Berlin 1936

by Oliver Hilmes

  Peter has been looking forward to this Sunday for many weeks. It’s shortly after 3 p.m. when the stadium announcer calls out one of Peter’s favorite disciplines: the 4 × 100 meter relay. To be precise, Peter’s favorite events are those in which the Americans are much better than the Germans. The United States is considered unbeatable in the 4 × 100 relay. They’ve only lost the event once—at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm. As the runners take their positions, a hush falls over the arena. The Argentinians have the inside lane, then come the Germans, the Dutch, the Americans, the Italians and all the way to the outside in lane six, the Canadians. Peter is only interested in lane four. He cranes his neck in order to see the other side of the oval track and can make out Jesse Owens, who will run the first leg, followed by Ralph Metcalfe, Foy Draper and Frank Wykoff.

  What Peter doesn’t know is that there were heated discussions within the American team about who would be allowed to run the relay. Marty Glickmann and Sam Stoller assumed for a long time that they would be running, but coach Lawson Robertson decided against them and in favor of Owens and Metcalfe, breaking his usual habit of using fresh runners for the relays. Glickmann and Stoller, who are both Jewish, suspect an anti-Semitic plot. They think that American sports officials put pressure on Robertson to take them out of the action in an attempt to cozy up to the Nazis. It’s understandable that the disappointed athletes might think this, but in reality the logic behind the coach’s decision is simple: Robertson wants to prevent a surprise German victory at all costs and doesn’t believe he can do this without his strongest runners, Owens and Metcalfe.

  Just before the start, the man in the white apron, Franz Miller, inspects his wind gauge one last time. In athletics, world records are not recognized if they are aided by tailwinds of more than 6 feet a second. Miller has reassuring news. The wind is blowing from the side at a speed of 5 feet a second: the conditions are perfect. The start is only seconds away and 100,000 spectators hold their breath. Then the starting gun is fired, and Owens sprints out to an expected lead before handing over the baton. Metcalfe and Draper increase that advantage, and down the home stretch the American team is more than 10 yards ahead of its nearest competitors. Wykoff crosses the finishing line in 39.8 seconds—a new world record! The Italian team comes in second with a time of 41.1 seconds, and one second behind the Germans finish third. Frenetic cheers go up, and many of the spectators rub their eyes. Is it already over? It feels as though the sound of the starting gun has only just died away. The speed of the U.S. team seems supernatural.

  Jesse Owens has done it again. With four gold medals, he’s become by far and away the biggest star of the Games—and Peter Fröhlich’s personal hero. Peter and his father feel safe and protected from prying eyes in the Hungarian supporters’ section and can cheer on the Americans with all their hearts. At the medal ceremony, Peter takes to his feet and hums along with the “Star-Spangled Banner.” Thanks to Dr. Quandt, he knows Latin but no English, so he doesn’t understand the words: “O say, can you see…” But he intuitively understands that the song is a hymn to freedom.

  It’s the final day of the athletics competitions at the Olympics, and only 15 minutes later, at 3:45 p.m., there’s a further highlight: the women’s 4 × 100 meter relay. Germany, Britain, America, Canada, the Netherlands and Italy are in the final, but the German women are as highly favored as the American men were earlier on. The result seems to be a foregone conclusion. After the spectacular American victory, Hitler is pacing around in his box, rubbing his hands in anticipation at Germany getting its revenge. Across the arena sits Peter Fröhlich, who doesn’t share the Führer’s excitement and expects his worst nightmare: a German victory. The referee fires the starting gun, and the first German runner, Emmy Albus, streaks past the competition. Käthe Krauss takes the baton and increases Germany’s lead, before making the hand-off to Marie Dollinger. Peter can’t bear to watch. Germany’s advantage seems unassailable. Suddenly Moritz Fröhlich jumps up from his seat and cries: “The girl’s dropped the baton!” Peter too now realizes what has happened: the Germans have botched the final handover. Anchor Ilse Dörffeldt can’t hold on to the baton. The American Helen Stevens crosses the finishing line in first place.

  Everyone in the Führer’s box is disappointed. Hitler shakes his head in irritation and smacks his knee with his hand. “We’ve had bad luck,” Goebbels writes in his diary. “The girls were all broken up. The Führer consoled them. But the whole stadium was sad.” The whole stadium? One 13-year-old boy is beside himself with glee. Even decades later, Peter Fröhlich will describe the misfortune of the German women’s relay team as “one of the greatest moments in my life.”

