Berlin 1936

by Oliver Hilmes

  People in Wende­nschlo­ssstra­sse noticed little of the opening of the Olympic Games the day before. Tourists never find their way here. Erna isn’t interested in sport anyway. She has other problems. For a long time, she’s felt unwell. There’s nothing wrong with the 25-year-old physically; the problems are psychological. She, too, carries a secret around with her. It must be a dark one since she doesn’t share it with anybody. She can’t talk to Willi. Perhaps Willi is part of the problem—we simply don’t know.

  What we do know is that around noon Erna enters the Neukölln station of the S-Bahn, Berlin’s overground public transport system. The station is part of a circle line that goes all the way around the city. Unsurprisingly, on the second day of the Olympics, it’s very busy—many of the passengers are on their way to the Games. People laugh and are in a jolly mood. Erna makes her way through the mass of travelers waiting for the next train until she’s right there in the front, around two feet from the tracks. She hears garbled words come over the loudspeakers. “Attention…circle train arriving…please stand clear.” When the approaching 12:34 train is only a few yards away from her, Erna Rakel takes a step forward.

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  At 3 p.m. in the Olympic Stadium, the women’s javelin event begins. Fourteen athletes are competing, including three Germans: Ottilie “Tilly” Fleischer, Luise Krüger and Lydia Eberhardt. Together with Austria’s Herma Bauma, Krüger is the favorite. But, on only her second attempt, Fleischer records a throw of 44.69 meters, breaking the previous Olympic record from Los Angeles by exactly one centimeter. After three further attempts, Fleischer reaches 45.18 meters, smashing her own Olympic record. With that, the butcher’s daughter from Frankfurt am Main wins the first gold for Germany at the 1936 Olympic Games. Krüger takes the silver medal; bronze goes to Poland’s Maria Kwaśniewska.

  After the awards ceremony, Hitler invites the three athletes to have their photo taken with him at his box, much to the irritation of the Olympic Committee, which considers itself to be the host of the Games. But the German dictator knows how powerful photographs can be. “I almost burst into tears in front of the Führer,” Tilly Fleischer is quoted as saying in a newspaper. The German press makes a meal of Hitler’s congratulations. Several photos are taken of the Führer, Göring and Reich Sports Leader Hans von Tschammer und Osten next to the 24-year-old Fleischer. No tears can be made out on the images. But the photo shows a small, roughly 20-inch-tall oak sapling given to all gold medalists. In her photo album, Fleischer drily notes: “Adolf + I with oak.”

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  Hubertus Georg Werner Harald von Meyerinck comes from a venerable family of Prussian officers and high-level civil servants. He was supposed to go into the military or at least become a clergyman, but from early on he felt drawn to theater and film. In any case, it’s hard to imagine someone nicknamed “Hupsi” having much success in the military or religion. By 1936, Hupsi the actor has already become something of a household name. With his slicked-back hair, monocle and pencil-thin mustache, he usually portrays oleaginous villains, upper-class oddballs, scatterbrained aristocrats and gallant eccentrics. Hupsi can snarl like a Prussian corporal or talk through his nose like an arrogant snob. That’s made him very popular. Meyerinck appears in around ten films a year. At the end of May, his latest one premiered in the Primus Palast cinema on Potsdamer Strasse in downtown Berlin. In the comedy Orders Are Orders, Hupsi played a cavalry captain and swindler out to make some easy money.

  Meyerinck is a staple of Berlin’s famous nightlife, frequenting restaurants like Schlichter or, on fancy occasions, Horcher. He can also be found in trendy watering holes like Aenne Maenz, Mampe, the Taverne, the Ciro Bar and Sherbini. But his favorite place to party is the Quartier Latin. You could almost call it his local, were that not too profane a word for this sort of luxurious établissement. The Quartier Latin on the corner of Nürnberger Strasse and Kurfürstendamm is the most elegant and expensive club in the German capital. Tuxedos are required for men, evening gowns for women, and money for patrons of both sexes. The dress code is strictly enforced—no exceptions are made, no matter how famous someone is. You won’t see any Brownshirts or people in uniform at the Quartier Latin. At first glance you might think that time has stood still since 1926 or perhaps 1928, but appearances are deceiving. The club is by no means a holdover from the Roaring Twenties. It first opened in 1931, and its short heyday comes during the Third Reich.

