Two Brothers: A Novel
Page 55
She was in the process of performing this self-appointed task on the morning she died, suffering a heart attack as she stepped out of her car. Falling to her knees on the pavement, she slumped slowly forward until her face was on the stones, her mouth open and her tongue lolling out. A concerned crowd quickly gathered round and a young man stooped down to ask if he could help her.
‘You’re too late,’ Dagmar whispered to the paving stones as the breath of life left her body. ‘Seventy years too late.’
Afterword
Biographical Reflections
THIS STORY IS entirely a work of fiction, but it is inspired in part by a circumstance of my family history.
My father was a Hitler refugee. He was born Ludwig Ehrenberg in Germany into a secular family of Jewish descent. He came to Britain via Czechoslovakia in 1939 with his parents Eva and Victor and his older brother Gottfried. The great kindness of various individuals in Britain ensured the family’s survival, as did the help of a small charity established in 1933 by British academics and scientists. The charity, now called the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics (CARA), still exists today.
Gottfried enlisted in the British Army in 1943, when, like the Stengel brother in my story, he was advised to anglicize his name in case of capture by the Germans. He became Geoffrey Elton and my father followed suit, changing his name to Lewis Elton. My grandparents remained Ehrenbergs until their deaths in London in the seventies.
Gottfried and Ludwig had a cousin, Heinz. Like the brother in my story, Heinz was adopted and, to use the Nazis’ own term, of pure ‘Aryan’ blood. When his parents Paul and Clara Ehrenberg escaped Germany, Heinz elected to stay in order to farm the land his parents had acquired for him.
Heinz was soon drafted into the Wehrmacht and, like the Stengel brother in my story, was part of the army stationed on the Channel coast in 1940 in preparation for Hitler’s planned invasion of Britain. Heinz also served in Italy; after the war, the family discovered that he and Geoffrey had come quite close to each other while fighting there on opposite sides.
Like the fictitious Paulus and Otto, my father and uncle experienced the segregation of school classrooms. They, too, were insulted by Nazi teachers and witnessed the confusion of the so-called Mischling. My father’s best friend was half Jewish and, on being given a choice, bravely elected to sit with the Jews.
In the story, Paulus and Otto’s grandfather had won an Iron Cross in the First World War. My grandfather Victor also served in the Kaiser’s army and won the Iron cross in 1914. He fought in the trenches throughout the war, and my children have the piece of shrapnel that was dug from his leg in 1917. Like the fictitious Taubers, my grandparents loved the country of their birth very much and saw themselves as both Germans and Jews. When the family emigrated to England, my grandfather secretly brought his Iron Cross with him. On discovering this in 1940, my grandmother buried it in the back garden of the lodging house in which they were staying, where it has no doubt long since rusted away.
Like the Stengel boy in my story, my Uncle Geoffrey ended up with the Army Intelligence Corps as an interpreter. Geoffrey achieved the rank of Sergeant and throughout his life retained a deep affection for the British army. Indeed, it was said in the family that the army truly made him an Englishman. In 1989, when Blackadder Goes Forth was broadcast, Uncle Geoffrey was at first most unhappy at what he considered to be an insulting portrayal of the army; he later took the view that the satire was drawn with great respect.
Although my father’s family were more fortunate than some in terms of the number of members who were able to escape the Holocaust, many of course did not. Lisbeth, my grandmother’s beloved sister, for instance, died like the fictitious Frieda, having volunteered to accompany a group of Jewish children being transported east. Lisbeth was shot along with her young charges immediately on arrival in Lithuania in 1941.
An incident which I had hoped to include in my fictional narrative but could eventually find no place for concerned my Uncle Heinz and the death of my great-grandmother. In October 1941, she was still living in her home town of Kassel when the German authorities began a final round-up of Jews there.
Her grandson Heinz very bravely visited the Kassel Gestapo in his army uniform and asked that his adoptive grandmother, who was close to death, be allowed to die in her bed. ‘Lassen Die mir die alte Judin in Ruhe,’ was his appeal. ‘Let that old Jewess alone.’ Perhaps his appeal was successful, because Emilie Ehrenberg did die in her bed soon after. She was spared the nightmare of transportation in a cattle truck to a death camp, but not that of having seen the country in which she was born in 1859 descend into insanity and barbarity without parallel.
Like Wolfgang Stengel, my family also had some experience of the pre-Holocaust SA concentration camps of the 1930s. My grandfather’s other brother, Hans, was a Christian pastor, having been converted while he was a student. He was sent to Sachsenhausen Camp, where his good friend Reverend Martin Niemoller, the great anti-Nazi cleric and author of First They Came …, was also an inmate. Hans was eventually released, due largely to the efforts of the Bishop of Chichester.
He came to England, where, like the brother in my story, he was interned as an enemy alien, although, also like him, he did not resent it. Great-Uncle Hans returned to Germany after the war in an effort to continue his ministry, but my father and his family were happy in Britain, grateful for the safe haven and the opportunities this great country afforded. Having arrived as penniless refugees, they eventually prospered and made their mark. Both my father and my uncle married English girls and both became professors. My father held chairs in Physics and later in Higher Education, and in 2005 was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Times Higher Education Awards.
My uncle became a historian and Regius Professor of English Constitutional History at Cambridge. In 1986 he was knighted for his services to the study of history.
