by Derek Hansen
Over the centuries, the Sorbs became Germanised along with their village, which developed into a bustling medieval town straddling both sides of the river, and then into the most beautiful city in Germany. Credit for this transformation goes to Augustus the Strong, elector of Saxony in the early eighteenth century, who allowed nothing as trivial as finance or reasonable constraint to come between him and his baroque fantasies. Unfortunately, the King of Prussia saw fit to sack Dresden some thirty years after Augustus the Strong died, but enough of his baroque wonders remained to give visitors a glimpse of how remarkable the city had been. Indeed, even up until the Second World War, Dresdeners still maintained their city was the fairest in all of Germany.
Through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Dresden became a focal point for the arts. It was home to many great artists including the Venetian painter Canaletto, and boasted one of the world’s finest art collections. Richard Wagner composed his operas Tannhäuser and Lohengrin there, and composer and innovator Carl Maria von Weber gave conductors their treasured baton. However, Dresden in 1937 had fallen well behind Berlin as an arts and entertainment centre, and young Saxons looking for a good time would put aside their inborn distrust of Prussians and head for the German capital with its cabarets and American jazz. Yet Dresden was hardly devoid of life, music or theatre and, all things considered, was an attractive place to live, provided you weren’t foolish enough to have a social conscience or be Jewish, Slavic, Russian, communist, gypsy, retarded or insane.
Christiane Frederika Schiller numbered among the more privileged Dresdeners. She was living proof of the old rhyme: ‘Sachsen, wo die shönen Mädchen wachsen!’—Saxony, where the pretty girls come from. Typically, she had long blonde hair which tumbled recklessly in a mass of vigorous curls and twists. Her skin glowed with health and vitality, not so much pale as fair, a subtle backdrop which accentuated the glow of her cheeks, the blaze of her lips, the cobalt in her eyes and the glimpses of dark brown root deep in the forest of her hair. Yes, she was a beauty, though by no means exceptional among the many beauties of Saxony.
She was fortunate, however, to be the daughter of a director of the Dresdner Bank, good fortune she shared with two younger sisters and a younger brother. Her family was well-off rather than wealthy, and their pride was their two homes. The first was eighteenth century and six storeys tall with an elaborate façade. It was in the very heart of Dresden on Prager Strasse, near the junction with Ring Strasse where the fashionable shops were, about half-way between the Altmarkt, the old Dresden market, and Dresden Main Station. The second was a country residence fourteen kilometres southeast of Dresden, set in grassed and timbered land two kilometres east of the River Elbe. It claimed the royal summer residence of Pillnitz, one of Augustus the Strong’s legacies, as a near neighbour. Christiane adored Pillnitz. Even as a young child, she’d found its elegant symmetry, its pagoda roofs, Chinese lantern chimneys and tranquil gardens an irresistible attraction. She loved to picnic nearby and dream of being a princess at court, trying to place herself among the pomp and splendour of earlier times.
But as much as Christiane loved her country home, she preferred the grand old house on Prager Strasse. Her interests were those of any twenty year old in any Western city. She loved music both old and new. For Christiane, nothing could possibly compare with the opening night at the opera, especially if Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was performing. But by the same token she loved dancing, and there was no better music for dancing in the whole world than American big band music, even though it was not always successfully adopted by the local musicians. There was enough provocative theatre to keep the young entertained and stimulated, though the quality of it had fallen along with the involvement of the Jewish citizens who had been its life blood. They’d been the mainstay of German experimental theatre, providing the actors, directors and producers. She also loved the volunteer work she did three days a week at the Semper Picture Gallery, where she helped clean frames, catalogue and occasionally act as guide. But her preference for her home in Prager Strasse was very much the result of her age. All twenty year olds are hosts to biological imperatives and Christiane was no exception. Dancing has always provided an opportunity for flirting and, until recently, she had competed as keenly as any of her friends for the attentions of the most handsome and entertaining young men.
