Cold Angel: Murder in Berlin 1949

by Horst Bosetzky

  “You want us to visit each one? Maybe he also took the streetcar and took her somewhere else…” He pointed to the number 77, right behind them, ringing its bell. “Lichterfelde West-Goezerallee… Down Kaiserallee, Steglitz… Beautiful places for beautiful women.”

  “Nonsense!” Gerda Seidelmann didn’t believe her brother had a secret love nest. “Hermann wouldn’t have dropped everything he had built up so painfully and blow it all for that.”

  “You don’t know about these things.” He told her of his experience and what he had read and what he’d been told about ‘how men go crazy’. “As soon as a woman appears…”

  “He doesn’t take her to bed immediately. First he takes her for a drink.” Gerda insisted that they go and ask about Hermann in the cafes and bars nearby. So they started down the avenue; despite the ruins and the ration cards and the absence of lights and stars the Kudamm was still alive and enticing. It was a promise that would not die: come in and feel the intoxication, champagne is flowing. Even a person as down to earth as Hannes Seidelmann could feel the pull and soon he felt as if he were living in a film. He was Paul Kemp in Amphitryon, Willi Forst in Bel Ami or Willi Fritsch in The Guys at the Gas Pump. He completed his thought. “You feel you’re on a cloud…”

  But no one remembered a man by the name of Hermann Seidelmann from Saxony. They were told to try the Casablanca bar in Augsburgerstrasse. “If you want to please a girl, you take her there.”

  As they made their way up the street they felt more and more out of place; in this neighborhood many of the grand houses dating from the nineteenth century industrial boom still stood and it was all very high bourgeois even if the huge mansions had most probably been divided into smaller apartments and rented out. Still, it wasn’t their kind of neighborhood. And people looked at them suspiciously, as if they were a pair of crooks staking out the place. Or was it their imagination? Hannes Seidelmann didn’t know. In any case he found it very difficult to knock at the heavy wooden door of the bar Casablanca. At this early hour it wasn’t even open. After a while a sullen employee, probably the bartender, condescended to open the door just a bit: “What, the Kripo again?”

  Hannes Seidelmann thought quickly: would it be illegal if he didn’t deny being from the police and just pretended not to have heard? It wouldn’t. So he didn’t answer and, without a word, showed the bartender the photo of his brother.

  “Was this man here…” The bartender patted his bald head with the flat of his hand. “Yes, just yesterday, with a pretty woman.”

  The answer had been so spontaneous that brother and sister didn’t doubt it for a second. They heard what they wanted to hear: their brother was still alive. “I was afraid something had happened to him,” Gerda said and Hannes added: “You’ll laugh and so will I. You see, bad seed never dies.” They returned to Moabit relieved and prepared some herb tea.

  As they were sitting down the phone rang. Hannes was one of the few people of his kind in Berlin to have a phone, the reason being of course that he was a long distance technical secretary at the Post Office, he got it “right from the source” so to speak. It was the Missing Persons’ Bureau. Could they please come to the East Berlin morgue on Hannoverstrasse?

  “Has my brother been found? Is he…?”

  “I don’t know. We have parts of a body that seem to belong to an adult male and we are informing all the people who declared someone missing.”

  “Oh, I see…” Hannes Seidelmann felt relieved.

  Again they put on their coats and went out. It was no joke to have to travel across the ruined landscape of Berlin in the cold and dark of a December evening, it was more like a dangerous journey. They took the number 21 to Invalidenstrasse and caught the number 44 which they rode all the way to the last stop, Sandkrug bridge. From there it was only a few hundred meters on foot. But what a neighborhood! If you wanted to know how it felt being scared, that was the place to go. They didn’t talk much. There was nothing to say.

  On Hannoverschen strasse they were met by a thin and extremely sullen man who led them through a labyrinth of stairs and corridors. It was just routine. Finally there it was. “Don’t be scared,” the thin man said looking precisely as if he would enjoy seeing them scared. On a metal slab there was a white sheet and something underneath the sheet: the body parts that they had come to see, evidently.