  DAILY REPORT OF THE STATE POLICE OFFICE, BERLIN: “It has become known that a Hitler Youth patrol brought the Jews Heinrich Frankenstein, born 24 November 1918 and residing in Wörtherstrasse, and Willi Klein, born 12 December 1919 and residing at Wörtherstrasse 30, into the police station after they tried to beg cigarettes from an Argentinian in the Lustgarten. When the patrol approached, the Jews said to the foreigner: ‘This is Germany’s youth.’ ”

  * * *

  *

  At home in Carwitz, some 62 miles north of Berlin, the writer Hans Fallada is recovering from the latest of his many stays in a detoxification clinic. A few months previously, in mid-May, he was released from Dr. Schauss’s Heidenhaus sanatorium in Zepernick near Berlin. Fallada has been suffering from depression and anxiety for years and is addicted to alcohol and morphine. By August 1936, he has got himself together sufficiently to begin work on a new novel. It will be called Wolf Among Wolves.

  * * *

  *

  Athletics is the most prestigious set of Olympic disciplines, and after the final event, the U.S. team leads the medals table with fourteen gold, seven silver and four bronze. Germany is a distant second with five gold, four silver and seven bronze medals. The Americans have good reason to celebrate their achievements. That evening, the high jumpers Cornelius Johnson and Dave Albritton, together with sprinter Ralph Metcalfe, leave the Olympic Village and head into town. Their destination is the Sherbini Bar on Uhlandstrasse. The three athletes have put on their best attire, but their light-colored suits don’t meet the dress code. Mustafa El Sherbini places great emphasis on proper evening wear, and that means dark suits. But for such VIP guests, he’s willing to make an exception—unlike in the Quartier Latin, in the Sherbini Bar people aren’t more Catholic than the pope—and welcomes the three Americans. No doubt Mustafa’s motivations are partly selfish. A visit by world-class athletes has to be good for business.

  Johnson, Albritton and Metcalfe’s buddy “Mickie” is waiting for them. Mickie’s real name is Herb Flemming, and he’s American too, although he has lived in Berlin for more than a year. Because he speaks decent German, he’s done some translating for the American team in the past few days, which is how he met the three athletes. Flemming is not a professional interpreter, nor does he have anything to do with the Olympic Games. He’s what Sherbini and Yvonne Fürstner call a “special attraction”—something out of the ordinary for their customers.

  Flemming and his musical combo have had a residency in the Sherbini Bar since the spring. Along with Flemming, who plays trombone and sings, the core of the group consists of Rudi Dumont (trumpet), Franz Thon (clarinet), Fritz Schulz-Reichel (piano), Max Gursch (guitar) and E. Wilkens (bass). As often as his duties in the bar allow it, Sherbini himself sits down behind the drums. This combo is considered by more than a few connoisseurs to be the best swing band in Germany. Evening after evening, they make jazz history. “He was the most unbelievable trombone player I’ve ever heard,” one contemporary remarked of Flemming. “He had a lip vibrato, a tone on the trombone, like a top cellist.” On the group’s music stands you’ll find the latest songs from American film musicals like Top Hat and Broadway Melody of 1936. Yvonne has her sister purchase the sheet music from a London store. No one in the Sherbini Bar cares that Irving Berlin, the composer of Top Hat,
and Arthur Freed, the lyricist for Broadway Melody, are Jewish. On the contrary, patrons love dancing to catchy songs like “No Strings” and “Cheek to Cheek.”

  The other special attraction currently in residence are the Mackey Twins, a step-dancing duo. The twins from the United States performed in the bar the preceding year, and business was good. Sherbini no doubt has a nose for this sort of thing. He knows which acts audiences like. But what really makes Herb Flemming and the Mackey Twins into sensations in Nazi Berlin is the fact that they’re black. The moral guardians at the Nazi hate rag Berliner Herold spew bile at the Sherbini Bar, denigrating it as a venue “where niggers step-dance to hot jazz!” Yet despite such attacks in the press, Flemming and the Mackeys have been able to perform unhindered for quite some time. In early 1936 Flemming had a problem with his work permit, but after intervention from U.S. Ambassador Dodd, he immediately received the necessary documents. Flemming will later claim to have played for Hitler in the Reich Chancellery, although there’s not a shred of evidence that this was the case.

