by Leo Maxim
Wilhelm is from a Jewish family that moved from Warsaw to Berlin in the eighteenth century, and whose sons became either doctors or lawyers. The family converted to the Protestant faith very early, and otherwise tried to eradicate the traces of their Jewish origins as best they could. Even the original family name, Levin, was shed and replaced by Leo, which to my ears doesn’t sound particularly Prussian either. When Gerhard is three years old, the family moves to Rheinsberg, to a villa on the lake. Later Gerhard asks his father why they left Berlin, and Wilhelm says, “It was high time. I was well on the way to becoming wealthy.” But probably it’s most of all because his clients—mainly the chairmen of major companies—and the legal manoeuvres he had to carry out on their behalf were not congenial to him. William explains to his son that he’d rather deal with simple people and also escape the hurly-burly of Berlin, where he doesn’t even have time to play the piano. Wilhelm is an excellent pianist, and has often regretted not being a musician. In Rheinsberg the family stands around the big grand piano every evening. They sing songs by Schumann, Schubert and Hugo Wolf. Once Gerhard asks his father why they’ve only got a normal car, while their neighbour, a confectioner, drives a huge car with chrome fittings. Wilhelm replies: “What matters are scientific and artistic merits, money doesn’t count.”
Wilhelm, 1945
Frieda, 1943
In Gerhard’s memory, Rheinsberg is a paradise. The little town with the famous rococo palace is surrounded by forests and lakes. In the summer they go for long hikes and boat trips. When Gerhard comes out of school, he goes to his father’s office and if he has time they have serious conversations. Gerhard is allowed to sit in the heavy leather armchair that is actually meant for clients. They talk about literature and music. Sometimes Wilhelm recites a poem which Gerhard then has to learn by heart. In November 1927 a retired French general commissions Wilhelm to bring a case on his behalf. It isn’t a particularly big one. A relatively unknown far-right agitator called Joseph Goebbels claims that he was tortured in 1920 as a German patriot, in the basement of the French military headquarters in occupied Cologne, in the presence of the general. It was from those tortures, Goebbels announces in public speeches, that he got the club foot that people mocked him for at the time. The hearing is taking place in a Berlin court. Wilhelm is able to prove without much difficulty that Goebbels has had his club foot since birth. He presents a photograph of the little Goebbels lying naked on a bearskin rug. With a club foot. There is also a school photograph showing Goebbels in the front row with his club foot. Wilhelm also presents the judge with a certified copy of the military papers of the plaintiff, who was exempted from military service in the First World War because of his club foot. The court sentences Goebbels to pay a symbolic franc as damages to the French general. Once the ruling has been given, Goebbels’ lawyer walks up to Wilhelm and says in a menacing voice, “You, sir, will remember this day often and vividly.”
Wilhelm doesn’t take these words particularly seriously. Only a few years later, in autumn 1932, when the Nazis set about taking power, does he remember the trial. Once Gerhard listens in on a conversation that his parents are having in the drawing room, in muted voices. Wilhelm says, “They’ll take their revenge as soon as they can.” The conversations over dinner, which until then had been light and cheerful because Wilhelm liked to amuse the family with funny anecdotes, become serious. All of a sudden his parents are talking only about politics. It’s all about whether the Nazis are going to take over the government or not. Wilhelm calls the Nazis “Teutons”, “barbarians” or even “the lawless ones”, which is the most serious condemnation as far as he’s concerned, because he places the law above everything else. Wilhelm has often told Gerhard that man is different from the animals primarily because he deliberately applies laws and thus creates a just coexistence. Wilhelm can’t imagine that people who openly declare that they’re not going to adhere to the constitution could ever enter government.