It is hard to think of Christiane as being anything other than a very fortunate young woman with a life as perfect as any could wish. She was beautiful, cultured, well educated and intelligent. But she was also immature and naïve. The young princess at the court of Augustus the Strong was alive within her, and she still harboured old-fashioned notions of chivalry and gallantry, of simpler times when good and evil were sharply defined. She hadn’t yet grown up and, for this, her father could claim responsibility.
Few people are as steeped in establishment conservatism as bankers, and Carl Schiller was one of those men who take their lead from their superiors. He negotiated a path through life, protecting himself and his family from its pitfalls and excesses. In a sense, he created his own little world, which was as unreal as any of Christiane’s imaginings. The great depression had cast no pall over their house. The closest the family had come to the misery and hardship endured by millions of their fellow Germans was through charity works. Prior to Hitler’s accession, Carl had also shielded them from the collapse of the German mark by transferring funds to other countries and investing there. When that became politically unwise, he invested in the burgeoning armament industry, seeing only the potential profits and nothing of what the new armaments might portend. He was slavishly obedient to authority and it would never have occurred to him to be otherwise. When Hitler and the Nazis came to power in 1933 he embraced them as his new masters and applied himself to helping build a better Germany as defined by the National Socialists. Now five years later he held few qualms. He firmly believed that what was good for Germany was good for the world as a whole. And he believed Hitler was good for Germany. Hitler had certainly been good for the Dresdner Bank.
Carl Schiller managed his family’s social life with the same measured, narrow-sighted conservatism. He chose the schools and universities his children would attend. He even found Christiane’s job at the Semper Picture Gallery for her. He shaped the family’s taste in music and art. He created a world where loyalty, good manners, endeavour and a clear code of ethics could achieve anything they wanted. He gave them an honest and honourable set of values few could quibble with. Unfortunately, he gave them no real understanding of life.
The man Christiane fell head over heels in love with was a clear manifestation of this. Dietrich Schmidt could never be described as entertaining, at least not in the circle in which Christiane moved. He was not even a good dancer. Wooden Pinocchio moved with greater fluidity. But, by God, Dietrich Schmidt was handsome! In the uniform of an SS-Untersturmführer he was Hitler’s vision of the master race personified. If it were at all possible, doubtless the Führer would have delighted to use him as a pastry cutter to punch out an army of others just like him. Christiane was completely infatuated, and when her arm was linked with his, she just knew she was the envy of all the other girls. It didn’t matter that when he spoke, his sächsisch belied his good looks. While Goethe maintained that the Saxon dialect was the clearest in Germany, most Germans find it too flat and broad. They complain that Saxons don’t open their mouths enough and that the words just spill out carelessly. Because of this, they like to lampoon Saxons and portray them as fat, lazy, incomparably stupid buffoons. The flat, working class Saxon accent they give these dummkopfs in their clubs and cabarets was, unfortunately for Christiane, uncomfortably close to the way Dietrich spoke.
But in the blinding optimism of young love, Christiane found it easy to overlook his accent, and just as easy to convince herself that she could teach him to speak properly. With the confidence and assurance she’d inherited from her father, she began a process of re-education as methodical as any set down by her
school teachers. She took him to the opera and introduced him to Wagner, to recitals and introduced him to Beethoven, and to the theatre. In the theatre at least, Dietrich found something he could understand and identify with. By 1937 the avant-garde expressionist theatre which had once shocked, challenged and thrilled Dresdeners had long gone, replaced by more ideologically correct fare, not too far removed from the propaganda which had been Dietrich’s cultural bread and butter.
Standing together in the foyer or taking their seats the moment before the lights dimmed, the handsome Dietrich and beautiful Christiane were a combination none could ignore. Christiane soaked up the admiring and envious looks like bread soaks up gravy. She could scarcely believe her good fortune. Often in the darkness her eyes would blur when she stole a sideways glance at the handsome profile alongside her. If this was love, then she was very much in love.
