The Work I Did

by Brunhilde Pomsel

  It was all a bit ambivalent. But I didn’t feel it was all that serious. I was completely uninterested in those things. At the time I was a young girl in love – that was what mattered to me. And it’s all so long ago. I can’t see things from that perspective any more. That’s simply how it was in those days – you just slipped into it.

  Brunhilde Pomsel

  ‘HITLER WAS SIMPLY JUST A NEW MAN’: JOINING THE REICHSRUNDFUNK

  At the end of 1932 Brunhilde Pomsel is twenty-one years old, and under the laws of the time she has reached maturity.

  Berlin was a vibrant and open city, and had a lot to offer. Of course, that was only for people who had money. For the rich Jews. For the people who had money, there was a lot in Berlin. It was a city that had everything. It had things that people considered important at the time: theatre, concerts, a wonderful zoo. There were also lovely big cinemas too. There was always a film, then there was a film about culture as a B-feature and a stage show, often a solo singer and a man at the piano, or a dance revue, the Tiller Girls. There were lots of things like that. Everything people needed. What else could you want? There were very smart restaurants, expensive restaurants, and of course mortal feet never stepped inside them. I only found out a bit about that when I started at the radio station.

  But while Berlin might have been praised to the skies, it had always had its dark sides, and particularly then, after losing the First World War. Unemployed people on every corner, beggars, poor people. Anyone who lived in good areas, as I did, in a good suburb, didn’t see any of that. Of course there were particular areas swarming with poverty and wretchedness; you didn’t want to see things like that, you just looked away.

  Then in March 1933 the Nazis suddenly won the elections. I don’t know how my parents voted. I can barely remember how I voted. German National Party, I think. The colours were black, white and red. I always quite liked that as a flag. Even in childhood election Sundays were different from normal Sundays. There was an atmosphere with flags and posters and life all over Berlin. Election days were really fantastic. But it was about politics… So, we young people weren’t involved with it at all. And we weren’t influenced.

  A short time before, in January 1933, my boyfriend Heinz dragged me along to Potsdam, where Hindenburg, an old man by then, and Hitler shook hands. I didn’t even ask what that nonsense was all about. I didn’t even want to know. And he noticed how stupid I was, how uninterested in politics. I certainly wasn’t worthy of him. And he didn’t try to convert me either. The Party wasn’t an issue between us at all, and within the year we split up anyway.

  When Hitler was appointed Chancellor in January, the whole of Berlin was on its feet. The really mad ones made the pilgrimage to the Brandenburg Gate. And of course my boyfriend Heinz made the pilgrimage too. With me. All I remember is Hitler standing at the window of the Chancellery. People, people, people everywhere, roaring as they would at a football match these days. We roared along. And when you’d roared and cheered enough, the others jostled you out of the way, and then you were delighted to have witnessed a historical event. I was one of the ones who cheered. It’s true, and I admit it. Hitler was simply just a new man.

  But I certainly wasn’t enthusiastic. I could never get enthusiastic about that. Later, I tried to avoid gatherings like that if at all possible. I mostly managed to do that. I remember later, when I started working at the Reich Broadcasting Corporation, we always had to march to the Reich sports field or to Tempelhof airport, when Mussolini came and so on. Then we had to put in an appearance. There were certain people in the departments that you didn’t really trust – who whispered things to somebody or other if you didn’t join in. They kept a close eye on who didn’t come. But we weren’t stupid either. We went along nicely and marched along a little way. Then, when the big march began – I remember one time, it was a march to the Reich sports field – we had to meet in front of the broadcasting building. But our department had arranged to meet in a pub. Every five minutes or so one of us crept away from the march and went to drink a beer instead. Of twenty people, only two ever showed their faces on the sports field. But that was always a small risk. There were certain departments that were kept under particularly close surveillance. For example, the literature department of the Broadcasting Corporation.

  But immediately after Hitler’s accession, the mood was simply one of new hope. It was still a huge surprise that Hitler had done it. I think they were surprised themselves. But I was so uninterested at the time. For me, life just went on. I was still working for Dr Goldberg as well. Of course, I hadn’t told him that I had cheered Hitler on 30 January. I didn’t do that; I was still tactful enough not to do that to the poor Jew. Such things weren’t done. It was all a bit ambivalent. But I didn’t feel it was all that serious. I was completely uninterested in those things. At the time I was a young girl in love – that was what mattered to me. And it’s all so long ago. I can’t see things from that perspective any more. That’s simply how it was in those days – you just slipped into it.

