A Woman in Berlin : Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary

by Marta Hillers

  THURSDAY, 14 JUNE 1945

  And once again the walking machine was back in Charlottenburg. If only our firm were already in operation and I had my Group II ration card, with 500 grams of bread per day so that I could save a little of it for the evening. As it is I sacrifice all six of the rye rolls I get every morning for breakfast. That is to say, I pack two with me and eat them at the two breaks I allow myself; otherwise I’d give out. Despite my ‘frying’ them in coffee substitute, the rancid-tasting potatoes are difficult to get down. I should pick them over again; the little pile is melting away at an alarming rate.

  Dozens of telephones were lining the hallway outside the engineer’s apartment. They’re being collected from everywhere, supposedly for the Russians. Berlin without phones! Looks like we’ll go back to being cavemen.

  The evening brought a nice surprise. I finally procured my ration of fat for the past twenty days at the corner shop - 20 times 7 equals 140 grams of sunflower oil. Reverently I carried back home the little bottle I’d been toting around all week in vain. Now my apartment smells like a Moscow stolovaya- one of those cafeterias for ordinary people.

  FRIDAY, 15 JUNE 1945

  I went down very early to get my six daily rolls. They’re dark and wet-we never had anything like them before. I no longer dare buy a whole loaf, because I’d eat up the next day’s portion.

  Today we broke into my old employer’s basement. The Hungarian, the engineer and I slipped in through the back, through the laundry room. We had managed to prise open the crate, which was standing untouched in the shed, when the wife of the company’s representative appeared on the basement stairs. They’re still living in the building. I mumbled something about having left some files and papers lying around. The men hid behind the crate. Then we broke off the frames, tore out the pictures - photographs signed by young men decorated with the Knight’s Cross - and stacked the glass panes; we had brought some packing paper and string with us. After that we were able to make our getaway through the back entrance. I don’t really care if they notice the loss; after all, I lost my camera and all my equipment, which I had left at work at my boss’s request, when the place was destroyed by a bomb. What are a few panes of glass compared with that? We absconded with our loot as fast as we could, each of us lugging a heavy stack of glass to my place where the men had parked our two valuable company bicycles. I was given four panes as commission. I could have glazed one whole window in my attic apartment - if I’d had any putty.

  In the evening I read some of the rather random selection of books belonging to the apartment’s rightful tenant. I found a copy of Tolstoy’s Polikushka and read that for the umpteenth time. Then I ploughed through a collection of plays by Aeschylus, and came across The Persians, which, with its lamentations of the vanquished, seems well suited to our defeat. But in reality it’s not. Our German calamity has a bitter taste - of repulsion, sickness, insanity, unlike anything in history. The radio just broadcast another concentration camp report. The most horrific thing is the order and the thrift: millions of human beings as fertilizer, mattress-stuffing, soft soap, felt mats - Aeschylus never saw anything like that.

  FROM SATURDAY, 16 JUNE TO FRIDAY, 22 JUNE 1945

  I haven’t been writing. And I won’t be either- that time is over. It was around 5p.m. on Saturday when the doorbell rang. The widow, I thought to myself. But it was Gerd, in civilian dress, suntanned, his hair lighter than ever. For a long time neither of us said a thing; we just stared at each other in the dim hallway like two ghosts.

  ‘Where have you come from? Have you been discharged?’

  ‘No, I just sneaked off. But now would you let me in?’ He was dragging a sled behind him, mounted on small wheels and loaded with a trunk and a sack.

  I was feverish with joy. No, Gerd wasn’t coming from the Western Front. His anti-aircraft unit had been shipped out to the east at the last minute. After an enemy shell hit their position three of them went off and parked themselves in an abandoned villa, where they found suits, shoes, a bale of tobacco and sufficient food. The situation got dicey though, when the local authorities, a mixture of Russians and Poles, started going through the houses. The three joined a group of Berlin evacuees and marched home with them. Gerd knew my current address from the red-bordered field-post he received about my apartment being hit. Of course, he fully expected to find my new lodgings destroyed as well and me who-knows-where. He’s amazed I’m here and in one piece. When I told him about my starvation rations he shook his head and claimed that from here on in he’d take care of getting what was needed. He had some potatoes in his sack, in perfect condition, and a piece of bacon. I started cooking it immediately, and invited the widow to join us. She knows Gerd from my stories, greeted him with an effusive hug, even though she’d never seen him before, and in her torrent of words was soon showing him her thumb-and-finger trick: ‘Ukrainian woman - like this. You -like this.’