But love was destined to take second place to the problem of the Jews. As usual, Christiane’s father chose to shelter the family from the harsher realities of life. When he received word that the Brownshirts were to take to the streets in yet another spontaneous demonstration against the Jews, he promptly whisked the family off to their country house.
Christiane was irate. It meant she would miss many engagements, foremost of which was a rare and prized Saturday night engagement with Dietrich Schmidt. He was ambitious and committed to the service of the SS. If she had ever had to ask him to choose between herself and his career, she knew she’d come second. She had to organise her life around him and his hours of duty. It wasn’t often that he was free on a Saturday night and now she was obliged to cancel.
It would be nice to think that someone as kind, thoughtful and as involved in the arts as Christiane would feel sympathy or a sense of injustice at the way Jews were being treated. But she hardly gave them a thought. Hitler’s racial policies had not reached her in her isolated little world. She was not unaware of the hatred some Germans felt for Jews, after all there was a limit to what her father could shield her from. But she was at a loss to know what the Jewish problem had to do with her. She’d had little contact with Jews. They had not attended her exclusive school and were forbidden from entering university. Undoubtedly she encountered Jews in the shops around Ring Strasse but the issue then was the purchase, not race or culture. She didn’t care who served her, Jew or Gentile. To Christiane the Jewish issue was one of inconvenience, like on her sixteenth birthday when her parents had taken her to see Rigoletto at the Opera House. Halfway through the performance, security police had walked out on stage and arrested the Jewish conductor, Fritz Busch. At that moment, though only briefly, she was on the side of the Jews. Couldn’t the police have waited until the performance was over?
Her father, who in every other way was a reasonable man, spoke disparagingly of the Jews on the few occasions the subject was raised. So Christiane, without evidence to the contrary, saw no reason to take issue with the prevailing sentiments which blamed the great depression, communism and all the accompanying ills of the world on Jewish greed and conspiracy. She fully subscribed to the Nazi-inspired portrait of the fat, cigar smoking Jew with the jewelled tiepin, and pockets bulging with money made from the sweat of honest, hard-working Germans, even though she’d never ever seen one. This is what she’d been taught as a child and in the League of German Girls, where they were instructed in comradeship, domestic duties, motherhood and who to hate.
Despite Christiane’s tearfilled protestations, they moved down to Little Pillnitz, as they jokingly referred to their country house, on the Friday afternoon. She moped about the house wondering what she would do to fill in the hours until the mobs had returned the streets to their inhabitants, and her father deemed it safe enough to return to Prager Strasse. Bed, it seemed, was the only alternative to boredom. Damn the Jews!
She woke up irritable on the Saturday morning and not even breakfast in bed could improve her mood. Her mother, Clara, tried to talk her around but soon gave up. Though she failed to see what Christiane saw in the young Untersturmführer beyond the obvious, she knew what her daughter was going through.
‘It’s just part of the game,’ she’d argued. ‘The game of being in love. You’re still too young to get serious with any young man. You’re a beautiful girl. You can have any man you want. Why tie yourself down?’ But Christiane had simply responded by pulling her bed covers over her head. Clara was a calm and patient woman but she was also smart enough to know when patience would not be rewarded. She left her daughter to sulk.
When Christiane finally came downstairs she went straight to the piano, and tried to lose herself in bittersweet melodies. But her sisters were making so much noise disputing the ownership of a pair of her shoes she’d given them that she couldn’t concentrate. She decided to tie some flies. If there was one thing that could distract her and block out everything else on her mind, it was tying flies.
Being the first born, Christiane knew she was supposed to have been a boy, a situation exacerbated by the succession of sisters that followed. So she stood in as substitute while her father awaited the arrival of a son, and during that time shared his hobbies and pursuits. Only one of his passions endured in the young girl: she adored fishing. By the time she was eight, she could tie flies better than her father and cast almost as well. She learned how to play the trout that inhabited the nearby streams and the salmon that ran in the Elbe so skilfully that, when they were finally netted, it was all they could do to excrete one final time.