  The Quartier Latin consists of a tiny entrance hall with a cloakroom and two connected rooms. In the first is the bar with a few cocktail tables and bar stools; in the second is the restaurant, which has a dance floor and a stage for the band. It goes without saying that only live music is played in the Quartier Latin.

  As soon as Hubert von Meyerinck or another famous customer enters the bar, Leon Henri Dajou is immediately at his service. Dajou is a one-man welcoming committee, helping film divas out of their fur coats, showing groups of industrialists to their tables and taking initial orders. Dajou is the Quartier Latin’s owner, and he’s everywhere, directing his team of employees this way and that with a keen eye and concise instructions.

  Hupsi calls Dajou a friend, but in reality he doesn’t know much about him. Dajou comes from Romania, so one story goes, but other versions have him immigrating to Germany from Algeria or Morocco and beginning his career as a professional dance partner in the Hotel Adlon. Rumor has it that Hedda Adlon, the wife of the hotelier, fell for this gigolo and kept him as her lover, providing him with the money to open his own establishment. But no one knows for sure.

  Dajou’s origins may be shrouded in darkness, but there’s no question that he’s doing fantastic business. He’s able to afford a flat on Kurfürstendamm and a luxury Cadillac, which he loves to drive through the streets and always parks directly in front of the Quartier Latin. Dajou also has a girlfriend, Charlotte Schmidtke. In her late 20s, good-looking and blond, she could be a model. In fact, Miss Schmidtke doesn’t work for a living, but she still resides in a luxuriously decorated five-room flat just off Kurfürstendamm. It is said that Dajou gives her the necessary pocket money for this sort of lifestyle. But again, nothing is certain. Whenever Hubert von Meyerinck asks his friend Dajou something personal, he just laughs. He’s not laughing at or about Hupsi—he’s laughing away the question. “Well, you know, Hupsi…” he’ll say, and then top up the actor’s glass of champagne.

  The patrons of the Quartier Latin are as glamorous as their host is mysterious. Sitting at one of the tables is the great Pola Negri, who has just finished shooting her latest film, Moscow–Shanghai. Negri is wearing an ermine coat with long black gloves. Her face is powdered white, and her lips glow blood-red, making her look like a latter-day Lucretia Borgia. But instead of a glass of poison, her hand holds her favorite drink, whisky, which is available in the Quartier Latin for the small fortune of 2.25 marks (6 dollars). At another table, the film producer Willi Forst is chewing the fat with the actress Elsa Wagner; in the corner, the writer Lally Horstmann, the daughter of a Jewish banking family, is talking to her husband, the filthy-rich art collector Alfred Horstmann. At the bar is Berlin’s police president, Count Wolf-Heinrich von Helldorff. He’s known as a brutal Machiavellian with blood on his hands, but you wouldn’t think that to see him drinking champagne in his tuxedo in the Quartier Latin. Another one of the regulars is Ernst Udet, a highly decorated fighter pilot and Luftwaffe colonel who only ever sips from his glass but shows himself to be a passionate lover of swing music. Every time the 24-year-old publisher’s son Axel Springer—later the conservative publisher of West Germany’s most popular tabloid—visits Berlin, he always stops by the Quartier Latin. The young Springer is a bon vivant and a snob, and the club is right up his street. Just to be safe, he leaves his wife, Martha, in Hamburg every time he decides to partake of Berlin’s nightlife. In August 1936 Springer is often seen in the company of a stunning-looking woman from Chile. It’s whispered that she’s the singer and ac
tress Rosita Serrano, who has recently moved to Berlin and is scheduled to appear shortly in the Wintergarten cabaret theater. On numerous occasions Horst Winter, whose small jazz band has been booked by the Quartier Latin during the Olympic Games, observes Springer and his female companion dancing the night away, locked in deep embraces. “One evening they both turned up with bandaged wrists,” Winter will later remember. “People speculated about a heartache-inspired suicide pact, but the two of them seemed to have got over it somehow.”