  We weren’t all that aware of the Nazis’ parades and torchlight processions either. Südende was the rather smarter part of Steglitz. We didn’t know anything about the uprisings either in the 1920s or later, when things got going with Hitler. Everything was very nice and middle class. You found those things more in the parts of the city where the workers lived. Berlin Südende, where I lived, was a very smart part of town, and a few very well-off people lived there; there were a few very lovely villas and big houses where whole floors were rented out, and there were the shops and business people you would have expected. And there was a certain harmony there. I don’t think I saw a single procession in Südende. They just didn’t have things like that, and no one would have taken part. Certainly not there. And we didn’t go to other places. There were a lot of things in the paper, but it was all very peaceful where we were. We had a certain flair. Those riots were on the main street, on Steglitzer Strasse, and then there were Nazi processions. You got out pretty quickly. In fact it barely touched us. The fact that my brothers joined the Jungvolk and wore those brown shirts – well, that was just how it was.

  And then more and more SA were running around in the streets. They didn’t bother us, though; we didn’t give them so much as a thought. And there was also a Nazi Women’s League, although I was terrified that they would introduce a law that said we all had to join. There were rules about what you had to wear. BDM – Bund Deutscher Mädel – they had to wear blue pleated skirts. My whole circle thought they were dreadful. We wore tight skirts at the time: that was the fashion, and they were running about in this strange kind of clothes. That was really what worried me at the time. I managed to get out of joining the Nazi Women’s League. I can’t remember how I did that. There was no compulsion, but they did their best to drum up membership. I didn’t want to join a mass movement; I’ve always rejected that.

  But after Hitler came to power, all the rules and restrictions got going, and a lot of things changed very quickly. Suddenly there were a lot of regulations, including emergency regulations. But there was also a lot that was positive: they started building the Autobahn – that was a huge change, and it kept people off the street, because among those beggars and poor people there were a lot who were hanging around out of real poverty, not because they enjoyed bumming around and idling. They were unemployed, and had too little support for their families, most of which were growing. Wherever there were poor people they had fewer children than the rich people did. Overcoming the consequences of the First World War that had been imposed on us: Hitler got to grips with that very well at first.

  At the time, some young people felt that this was a liberation. My brothers could go and sit in a pub in the evening, which they had never done before. They joined the Hitler Youth and were with their peers away from home. They went wherever they felt like; they went on outings, away from their parents. At any rate there were so many things that were suddenly better. So that you just ha
d to say: my word, this is all fantastic.

  Then a little while later – I hadn’t quite finished doing Wulf Bley’s book with him, and immediately after the 1933 elections he was called to the Deutsches Theater as a dramatist. He suggested I came with him, and that was the beginning of my rise. Without the lucky chance of meeting Wulf Bley, my whole life would probably have taken a different course and I’d have ended up somewhere else as a secretary. And he said to me, ‘Well, your Jewish boss won’t be around for much longer. Don’t you fancy working for the Broadcasting Corporation? I’ll find something to dictate to you.’

  I still remember that he’d told me that before, in about Christmas 1932: ‘So, these National Socialists – another election and they’ll have done it.’ And if they’d done it, he would be sorted out for the rest of his life. And that was what happened. He had belonged to the Party even before. Not even the clever Nazis knew that a completely fake, completely unartistic person was being given a job in the Deutsches Theater. But he got the job shortly after Hitler’s seizure of power.

  They were just rehearsing their first big theatrical performance at the time: Wilhelm Tell, with Heinrich George1 as Gessler and Attila Hörbiger2 as Tell. I sat around in the theatre and had nothing to do at first. Every now and again he would dictate some letters to me. But he valued me so much that he always paid me a slightly bigger salary. I was glad of that, and I enjoyed it. Particularly when the secretary – the theatre secretary, one Fräulein von Blankenstein – allowed me to visit her in her office. On one wall she had portraits of all the actors hanging up with a dedication. One of the greatest things was when I was having a conversation with her and the door opened, and who comes in? The actor Attila Hörbiger, who was every girl’s heart-throb at the time. He took out a cigarette case and offered me a cigarette, which I smoked, trembling. Those were experiences that I regaled the dinner table with in the evening.

  A few months later Herr Bley told me he was going to negotiate with the Broadcasting Corporation, and he asked me if I would be interested in taking a job there. He could bring his secretary, but he wanted her to be paid by the Broadcasting Corporation, rather than paying her himself. He wanted to get me a contract with the Broadcasting Corporation. That’s great, I thought, with such a big company. What an opportunity! So I was very happy to say yes.

  A short time later he said to me: ‘It looks like it’s working; it looks like it’s working. With you too. I think we can bank on it.’ We were still going to the Deutsches Theater, where he still had his job as dramatist.

  Then he said a little while later: ‘You are in the Party, aren’t you?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m not in the Party.’ ‘Hmmm,’ he said. ‘It would be a good idea to join, for a company like this.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘then I’ll join.’ ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if it’s open for membership at the moment.’

  At that point the Party was the Party, and the whole world wanted to be a member. Because everyone assumed that this would be the big man who was going to be on the side of the little people. This had been their message before, so it was a good idea to belong to the Party. And I thought I’d join too, as he said it meant I could work for the Broadcasting Corporation. And then I told them at home, ‘I’m going to join the Party, for this or that reason.’ Well, my parents didn’t care either way – ‘Do what you like.’

