Anne Frank's Family

by Mirjam Pressler

  He must have thought long and hard before coming to this decision. Buddy had been very successful with Holiday on Ice; the successes were less and less important to him as time went on, but would it really be so easy for him to leave? He had lived a life with Holiday on Ice that most people could only dream of, had had all sorts of experiences he would never forget, and met all sorts of people he would not have wanted to miss the chance to meet. He had seen incredible landscapes and fascinating cities. But even variety eventually turns into a routine and leads to boredom and satiety. Later, in a birthday letter to his wife, Gerti, he would put it this way: “Fourteen years of the ice show, fourteen years with hardly any culture, no theater, almost no good concerts, a lot of popular culture and countless experiences and impressions in many foreign countries, a lot of unforgettable things, but still, no THEATER. So I wanted to come back.”

  Buddy had seen a lot of the world, very much—maybe too much, he says today—but in his heart he dreamed of little Switzerland, of Basel, of the house on Herbstgasse. Above all, he dreamed of appearing onstage again and doing what he had wanted to do since he was a boy. But after so many years would he find a way in? Would anyone hire him, a thirty-five-year-old nobody just starting out? Who went into the theater at that age? There were actors who left the theater at that age. Did he have even the slightest chance of being hired by a well-known theater? The decision to try anyway took shape slowly, especially since no one back home except for Leni supported it. Erich advised against it, and Otto felt that he shouldn’t take lightly the decision to give up his career as an ice-skater. Buddy wasn’t taking it lightly—he was actually quite nervous about it—but he did not want to keep going. He also was feeling the difficulties more acutely than in earlier years, not only the constant travel, which was depressing, and the feeling of being without a real home, but also the falls that were unavoidable in his line of work. It was getting harder and harder for him to cope with his black-and-blue bruises, a sprained finger here, a contusion there. Some days, especially the ones with three performances, he was totally kaput, as he says today.

  It nevertheless took a while before he could realize his wish. In October he wrote to “My dear ones”: “As for coming home. I’d rather come today than tomorrow. And stay forever too. I am really sick of this but I don’t know what to do. I have to think it over well … I want to give Steve enough time to look for something else. But I have decided to make the 1961/62 season my last season with the show no matter what. My decision is firm.”

  He wrote from Portland, Oregon, on November 4, 1960: “I pray to God that he help me get back into the theater. I will get in touch with Breitner as soon as I know for sure that I’m coming home, and ask him if there’s any room in his ensemble for me. It won’t be easy for me to get used to settling down after 14 years of traveling around. My main concern is whether I can restart my acting career. I don’t think that I’ve lost the talent for it, but I need people who will help get me on my feet.”

  In his New Year’s letter in December, he expressed his deepest wish for the year 1961: to see all his loved ones again and to make the house on Herbstgasse his home at last. He had had enough. Besides, he was thirty-five years old and would have to retire in a few years anyway, the sport was very physically demanding. So why shouldn’t he just get out now while he was still relatively young? “I’m still enthusiastic and sure that I can act,” he wrote home. “I’m tired of travel. I want to put down roots.”

  On January 6, 1961, he sent a letter from Lansing, Michigan:

  Dear everyone,

  I actually wrote to you yesterday but then got Leni’s and Papa’s letter from the 2nd last night. Many thanks. It’s depressing that no one except Leni believes in me. Or do you think the theater situation in Switzerland is so terrible that you think I don’t have a chance? Although it’s not really a way to judge, still I have to say that if … countless other people that I’ve seen can make it in the theater then goshdarnit I can make something happen too. I may not have star appeal, but I have enough faith and hope for that! Dearest Leniköppchen, thank you for all your moral support.

  Later in the same letter he wrote that money isn’t everything: “I’m not as materialistic as all that. I don’t care whether I have a nice steak or sausage and bread. That sounds arrogant, but I mean it literally. I need to be happy in my work, that and my health are the most important things.”

