THE LAST WEISS

by Rolf Richardson

  Siggy and I ran the gasthof in those early years. Until Benni was old enough to take over. We were hoping he’d want to carry on the family tradition. He did, largely because by then it had become much more than just running a hotel. It was the start of what became known as the German economic miracle. Business boomed. Times were exciting. Benni was determined to rebuilt not only the Gasthof zum Löwen, but also regenerate our town. Ensuring once more the pre-eminence of the family Weiss: founded, as Grandad Gregor kept reminding us, in the 1630s.

  Our children, Inger and Gregor junior, went their own way, as children do. The generations rolled on. I sit here in the sun, thinking how lucky I’ve been.

  And remembering some of the ghosts from the past.

  Like Ernst Frahm, our guide through neutral Sweden that autumn of ‘44. He said he might keep his nom-de-guerre, Willy Brandt. And he did. He returned to Germany in ‘46, took to politics, and eventually made it right to the top: Chancellor of West Germany.

  I only met Brandt once after that. In 1971, when he was back in Oslo to receive his Nobel Peace Prize. Big occasion at the University Aula, to which someone – Vigeland? – had wangled me an invitation. I managed to have a few words with the great man, who remembered our Gothenburg meeting well. Said Siggy and I should have some sort of prize for keeping the peace in Norway. Gracious of him.

  Richard Frunze became a big wheel at Volkswagen, whose products have improved a bit. I remember that ‘spin down the valley’ with him in ‘48. His little blue beetle with the divided rear window had no fuel gauge: you just drove on until the main tank ran dry, then switched to reserve tank by turning a lever next to the clutch – embarrassing if you happened to be overtaking. And the wipers ran off a pneumatic bleed which died if you accelerated too hard – overtake in the rain and you suddenly went blind. Richard had brushed aside these small defects as necessary to sell the cars cheaply. Later models would be better. He was right. My present VW does have a fuel gauge. And wipers that don’t die. As the ad puts it: ‘Vorsprung durch technik’.

  Life has been kind to my generation. Those of us that survived. Though God knows what would have happened had I not been befriended by a mangy old mongrel called Karl. Who, in April 1944, almost exactly where I’m sitting now, nuzzled me with his moist nose and lay down by my feet. The tree, which took the full force of Willi’s kübelwagen is long gone, but the rest of the square is much the same. As it probably has been since the 1630s.

  Funny old life.

  THE END

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  This is a novel, but woven around facts, some more bizarre than anything I could have invented. For example:

  Himmler did have an angora rabbit breeding program to supply the Luftwaffe with fur flying jackets. When he became concentration camp chief, the rabbits followed him there.

  Norway’s Reichskommissar Terboven spent many hours working from the comfort of a hot bath. Played table tennis on his last day on earth, albeit with his secretary, not our hero. And blew himself up 30 minutes before the end of hostilities.

  Ernst Frahm, born in Lübeck, is the man now known as Willy Brandt. Although he spent the war years in Sweden, there’s no record of him travelling to Gothenburg or speaking to anyone called Jespersen at his Nobel celebrations.

  Sinsen school in Oslo was converted to a Wehrmacht clinic for sexual diseases. German troop welfare included a large number of brothels, which were not always as clean as they might have been.

  Truth can be stranger than fiction.