Germania: A Novel of Nazi Berlin

by Harald Gilbers

  There was one unanswered question left. Oppenheimer was only able to ask it when Höcker knocked on the door and peered into the room. “Sorry, I don’t want to rush you, but I need to get at some of my papers.”

  “Come in. I’m done here. I have one more question. Who else owns the company? I’m assuming your sons?”

  “There are three owners. I actually have only one son, Karl. The place is called Höcker & Sons because it sounds better that way.”

  “And where was he when Ms. Friedrichsen disappeared?”

  “I’m guessing he was in Italy.”

  “He is stationed there?”

  Höcker sighed meaningfully. “Yes, indeed, Italy of all places. The Americans launched an offensive down there on Friday. Well, at least he’ll get some field experience from it. Character-building stuff. We’re perfect examples of that, aren’t we?” He laughed, then growing serious again, he leaned over to Oppenheimer. “I’m not really sure about the boy. But you’ve probably come across it before too, Richard. At first, he didn’t want to join the army—imagine that! But then I told him, Karl, you can’t cop out when the Fatherland and your führer are calling. It’s your duty as a good and proper German! Well, yes, and when I threatened to disinherit him, he finally signed up. Young people these days…” He shook his head in resignation.

  “You mentioned three owners,” Oppenheimer reminded him.

  “Oh yes, of course. Yes, the third owner of our company is the SS.”

  Shocked, Oppenheimer asked, “How did that happen?”

  “Didn’t you know? We used to deal in mineral waters and lemonades. A few years ago, they became a partner. Of course, the SS use a different name. They have a few of their own springs and later took over some others. Niederselters, Apollinaris—you wouldn’t believe all the pies they’ve got their fingers in. They control three-quarters of the mineral water market now, can you imagine. Well, yes, ever since then, we’re supplied almost directly by the party. However, I realized that the profit margin is higher with alcoholic beverages, which is why I founded a new company and changed our product range. It wasn’t a problem, I just had to discuss a couple of things with my counterparts in the Economic Administration Department, and then we were off. It’s just a bit difficult to get hold of a halfway decent beer. I can organize anything you like. Whiskey, scotch, sherry, even Bordeaux or champagne, large amounts, whatever you want. The SS can organize anything. There is a huge warehouse in the occupied territories. But beer? You’d think so—no chance! But honestly, what do French people know about beer? They still have to work on that.” Höcker smiled broadly.

  * * *

  Later, Vogler and Oppenheimer sat down together in Zehlendorf to exchange information.

  “Did you interview Bertram Mertens?” Oppenheimer asked.

  “Mertens? Just a moment.” Vogler checked his papers. “Yes, Bertram Mertens. Apparently, he asked Ms. Friedrichsen to go out with him a couple of months ago. She turned him down. He couldn’t say much more. He claimed he was at the Wannsee at the time in question. Went for a walk around the lake. It’s going to be hard to prove it.”

  “We haven’t checked Ms. Friedrichsen’s background properly yet.”

  “What are you thinking, specifically?”

  “Well, firstly, it would be interesting to know who the father of her son is. An illegitimate child can certainly be a motive for murder.”

  Vogler looked at him in surprise. “She had a child?”

  Oppenheimer handed him the photograph. “Here. Your colleagues must have overlooked it. She worked in a Lebensborn home called Kurmark. It is possible that our killer also came from there. It’s not too far to Berlin. Doable by train. I think it makes sense to extend our investigation to Klosterheide. Her former colleagues’ alibis also have to be checked.”

  “Hmm, she worked at Lebensborn.” Vogler frowned. “Interesting, the things you managed to dig up, Oppenheimer. This means that the number of potential suspects has suddenly increased.”

  “I’m afraid so, yes. That’s the way these things work. We can’t afford to ignore anything. When shall we go and visit the home?” Oppenheimer gave Vogler a challenging look.