  He was no longer happy on the skating rink, that was the decisive factor. And then, finally, it was decided. He had his ticket in his pocket to leave New York on the Flandre ocean liner on July 8, 1961, and arrive in Paris on July 15. He sent this enthusiastic letter to Basel, to Herbstgasse:

  I look forward

  I look forward to seeing you

  I look forward to the lakes in summer and the mountains in winter

  I look forward to bratwurst with rösti and to the bells of my homeland

  To MY bed in MY room without a number on the door.

  I look forward to “News from the Swiss Telegraph Bureau,”

  To hot sweet chestnuts and a cold glass of beer.

  I look forward to simple people and rich people and the Casino Trottoir on the first warm Saturday afternoon in the spring.

  I look forward to breakfast with the national paper and Papa’s delicious jam,

  To the first rehearsal in the theater, to carnival, and tea on the balcony.

  I look forward to watching “Frühschoppen” on Sunday mornings.

  To Alsatian asparagus and “tasty potatoes, three pounds for a franc!”

  I look forward to the Freie Strasse and cold chocolate milk.

  I look forward to my car and taking a little drive with you down the Leimen valley,

  To the fires on August first, to Swiss chocolate and beef soup.

  I look forward to no longer needing to fall on my butt to earn a living.

  I look forward to my records and the blue chair in the corner.

  I look forward to a symphony concert, a good opera, or an exhibit at the art museum.

  I look forward to no more ice-skating conversations.

  To not having to constantly unpack and repack my bags.*

  I even look forward to Herbi’s singing!

  I look forward ………

  * Stephan’s face after a successful day at the office,

  to Leni’s energy and Papa’s calm,

  to Ottel and Fritzi’s good cheer + optimism

  to Imperia’s spaghettis and

  even to Herbi’s singing.

  “I look forward” (photo credit 16.1)

  17.

  Home at Last

  Buddy was home in the house on Herbstgasse. After fourteen years of hotel life he woke up in his own bed every morning, in the room he used to share with his brother, Stephan. That didn’t bother him—it felt homey and comforting. He no longer had to try to figure out in the moment between sleep and waking what city he was in, what hotel. He was home, surrounded by the people he knew and loved. Still, the house seemed strangely empty without Alice and Grandma Ida.

  Ida Elias had died on January 15, 1957. Born in Homburg, she spent her life as a wife and mother in Zweibrücken and was buried, like Alice four years before, in the Jewish cemetery in Basel. She had passed away as quietly and inconspicuously as she lived, Leni wrote at the time. Buddy felt that now too. Only now that Grandma Ida was no longer with them did he become aware of how much greater a role than he had realized her caring presence, which they had always taken for granted, had played in his childhood and youth. He missed her the way he missed Alice. Now he had to get used to a house that seemed to have lost some of its warmth without the two women.

  Otherwise, everything was the same as always. Imperia ran the household, Leni worked in the store, Erich dropped in to see her there often—much too often, she sometimes complained—and Stephan was busy at his import business handling various consumer products, a business that wasn’t very successful. Herbert—yes, what exactly
was Herbert doing? He had jobs here and there and sometimes helped out at Leni’s store. Other than that, he rode his bike to Kleinbasel at 10:30 every day to have a morning drink in the Leuen Restaurant and was always back in time for lunch. He spent most of his evenings at the pub with his friends. He liked to drink and had one too many now and then. Otto usually spent all day in his room and answered, with Fritzi’s help, the many letters that arrived from all over the world.

  Buddy applied to various theaters and auditioned in Basel and in Zurich, but in vain. Of course he had known that it wouldn’t be easy to find a foothold onstage after such a long time—he didn’t think that the German-language theater world was waiting with bated breath for him, Buddy Elias. He was happy not needing to be constantly on the rink, training hard and undergoing the sometimes almost unbearable physical strain of his old career, but after a while it did get a bit boring. Luckily, he got a couple of jobs on the radio, and when Harald Kreutzberg, the famous dancer and choreographer, was looking for an actor to dance the part of the snake in Paradise in a guest production in Bern, Buddy applied and was accepted. “It was from Harald Kreutzberg,” he still says today, full of pride, “that I got the greatest compliment of my life. When I danced for him the way I thought the snake should dance, he said: ‘There’s no way to improve on that.’ ” Later, Buddy would play the Young Monk in Jean Anouilh’s Becket; or, The Honor of God under Egon Karter at the Basel Komödie and be noticed by Dr. Herterich, director of the State Theater in Tübingen, in Germany.

