to an abundance of opportunities. She feared it was far more likely that the situation would worsen and she would find herself at the back of the queue for the scarce few jobs that remained. Perhaps she would be wise to stay and hold on to the little she had.

  In late January, Greta was walking down Weydingerstrasse, avoiding piles of dirty slush on the sidewalks and shivering in her threadbare wool coat, when she came upon a workers’ protest in front of the Karl-Liebknecht-Haus, home to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. As she tried to pass, a crowd of Nazi Brownshirts swarmed upon the scene, shouting slogans and swinging fists. Instinctively she shrank back against a building, watching with increasing alarm as a terrible confrontation erupted. As the Reds and Browns fought, the police arrived and promptly took the side of the fascists, beating back the protesting workers with rubber truncheons and erecting a cordon around the square, detaining the Communists while allowing the Brownshirts through. Around the perimeter of the police cordon, the protestors—workers and the unemployed, Communists and Social Democrats—strode up and down the street in small groups, watchful and glaring, until Greta could almost feel the bitterly cold air crackle with animosity.

  Ducking her head against the relentless wind, burying her chin in her scarf, she continued on her way, only to encounter another protest near the Alexanderplatz. Desperate unemployed workers marched around the square, demanding food and jobs from the government, calling out to skeptical onlookers for support.

  “Our families are starving!” one man shouted, shaking his fist in the air.

  “Join the Communists, and together we’ll fight for bread and for work!” another man cried out to passersby. Most hardened their expressions and hurried on their way.

  “Don’t shoot!” an older man beseeched a pair of police officers on horseback impassively observing the protest. “You should be standing with us, not with the fascists!”

  Everything about the scene warned that violence would erupt at any moment, so Greta quickened her pace and did not stop until she crossed the Spree. It was outrageous that the police should take sides in a political struggle instead of reserving their loyalty for the rule of law. They should remain impartial public servants, not lackeys of Hitler’s Sturmabteilung.

  She was exhausted, worn out from hunger and worry and the ceaseless conflict that made a simple walk through the city an ordeal. She needed a respite from loneliness and dread. If going abroad meant that she would have to rebuild her fragile career from square one upon her return, so be it. Perhaps she would not come back to Berlin at all.

  That evening she called Felix and told him she would take the job. Now that she had made up her mind, her only regret was that they would not depart for Switzerland until spring.

  Chapter Six

  January–June 1932

  Mildred

  Mildred had high hopes for the New Year, inspired by her immeasurable happiness that she and Arvid were together again.

  In autumn, they had moved into a small home in suburban Zehlendorf near the Grunewald. Their modest flat belonged to a new woodland housing development that mixed three- and four-story apartment buildings with terraced single-family homes, all with flat roofs and angular lines in the Bauhaus style. Mildred adored the bright colors chosen for the exteriors of the buildings, which had earned their neighborhood the nickname Papageiensiedlung, “parrot estate.” Even after the brilliant autumn leaves had faded and winter’s snow had begun to fall, she and Arvid enjoyed walking in the lovely adjacent woods before breakfast or after supper. They often remarked that their new home felt like a country retreat, a peaceful oasis far from the increasing unrest of the cities.

  Mildred’s commute to the University of Berlin was longer from Zehlendorf, but she loved their new home and her work and studies so much that she did not mind. Her students were clever and interesting, and they never used hunger or hardship as an excuse to be unprepared for class. Students enrolled in her courses in steadily rising numbers, a promising development since as a junior faculty member she was paid not by the section or the number of hours she taught, but by the number of students who attended her lectures.

  If only Arvid’s search for a faculty position had been as successful. A series of promising interviews in Marburg had abruptly ceased when the university declined to hire him as an assistant professor because, as one distinguished professor had bluntly put it, his research proved that he was not Nazi enough.

  “Imagine how more vehemently they would have rejected me if they knew about ARPLAN,” said Arvid wearily, referring to the research organization he had founded for prominent economists to study the Soviet Union’s planned economy and adapt its strategies to improve Germany’s steadily worsening financial situation. Although sometimes Mildred worried that Arvid’s outspokenness on the merits of Marxism might draw the ire of the Brownshirts, she told herself that if ARPLAN developed a plan that saved Germany, all would be forgiven. The trick was to avoid trouble with the Nazis until then.

  Unfortunately, trouble seemed more likely by the day.

  When spring arrived, the Papageiensiedlung felt more like a country retreat than ever as pale green leaves unfurled on the trees and birdsong returned to the skies. The conflicts of the city receded to a faint echo as Mildred and Arvid strolled through the awakening forest, but one morning they returned from their daily walk to discover a red, black, and white swastika flag hanging from a neighbor’s window. The next week, two more hung from poles newly installed outside other front doors. A man who lived around the corner, a low-level civil servant in the transportation ministry, began engaging Arvid in conversation on the train platform each morning, praising the National Socialists, condemning the Communists, and promising that soon Herr Hitler would make Germany great again, as it had been before the war.