  9

  WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 1944–FRIDAY, MAY 19, 1944

  The house in the Kameradschaftssiedlung in Zehlendorf remained a mystery to Oppenheimer. He spent most of the next few days there, sorting the information. After the morning briefing, Vogler drove off and left him behind with the radio operator, who sat by himself in the cellar in front of his devices. As Oppenheimer felt relatively unobserved, he carefully checked out his surroundings when he was able to tear himself away from his papers. The ground floor consisted of a hallway, the living room where he worked, the kitchen, and a large cupboard. The kitchen was fully furnished, but there was a serious shortage of food. The initial impression that no one lived here seemed to be confirmed. Luckily, there was a large tin of coffee beans that Oppenheimer could grind to perk himself up from time to time. Added to this were the sandwiches that Hoffmann brought by. Oppenheimer didn’t hesitate to make extensive use of these luxuries.

  He didn’t see much of the top floor. The doors of the rooms were closed so that the stairs led into darkness. Those were probably the bedrooms. However, Oppenheimer only dared to quietly go up two or three steps and peered through the bannisters. But he wasn’t able to find out anything new.

  It was a completely different matter with the employees at Höcker & Sons. He was bombarded by information. The first reports arrived on Wednesday morning, and the next day, the stack with painstakingly compiled lists of names and details grew further. Vogler primarily seemed to use SD people to do the groundwork for him, which made sense. At first glance, the information on Inge Friedrichsen’s colleagues was anything but out of the ordinary, though that could not be blamed on Vogler’s spies. At this pace, Oppenheimer was pretty certain they would soon have interviewed every single witness.

  This was the start of a phase of the investigation that Oppenheimer always found tiring. Routine work. As usual, he noted down the names of suspects on small cards. The radio operator supplied him with drawing pins, and Oppenheimer pinned the cards to the wall. In doing so, he followed a system that only he understood properly. He had once tried to explain the system to an aspiring inspector, but after one frustrating week, he’d given up in exasperation. Although he himself thought it perfectly simple.

  First, he stuck the card with Inge Friedrichsen’s name in the middle of the wall. This was followed by the remaining cards to form a wide circle around the first one. The closer a suspect’s name was to the murder victim in the center, the more likely he was to be the perpetrator. After brief reflection, Oppenheimer placed the name Bertram Mertens several centimeters closer to the center. He had been snubbed by Ms. Friedrichsen, which might have been a motive. Oppenheimer proceeded in the same manner with the other cards. The more evidence he gathered, the complexer his chart became.

  By Thursday, Oppenheimer had come to the sobering conclusion that despite all his shifting around of cards, nothing much had changed. He also realized this would be the harmless part of his work. Once the information regarding the suspicious persons from Klosterheide was added, the wall would probably be completely covered with notes.

  Nonetheless, Oppenheimer discovered an important difference to his previous work. In the past, when he’d been working on a case, he’d occasionally had to fight to keep track of things. He’d always had a problem remembering names and faces of all the people he encountered during an investigation. Sifting through stacks of files had often been too much for him. But now, as he worked through the files, he realized to his surprise that his brain took an almost perverse pleasure in dealing with the smallest of details. His mind almost seemed like a dry sponge that had been waiting all these years to soak up information, to evaluate, organize, and connect things once more.

  Oppenheimer had arranged to visit the Kurmark home with Vogler on Friday. Honestly, he wa
s quite looking forward to getting out of the city. He wasn’t a true nature lover, but in view of the constant bomb attacks and surveillance aircraft, he enjoyed the trip to a calmer and more intact landscape.

  Hoffmann had taken the opportunity to get behind the wheel of the black car to escort them to the countryside of Ruppin. If his mind hadn’t told him otherwise, Oppenheimer would have thought that the landscape he saw just a few kilometers outside Berlin was a long-forgotten dream. On more than one occasion, he found himself staring out the car window with his mouth wide open. After an almost endlessly long time spent in the city, his gaze now lost itself in the wide-open landscape, and he was unexpectedly gripped by the feeling of being pleasantly foreign here.