  That was his breakthrough. Buddy was offered the role of Mephistopheles in the Ur-Faust. He went to Tübingen to look for an apartment and found a cheap bachelor pad with coal heating. As the date of starting rehearsals grew nearer, he rented a small truck and drove to Tübingen with Erich and a few pieces of furniture in August 1962. He had a two-year contract in his pocket.

  On August 17, he already sent his first letter to “everyone”:

  Writing letters again! [In English:] It seems to be the story of my life. Anyway, after I said goodbye to Papa with a heavy heart (still, I was very glad he came with me), I headed to my new home … First thing after my arrival I unpacked my clothes, then I went to the theater and checked in, and met a few of my colleagues … The next morning I woke up early, had a great breakfast with the newspaper that came with my order, and used my day off to go to Stuttgart and go shopping. I bought all kinds of things for the apartment and looked into furniture and a refrigerator … This morning was the first read through for Faust. My ideas 100% matched the director’s ideas, while he has already had to have serious arguments with the actor playing Faust.

  Only two days later, he clearly had to tell someone how happy and proud he was: he wrote to Basel that he had rehearsed the student scene in Faust and that Loges, the director, had interrupted him several times with the word “brilliant.” It must have given him not a little satisfaction to show the members of his family, who except for Leni had so forcefully expressed their doubts about his chances as an actor, that he had been right to take the plunge.

  On September 22, he sent Leni and Erich, who were staying in Italy, all the reviews and notices that had appeared so far, along with a note saying that he really couldn’t complain, he always got the best applause. And he added: “Take the reviews home please and show Steph, Ottel, Herbi, etc. The important Stuttgart reviews are super, aren’t they? People read those! There were people from the Stuttgart radio and TV stations there at the second performance, by the way, and it was in that performance that when I left the stage after getting my solo applause some people in the audience started to stamp their feet. Too bad they started too late.”

  Tübingen was not so far from Basel, and the whole family came to see Buddy onstage: his parents, Herbert, and Otto and Fritzi, who had recently moved to Birsfelden. They had been looking for a house of their own for a while. Buddy’s return might have hastened their decision, he can no longer say for sure, or maybe they just wanted a more comfortable place. In truth, the reasons were irrelevant—what is surprising is not that they wanted to move but that they had managed so long in the cramped conditions on Herbstgasse. Their life there was truly modest; the only thing they permitted themselves was occasional trips, and they usually spent the hottest weeks of the summer, when the heat collected in their added-on rooms under the roof, in Beckenried on Lake Lucerne. Now they had bought a house in Birsfelden, a town in the Basel district but only a good fifteen minutes to Herbstgasse by streetcar. Otto and Fritzi lived on the ground floor and rented out the apartment on the second floor. Later, Birsfelden would be the first municipality in Switzerland to name a square after Anne Frank, in 2009.

  They visited Buddy in Tübingen and congratulated him on his success, but not all at once: Erich and Leni went first, Otto and Fritzi somewhat later, in October. Buddy was in fact such a success that he was offered the lead role in A Model Husband. On November 13, 1962, he wrote a very happy letter home: “Voilà la situation. I am very content and of course happy with Model Husband. It’s a fantastic role, as you know! You can hardly do better in one season than Mephistopheles and the Model Husband.”

