Anne Frank's Family

by Mirjam Pressler

  At Herbstgasse, Leni, an ex-traordinarily distinguished lady, and Erich, an equally distinguished gentleman, received Gerti with a warmth that astonished her. Leni hugged her, even though they had never met, and said, “What a beautiful woman you are!”; Erich kissed her hand and said, “How nice to meet you, my dear lady.” Herbert and Stephan too were more than approachable, Gerti says, “they were charming.” She carried her bag up to the little room on the top floor next to the stairs that they had set aside for her—the room where Grandma Ida used to live, she would later learn. Then she came back downstairs to look around the dining room and the adjacent salon.

  Buddy Elias and Gerti Wiedner in My Sister and I by Ralph Benatzky, Tübingen, 1963 (photo credit 17.2)

  It was all new and fascinating to her. She had never met a family like this and never seen a house with such beautiful old furniture and so many paintings on the walls. One of them made a special impression on her: a strangely serious, dressed-up little girl, maybe four or five years old. “That was Alice, my mother, as a little girl,” Leni said, and added: “Buddy’s grandmother.” And Anne Frank’s grandmother too, Gerti thought. “And that is Cornelia, my mother’s mother,” Leni continued. Gerti could not overcome her surprise: in her house there were only photographs, no painted portraits. “And these two,” Leni said, pointing to a small oval painting, “were my grandmother Cornelia’s parents, Elkan Juda Cahn and his wife, Betty.” Leni brought the guest over to another picture in a carved gold frame: a pastel drawing of a very beautiful girl with slightly protruding ears, dressed in a cloud of tulle and ribbons. “And that was me. My parents were very proud of me, I was the only daughter after three boys.”

  They sat down in the salon, which was smaller than the living room in Gerti’s parents’ house. Everyone seemed to have their usual place—one particular chair from the many that were scattered around the room, and which they referred to with the French word fauteuil. Gerti sat down on the sofa and answered the questions that came at her from all sides: how she was liking Tübingen, what roles she was playing, which theaters she had acted in before, if she was ever homesick.

  Then Mariuccia came in, the Italian housekeeper, a short, round woman with her gray hair in a perm. The whole family spoke Italian with her, and when she said “A tavola,” they immediately stood up and went to wash their hands, one person after another, before entering the dining room and sitting down at the large table that Mariuccia had meanwhile set with old china, silver knives and forks, silver napkin rings, and lit candles. Everyone unfolded their napkins and laid them on their laps, except for Erich, who tucked his under his jacket, and Mariuccia brought the soup. When the last person, Stephan, put down his spoon, Leni reached for the bell hanging from the light fixture over the middle of the table; Mariuccia appeared and Leni said, “Abbiamo finito.” Mariuccia walked around the table, stacked the soup plates, and carried them into the kitchen, then brought in various serving dishes with meat, potatoes, and vegetables. Now it was Erich who stood up, to carve the meat and serve it to everyone before anyone took potatoes and vegetables.

  The conversation at the table never stopped. Buddy told stories about the theater and mimicked different actor colleagues; Leni reported on her business and imitated, with raised eyebrows and pursed lips, the words and gestures of one rich client looking for a present for her husband, a tiepin, but it had to be something special, something suited to his position. That prompted Stephan to tell a joke that was just the slightest bit indecent about a married couple, and Erich said that the forsythia buds were about to bloom, you could already see the yellow tips of the flowers. The whole time, Herbert, Leni’s brother, drummed on the table with his napkin ring until Leni at one point said, “Herbi, please!” Herbert said, “Yes, yes,” and stopped his nervous drumming before starting it again after a minute or two.

  Gerti observed it all and thought: What a family! Buddy had definitely inherited his talent as a comedian from his mother.

  When they were finished with the main course, Leni rang the bell again, and Mariuccia cleared the table and brought dessert: petit fours and espresso in paper-thin Asian cups. Only after dessert did they all stand up and disperse to their various rooms to relax. Except Erich, who sank into his fauteuil in the living room and immediately fell asleep. Gerti headed out with Buddy—he wanted to show her the city, although she already knew Basel, since she had had a short run at the local theater.