  Buildings became scarce. Alongside the redbrick structures that could be found all over Berlin, there were small houses covered in plaster whose sharp gables pointed toward the sky. Occasionally, they passed guesthouses where city residents had sought refuge from the bomb attacks. Locals walked the streets with rosy skin and honest gazes. But Oppenheimer knew this was wishful thinking. Of course, the people here were no better than those elsewhere. Hilde had told him that people in the country were particularly true to party principles and sniffed at city slickers’ lack of values. But at this moment, Oppenheimer simply wanted to believe that despite everything, there was a positive alternative world, yes, that he was driving through a picture-postcard idyll. Nobody was running toward a bunker to escape an air raid. No alarm signals cut through the air. There was a peacefulness around him that he hadn’t thought possible anymore. They drove past a church whose bell tower reminded him of the battlements of a medieval tower. In the next village, a different place of worship, built in timber frame, proudly presented its dark, stained wooden construction to the outside world. The few houses standing forlornly at the side of the road, the gently curving hills, the dark pine forests they were driving through—this reality had continued to exist the whole time, although it hadn’t appeared in Oppenheimer’s concept of the world for too long.

  About forty-five minutes into the journey, Oppenheimer tried to concentrate on going through the facts once more. At the speed Hoffmann was driving, they would arrive soon, and he didn’t want to get there unprepared.

  “So the last time Inge Friedrichsen was seen was on Friday evening,” he summarized. “The murder must have taken place at some point the next day, given that her body was discovered on Sunday morning. It would normally take one and a half hours to drive from Klosterheide to Berlin by car, the train journey around two and a half hours. There are five connections per day; the first train to Berlin is at 5:27 a.m., and the last one leaves at 8:10 p.m. It’s basically the same in the opposite direction. So there are a lot of ways to get to Berlin, but we should assume that the murderer spent the entire Saturday in the city. We should focus our investigations on those that were there that day.”

  Vogler nodded in agreement. Then he looked at the empty cigarette holder that was hanging from the corner of Oppenheimer’s mouth.

  “Here, have this,” he said and handed him a cigarette. “You don’t need to smoke, but please put it in the holder. Otherwise, it irritates me.”

  Of course, Oppenheimer accepted. This way, he was able to add another cigarette to his collection.

  The village where the Lebensborn home was situated was right on the southern edge of the Mecklenburg Lake District, which reached as far as Wismar. Three large lakes dominated the area around Klosterheide: the Große Strubensee, the Wutzsee, and finally the largest, the Gudelacksee, which was where the Kurmark home was located. Oppenheimer would not have been surprised if the Lebensborn home had towered over the nearby village on a steep cliff, a forbidden place with an unwelcoming façade like the castle of Count Dracula, radiating a dark aura across the few roofs of Klosterheide that were clustered together as a means of protection. But nothing could have been further from the truth. The village consisted of a handful of houses that had been built a good distance from one another. There was more than enough space here.

  Just before they left the village, Hoffmann suddenly turned off the main road to the left. They came to a country lane leading directly into the woods. Oppenheimer almost believed that Hoffmann had gotten lost, but the man drove unerringly through the woods until he found a narrow lane between the dense, leafy wall of trees. Instead of the sky that Oppenheimer had expected to see through the treetops, an impressive yellow-brick chimney appeared. It stood there like a whim of nature, among all the other growths, a tree that was not true to type. When they got closer and stopped at a small square, he saw a building behind a closed gate. They had arrived.

  * * *

  A nurse led them to a large, completely empty hall. The light coming in through the windows, whose dusty curtains seemed to have been untouched by human hand for decades, refracted on the parquet floor. A good dozen swastika flags were draped on the opposite wall, with a monolithic black bust of the führer in front of it. Oppenheimer could not see any other objects in the room.