  Tonight, no one in the Sherbini Bar is wasting a thought on Hitler and the Nazis. The mood is buoyant, and politics are a world away. Johnson, Albritton and Metcalfe celebrate their triumphs, and the booze flows like water. On the face of it, it’s business as usual. Flemming and his combo play their red-hot swing music, Sherbini flits through the establishment with a smile on his face, and Aziz de Nasr, watching from the sidelines, pines after Yvonne Fürstner, who stays close to her rubber truncheon. But stormclouds are gathering over Uhlandstrasse. Fürstner has no idea that the Gestapo have her in their sights.

  DAILY REPORT OF THE STATE POLICE OFFICE, BERLIN: “In the exhibition halls on Kaiserdamm, various toilet doors have been scrawled with slogans hostile to the state concerning the racial question.”

  * * *

  *

  Mrs. Volland lives in a respectable building. Her neighbors include the elderly baron and estate owner Michael von Medem, the jeweler Joachim Mersmann and the orthopedist Dr. Gustav Muskat, who specializes in treating flat-footedness. Franz Bannasch owns a fashion boutique, and the worthy Mrs. Aven is a matron at the Erikahaus nursing home. All of these people live at Kurfürstenstrasse 124, on the corner of Courbièrestrasse. Mrs. Volland occupies the largest flat: ten rooms at the front of the building cost her 255 reichsmarks (650 dollars) in rent every month. The lady lives alone. Obviously she likes her space. The owner of the building is a Spanish national named Maurice Gattengo. Señor Gattengo is Jewish, so understandably he prefers to give Germany a wide berth. At present, he’s living in Cairo.

  The ground floor contains an Italian restaurant called the Taverne, which is run by Willy and Maria Lehmann. The Taverne consists of three connecting rooms and is always full to capacity. Diners sit at small tables, packed close together, so it’s easy to strike up a conversation with those around you. There’s a piano in the main dining room, but it’s rarely played, since people prefer talking. In the lively din any music would hardly be heard anyway. Travel guides tout the Taverne as a restaurant for celebrities. That’s because of Willy Lehmann’s former job: before he opened the establishment, he was the production manager at Stern-Film. Lehmann knows many actors and actresses, and they’ve become Taverne regulars. Ever since the tabloids reported that stars like Olga Tschechowa frequent the place in Kurfürstenstrasse, Lehmann no longer needs to advertise. Along with film stars, foreign journalists also like to dine there. William Shirer from the United News Service, Louis B. Lochner of the Associated Press, Sigrid Schulz of the Chicago Tribune and others are part of a group that is present almost every evening. Most of the time, the reporters arrive after 10 p.m., once they’ve cabled their articles to America. Not infrequently, they don’t leave until 2 or 3 a.m. Sometimes they are accompanied by friends and acquaintances like Martha Dodd or Mildred and Arvid Harnack. They talk over the news of the day, drink, laugh and dig into Maria Lehmann’s spaghetti and excellent vitello.

  Tonight, when Thomas Wolfe and Mildred Harnack enter the restaurant, there’s no one at the journalists’ regular table, so they take a seat at a smaller table for two. They can always move if Shirer and some of the others show up. Wolfe has unpleasant memories of the Taverne, he confides to Mildred. During his last visit to Berlin, he went out for a night on the town with Heinz Ledig and some other acquaintances. At an advanced hour, they ended up in the Taverne, where Martha Dodd was drinking a glass of wine with a fellow they didn’t recognize. Wolfe, Ledig and the rest of the party sat down at the neighboring table, but Dodd showed no signs of inviting them over. Indeed, she seemed embarrassed by their presence. Wolfe and Ledig were taken aback by Martha’s impolite behavior. Later they were told that her companion was Donald S. Klopfer, the founder of the publishing company Random House, a Jew who adamantly refused to sit down at the same table with Germans. Ledig was terribly insulted. How could a foreigner not distinguish between Germans and Nazis, as everyone in Germany did? Ledig couldn’t let this rest. He stood up, approached Klopfer, introduced himself and demonstratively extended his hand. Taken off guard, the American returned Ledig’s greetings, and the two men briefly made some forced conversation. But the mood was ruined.