  They stayed in Basel for only two days, then they had to go back to Tübingen. The farewell was as unbelievable as the visit. Leni said to Gerti: “You are truly a beauty.” Gerti was embarrassed and did not know how to react. She would have been much more embarrassed if she had heard what Leni had already told her son, in her cheeriest Frankfurt dialect: “You can marry her, she has beautiful nostrils.”

  In any case, their relationship developed quickly after this visit to Herbstgasse. Gerti broke things off with her boyfriend in Graz, and she and Buddy grew closer and closer. Buddy wrote that she was “very sweet” and often came over for dinner. Another time:

  Many thanks for your dear letter. Gerti has already written you. We are very happy. Aside from the Basel clan I have never met anyone I get along with so perfectly, down to the tiniest detail. It is really unbelievable. We have the same outlook on life, we like the same things and couldn’t care less about the same things. To start with, peace and quiet and a newspaper over breakfast (if you think I’m an epicure then you’ve never seen Gerti!), then theater, art, music, walks, etc. In everything she does, she is the most lovable, friendliest, most upstanding creature, brilliantly educated, 100% the lady. She is certainly no prude but hates bad language. (So no dirty jokes. Off-color jokes are allowed.) Everyone loves her. And she’s modest and accommodating too … We can’t get married right away, since Gerti still has her obligations in Tübingen, but she will try to get out of them sooner.

  They got engaged in the summer of 1964, and the ceremony took place at the registry in Basel on February 1, 1965. Grosser, a “totally charming director” in Tübingen, had been very understanding and let Gerti out of her contract early so that she could follow Buddy to Basel, where he had already started his engagement. The wedding party, which Gerti’s father and her sisters Ado and Thesy came to as well, was beautiful and moving. Obviously, Otto and Fritzi were there too.

  Mariuccia and Frau Baumann, who had worked as a housekeeper in the Herbstgasse house for a while after Imperia’s departure, until Mariuccia came, had prepared a feast. They pulled out the leaves of the table far enough so that everyone could fit comfortably, and laid it splendidly with the old china, Elkan Juda Cahn’s silverware, the antique silver candlesticks, and the nineteenth-century goblets. Stephan and a friend, René Steinbach, put on musical sketches that they had rehearsed—René was an excellent pianist, and Leni and Herbert dressed up in Buddy’s clown costumes and danced and sang a song from Kiss Me, Kate that Stephan had rewritten for Buddy and Gerti, accompanied by René on the piano.

  Gerti and Buddy Elias’s wedding photograph, February 1, 1965 (photo credit 17.3)

  Gerti was welcomed with wide-open arms and happily threw herself into the family’s life together. Buddy’s acting career went well too. His first role was Grumio in Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, with Barbara Rütting, then it was Truffaldino in Goldoni’s Servant of Two Masters, a role that won the hearts of the Basel public. In Brecht’s Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui he imitated Hitler in such a horrifyingly accurate way that many people still mention it to him today. Gerti and Buddy lived in the room that had been Alice’s, although they bought a new bed, since they didn’t want to sleep in the ancient Biedermeier bed, and added a walk-in closet.

  The wedding of his younger son was presumably the occasion for Erich to put certain financial matters in order. In any case, on May 20, 1964, he gave his sons the following document to sign:

  Herr Stephan Elias

  Herr Buddy Elias

  Dear Stephan, dear Buddy,


  As you know, I have sold our house, Herbstgasse 11, to Buddy, due to fears that turned out not to come true. This sale was notarized on December 1, 1952, and took effect on January 1, 1953. That it took place signifies no preference for him and had no reason other than the aforesaid.

  Since these facts are clear and since it is your mother’s and my wish that the two of you will have equal claim to the house at Herbstgasse 11, it is our wish that you manage the house together from now on and also that any income from the sale of the house go into a common account. In short, the two of you are equal co-owners of the house.