  “It’s as if he’s trying to provoke me into an argument,” Arvid told Mildred one evening over supper. “I refuse to give him the pleasure. When I try to speak with him rationally, he dismisses what I say if it doesn’t confirm what he already believes.”

  “I know exactly what you mean. Frau Schmidt does the same.”

  “The sweet woman from down the block who brought us Apfelkuchen when we moved in?”

  “That sweet woman now displays swastika flags in every window. She’s become so fervently Nazi that whenever I see her, I just smile, wave, and hurry on my way.”

  “Eventually the Frau Schmidts of the world will recognize Hitler for the blustering clown he is and he’ll fall out of favor,” said Arvid. “The National Socialists will diminish to the fringe party it used to be, a
nd progressive factions will work together to make policies that will finally get Germany out of this financial mess.”

  Mildred wanted to believe him, but as the days grew longer and warmer, more swastika flags cropped up in their neighborhood like prickly weeds among the spring flowers. In central Berlin, Mildred encountered the swastika as well as strutting Brownshirts and photos of Adolf Hitler glowering from every newsstand, but the university remained a refuge from the madness of politics, an oasis of sanity where reason and art and science still reigned.

  In May, as she was preparing for final exams and working extra hours to help her students with their term papers, Mildred learned that Friedrich Schönemann, one of her former professors from Giessen, had joined their faculty. According to chatter she overheard in the halls, he had recently returned from an extended leave in the United States and had been appointed director of the American section of the English Department. Mildred meant to stop by to congratulate him and renew their acquaintance, but before she found the time, she received a summons to his office.

  He greeted her formally, meeting her at the door and showing her to a chair in front of his desk. “Frau Harnack-Fish,” he mused, returning to his own more imposing seat and studying her over his steepled fingers. “When I took over as director here, I was surprised to see your name on the faculty list.”

  “Perhaps you left on your American tour before I transferred from Giessen,” she suggested, a bit taken aback by his cool, distant tone. Had he forgotten their many long talks about literature and society at his favorite Bierpalast not so many years before? “Did you learn more about Americans and our culture during your trip? I still agree with your assertion that studying our literature is a wonderful way to learn about us, but travel teaches lessons one won’t find in any book.”

  He gave her a thin smile and rested his hands on the desk. When he leaned forward, a pin on his lapel caught the light; her heart sank when she saw the swastika. “Frau Harnack, you are perhaps aware that the university is suffering financial difficulties, like so many other institutions these days.”

  “Yes, of course. These are challenging times.”

  “Then you will understand why we cannot renew your appointment for the next term. Many excellent German men with qualifications equal or surpassing your own are out of work. I cannot justify appointing a woman, and an American, instead of someone more deserving.”

  “I’m an American, teaching American literature,” she said, stunned. “I have a unique perspective that not even the best of my German male colleagues can provide.”

  “Tell me, Frau Harnack,” Schönemann said, leafing through some papers on his desktop. “Do you still encourage your students to study Marxism as ‘a practical solution to the evils of the present,’ as you wrote a few months ago?”

  Mildred hesitated. “I do.”

  “How unfortunate. Perhaps the department tolerated such deviant pedagogy under previous directors, but no longer.” Abruptly he rose, but although she understood the interview was over, she remained seated, numb. “Keep that in mind as you continue your studies. Although you are dismissed from the faculty, you have not been expelled from the university.”

  “Herr Schönemann, I would ask you to reconsider. Please look over my file. You’ll find that my teaching evaluations have been excellent and I’ve received several commendations—”

  “Then I trust you will continue to fill your days with productive work.” He gestured to the door. “Since it would be difficult to find a replacement instructor so close to the end of the school year, you may finish out the term. Good day, Frau Harnack.”

  She nodded and left before he changed his mind and expelled her from the graduate school too.

  Later, when she told her Modern American Literature class she would not be teaching in the fall, the students’ voices rose so loudly in outrage and indignation that she feared professors from nearby classrooms would complain. In the days that followed, her student Sara Weitz circulated a petition demanding that she be reinstated. Sara and her friends collected more than one hundred signatures, but although the students’ loyalty heartened Mildred, their efforts failed.

  On the last day of the term, after she proctored her last final exam, a group of students appeared at her office as she was cleaning out her desk. “We all wish you the very best,” Sara said as she presented Mildred with a beautiful bouquet of flowers.

  “Schönemann is making a terrible mistake,” declared another student, Paul Thomas, an army veteran who had lost an arm in the Great War.

  “I agree,” said Mildred lightly, forcing a smile, “but please don’t take out your anger on your new teacher.”

  Sara, Paul, and a dozen other students insisted upon escorting her home all the way to Zehlendorf, carrying her boxes of books and files. Frau Schmidt glared suspiciously from her front window as Mildred ushered the boisterous group of young people into her flat, but Mildred merely smiled, tugged on the brim of her hat in a chipper salute, and shut the door.