  Even a good year later, Wolfe still finds Klopfer’s treatment of Ledig utterly unacceptable. Wolfe doesn’t like Jews, he admits without any sense of shame. Before long he’s discussing a topic that has been on his mind for quite some time: freedom of speech. “We say in America that we are free to speak and write and think as we please, but this is not true,” he tells Mildred. “We also say that in Germany people cannot speak and write and think as they please. This is also not true. People are free to speak and write and think some things in Germany that they are not free to speak and write in America. For example, in Germany you are free to speak and write that you do not like Jews and that you think Jews are bad, corrupt and unpleasant people. In America, you are not free to say this.”

  Mildred stares at Wolfe in disbelief. He can’t be serious. Surely he doesn’t believe that German anti-Semitism is nothing but an expression of free speech? Mildred’s face has the same expression she wore a couple of days ago at Rowohlt’s party. There’s something disapproving in her eyes. She stares at Wolfe like a governess eying a misbehaving child. You must be very careful, she says. What follows is a political eye-opener for Wolfe. Mildred tells him about the state-organized boycott of Jewish businesses shortly after the Nazis came to power, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, which removed Jews from all government posts, and the book burnings. In great detail, Mildred explains the Nuremberg Laws, which were decreed the previous year and completely exclude Jews from society. Mildred has grown visibly agitated. Is Wolfe familiar with Der Stürmer? she asks. Does he know about how the newspaper’s editor, Julius Streicher, and his cronies constantly incite popular hatred of Jews? Is he aware that there are restaurants and shops with signs in their windows reading “Jews not wanted here”?

  Finally, Mildred uses a term that Wolfe hasn’t heard until this evening: concentration camp. Does Wolfe know, she asks, that the German government is interning Jews, Social Democrats, Communists, homosexuals and anybody who thinks differently in prison camps? Wolfe shakes his head. Both of them fall silent. Their silence probably lasts only a few seconds, but they seem to Wolfe like half an eternity. As though he’s endured a dressing-down for some youthful prank, he looks at Mildred sheepishly. She smiles a bitter smile. “Only the horses are happy in Germany,” she says, citing a favorite saying of William Dodd. Wolfe cracks a wan smile. In an age in which most writers are taking a political stand, he is aware of his lack of political commitment, he tells Mildred, who nods understandingly. That evening, cracks begin to appear in Wolfe’s idealized image of Germany. Something inside him is beginning to change.

  In the popular Residenz Casino, patrons are able to call one another on telephones at the table: “Excuse me, dear lady, would you happen to be…” Credit 10

  Monday, 10 Augu
st 1936

  REICH WEATHER SERVICE FORECAST FOR BERLIN: Warm weather continues, with gradually increasing clouds, isolated thunderstorms and moderate easterly winds. Highs of 25°C.

  If you exit the Sherbini Bar and walk 300 yards north up Uhlandstrasse, you’ll get to Steinplatz, a square built in 1885 that is part of the Charlottenburg district. In the 1920s, waves of Russian émigrés who had fled the revolution in their homeland moved into the luxurious apartment buildings between Kurfürstendamm to the south and Bismarckstrasse to the north, causing Berliners to jokingly rename Charlottenburg “Charlottengrad.” The building at Steinplatz 4 is a particularly nice example of Wilhelmine architecture. Designed and built in 1907 by August Endell in art nouveau style, it’s home to the Hotel am Steinplatz. In the summer of 1936, Erna Zellermayer runs the establishment. No one calls her Mrs. Zellermayer: guests and employees alike refer to her exclusively as “Mrs. Director.”

  Zellermayer was only 37 when her husband Max died three years ago. Back then she didn’t know the first thing about the hotel business, but from one day to the next, she had to take over the place—and in difficult economic times, to boot. Back in the 1920s, the hotel became a popular place of refuge for Russian aristocrats. Many a grand duke rented a whole floor of the hotel for months at a time for himself and his servants. Among the regulars were also a number of wealthy Jewish ladies who felt unable to keep house on their own and wanted to live out their widowhood on Steinplatz. When business declined after Hitler took power, “Mrs. Director” decided to invest, modernizing the building, installing new bathrooms and redoing the furnishings. That has proven a success. In 1936, the Hotel am Steinplatz is one of the most popular places to stay around Kurfürstendamm. An en suite room costs 9 reichsmarks (23 dollars) a night—only half of what guests in the Adlon have to pay.