  Because Buddy has spent 45,000 francs of his own money to date on the mortgage, taxes, and maintenance, this sum is to be reimbursed to him upon any sale of the house. If he wants, or if it would be beneficial, this amount may be secured with a mortgage.

  Please confirm by signing a copy of this letter that you acknowledge and agree to the contents.

  Your parents

  Both sons, Buddy and Stephan, placed their signatures at the bottom of this document, and Erich was satisfied.

  Gerti soon became an integral part of the family. She was amazed to realize that the ceremony she had so marveled at during her first visit for carnival took place at every meal.

  The table was always set beautifully, there were always candles burning, always soup, Erich always carved the meat, especially the Saturday boiled beef, and there was always dessert, fruit with a fruit knife and fork, or a compote, or at least pastries, and espresso to finish. After lunch they dispersed back to their rooms to rest, and Erich fell asleep in his fauteuil in the salon. Leni had her afternoon nap as well but was always back at her store punctually at 2:30. In the evenings there was always bread with ham and cheese and sausage, but that too was laid out nicely on a table that was set, with candles lit.

  Stephan moved out of the Herbstgasse house in 1964, into his own apartment, but that didn’t stop him from continuing to come to most meals. He typically fetched Leni from the store in his car at noon and drove her back to Herbstgasse. They all sat there in the salon, each with a book or newspaper, and no one said anything until Mariuccia called out “A tavola.”

  Mariuccia did all of the housework and refused all offers of help, so Gerti did not have much to do, and she started to help Leni at the store. She also accompanied Leni whenever she had to go out on an appraisal. Even today, Gerti is full of admiration when she talks about how expert Leni was: how she could identify every piece of furniture, every candlestick, every sugar bowl, even every tablecloth or piece of embroidery, and every carpet—both its period and its value. Gerti helped with displaying the objects on the tables and with taking down the information about each object, including the price.

  “Those were gigantic houses,” Gerti says, in amazement even today. “Sometimes there were more than four stories, each one full of valuable objects. Here in Switzerland, of course, there had been no wars for hundreds of years, just imagine! Everything was still there, everything they inherited plus everything new they bought. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw how rich some of the people here were, and what kinds of things they had!” She was fascinated by the work, and admired her mother-in-law for being able to judge and appraise everything without any hesitation. “At a set time, people came and bought things, and you had to keep a sharp eye out to make sure nothing was stolen. Herbert usually manned the desk downstairs and collected the money, and there were another couple of people there as well to pack everything up.”

  Gerti stopped working with Leni only on April 9, 1966, when her first son, Patrick, was born. Along with the proud parents, the grandparents were crazy about the child. Leni cuddled him and kissed him and said several times: “It’s too bad that I. didn’t live to see him.” Otto and Fritzi visited often as well, and Gerti was always happy to see them. She still remembers it exactly: how tense and even a little nervous she was, how hesitant, the first time she met this man who had had to bear such a terrible fate. And how differently it went from how she had feared. Otto and Fritzi had welcomed her naturally and lovingly. It was a lovely evening, there in Birsfelden, and Otto had laughed a lot.

  On their way back home, Gerti had expressed her amazement, and Buddy had said: “What do you expect? Otto has his life under control, he loves Fritzi and Fritzi loves him. And she does everything she can to help him spread Anne’s ideals. Otto sees it as his task to work toward a peaceful coexistence of different religions and peoples, as Anne would have wanted. He could never have found someone better to help him than Fritzi.”

  “Did he ever do anything else?” Gerti asked. “Did he come back from the concentration camp and start working on his daughter’s diary?”