  I could see that Gerd was taken aback. With every sentence he grew colder, pretended to be tired. We tiptoed around each other and were sparing with any words of affection. It’s bad that Gerd doesn’t have anything to smoke. He had expected a flourishing black market like Berlin of old.

  After the unaccustomed rich food I felt flustered and highspirited. But in the night I found myself cold as ice in Gerd’s arms and was glad when he left off. For him I’ve been spoiled once and for all.

  Disrupted days, restless nights. All sorts of people who were on the march with Gerd came by, and that led to constant friction. He wanted the guests to be fed. I wanted to save as much bacon and potatoes as I could for the two of us. If I sat there and didn’t speak he yelled at me. If I was in a good mood and told stories about our experiences over the past few weeks, then he really got angry. Gerd: ‘You’ve all turned into a bunch of shameless bitches, every one of you in the building. Don’t you realize?’ He grimaced in disgust. ‘It’s horrible being around you. You’ve lost all sense of measure.’

  What was I supposed to say to that? I crawled off in a comer to sulk. I couldn’t cry, it all seemed so senseless to me, so stupid.

  Do you remember, Gerd? It was a Tuesday towards the end of August 1939, around ten in the morning. You called me at work and asked me to take the rest of the day off, to go on an outing with you. I was puzzled and asked why, what for. You mumbled something about having to leave and again insisted, ‘Come, please tome.’

  So we went out to the Mark and roamed through the piney woods in the middle of a working day. It was hot. One could smell the resin. We wandered around a lake in the woods and carne across whole clouds of butterflies. You identified them by name: common blues, brimstones, coppers, peacocks, swallowtails, and a whole gamut of others. One huge butterfly was sunning itself in the middle of the path, quivering slightly without spread wings. You called it a mourning cloak- velvet brown with yellow and blue seams. And a little later, when we were resting on a tree trunk and you were playing with my fingers, so quietly, I asked you: ‘Do you have a draft notice in your pocket?’ You said, ‘Not in my pocket.’ But you had received it that morning, and we sensed it meant war. We spent the night in a remote forest inn. Three days later you were gone, and the war was here. We have both survived it. But is that a good thing for us?

  I gave Gerd my diaries. (There are three notebooks full.) He sat down with them for a while and then returned them to me, saying he couldn’t find his way through my scribbling and the notes stuck inside with all the shorthand and abbreviations.

  ‘For example, what’s that supposed to mean?’ he asked, pointing to ‘Schdg’.

  I had to laugh. ‘Schdndung,’ of course - rape. He looked at me as if I were out of my mind, but said nothing more.

  Yesterday he left again. He decided to go off with one of his anti-aircraft buddies, to visit that man’s parents in Pomerania. He said he’ll bring back some food. I don’t know if he’s coming back at all. It’s bad, but I feel relieved. I couldn’t bear his constant craving for alcohol and tobacco. />
  What else? Our publishing plans are stalled. We’re waiting for an official reply. The Hungarian is showing the first signs of growing tired. Lately he’s been talking about a political cabaret that absolutely ought to be started up right now. Nonetheless we continue working diligently on our programme and do what we can to combat our general sense of paralysis. I’m convinced that other little groups of people are starting to move here and there, but in this city of islands we know nothing about each other.

  Politically things are slowly beginning to happen. The emigres who came back from Moscow are making themselves felt; they have all the key positions. You can’t tell much from the newspapers, assuming you can even find one. I usually read the Rundschau on the board next to the cinema, where it’s stuck up with drawing pins for the general public. Our local district administration has a curious programme - apparently they’re trying to distance themselves from the Soviet economic system, they call themselves democratic and are endeavouring to get all ‘anti-fascists’ to come together.

  For a week now it’s been rumoured that the southern parts of Berlin will be occupied by the Americans, and the western parts by the English. The widow, duly illuminated by Herr Pauli, thinks that an economic upswing is near at hand. I don’t know; I’m afraid it won’t matter much which of the Allies will be in charge, now that the victors have embraced so warmly at the Ethe. We’ll wait and see. I’m not so easily shaken any more.

  Sometimes I wonder why I’m not suffering more because of the rift with Gerd, who used to mean everything to me. Maybe hunger always dulls emotions. I have so much to do. I have to find a flint lighter for the stove; the matches are all gone. I have to mop up the rain puddles in the apartment. The roof is leaking again; they merely patched it up with a few old boards. I have to run around and look for some greens along the street kerbs, and queue for groats. I don’t have feeding time for my soul.