  “Look out!” cried the thin man as he pulled the sheet away like a magician performing a trick, like pulling off a tablecloth without upsetting the glasses and the plates. “What we have here are two shin bones with feet, one thigh and a left arm. The rest is missing… Now see if that’s your brother or not.”

  Gerda Seidelmann buried her face in her hands, broke out in tears and fled the room, she was going to be sick.

  Hannes too felt something well up in his throat but he managed to stay in the room. It was awful to think that these … that this was… He wanted to fix his eyes on the sheet or on the window or on the faucet but he couldn’t. It was as if some powerful force drew him to the body parts. He was transfixed by the ghoulish spectacle. Such a thing couldn’t be, it couldn’t be real, you had to be insane to imagine this kind of stuff, that was the reason people got locked up in asylums, “Doctor, I keep seeing my brother cut up in little pieces on a table in front of me, neatly sliced.”

  The thin man was getting impatient. “Well…?”

  Hannes staggered back and had to hold on to something. The color of the skin was right… a little pale…the dark body hair too… Everything seemed to indicate that the arm and the thigh belonged to Hermann, were Hermann. But he would not accept it. Impossible. He felt that if he admitted that the body parts were his brother’s then his brother would really be dead. So, even though he knew better, he said no, he couldn’t indentify anything. “Whoever this is, he’s not my brother.” Then his sister Gerda came back into the room, behind him; she had recovered and she said in a totally deadpan voice: “On the contrary, that’s him. He’d just had his corns operated on… here on his left foot he still has a bandage.”

  4.

  Elisabeth Kusian stayed in the operating room to clean up a bit. She was alone with the dead woman’s body still illuminated by the lamps over the operating table, like an actress in front of the cameras. Once again, the doctors’ best efforts had failed. The cancer in the uterus had been too advanced. She leaned over the woman and closed her eyes. “You’ll be better where you are now than you were here…” Throughout her long years of work, including during the war, she had seen too many men and women die and too many lying dead like this to be impressed in any way, let alone moved. That was the way things were and she was on very close terms with death. The sun went down every evening, in the winter it was cold and that’s all there was to it.

  On the other hand…she was intensely interested in the operation itself. When the blood spurted out like a fountain from the opened wound, when the surgeons dug into the organs like butchers. Plus… the woman who had just died was her age, born in 1914 like herself. She was a waitress in the Tiergarten. What did she get out of life? Not much. Now it was all over, she would never get a piece of the pie. Thinking of pies… Elisabeth Kusian remembered she had promised to make Lebkuchen for the nurses’ Christmas party. She’d completely forgotten. She’d also forgotten the Secret Santa present for her friend Anni.

  Her colleagues came to pick her up for lunch. She was extremely well liked by everyone because she took part in everything, she was the heart and soul of the group. They all respected her because they had found out long ago in her personnel file that she was the wife of Dr. Wilhelm Kusian, a surgeon who had died in the war and she herself had started out as a medical student. They walked down the corridors joking and carrying on. They ate their potato salad and fried fish together in the canteen. There was a lot of noisy joking there too.

  The conversation stopped when head nurse Anita came to their table. She was usually very friendly and anything but a dragon lady or a drill sergeant but this ti
me she was stern and inquisitorial.

  “Ramolla is making my life very hard because several surgical instruments and syringes are missing again. And who is he suspecting my dear ladies? You most of all. If one of you has something to tell me, please come to my office later.”

  Annemarie Gruschwitz refused to be a suspect. “His highness the director should take care that he’s not served with a complaint for harassment. I will not be insulted anymore.”

  “But the fact is that things are being stolen, instruments, drugs…”

  “In every business you have to reckon with ten percent stealing,” someone said with a laugh.

  “This is not over.” The head nurse stormed out.

  She was soon forgotten, they had better things to talk about, like work or their private lives. Was anyone willing to exchange their shift, which patients had problems, which were the most difficult, who was in love with which doctor, Herta, Gerda, Christa? After a while they split up. Elisabeth Kusian and Anni Gruschwitz remained at the table.