  “Not right away,” Buddy answered. “It took time for the significance of the diary to become clear. I think that at first he only wanted to make it up to Anne, he felt bad that he had never really known her and thought he should have treated her differently. They had divided up the children—Anne was Otto’s child and Margot was Edith’s, not exactly but you know what I mean. You could tell from when Anne was very young. Margot was a wonderful girl, but very quiet and introverted. I always see her in my mind with a book in her hand, always. Anne on the other hand was a bit wild, funny, and cheeky, as you can tell from her diary too. Otto had no idea what the diary would become, the thing took on a life of its own with the book’s worldwide success. Now Otto has something to do about it every day, because people write to him or visit him or invite him somewhere to dedicate a school or give a lecture. But that doesn’t at all mean that he has no pleasures in life. He can obviously never forget the loss of his family, but I think that Anne’s success and everything that goes with it, and his trips, make him happy, even if it’s a strain at the same time. It is very, very important to him to be in contact with young people: I wouldn’t say it’s fun for him, but it does give him pleasure. What I really think is that he needs people he can talk to about Anne.”

  Gerti would confirm for herself again and again how right Buddy was in this estimate of Otto’s good mood and vitality. Sometimes she did think she could see a shadow pass across Otto’s face when he held Patrick in his arms, and that he would suddenly look deeply sad. He must have been thinking about Margot and Anne in those moments, she thought, and she imagined how, if his daughters had lived, he would probably have been able to hold a grandchild of his own in his arms. But she never uttered a word of these thoughts out loud; she was afraid to open old wounds.

  Patrick’s birth revived many memories in the house. For example, one time when Gerti walked past an open door, she heard Leni and Erich talking about the child. “I always think about I. and Grandma Ida,” Leni said. Gerti stopped and listened. “I. had four children, Ida three. Without Hitler and the catastrophe they could have easily had twenty great-grandchildren, or more, but now there’s only little Pat, only one single great-grandchild.”

  “You’re right,” Erich answered. “It truly is sad. But Buddy and Gerti might still have more children. And maybe Stephan will even get married someday. He’s not too old to become a father.”

  “That would be a real miracle,” Leni said, with bitterness in her voice. “Steph has bad luck with his girlfriends, he always ends up with the wrong ones.”

  Erich gave a deep sigh. And Gerti, embarrassed, as though she had done something wrong, went quietly upstairs.

  18.

  Winter on Autumn Lane

  The actor’s life is an unsteady one—or at least not much steadier than that of an ice-show star. After his engagement in Basel, Buddy played a few more parts in Zurich, then accepted an offer from Bremen and moved with his wife and son to northern Germany. They found an apartment, not too small and not too large, and Buddy worked at the Theater Bremen on Goetheplatz playing many major roles. Gerti sometimes appeared onstage too. For example, they appeared together in Kurt Hübner’s production of Nathan the Wise, with Buddy as the Dervish and Gerti as Sittah, Saladin’s sister. Gerti sang and played Metella in Jacq
ues Offenbach’s operetta Parisian Life. Buddy wrote from Bremen in 1969 that Gerti was a smash hit with the Parisian Life people, everyone loved her and wanted to give her a permanent place in the ensemble, but she turned them down because of Patrick. Still, she might take a part now and then. In fact she did, but her career was clearly limited, especially when she became pregnant for a second time.

  On December 5, 1971, Oliver was born after a difficult pregnancy. Gerti was on bed rest for four months because of the risk of a premature birth. Everyone was very happy that the child was born healthy after all of these fears, particularly the parents of course. Oliver, who had given rise to so many fears and anxieties, would become an especially friendly and lovable child. Patrick and Oliver were the family’s hopes for the future, that the family would not die out. Everyone was happy. Leni and Erich came straight to Bremen, and Otto and Fritzi wrote a letter with their congratulations:

  You can’t imagine how happy & relieved we were to get the news of the happy arrival of your little Oliver and we wish you as much happiness and joy as his big brother has already brought you, and that the 2 brothers will love each other just as much as Buddy and Stephan do.

  It was so nice to talk to both of you on the phone and to know that everything is going fine. It’s too bad only that we won’t be able to see the little one grow up as much as we could with Pat. But if you’re in Mannheim next season, we’ll have a lot more chances to visit you.

  We’re doing well here and send you and Pat our biggest hugs and kisses.