  It hardly could go better, since A Model Husband was a great success as well and Buddy’s reviews were stellar. He wrote in January 1963: “It’s going unexpectedly well. Especially for me. The audience roared and hooted with laughter. Applause after the scenes and big applause at the end … I met the gentleman from Berlin who has just been hired as a director for South German TV. He has to shoot 9 TV movies and is scouring all the theaters near Stuttgart for talent at the moment. I was really flattered when he told me that an actor at the State Theater in Mannheim and I were the only actors he approached … He obviously couldn’t promise me any TV parts yet, but he told me I should come to auditions in Stuttgart in March.” On top of that, Egon Karter from the Basel Komödie Chamber Theater had seen him perform and hired him for the 1964–65 season in Basel. Buddy had found his feet, won a place onstage as an actor, and proven that his decision to leave Holiday on Ice was the right one. Everyone in Basel was very proud of him, especially Leni.

  Buddy Elias and Gerti Wiedner’s first stage appearance together, in The Bockerer by Ulrich Becher and Peter Preses, Tübingen, 1963 (photo credit 17.1)

  In January 1963, Otto and Fritzi established the Anne Frank-Fonds as a trust under Swiss law, based in Basel. Otto Frank had discussed his plans for a long time and in great detail with his family and friends. It was a question of managing the copyrights in Anne Frank’s literary estate as well as the income from the sales of The Diary and the royalties from the play and the movie.

  There was already the Anne Frank Foundation in Amsterdam, of course, but Otto did not want to send all the money to Amsterdam—he said that no one knew how the foundation would develop. Here in Basel, he had his family and his friends, and wanted to have the money here, under state control, as well. His opinion had always been that it wasn’t his money but Anne’s money, and his wish was that it be used in accord with her vision.

  The new Anne Frank Foundation was intended to carry out social and cultural projects in memory of Anne Frank’s message. Otto expressly said: “The foundation will contribute to better understanding between different religions, serve the cause of peace between peoples, and promote international contact between young people.”

  From the beginning, Stephan and Buddy were members of the foundation’s board. Stephan was not very active, however, and Buddy was performing at various theaters in Germany. It was only in 1986 that Buddy would become more involved in the Anne Frank-Fonds.

  In the 1963–64 season a new actress joined the State Theater in Tübingen, Gerti Wiedner. Buddy says today that he fell in love at first sight but that Gerti didn’t know. They acted together three times, in fact: once in The Bockerer, a play by Ulrich Becher and Peter Preses; a second time for a Chekhov evening with three one-acts; and finally in the musical My Sister and I by Ralph Benatzky. It still took months before anything developed betwee
n them. Buddy mentioned her in a letter home for the first time in February 1964, and in March he brought her to Basel’s famous carnival celebrations, supposedly as a favor to her but actually to introduce her to his family.

  Gerti still had no idea what Buddy was feeling; for her, Buddy was just a colleague, they had not even started to use the informal form of address with each other. But she was very excited to meet Buddy’s family, since everyone at the theater knew that he was Anne Frank’s cousin. Gerti had read the diary when it came out in German, when she was seventeen or eighteen years old, and later had seen the play in Graz, Austria. She was already an actress then, but had not acted in The Diary of Anne Frank.

  They drove in Buddy’s car, a sleek Panhard, from Tübingen to Basel, which at the time was around a four-hour drive. Buddy was sunk in thought and said hardly a word to her, she says. Then they arrived at Herbstgasse, and Gerti was overwhelmed by the house and especially by the people.

  Gerti had grown up in a large family in Austria, in Oberhaag, a small town in southern Styria not far from the Yugoslavian border. Her father ran the general store. Despite the impoverished years during and after the war, she had a happy childhood, she says. “We had a beautiful house, we had beautiful furniture—no antiques, of course—and we had kilims, the pretty, colorful area rugs they have in Yugoslavia.” When Gerti was fifteen years old, her mother, who had suffered from heart troubles since a serious angina in her youth, died giving birth to her sixth child. Gerti’s father sent her, the third child, to live with an aunt in Graz so that she could go to acting school there. That was Gerti’s deepest wish, and her deceased mother had always supported it. To this day, Gerti marvels at the fact that it all turned out well, that she didn’t get into any trouble even at the young age of fifteen and a half.