by Donald Hunt
In 1918 the country had seemed on the brink of civil war. But hostilities were narrowly averted by the abdication of the Kiser. In a bold move to advance the socialist agenda, Karl Liebknecht began driving around Berlin to rally the support of the thousands of striking workers out on the streets. At the same time, Philipp Scheidemann was in the Reichstag lunchroom when about 50 soldiers and workers stormed into the room. Word of Liebknecht’s activities had reached the Reichstag and started a panic. The right wing supporters realized that there was significant danger of a Communist coup that could sweep them in to power and that they must be stopped at any cost.
“Philipp, you must come out and speak to the crowd,” he was told. “Liebknecht is pushing for a Soviet style republic.”
Thousands were waiting for some word, any word, unaware of the drama being played out. Scheidemann did not know what to say. Finally, he blurted out, “Workers and soldiers…the cursed war is over…the Emperor has abdicated. Long live the new Germany!”
A deafening roar went up from the crowd. In the state of excitement and confusion, his declaration was taken by the hopeful citizens as the beginning of a new government. A wild celebration ensued.
About 4:00 p.m., snow began to fall. As the winter chill of the evening set in, Liebknecht finally reached the palace with a small band of his rebel supporters. The tall palace rooms were mostly deserted. When he stepped out onto the main balcony, only about 200 people remained.
“The day of liberty has dawned…” he began.
But, in fact, he had missed the dawning of liberty, which had occurred a few hours earlier that day.
* * *
At this time, Anna Eichenwald was approaching her eighteenth birthday. She had passed quickly from her awkward teen years into a sophisticated young woman. She remained an excellent student, especially in math and science. She now stood at just under six feet in height. Her dark, auburn hair and blue-green eyes gave her a striking appearance and lured the frequent glances of admirers. Her mother had done an exceptional job of keeping Anna’s values strong and her academic pursuits equally focused. Anna’s interest in boys had been, for the most part, limited to flirting. With her looks and brains, she intimidated most of the boys she knew.
One of her father’s friends was a medical doctor with a surgical practice at the Charite Hospital across the Spree River. Marvin Katz was in his early 50’s. A robust man of some 200 pounds, he stood about six feet with a focused and intense decorum, and large brown eyes that penetrated whoever held his attention. He was a widower, having lost his wife in childbirth along with their only child. Now married to his work, his one hobby was as an amateur astronomer. He had become acquainted with the Eichenwald family after attending a lecture on solar eclipse. Marlene had been especially happy to have him for evening meals, hoping to fill the void of his lost family. Marvin was grateful for these gatherings, as he was especially fond of Anna and liked to think of her as the daughter he never had.
On an occasional weekend, Anna would arrange to go with him to the hospital emergency ward. It was on one such an occasion that Anna accompanied him for an urgent consult involving a 19-year old boy who had been brought to emergency unconscious following a car accident. The boy had been walking along Leipziger Strasse when a car jumped the curb and struck him. After arriving at the hospital, he regained consciousness but was pale and complaining of abdominal pain. His blood pressure was 90/60, pulse 120, lungs clear, and his abdomen was tense. Dr. Katz finished his evaluation and reviewed the lab work.
“He will need to go to surgery,” Katz said in an urgent voice. “Call the blood bank and ask for four units of cross-matched and two unmatched units available. I’m going out to speak to his family.”
Anna, who had never seen a major surgery, followed Dr. Katz to the waiting room where they found the boy’s older brother. “Where are your parents,” asked Katz, never glancing up from the chart.
“I have sent for them,” the young man replied. “But we live ten kilometers from town.”
“Good. Your brother has a serious abdominal injury and is bleeding. He is being moved to surgery.”
The young man looked into Katz’ large brown eyes and noted their concern. “Will he be alright?”
“He is a young, healthy boy. He will need blood, so I want you to go to the lab and see if you have his blood type. The nurse will show you the way.”