  “I have to tell you something…” Elisabeth Kusian leaned in close. “I’ve got a new guy. His name is Kurt and he’s absolutely wonderful.”

  “Married?”

  “Yes, but I’ll take him away. He’s the kind of man I’ve always hoped for since my husband died; with a man like him I’d start over, from the beginning.”

  “What does he do?”

  “He’s a police chief.”

  Anni smiled. “Not bad. At least you can feel safe with a man like him to take you home.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Well you know, where they found the body parts, I’m always afraid for you.”

  Elisabeth Kusian shrugged. “I’m careful. Anyway, they say it was a man’s body.”

  Anni stuck a cigarette between her lips. “Goodness, my Lisbeth, true love at age of 35…”

  “It’s never too late.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  “I’d love to make him a big present, but the money…”

  Anni said sadly:” I can’t help you there.”

  “Kurt and I are meeting tonight. I’ll see what he wants for Christmas.”

  “You can give men a lot without spending a penny, give them what makes them happy.”

  “That too of course.”

  Her friend stubbed out her cigarette. “Dr. Weimann is lecturing here today. Are you going?”

  “Of course I am. You know I worship him. He’s exactly the same type of man as my father in Thüringen. Ah, if only his clinic were more profitable… Then I wouldn’t have to worry about money anymore. But in the GDR they’re driving private clinics into bankruptcy.”

  They parted and Elisabeth arrived just in time for the famous Medical Examiner’s slide show. Tonight the subject was death by strangulation. Ah… she already knew all about that.

  When she got back to the nurses’ station she concentrated on the paperwork. But soon, she was interrupted by a female patient, Gerda Zepter, who would be checking out the next morning and wanted to see her one more time.

  “Thank you so much Mrs. Kusian… The reason I got better so fast is mostly thanks to you.” She handed Elisabeth an azalea and a box of candy.

  “Thank you but you shouldn’t have… it’s our job to take care of our patients.”

  “No, no, you did more than that.”

  Elisabeth Kusian took the presents to the staff lounge. She shared the candy with her colleagues of course. Although… The temptation to sell it somehow was strong since she needed literally every penny she could get. Not just for her dear Kurt. For her three children in the home in Teltow. That cost her 225 Mark per month and she only made 285 Mark at the hospital. Then there was the rent for the room in Kantstrasse. Did that leave any money for food, for clothes or cosmetics? Of course not, on the contrary. The only way she could make ends meet was by making debts. She was lucky that there were always some female patients who not only took pity on her but also had enough money to be willing to lend it to her. She picked up the bed plan and examined it thoughtfully. Maybe Mrs. Gast. Her husband owned a small company that made women’s clothing and he drove a Mercedes when he visited his wife.

  Imgard Gast was in a room with four beds and it would have been embarrassing to talk to her there but, most of all, it was dangerous because her neighbors might overhear and tell the head nurse. If that happened she would certainly be in trouble because it was forbidden to ask the patients for money. Still Elisabeth Kusian had to risk it for the sake of her children. And so she stood watch and waited for her prey to come out into the hallway or go to the bathroom.

  A man of about her age walked down the corridor with a limp. Left lower leg amputation. The rubber under one of the crutches was missing so he made quite a bit of noise. He wore a modified army overcoat and definitely didn’t look like he had slept on anything like a “bed of roses”, quite the contrary. Another one looking to steal something?

  She barred his way. “We don’t have visiting hours at this time.”

  “I’m sorry, I got lost.”

  “Who were you looking for?”

  “A person called Ramolla.”

  “He’s not a doctor.”

  “No, he’s the director, I know…” he stood there and wiped the sweat off his brow. “I’m a salesman… prostheses, glass eyes… Well, not as nice as the ones you have but…” he stopped and looked at her intently. He was suddenly filled with joy. “Christ, you’re Nurse Elisabeth, from Seelow…!”

  “My name’s Elisabeth but I’m from Berlin.”