  “If you’d just wait here for a moment,” the nurse said, glancing at Vogler shyly. “I’m afraid we’re just in the process of preparing for a name-giving ceremony.” Then she disappeared in the twilight behind the doorway like a hallucination.

  “Name-giving ceremony,” Oppenheimer repeated. “Are they expecting us to contribute something?”

  “I—I don’t think so,” said Vogler, who didn’t know what he was supposed to do and therefore kept switching legs every few seconds.

  Oppenheimer walked along the flags. In the middle hung a portrait of a woman. He examined it curiously. “Hmm, who do we have here? I’m guessing this is the founder of the home? Judging by the photograph, the lady is probably somewhat older.”

  Vogler sighed at Oppenheimer’s lack of knowledge. “That is the führer’s mother.”

  “Oh, oh yes,” was the only thing that Oppenheimer could bring forth in his surprise. With a decent portion of feigned contriteness, he finally added, “Sorry, my mistake.” Of course, he should have guessed that a picture of Hitler’s mother would be hanging in every Lebensborn home. “Beautiful frame,” he said, but Vogler’s silence only seemed to grow icier.

  Suddenly, two panting figures in gray smocks forced their way past, carrying chairs. When they noticed Vogler’s uniform, they both immediately put down their load and called out, “Heil Hitler!” Before Vogler could even nod to indicate that they were permitted to continue with their work, they had picked up their chairs again and hastened into a corner of the room. As Oppenheimer looked around in irritation, a nurse appeared in a white gown. The white collar and bright white bonnet, fastened to her dark hair with clips, did not differentiate her from the other carers. But her self-assertive appearance and the reaction of the other staff suggested that despite her small stature, she held a certain authority.

  “Good day. I presume you are Inspector Oppenheimer. I am Mrs. Berg, the senior nurse here at Kurmark.” She shook Oppenheimer’s hand firmly. “The doctor cannot receive you right now, as he is attending to a birth. You will have an opportunity to speak to him later.”

  A group of perspiring cleaning ladies carried bucketsful of soapsuds into the hall, reverently steering clear of Mrs. Berg.

  “As you can see, we are in the middle of preparations for our name-giving ceremony. It’s probably best if we find somewhere quieter. If you like, I can show you around.”

  Oppenheimer had no objections to being led around the premises, but he had to admit that he was disappointed. The plush parlors he had imagined were nowhere to be found. Nor were there any other amenities that might have induced one to joyfully procreate. As they walked along the boring corridors with their stuffy smells, the home reminded him less of a brothel and more of a maternity home. And this indeed did seem to be the sense and purpose of Lebensborn.

  “Originally, this building complex was a convalescent home belonging to the Army High Command. We also have a crèche alongside the maternity ward.” />
  “Who runs the home?” Oppenheimer asked Mrs. Berg.

  “The position is currently vacant. The doctor and I share the responsibilities.”

  “Then I am sure you can help me. Ms. Friedrichsen worked here as a secretary. I can’t picture what this would entail. What exactly were her responsibilities?”

  “The secretary administered the funds and completed the paperwork.”

  “What would that involve?”

  “There are official papers that she would make out—birth certificates, death certificates—and she managed the books and the registry. I think Miss Inge once even married a couple.”

  “Is there not a registrar here to perform such tasks?”

  “You have to understand—our children are well-kept secrets. A large part of our work consists of admitting SS members’ wives for delivery. But we also have other responsibilities. This includes enabling unmarried women to deliver their children without anyone finding out. We take care of the offspring, and should the mother decide to give her baby up for adoption, we try to place them with families that are true to party principles. We are committed to the highest possible discretion. Therefore, the usual registration requirements don’t apply to the children that are born here.”

  “So Ms. Friedrichsen was entrusted with confidential information?”

  “Well, you could say that. The secretary compiles all the information. She knows the mothers’ real addresses, knows which of them were married, and in some cases, she even has information on the fathers. Like all other secretaries before her, Miss Inge was made aware that her position was subject to the strictest secrecy by the doctor.”