On 30 January 1933 Hitler is appointed Reich Chancellor. Only a few days later some boys in Gerhard’s class are wearing brown shirts and swastika armbands. A schoolfriend tells Gerhard rather embarrassedly on the way home that he isn’t allowed to play with him any more because Gerhard isn’t racially pure. “Your mother is Aryan, but your father is a Jew.” Gerhard doesn’t understand what his friend means. He’s heard of Jews, but what does Aryan mean? Perhaps, Gerhard thinks, the boy’s got mixed up. Does he mean Arabian? Gerhard has just read a book of adventure stories in which Arabian warriors gallop through the desert and defeat everyone who tries to stand up to them. He runs home, charges into his father’s office and says he wants to be Arabian, like Mutti.
Wilhelm interrupts his work, invites Gerhard to take a seat in the heavy armchair and listens. Then his father tells him that the Nazis want to bring back times long past in which people were burnt on pyres for their origins or convictions. “Now nothing will be as it was,” says Wilhelm, and for the first time Gerhard sees something like fear on his face. Gerhard must promise to tell his father anything that strikes him as strange. He should be extremely careful in conversations with teachers and other children. He is nine years old.
The night after the Reichstag fire, on 28 February 1933, a truck of armed SA men stops outside the family’s house in Rheinsberg. Gerhard wakes up because he hears voices and shouts. He opens his nursery window and sees his father being beaten up by men in uniform and dragged through the front garden to the truck. He sees his mother, with tears running down her face, standing by the steps to the front door. Gerhard screams into the night. It is a desperate, piercing cry that sounds very strange even to him. He will see the pictures of that night before his eyes often in years to come. They are the pictures which shook him out of childhood, which will later show him time and again what is right and what is wrong. In his memoirs, which Gerhard wrote in the late Seventies and which, now that he himself can no longer speak, are my most important source for finding out things about his life, Gerhard writes: “Since I saw my father being abused by SA men as a child, the cruelty of the regime, its crimes against humanity, are my chief motivation for anti-fascist resistance.”
I found the first version of his memoirs in a green file in the Federal archive in Berlin-Lichterfelde. Two hundred and ninety-eight typed pages, thin, yellowish copy paper that smells of dust when you turn the pages. My grandmother Nora probably typed it all out. For many long years she was his secretary and companion. I don’t know if she wouldn’t have liked to do something for herself. Whether he ever asked what she wanted. Nora was there when Gerhard needed her, she looked after the children and the household. She lived her whole life in his shadow, and she says today that that was fine. But then what is she supposed to say?
Gerhard always wrote by hand. He said he couldn’t feel the text otherwise. His memoirs are archived in the files of the Central Party Control Commission. That was where the Party watchdogs sat, making sure that a comrade was still on the right path. The Commission also decided who was excluded from the Party, which for convinced comrades amounted to a death sentence. I would like to know how Gerhard’s manuscript ended up there. Did he deliver it to the censors himself? Most of the text is identical to what was published a few years later under the title Early Train to Toulouse. But some passages have disappeared. Above all the one about the relationship between the German Communists and the Social Democrats in France. Gerhard describes cordial co-operation, but later on that didn’t fit with the historiography of the East Berlin comrades. The violent debates among German émigrés in Paris about the non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin in 1939 don’t appear in the book either. Gerhard writes about how shocked the German Communists were that Moscow should enter into a pact with the Nazis. But afterwards nobody wanted to remember that, because the German Communist Party had spoken in favour of the pact. And of course the Party never made a mistake.
In his account of his childhood and early youth Gerhard still displays feelings. He writes
about his anxieties, his doubts, his weaknesses, his curiosity. Later, when he writes about his illegal work in France, when he himself must already have been a comrade, he just writes coolly and pragmatically. As if at some point something in his attitude had frozen and he could no longer change it. An attitude based entirely on appearance, which made even the most difficult decisions simple. Because it was no longer about him, but about the great cause whose servant he had become. I wonder whether he would still write it like that today, whether his attitude would have held. If he could still speak.