What Christiane found particularly satisfying was the deceit of fishing. It was not easy to replicate nature so precisely that fish could be deceived. Fly-tying was an exacting art which required a dedicated hand. As a child she’d spent hours watching her father tie a single fly, patiently removing the herls from a feather quill, and trimming and shaping it so exactly that she could recognise the insect upon which it was modelled long before the fly was completed. The whole process fascinated her, and it wasn’t long before the apprentice was as skilled as her teacher. The precise nature of the art absorbed her to the point where she became oblivious to everything else. She was the last person in the household to hear the sound of tyres scrunching on wet gravel.
She heard her sisters rush to the door, grateful for the diversion. Christiane would have joined them but for the fact that her fly-tying was at its most delicate stage. Nevertheless, as she bound the strands of fox hair to the shaft of the tiny hook, she couldn’t help but listen for the voices which would identify their visitor. She knew it wouldn’t be Dietrich because he was still on duty until evening. Besides, although she had formally introduced him to her mother and father, her father had given no indication that he would be welcome at Little Pillnitz. The country house was her father’s sanctuary and he was very particular about who was invited to visit there. Yet for some reason she felt a tremor of excitement which went beyond the relief from boredom. Who could it be, she wondered? Who else could be mad enough to drive down on this bleak December day, through the mud and slush and suspicion of ice?
‘Uncle Gottfried!’ The shouts of delight from her sisters, Lisl and Jutta, brought a smile to her face. He was her favourite uncle and she sincerely believed that she was also his favourite niece. She heard his deep, resonant voice as he greeted her sisters and her brother, then the voices faded as they moved from the hallway. She decided she’d present him with a gift of the flies she had just tied. He was also a keen angler, though he maintained that Christiane’s flies were far too exquisite to waste on fish.
Though she loved her father dearly, there were times when she’d wished Uncle Gottfried was her father instead. Where caution and prudence marked every move her father made, her uncle was both fearless and passionate. She remembered how he’d plunged fully clothed into a freezing stream to grab a trout that had thrown the hook just as it was about to be netted. He’d missed the trout and broken his rod, but rather than get upset about it, he’d sat waist-deep in the icy waters and laughed his head off. Everything he did
was larger than life. He rode his horse faster than anyone else and never backed off no matter how high the hedge or wide the stream. His confidence and energy, like his courage, were boundless, qualities that had helped him rise through the ranks of the Reichswehr to Generalleutnant.
She hunted around and found a small box which had once housed one of her brother’s toy cars. She covered the bottom in cottonwool, making a bed which both protected the flies and showed them off in all their glory. Then she did what any beautiful twenty year old would do: she tidied her hair and clothes, and rubbed her cheeks to bring back the colour the cold and her inactivity had drained away. Now she was ready.
As she closed the door to her room, she heard the gramophone burst into song in the lounge room. Uncle Gottfried had obviously brought them some new jazz records from Berlin, and her sisters and brother had wasted no time giving them an airing. That meant her father and uncle would be in the study, for her father detested modern music. He thought it was decadent and worse, black man’s music. The door to the study was slightly ajar. She was about to knock discreetly before entering when she heard a voice she didn’t recognise. She hesitated. She peered through the tiny gap and saw a young officer sitting in the chair next to her uncle’s. She was immediately struck by his manner. He seemed to show no deference to either her uncle or her father, nor any respect for her father’s prized Scotch whisky. Uncertain whether or not to interrupt, she chose to wait and pick her moment. In the meantime, she was happy to eavesdrop.
‘So you witnessed the bombing of Guernica,’ she heard her father say. ‘How was it really? You are the first person I have met who was there. The foreign press have been very critical of the bombing of civilians, as you are no doubt aware. What do you say? Was it a great victory for our Condor Legion or an atrocity? You may speak bluntly, Captain.’