Geoffrey died in 1994, but at the time of writing my Uncle Heinz and my father are still alive; they still correspond and met quite recently. Heinz has even met my Australian wife, Sophie – at Geoffrey’s funeral, in fact, making a connection that spans time, distance and history. I myself have been to Germany many times, where my plays are sometimes performed and also as director of the musical We Will Rock You. I have made true and lasting friendships there and have nothing but happy memories of the country of my father’s birth.
Ben Elton, May 2012
About the Author
Ben Elton is one our most provocative and entertaining writers, author of thirteen internationally bestselling novels. His multi-award-winning TV credits include The Young Ones, Blackadder and The Thin Blue Line. His stage hits include the Olivier Award winner Popcorn and the global phenomenon We Will Rock You.
He met his wife Sophie in 1986 while touring Australia as a stand-up comedian. They have three children and call both Britain and Australia home.
Also by Ben Elton
Stark
Gridlock
This Other Eden
Popcorn
Blast from the Past
Inconceivable
Dead Famous
High Society
Past Mortem
The First Casualty
Chart Throb
Blind Faith
Meltdown
TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA
A Random House Group Company
www.transworldbooks.co.uk
TWO BROTHERS
A BANTAM PRESS BOOK: 9780593062050
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN: 9781409080497
First published in Great Britain
in 2012 by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © Ben Elton 2012
Ben Elton has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any res
emblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
A CIP catalogue for this book
is available from the British Library.
Addresses for Random House Group Ltd companies outside the UK can be found
at:
www.randomhouse.co.uk
The Random House Group Ltd Reg. No. 954009
Table of Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
The Girl on the Cart: Berlin, 1920
Tea and Biscuits: London, 1956
Twins: Berlin, 1920
Another Baby: Munich, 1920
An Operation is Cancelled: Berlin, 1920
A Whimper and a Scream: Berlin, 1920
A Proposal: London, 1956
Brand New Model: Berlin, 1921
Rhinemaiden: Berlin, 1922
District and Circle Line: London, 1956
Money Gone Mad: Berlin, 1923
Young Entrepreneurs: Berlin, 1923
Funny Money: Berlin, 1923
Renewed Acquaintance: Berlin, 1923
A New Job: Berlin, 1923
Hot Hot Hot!: Berlin, 1923
St John’s Wood: London, 1956
Too Much Jazz: Berlin, 1923
A Screaming Three-year-old: Munich, 1923
Modern Jazz: London, 1956
A Very Proper Little Girl: Berlin, 1926
The Saturday Club: Berlin, 1926–28
Two Parties and a Crash: Munich, Berlin and New York, 1929
Fighting over Dagmar: Berlin, 1932
That Man: Berlin, 30 January 1933
The Penny Dropped: London, 1956
Final Match: Berlin, 1933
Thirteenth Birthdays: Munich and Berlin, 1933
Visitors to the Surgery: Berlin, 1933
Hope Lost: London, 1956
Opening up Shop: Berlin, 1 April 1933
The Banks of the Red Sea: Berlin, 1 April 1933
A Quiet Day at the Store: Berlin, 1933
Law Student: London, 1956
A Party Is Announced: Berlin, August 1933
The Fischers Throw a Party: Berlin, 1933
Auf Wiedersehen: Berlin, 1933
Further Briefings: London, 1956
A Friendly Nazi: Berlin, 1934
Unfriendly Nazi: Berlin, 1934
Party Interrupted: Bad Wiessee, 1934
Aryan-free Zone: Berlin, 1935
Beached Dolphin: Berlin, 1935
New Laws: Berlin and Nuremberg, 1935
Romantic Gesture: Berlin, 1935
The Adopted Son: Berlin, 1935
Family Trees: Berlin, 1935
A Country Excursion: Saxony, September 1935
Blood Family: Saxony, 1935
Fate Sealed: Berlin, 1935
A Spontaneous Drink: London, 1956
Into Exile: Berlin, 1935
Making Contact: Berlin, 1936
Weekly Visits: Berlin, 1936
Rejected on Grounds of Race: London, 1956
Personal Sacrifices: Berlin, 1936
On the Embankment: London, 1956
Reichssportfeld, Grunewald: Berlin, 1 August 1936
A Holiday in Munich: 1937
Frieda’s Other Children: Berlin, 1938
English Conversations: Berlin, 1938
The Night of the Broken Glass: Berlin, November 1938
Rain on the Beach: Lake Wannsee, November 1938
The Last Meeting of the Saturday Club: Berlin, February 1939
The Morning After: The German–Dutch Border, 1939
Early Breakfast: London, 1956
From Untermensch to Superman: Berlin, 1940
A Marriage is Discussed: Berlin, 1940
Final Briefing: London, 1956
Mixed Marriage: Berlin, 1940
Old Friends: Berlin, 1956
Further English Conversation: Berlin, 1940
Recognized: Calais, 1940
The People’s Park: Berlin, 1956
German Hero: Berlin and Russia, December 1941 and January 1942
Park Bench: Berlin, 1956
The Jewish Hospital: Berlin, 1943
Continued Conversation in the Park: Berlin, 1956
Jew Catcher: Berlin, 1945
Between Rapunzel and Little Red Riding Hood: Berlin, 1956
Two Women: Berlin, 1945
In the Garden of Innocence: Berlin, 1956
Girl on a Pavement: London and Berlin, 1989 and 2003
Afterword: Biographical Reflections
About the Author
Also by Ben Elton
Copyright