Anna’s heart was racing as she contemplated what was about to happen. As they walked to the surgical suite, her mentor seemed deep in thought and she was reluctant to speak. Finally, she broke the silence. “What do you think is wrong?”
“It’s called a differential,” Dr. Katz replied.
“Meaning, what are the possibilities?” she questioned.
“He has blunt abdominal trauma. The force of the injury seems to have been severe. My worst fear is a fractured liver or an aortic injury. It could be his spleen or torn vessels to the intestine. His urine is clear so I don’t expect a kidney or bladder injury. He’s shocky, so he has probably lost about half his blood volume.”
Anna did not understand the term ‘shocky’ but did not ask. She was fascinated with the doctor’s ability to evaluate the problem. She found herself feeling envy for his knowledge and skill.
“Surgeons are problem solvers by nature,” said Dr. Katz as they parted for the changing rooms.“Solving this problem…. the challenge. Saving his life… the reward.”
Anna, in her scrubs, cap and mask, stood on a short stool in the corner of the OR trying to absorb the drama. The boy was being put to sleep with ether. Dr. Katz and his surgical assistant entered, gloved and gowned.
“His pressure is 60!” the anesthetist called out as he turned both IVs to run as fast as possible.
“He has uncross-matched blood. Give it!”
One of the nurses had already prepped the abdomen with alcohol. Dr. Katz quickly draped off the field, and then in one quick movement with the scalpel, opened the abdomen through the midline. Immediately a large amount of dark blood gushed out of the incision and covered both surgeon and assistant. A large suction was placed into the wound and simultaneously Katz’s right arm disappeared into the gaping wound. The liver felt intact. The bleeding was coming from the left upper quadrant. He quickly glanced up to see the blood running wide open, his right hand now blindly searching the left upper quadrant of the boy’s abdominal cavity.
“The spleen is shattered,” he said, keeping the others in the OR appraised of this life and death struggle.
With his left hand, he grasped what was left of the spleen. Using a long surgical clamp, with his right hand he placed the clamp on the vessels to the spleen and blindly divided the attachments holding the spleen to the surrounding structures, then delivered it into the wound still attached to the vessels
“Bleeding is controlled!”
“Pressure is up to 70…pulse is 120!” “Are you giving the matched blood?” “Second unit is running!
Katz placed a zero silk suture ligature on the vascular pedicle which had supplied the spleen to permanently seal it off, and divided the vascular supply to the spleen. He handed what was left of the spleen to the scrub nurse, then used saline solution to wash out the abdominal cavity and remove as much of the old blood as possible. Carefully, he inspected the liver again as well as the stomach, pancreas, and intestine. He could find no other injury.
“Pressure is up to 90. He’s starting to make some urine,” observed the anesthetist. “I’ll use zero silk to close.”
Dr. Katz glanced at Anna. He had been too busy to notice how she was dealing with the rather bloody scene. The look on her face did not betray her fascination.
He motioned for her to follow him and they entered a small lounge area. As they sat down he removed his sweat drenched cap.
“The boy’s age probably saved him,” he told Anna. “An older person would not have su
rvived that much bleeding.”
Katz relaxed for a moment and looked at Anna.
“Nothing like a little excitement on a Saturday evening, yes?So what do you think?”
“Pretty amazing,” she replied. “Have you done similar cases?”
“Once in my training and another time about five years ago. A nine year old boy fell off his bicycle.” Dr. Katz stood up. “I’m going to check on our young boy and speak with his parents. I’ll meet you back here in 20 minutes.”
Anna’s eyes followed him out the door. She wondered if there was a place for a woman in this very male oriented world of surgery.
* * *
Fredrich Ebert was alone in the Chancellor’s office. The building on Wilhelmstrasse was now abandoned. The events of the past 72 hours had made him the highest official in Germany. They had also shaken him to the core.
Ebert was a stout man with a raffish appearance, inconsistent with one born into poverty. The son of a tailor in Heidelberg, he spent his early years as a saddle-maker. Using inherent communication skills and fortunate circumstances, he had become a political party functionary in Berlin. Now at forty-eight years of age, he had been told by the departing Chancellor, “Herr Ebert, I now commit the German people into your care.”