  Yesterday I experienced something comic: a cart stopped outside our house, with an old horse in front, nothing but skin and bones. Four-year-old Lutz Lehmann came walking up holding his mother’s hand, stopped beside the cart and asked, in a dreamy voice, ‘Mutti, can we eat the horse?’

  God knows what we’ll all end up eating. I think I’m far from any life-threatening extreme, but I don’t really know how far. I only know that I want to survive - against all sense and reason, just like an animal.

  Does Gerd still think of me?

  Maybe we’ll find our way back to each other yet.

  AFTERWORD BY THE GERMAN EDITOR

  It is perhaps no accident that an extraordinary work like A Woman in Berlin had a history that is no less amazing; first published in 1953, the book disappeared from view, lingering in obscurity for decades before it slowly re-emerged, was reissued, and then became an international phenomenon - a full half-century after it was written. While we cannot know whether the author kept the diary with eventual publication in mind, its clear that the ‘private scribblings’ she jotted down in three notebooks (and on a few hastily added slips of paper) served primarily to help her maintain a remnant of sanity in a world of havoc and moral breakdown. The earliest entries were literally notes from the underground, recorded in a basement where the author sought shelter from air raids, artillery fire, looters - and ultimately rape by the victorious Russians. With nothing but a pencil stub, writing by candlelight since Berlin had no electricity, she recorded her observations. Months later, when a more permanent order was restored, she was able to copy and edit her notes, on 121 pages of grey war-issue paper.

  The author chose to remain anonymous, and I feel bound to respect her wish, responsible as I am for the reissue of her text. What may be said, however, is that the woman who wrote this book was not an amateur but an experienced journalist. This is made clear in the diary itself when the author alludes to several trips abroad as a roving reporter. On one occasion, she actually travelled to the Soviet Union, where she picked up a basic knowledge of Russian. We may surmise that she continued working for a publishing firm or for various periodicals after Hitler came to power: up until 1943-44 a number of magazines managed to avoid direct involvement in the relentless propaganda demanded by Joseph Goebbels.

  It is likely that through her professional contacts the author met Kurt W. Marek, a journalist and critic who facilitated publication of the diary. An editor at one of the first newspapers to appear in the new German state, he went on to work for Rowohlt, a major Hamburg publishing house. It was to Marek that the author entrusted her manuscript, taking care to change the names of people in the book and eliminate certain revealing details. In 1954 Marek succeeded in placing the book with a publisher in the United States, where he had settled. Thus A Woman in Berlin first appeared in English, and then in Norwegian, Italian, Danish, Japanese, Spanish, French and Finnish.

  It took five more years for the German original to find a publisher and, even then, Kossodo was not in Germany but in Switzerland. But German readers were obviously not ready to face some uncomfortable truths, and the book was met with hostility and silence. One of the few critics who reviewed it complained about what he called the author’s “shameless immorality.” German women were not supposed to talk about the reality of rape; and German men preferred not to be seen as impotent onlookers when the victorious Russians claimed their spoils of war. The author’s attitude was an aggravating factor: devoid of self-pity, with a clear-eyed view of her compatriots’ behavior before and after the Nazi regime’s collapse, everything she wrote flew in the face of the reigning post -war complacency and amnesia. No wonder then that the book was quickly relegated to obscurity.

  By the seventies, the political climate in Germany had become more receptive and photocopies of the text, which had long been out of print, began to circulate in Berlin. They were read by the radical students of 1968 and taken up by the burgeoning women’s movement. By 1985 when I started my own publishing venture, I thought it was high time to reprint A Woman in Berlin, but the project turned out to be fraught with difficulty. The anonymous author could not be traced, the original publisher had disappeared, and it was not clear who held the copyright. Kurt Marek had died in 1971. On a hunch, I contacted his widow, Hannelore, who knew the identity of the author. She also knew that the diarist did not wish to see her book reprinted in Germany while she was alive - an understandable reaction given the dismal way it was originally received.

  In 2001, Ms Marek told me that the author had died and her book could now reappear. By then, Germany and Europe had undergone fundamental changes and all manner of repressed memories were re-emerging. It was now possible to raise issues that had long been taboo. Subjects like the widespread collaboration in France, the Netherlands, and elsewhere; anti-Semitism in Poland; the saturation bombing of civilian populations; ethnic cleansing in post-war Europe - which for many years had been dwarfed by the German act of genocide - were now legitimate areas of inquiry. These are, of course, complex and morally ambiguous topics, easily exploited by revisionists of all stripes; nonetheless, they belong on the historical agenda and deserve level-headed discussion. And it is in this context that A Woman in Berlin ought to be read.

  Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Eichhorn