  Inside, she set out bread, cheese, and slices of smoked sausages, and she passed around a bottle of schnapps. Later Arvid arrived with groceries, interrupting a heated debate about the relative merits of socialism versus communism. He eagerly joined in the conversation while Mildred set out more food for their guests until it felt like a proper party.

  They stayed up until midnight discussing politics and literature, and some of the more imaginative students wove elaborate schemes for how they might get Mildred her job back. It was not until the last half hour that the mood turned melancholy.

  “You’ll still see me on campus,” Mildred reminded them as they said their goodbyes. “We can form our own study group. Herr Schönemann can dismiss me from the faculty, but no one can prevent us from gathering on our own to discuss whatever we like.”

  “Not yet, anyway,” muttered Paul.

  “Not ever,” said Mildred firmly, but although her students nodded, their expressions were clouded over with anger and doubt.

  The loss of Mildred’s income meant that she and Arvid could no longer afford their home in the Papageiensiedlung. As much as Mildred regretted leaving the woodland retreat where she and Arvid had been so happy, she would not miss the suspicious glares of their National Socialist neighbors. After a brief search and a recommendation from a friend in ARPLAN, they sublet three rooms in a flat on the fifth floor of Hasenheide 61, about a kilometer north of the Tempelhof airfield near St. Johannes-Basilica and the Volkspark Hasenheide. Their building was on the northwest edge of Neukölln, a working-class neighborhood popular with Communists.

  “If I have to choose between living among Browns or Reds, I’ll choose Reds every time,” said Arvid after they signed the lease.

  They moved out of their old flat quietly under the cover of night and left no forwarding address, reminding Mildred uncomfortably of her childhood in Milwaukee and the many times her father, unemployed and months behind on the rent, had moved the family from one home to another to flee a disgruntled landlord.

  As she and Arvid unpacked and settled in, Mildred resolved to focus on everything she loved about the new place and not dwell upon what she missed about the old. The rooms were beautifully decorated in appealing modern colors—warm yellows, dove tans, soft blues and greens—and the cupola in the front room offered plenty of sunshine, cooling breezes, and lovely views of the broad tree-lined avenues below. Mildred had a small, sunny room of her own for her desk, her bookshelves, and her favorite lamp, and although neither she nor Arvid said so aloud, someday it would make a perfect nursery, should the need arise. Arvid set up his own desk in the front room, near two tall vases where Mildred arranged bouquets of lavender cosmos. Throughout the day, but especially early in the morning, sweet, enticing aromas wafted into the flat from the patisserie on the ground floor.

  “This is the perfect place for two scholars like us,” she told Arvid when they finished unpacking. “The light, the air, and the pleasantness of the rooms will encoura
ge excellent work, I’m sure of it.”

  Her first task was to find a new teaching position for the fall term. She updated her résumé, collected letters of recommendation, and made dozens of inquiries, steeling herself to meet with indifference or even hostility. She would persist as long as it took. All she had to do was find one school where being an antifascist American woman was an asset, not a liability.

  Chapter Seven

  July 1932

  Sara

  Dieter had been traveling on business to Budapest and Belgrade for more than a fortnight, but when Sara’s mother suggested they celebrate his homecoming with a family supper at the Weitz residence, Sara was so surprised that she hesitated before accepting. Her parents sometimes chatted briefly with Dieter when he picked her up for dates, and one afternoon after he escorted her home he had been asked in for Kaffee und Kuchen, but an invitation to dinner was something different altogether. Sara could only hope that this marked a shift in her parents’ feelings for Dieter, a thawing of the polite reserve that she feared concealed dismay and disappointment.

  From the beginning Sara had suspected that her parents did not wholeheartedly approve of her relationship with Dieter, even if they did not object to him personally. She and Dieter had met through Wilhelm and Dieter’s employer, whom Wilhelm had hired to supply rare Italian marble to refurbish a crumbling fireplace in the east wing of Schloss Federle. Sara happened to be visiting her sister when Dieter had come to the estate to work out some details about payment and delivery, and she had been immediately struck by his good looks, confidence, and courteous manner. Amalie had invited him to join the family for lunch before making the long trip back to Berlin, and he and Sara had become so engrossed in conversation that Amalie laughingly declared that she felt quite forgotten. In parting, he asked if he and Sara could meet again in Berlin to continue their conversation, and she feigned a moment’s prudent reflection before agreeing. Amalie and Wilhelm teased her for swooning over Dieter’s dreamy blue eyes and dazzling smile, but what she admired most about him was his calm confidence, his stories of travel abroad to remote provinces and renowned capitals she had only read about in books, and his astonishing perseverance, which had enabled him to build a successful career from almost nothing. He had worked for everything he had, and Sara had never heard him utter a word of bitterness or envy for other men who enjoyed the benefits of family connections and fortunes.