Sitting in the office in solitude, his thoughts turned sad as he considered his two sons, both of whom had been killed on the battlefields of France. They had been the joy of his life and he was still unable to get over their loss. He commonly experienced days of depression and bitterness. The loss of the war only compounded his feelings. Ebert was surprised and startled back to reality by the ringing of one of the office phones. The caller was General Groner, the deputy commander for Field Marshal Hindenburg. Ebert had spent little time in the office and was unaware the phone was a secret private line to military headquarters in Spa. He identified himself and warily asked how the army planned to deal with the crisis, and more specifically, how the Field Marshal would deal with it. Now that the Kaiser was gone, Hindenburg was in complete command. The answer was reassuring. The front line troops would be brought back to Germany and would support the Ebert-led government.
The following day, November 10th, a decree was released by a group of Social Democratic and Independent commissioners. It proclaimed amnesty for all political prisoners. This was being done in an effort to unify the government. There would also be freedom of speech, press, and assembly. All public officials would be elected by secret ballot. And the new government was committed to providing jobs, housing and food.
The majority of Germans were still very conservative. They remained orderly and compliant. Once, when a fire broke out around the royal Palace, the crowds running to escape did so paths observing the “keep off the grass” signs. In a few short years this sense of order in their lives would be obliterated. In its place would be chaos.
Chapter 5
‘Mein Kampf’
History would record the years after the war as filled with turmoil. Because of the political crisis, a scientific event of monumental proportions was virtually ignored. The physicists at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute were concerned with something much more fundamental than political turmoil - an imminent eclipse of the sun. This eclipse was significant. The opportunity to measure the gravitational force of the sun on the light from the Hyades group of stars would not occur again for several hundred years. Hanz Eichenwald knew this was not just a chance of a lifetime but of several lifetimes. To be working in the same Institute with Max Planck and Albert Einstein was something Hanz never could have imagined. Planck, in 1900, working on a theory to explain the relationship between radiation and matter, had postulated that energy existed in small discrete bundles he called quanta, taken from the Latin word ‘how much’. And Einstein was opening his theories of relativity to the world. The depth of their discussions was beyond ordinary mortals. As they pondered the implications of general relativity theory, they were anxious for the breakthroughs of proof.
The law of energy conservation had been proposed in the mid-1800s. It stated that both energy and matter (mass) exist in a fixed amount. One can be converted to the other but the total amount of each will always remain constant in the universe. Man can convert mass to energy and energy back to mass, but is incapable of “creating” either one. And yet with the amount of mass/energy fixed, it was becoming more obvious that the entire universe was changing. The old idea that the universe was static and had always existed as such, did not fit what Einstein was observing. He began to reason that the universe was actually finite and at some point had a beginning. One day Einstein was discussing the topic with Hanz.
“If the universe had a beginning, what existed before?” “Nothing!” Einstein exclaimed. “Nothing existed before - void.”
“So, we might assume there may have been an enormous black space full of nothing?” Hanz asked.
“No! An enormous black space is something - void is nothing. Void has no reference in human experience, no reference at all.”
Einstein posited two conclusions about the origin of the universe. One, it came into being by chance. Or two, it was brought into being by a self-existent power out of nothing - ex nihilo. Chance, a random event, could not produce something from nothing. A universe of a hundred million galaxies did not come about by chance. But he also believed that a beginning event would necessarily require the concept of infinity. Mathematics, even theoretical mathematics, cannot handle infinite numbers. So the theory of general relativity itself predicted that there is a point, a beginning, where the theory breaks down.
“We can only know what has happened since the beginning, not before,” Einstein reasoned. He was convinced of a genesis event. But as to what brought it about and how it occurred, he remained uncertain.