  “Yes, but you saved my life in Seelow, at the military hospital. The doctors had already given up on me, they didn’t think it was worth the effort with me. There were so few resources, so little medicine, so few people – it made sense to operate fitter people. Then you came and said: “This one, Karl-Heinz Gössnitz, he’s not ready for the mass grave, let’s give it a try!” And then your medical guys put me together again. Not the leg though. But still I’m happy, I’m unbelievably happy to be alive. My wife, my children…” He broke down, embraced Elisabeth and kissed her forehead. “Thank you, thank you for everything. You are an angel! I know that you almost died then too. When the shooting started all of a sudden.”

  After he had gone, Elisabeth felt a terrible emptiness rise up inside her. What was the point of it all, all these victims…? This gratitude was fine but what could she buy with it? Nothing. All she had were debts. And hurt. Because of what had happened. She had no man, no home, no future. Or did she…? She saw herself all of a sudden, as in a dream, standing next to another man, next to Kurt. He looked strikingly like Gössnitz, they could have been brothers. Would fate make everything good again for her, after it had destroyed everything?

  At that moment Imgard Gast came out of her room and Elisabeth Kusian took this as a sign that the winds had shifted.

  “Well, look at you, Frau Gast, you’ve already got a spring to your step! And you look so lovely!”

  The patient was in her fifties and fairly overweight; she was a diabetic. She stopped, feeling flattered. “That’s because we are well taken care of here. Especially by you, Nurse Elisabeth.”

  “We do what we can.”

  “But you my dear, you look bad. Are you sick too?”

  Elisabeth shook her head: “I can’t afford to be sick. No, the only thing is my scar: that hurts sometimes.” She rubbed her lower belly.

  “You had to have a hysterectomy?”

  “No, it was during the war in a field hospital, a fragment of a grenade tore into my stomach, and when the weather gets cold my scar hurts, it never fails.” She touched under her stomach.

  Frau Gast shook her head. “But that’s terrible. And still you work in that condition…?”

  “What else can I do? My husband died in the war, my parents are in an old people’s home in the GDR, I don’t have any brothers and sisters or rich relatives… All I have are my three children in a home in Teltow and I have to provide for th
em myself…” She started crying. “I can’t even afford Christmas presents for them…Everything is so expensive…”

  The patient was the kind of woman who enjoyed being in charge: she took her by the arm. “Well now, let’s swap roles, I’ll be the one to take care of you. Can I lend you a little money?”

  “That’s very kind of you but we’re forbidden to take anything.”

  “My dear child, no one will know. I have 50 marks in my closet. When I go the bathroom later I will give it to you. Until next year when you come by at my house and give it back. No interest.”

  This made her feel good about herself and she laughed.

  Elisabeth Kusian could breathe again. One more time. But she felt bad. What was she after all but a beggar. She had expected something else from life. Still, two hours later she had the money and she could start thinking about what would please the children most.

  5.

  Everybody envied Kurt Muschan. For several reasons. Almost no one had come out of the war and the nazi period as well as he had. Other men of his age group had lost life and limb in the trenches, in panzers and U boats, but he had lived the perfect life throughout the war. He had spent it sitting in an office doing paperwork for a food center. He had lived like a king. And his house… it hadn’t been bombed, no one in his family had died in a bomb shelter. “A Lucky duck,” people thought. His wife Uschi was also one of those rare examples of a perfect mother and a perfect mate, even though she had put on a few pounds of late. And last but not least, Muschan had a job, he’d been hired into the police force right after 1945. His neighbors, his friends and his relatives all said:” God gives to those who have.”

  Muschan liked to sit on the window sill and look down onto the rail station buildings. To his left the freight train station stretched all the way to Innsbruck Platz and right in front of him there was Wilmersdorf station. Ever since he was a child he had been fascinated by the yellow and red S-Bahn trains and he would always try to imitate the long ‘tchaaa…’ sound the engine made when the trains started or the hissing sound of the brakes. In the neighborhood around Wilmersdorf station and Kaiser platz there were relatively few ruins and even in 1949, one could still enjoy a whiff of bourgeoisie typical of early turn of the century Berlin. His colleagues called his neighborhood ‘the policeman’s spa’.