  And that same afternoon my Jewish friend Eva Löwenthal paid me a visit, and we were going for coffee. That actually meant taking Eva out for coffee, because we all knew she had no money. If you said, ‘Let’s go for a coffee’, it meant ‘I’m taking you out for coffee.’ So I said: ‘Eva, we can’t today – I have to join the Party very quickly!’ Because the Party always opened up, let a few hundred or thousand people in, and then closed again. They couldn’t keep up with making the membership cards, so people had to queue up again until it was their turn with the next recruitment drive.

  ‘Yes,’ Eva said, ‘I’ll come with you.’ Eva and I went together to the local group in Südende. There was an NSDAP there, and at least a hundred people were standing outside. They all wanted to join the Party because they thought it would be closed again on the first of the month, and it was a good idea to be in.

  I had to join the queue. While she waited, Eva sat on a wall. And it all happened very quickly; it was very well organised. You went in and you had to sign something. The monthly fee was supposed to be two marks – that was painful, that was a very big sum. But even more painful was the fact that I had to pay a ten-mark joining fee. That was harsh. That was my whole kitty. It meant going for coffee was out of the question. Ten marks was a lot of money at the time.

  But I signed anyway, because I thought that if things worked out with the Broadcasting Corporation, I’d forget the ten marks very soon. And things did work out, so I joined the Party. Later, if anyone asked me, ‘Are you in the Party?’ I said, ‘Yes, I’m in the Party.’ But otherwise no one actually asked me. And later, when I was working in the Ministry of Propaganda, no one asked me at all. I don’t even know if they were all in the Party. So that was an over-hasty move on my part, but it didn’t do me any harm either.

  Then, after a few weeks, I got a letter from the local group and a proper membership card: member of the NSDAP since such and such a date. Then I got another letter, because, they said at the time, as a member of the Party you had to do something for the Party. You had to take part in street collections, and they had a few suggestions. Then I thought: let’s wait for a while. There were street collections all the time, the tins were always rattling for all kinds of things. I didn’t yet feel that I was affected. But then I got a letter telling me to report to the local group.

  So I went along and they made it quite clear to me that I was now a member of the Party and I hadn’t yet done anything for the Party. ‘Right, what am I supposed to do?’ I asked. ‘What do you do for a living?’ ‘I work for the Broadcasting Corporation.’ Right, they said, then I could write for them in the Party office. At six in the evening when the shops were just closed, they had a bit of mail to sort out and needed someone to write.

  So I no longer had an excuse, and had to type out pointless things. Then I phoned them and came up with some excuses. I can’t come: we’ve got a programme this evening and I have to be there. They believed me. The next week I had a different excuse until in the end they said they were no longer interested in me working for them since they couldn’t rely on me. After that they finally left me in peace. But they kept asking me to do street collections for orphans and the poor, which I thought was awful.

  I remember one of the collections particularly clearly. It was a very big collection day in winter. The chocolate firm Sarotti – the one with the little Sarotti Moor, a sweet little dwarf in a striped uniform and with a black face – supported the collection. Sarotti chocolate was the best chocolate there was at the time. The company made the uniform available to the Broadcasting Corporation. Someone had said it would be a good thing if the collector showed a bit of imagination and dressed themselves up as fairy-tale characters, and this was in the middle of winter. And then the uniform came to our department, and everyone said, ‘Pomseline, you put it on.’ And it was the right size for me. It was really made for a small person like me. Out of fabulous fabric. All silk, an expensive, delightful uniform. Great astonishment on the part of the others, so they said, ‘You’ve got to go with your collecting tin to the winter relief collection dressed as the Sarotti Moor.’

  And that was what happened. All the famous actors were around, collecting. And people flocked there, just to see the actors, and the politicians and a little Sarotti as well. I was assigned to the Finance Minister of the time. He gave a speech, and I swung the tin and danced around him. And of course I had a huge audience. It was all on Unter den Linden and it also spread to the Tierpark and the Tiergarten. But the main part of it was of course in front of the Stadtschloss and the Reichstag. And I danced around until it was dark, until the collecting was all over an
d we’d handed over our money, and then we could go home. I remember my mother putting me in the bathtub and trying to get all the brown make-up off me.

  Meanwhile Herr Bley had taken up his new job in the Broadcasting Corporation, as head of the board of directors. And I got a lovely room of my own, with another office next to it. It was full of offices, that beautiful, elegant building. It was a sensation at the time – because the building was very modern, with its clinker bricks and its shape.

  At first I didn’t have much to do. There was a lovely canteen in the building. The other ladies invited me for dinner. There was a wonderful roof garden upstairs, where dinner was served by the canteen staff as well. Working there, I met a few girls with whom I would be friends for a long time, until they all died. Some friendships from my time at the Broadcasting Corporation run through my whole life. One of them is even still alive. She’s a year older than me.