A few weeks after the armistice was signed officially ending the war, Britain’s Royal Astronomical Society announced that it would send two expeditions to photograph the eclipse. The areas where it could be best observed were the town of Sobral in northern Brazil and the island of Principe in the Gulf of Guinea. General relativity had predicted that light should be bent by gravitational field influence. So light from a distant star would appear to be in a different position to an observer on earth. During the eclipse the moon blocked the sun’s light in such a way that the star’s light could be photographed and measured. British teams were on both locations.
Einstein was asked to compute how much the light rays of the Hyades should be deflected by the sun’s gravity. His computed answer was 1.75 seconds of an arc. Photographs were taken during the eclipse and during an ordinary evening. After several months the returned data showed the sun’s gravity had deflected the light 1.64 seconds of an arc, almost exactly matching Einstein’s estimate. When the results were disclosed at the next meeting of the Royal Society, one of the members later was quoted as saying, “The whole atmosphere of tense interest was exactly that of a Greek Drama. We were the chorus commenting on the decree of destiny as disclosed in the development of a supreme incident.”
Hanz Eichenwald had been confident of what the findings would show, now for the proof. He had spent countless hours contemplating the implications of general relativity. Concepts that previously could not be proved, he now knew to be true. Nevertheless, he would spend years bringing this new found knowledge alongside all he had been taught as a student of the physical sciences.
As a child, Hanz had read, over and over, the first declaration of the Torah.
“Bereshith” - in the beginning, “Elohim”- God, “bara”- created, shamayin-ara all things.” He had wanted to believe this as a child and dealt with it in his imagination. He viewed all he saw as mystical, all in the heavens and in the earth. To a great extent as an adult he still did. But now there was scientific evidence that seemed to confirm the ancient Hebrew manuscripts. His depth of understanding was still limited, but what had been mystical was now being proved reality.
The German economy had been massively distorted by the industrialized warfare. The cost in financial terms was almost as devastating as the loss of life. Taxation covered only about 14 percent of expenditures. War bonds were used for the short fall. After the expected German victory, the bonds were to be redeemed through reparations from the defeated enemies of the Reich. But there was no victory, and no defeated enemies. Reparations would be paid by Germans not to Germans. To fund the war, the government simply printed more money. The resulting inflation was devastating. By 1918, the German mark had lost 70 percent of its pre-war value and was rapidly on the way to becoming worthless.
The war also contributed to what one observer called a ‘moratorium on morality’. Crimes of all types increased. So did the rate of divorce, sexual immorality and the resultant venereal diseases. The numbers of fatherless children tripled. Some of the bitterest divisions in war torn Germany were racial. In 1916, the war ministry conducted a ‘Jew-count’ to shed light on who was actually doing the fighting. The survey was never published because it actually showed strong support for the war by Jews. They had been accused of prospering while others were dying. The strongest testimony of Jewish patriotism was the 12,000 war dead buried in Jewish cemeteries. The Eichenwalds, along with most Jewish families, had relatives who had died in the war. Jewish men had put their lives on the line along with thousands of other Germans.
* * *
Anna’s world was a small sphere, one that swirled with school activities, friends and fashion. Her exposure to the war was limited. What she knew of it, she knew from her best friend, Erin Nitschmann. Erin’s brother Peter had been in the war. Anna and Erin, as the only Jewish girls in their class, spent their time together. Although physically dissimilar, they were kindred spirits. Anna was tall, strikingly defined by the locks of dark hair that framed her aqua-blue eyes like a painting. Most of her physical traits were inherited from her father. But she had also received a good bit of his intellect. She tended to stay to herself focusing on academics. Erin, on the other hand, was assertive by nature and comfortable in confrontations. Her parents were professional musicians, both performers with the Berlin Philharmonic. Erin’s father was the violin first chair and concertmaster. Her mother played the cello and was the stabilizing force in the Nitschmann family. Erin had studied violin since she was five-years old. With her pale skin, light blue eyes and long, strawberry blond hair pulled carefully into a pony tail, Erin appeared almost fragile. But those who came to know her discovered she was as willful as she was sweet, with a truly indefatigable nature.