  Leon Henri Dajou knows all the secrets, big and small, of his customers—but his lips are sealed. Discretion is his first and foremost principle. Only rarely does he lose control and join the ranks of the gleeful revelers, but when he does, the results are scenes scarcely imaginable in such an elegant establishment in the capital of the Third Reich. In early 1935 a group of regulars visited the club, and Dajou treated them to a round of cognac on the house. One round led to another until everyone was more or less inebriated. Suddenly a lady sprang to her feet, went to the dance floor and began to gyrate around ecstatically. In order to dance more freely she lifted her skirt but it kept on riding down again. Dajou, seeing the problem, stepped onto the dance floor and simply helped her out of her skirt. “Miss, we’re going to have to call the police,” joked the actor Ernst Dumke. “You’re not showing enough skin.” The young lady didn’t have to be told twice. “The woman undid her blouse, now completely exposing herself,” recalled another eyewitness. “His Highness Prince August von Hohenlohe used the occasion to risk a dance with the woman. Mr. Dajou felt inspired to take a wineglass and kneel down in front of her, sticking it between her legs from behind. He seemed to be suggesting that the woman fill it with piss. Then he stood up and pretended to drink the glass dry.” On that evening, Dajou seems to have utterly abandoned his customary reserve. He went up to the jazz band, which had continued to play the entire time, and took a cucumber-shaped rumba maraca away from one of the musicians. “Mr. Dajou stuck the instrument between his legs, so that it resembled a gigantic organ, approached the woman, who was dancing with Mr. Dumke, from behind and made gestures simulating intercourse.”

  The Quartier Latin is a volcano, and patrons dance on its edge. For a few hours, it’s as though the Third Reich doesn’t exist. Leon Henri Dajou is a daredevil who refuses to acknowledge danger. But the noose is already around his neck—and during the Olympic Games it will be tightened.

  Unprecedented effort in terms of technology and personnel goes into staging the Games in the Olympic Stadium. Jesse Owens becomes the undisputed star and fan favorite. Credit 3

  Monday, 3 August 1936

  REICH WEATHER SERVICE FORECAST FOR BERLIN: Cloudy, occasional showers and a light breeze. Somewhat warmer. Highs of 21°C.

  Mascha Kaléko isn’t as famous a writer as Thomas Mann, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature seven years earlier, but she already has something of a reputation at the age of 27. Indeed, not long ago, Kaléko was considered one of the leading young hopes of German letters. Well-respected newspapers fought over her poems, which were lively, full of gentle melancholy and captured the spirit of the early 1930s. Kaléko’s favorite subjects include the highs and lows of human interaction, the ups and downs of relationships and life in the big city. Her poem “The Next Morning” reads:

  We wake up. The sun barely shines

  Through the slits of our gray blinds.

  You yawn and I must admit.

  It sounded ugly, and it seems to fit

  That married people don’t glow with love.

  I lay in bed. You looked in the mirror

  And lost yourself as you worked your razor.

  You reached for your brush and hair cream

  While I watched you silently.

  The very definition of a husband.

  How suddenly I loathed so much

  The room, you, the faded bunch

  Of flowers, the glasses we emptied yesterday

  And the rest of the compote we ate.

  Everything looks different the next morning.

  At breakfast you stared at your bread silently.

  That may be hygienic, but I find it not so keen.

  I saw your fatty lips redden up

  As you dipped the bread in your coffee cup.

  I’d rather die than view scenes like this.

  I got dressed, you inspected my legs.

  The air smelled of coffee drunk to the dregs.

  I went to the door. Work started at nine.

  I only said this, though there was much on my mind,

  “I think it’s time to go.”

  Kaléko’s poems about everyday life remained popular after the Nazis’ rise to power. In March 1933, Rowohlt published a selection of her verse. The book sold so well that another appeared in December the following year. But, at some point, the officials at the Reich Writers’ Chamber discovered that Kaléko was a Jew. Suddenly, one of the Third Reich’s most promising authors is a poeta non grata. As if that weren’t enough, her private life is also in turmoil. In short, by August 1936 the writer is going through an existential crisis.