8
Stage Sets
ONLY WEEKS AFTER WILHELM’S ARREST the family learns that he was sent to Oranienburg concentration camp. Gerhard’s mother pulls out all the stops to get her husband freed again. She calls the writer Ernst Wiechert, who is a good friend of Wilhelm’s. Wiechert is held in high regard by the Nazis because he has not, unlike most of his colleagues, opposed them from the outset. Goebbels has a particular weakness for the author, and complies with his request to release Wilhelm temporarily from the concentration camp. Wilhelm spends some weeks in hospital. When he comes home again, Gerhard sees a pale, weakened man.
Goebbels takes on a lawyer to prepare a new trial in which it will be proved once and for all that his club foot is indeed the result of torture in French headquarters in Cologne. Wilhelm is questioned several times. Early in September the SA confiscate his passport and tell him he is on no account to leave his house. A few days later at dinner Wilhelm asks if Gerhard would like to go with him to Berlin the next day. In the morning they have breakfast at six o’clock and take the car to the capital. Wilhelm visits colleagues to whom he hands over the files of trials that he himself will be unable to continue. In the evening they go to a hotel near the Brandenburg Gate. Wilhelm puts on a tuxedo and Gerhard the dark-blue suit that he only wears on very special occasions. It is only when they are in the car driving along Unter den Linden that Wilhelm reveals they are going to the opera. Wilhelm says this visit to the opera was actually planned for a few years later, as an introduction to the world of adults. “But we haven’t got much time, so you’ll be growing up today.” Wilhelm looks at his son with serious eyes. Then he smiles and says they’re going to enjoy themselves hugely.
They go to the restaurant at the Staatsoper. The waiters know Gerhard’s father and nod to him politely. There is roast chicken and French red wine, of which Gerhard is allowed to drink half a glass. Wilhelm leans over to him and whispers: “Let’s not say anything about our concerns. Waiters and restaurant walls have ears.” After dinner they go to the opera. Verdi’s Ballo in maschera is being performed. Wilhelm has hired a box. In the interval an elderly lady from the neighbouring box asks if the little fellow understands it. Gerhard is furious about the question, since he is already ten years old. But he’s comforted when he hears his father saying, “My son understands everything.” In fact Gerhard hardly understands anything at all. He is fogged with alcohol and excitement. He hears the music as if in a dream, and the stage sets drift past him like a colourful carpet. In the end he has trouble keeping his eyes open. But it’s still a great evening. He doesn’t know that these are the last moments of his life in the haute bourgeoisie.
The next morning Wilhelm explains the situation. He says they’re going to go and see a colleague who will help them get safely abroad. Wilhelm says he had no other choice, because he can’t win a second trial against Goebbels. “I wouldn’t survive another stay in the concentration camp.” The lawyer’s office is near the house where Wilhelm lived during his time in Berlin. His study strikes Gerhard as decidedly luxurious in comparison to his father’s. There are thick carpets, deep, white leather armchairs and furniture made of steel and glass. A big glass facade looks out over the busy Kurfürstendamm. The lawyer greets Wilhelm like an old friend and suggests sending “the little fellow” out during the conversation. Wilhelm says, “My son is in the picture, and very discreet.” Again Gerhard is incredibly proud. He likes this new time of secrets, this world of adults. He senses that a great danger is lurking behind all this, but he enjoys it anyway.
The lawyer explains that he’s about to call in a man who was once the “king of smugglers” between Germany and Belgium. Now that the new government has intensified border checks, he uses his good contacts to smuggle people. The man owes him a favour, the lawyer says. So the price of his services is only 5,000 marks, a fifth of what he would normally charge. Half of it has to be paid immediately, the rest after their escape. The smuggler king is an elegantly dressed, good-looking young man. When he greets Gerhard, he winks at him as if they’d known each other for ages. He says he came back from Aachen during the night, everything’s ready, but it must happen at the weekend. Wilhelm agrees, and starts counting out 100-mark notes on the table. The smuggler gets half of them, the other half goes to the lawyer. The lawyer takes a white sheet of paper out of his desk drawer and tears it into two unequal pieces. He gives Wilhelm one half of the sheet, and keeps the other with the money. “As soon as you’re in Liège, give your companion your half of the sheet. If he brings it to me and it fits the other half, he’ll get the rest of the money.” The smuggler names a train that will take the family to Aachen on Saturday. The meeting point is the café at the main station.
Two days later Gerhard leaves the house in Rheinsberg at dawn along with his parents. His two sisters are already with their grandmother in Hamburg and are going to come on later. They walk to the station on paths through the fields; they each have only a small briefcase, they’ve left everything else behind. In Berlin they stay with friends and the next day they take the train for Aachen. They are all very excited, but the journey is uneventful. In the café at the main station in Aachen two heavily made-up women are standing at the bar drinking schnapps. The smuggler isn’t there. After a wait that strikes Gerhard as endless, he arrives at last. He apologizes for the delay. “I just wanted to be sure that no one followed you.” They board the tram, switch lines several times and at last reach the end of the line, among fields outside the city. They cross a meadow and on the edge of the forest they see a high wire fence, the new fortified border. At one point there is a narrow opening with a turnstile. Beside it stands a sentry in field grey, holding a rifle. Wilhelm stops with horror when he sees the soldier, but the smuggler reassures him: “The man has had his money already.” The soldier sees the new arrivals, puts his rifle over his shoulder and strides slowly along the fence towards the forest. They pass through the turnstile one by one. After about a hundred metres the smuggler says, “So, we’ve done it. We’re in Belgium.” He walks more slowly now and takes a deep breath as if he’s just made a big effort.
Gerhard is a bit disappointed because everything here actually looks exactly like Germany. The Belgian forest is no different from the German, and the meadows along the border are like the ones at home. They reach a garden restaurant called “Le Coq jaune”. There they take their leave of their companion. Gerhard is hugely excited, crossing the border without a passport is an incredible adventure for him. It’s just a shame that he can’t tell anyone about it. He notices with amazement that his parents look very gloomy. Only much later does he understand that at that moment they were probably thinking about their lost homeland and the uncertain life in exile that now lay ahead of them.
From Liège they travel via Brussels to Paris, where there is a rich relative who has promised to help them. Wilhelm puts all his savings together and rents a shop on Rue Meslay, near the Place de la République. There he sets up a Franco-German bookshop which will soon become one of the meeting points of German émigrés in Paris. The family lives in two small rooms that belong to the shop. By now the sisters have arrived from Hamburg, and their new home is getting cramped. Gerhard doesn’t like Paris. He misses his friends in Rheinsberg. He longs for the swimming spots on the lake, his bicycle and his fox terrier Bruno. He can’t talk to anybody in Paris because he doesn’t speak French. Once, in the park, he sees an elderly lady having a lengthy conv
ersation with her dog. He thinks even the dogs understand more than he does in this city.
A few weeks after their arrival in Paris Gerhard develops diphtheria. He is taken to the big children’s hospital, the Hôpital des Enfants Malades, on Rue de Sèvres, where he is put in a ward with over forty children. The others are all chatting and laughing, and an older boy is telling funny stories that amuse even the nurses. Gerhard lies there mutely beside them. The ward doctor, a beautiful woman with short black hair and blue eyes, notices his loneliness. She sometimes comes to him and tries to cheer him up a little. On her rounds she spends a bit longer with him than she does with the others. When she examines him with her small, warm hands he feels as if an electric shock is going through his whole body. Gerhard doesn’t really know what’s happening to him, but when he sees that woman his heart pounds in his throat and all his worries flee. One day the doctor comes to his bed with a school book, an exercise book and a pencil and suggests that she give him a French-language lesson for an hour every day before she goes on duty. Gerhard is dizzy with joy, he works harder and more conscientiously than he ever did at school in Rheinsberg. The beautiful doctor sings him French children’s songs and recites fables by La Fontaine that Gerhard still knows by heart today. Gradually he starts understanding what the other children are talking about, and by the time he is due to be released three months later he speaks French like a little French boy.