  Today Kaléko is in a hurry. She takes her keys, locks the door to her flat and walks down the staircase. Every time she leaves her building, the first thing she sees is the tax office in the North Wilmersdorf district. There it stands on the other side of the road, cold and forbidding as government buildings tend to be. Kaléko has lived at Lietzenburger Strasse 32 for almost a year now, and she’s got used to the sight of this square, gray block. But today she doesn’t notice her neighborhood. She’s not only in a hurry—she’s full of gleeful anticipation. She walks a few yards to the right, crosses Sächsische Strasse and enters Lietzenburger Strasse 35, which houses the post office serving postal code W5. She joins the queue for poste restante, tells the clerk her name and receives a letter. This has been going on for weeks. Usually, all the clerk hands over is a single letter, but sometimes if Kaléko hasn’t had time to collect her mail for a while, it will be a whole bundle. Kaléko could have never imagined that she would feel such regular delight at visiting a post office, with its smell of linoleum. But the post office in Lietzenburger Strasse is where Mascha Kaléko picks up letters from her lover. What would Mr. Kaléko say, if he ever found out?

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  “Terse with Magda,” Goebbels writes in his diary. “And that’s for the best.” The propaganda minister is burying himself in work, receiving numerous visitors including Crown Prince Umberto of Italy and his wife, the Italian propaganda minister, Dino Alfieri, the British diplomat’s wife Sarita Vansittart (“a bigoted lady”) and several actresses. Goebbels likes to play the womanizer, but as coolly as he treats his wife, he can’t help thinking about her affair with Lüdecke. He keeps asking himself how Magda could have been so foolish as to get involved with such a dubious character.

  It’s not the first time that his wife has threatened to get Goebbels into political trouble. The 34-year-old Magda Goebbels is a woman with a past. Johanna Maria Magdalena Behrend came into the world in November 1901 in a hospital in the working-class district of Berlin Kreuzberg. Her family was poor and rather disreputable. Her mother, Auguste Behrend, was 22 when her daughter was born and worked as a servant for an affluent family on Bülowstrasse. Magda’s father seems to have been unknown: no name is listed on her birth certificate. Auguste later claimed that the wealthy construction magnate Oskar Ritschel from Bad Godesberg was Magda’s father; they were married, she maintained, but got divorced. But Auguste Behrend and Oskar Ritschel were never married, as Magda found out in late October 1931. “Magda sat there, devastated,” Goebbels wrote in his diary at the time. “Her mother told her that she had never been married to her father. Magda knew nothing about this. Now she’s inconsolable.” But things would get worse for Magda. Ritschel was also not her real father.

  The truth is complicated. Oskar Ritschel, the ambitious son of an industrialist, and Auguste Behrend, a young woman from a humble background, probably
met each other at the Rheinhotel Dreesen in the stylish spa resort of Bad Godesberg, where Auguste spent one season working as a chambermaid. They seem to have been intimate, since Ritschel showed no surprise when Behrend announced that she was pregnant with his child. He volunteered to pay 300 marks (750 dollars) a month and later financed Magda’s education. What Ritschel didn’t suspect was that Magda’s father was not himself, but probably the Jewish merchant Richard Friedländer, born in 1881, who married Auguste in December 1908. Friedländer’s official residence registration forms, at least, list Magda as his daughter. The terrible truth, so feared in the Goebbels household, is that Magda’s father was Jewish.

  It’s unclear whether and when Oskar Ritschel and Richard Friedländer saw through Auguste’s murky romantic life. But in December 1931 the main newspaper of the German Communist Party, Die Rote Fahne, had no doubts as to whose loins had sired Magda. “She was born a Friedländer,” the paper mocked. “This not exactly Aryan name fits perfectly with her husband’s purebred Aryan face. We’re no Jew-baiters, but we do take pleasure in noting that Goebbels married a woman born as a Jew.” Goebbels had the Nazi Party newspaper Der Angriff deny the report, but he was still nagged by doubts as to whether Oskar Ritschel was truly Magda’s father. He must have sensed that he had married into a difficult family. Goebbels considered his mother-in-law a “gruesome person,” the sight of whom made him feel “nauseous,” while he saw Ritschel as “a shabby egotist and wretched hypocrite.” Then, in June 1934, Magda told Goebbels “the terrible matter.” Goebbels was so shocked that he couldn’t bring himself to write down what he heard, censoring his own diary. All he could commit to paper were vague hints: “Terrible scenes. I’m completely devastated…We’ve separated internally.” Was this the moment that Goebbels learned that Richard Friedländer was Magda’s real father?