Elfriede Scheibel is nine years Teddy’s senior. She’s his boss—a word Teddy doesn’t like to hear, although it’s true. She manages the Delphi Palast on Kantstrasse and has hired Stauffer and his band, the Original Teddies—named after Berlin’s mascot, a bear—for the period from early July to late October. When he enters the Delphi Palast for the first time, Stauffer shrugs his shoulders and says nothing, especially not to Scheibel. But looking around the place, his eyes seem to ask: are you kidding me? Maybe he thinks of the old Berlin joke in which an architect says to the fellow who engaged him: “The frame is finished—what style house would you like?” The builders of the Delphi were fans of Greco-Roman architecture—or more accurately, what was considered Greco-Roman in 1928. There are stylized pillars, meander patterns and putti all over the façade. Up on the roof, four stone lions seem to watch over the premises. The building is set back from Kantstrasse, so there’s a spacious front garden on the corner with Fasanenstrasse, where patrons can enjoy a summer afternoon tea under palm trees and other exotic plants. The Palast proper is a two-story building. On the ground floor are the cloakroom, a café and the kitchens; the upper floor is home to the actual ballroom, with two dance floors and 530 seats. There’s also a gallery with an additional 120 seats and a parquet floor. The interior is a stylistic mishmash of wall paintings, pillars of stucco marble and fake papier mâché accoutrements. The ballroom ceiling is covered with countless tiny lightbulbs that simulate a starry sky. In the Delphi there’s not a hint of the New Objectivity that set the architectural tone in the late 1920s. This will be Teddy’s place of work for the next four months.
By hiring the band for such a long time, Elfriede Scheibel is putting all her eggs in one basket. Business hasn’t been good, and she hopes that the many international Olympic visitors will turn the tide. The gamble pays off. From the very first day of their engagement, Teddy Stauffer and his Original Teddies draw in the crowds like a magnet. The Delphi Palast is always sold out. In the afternoon, when the band performs in the front garden, people cluster on the surrounding streets to listen in; every evening, hundreds of people are turned away at the door because the ballroom is already full. Berlin seems to have been craving the Teddies’ sound. “Americans were in the audience,” Stauffer will write in his memoirs. “At the Delphi Palast, their presence inspired us to play rhythms previously unheard of. People had already started dancing in the afternoon. The atmosphere in the evening was indescribable. And Berliners were dancing alongside Americans.”
Teddy is particularly popular with the ladies of Berlin. He’s a tall fellow with combed-back blond hair, which makes him look like a Hollywood film star. The swinging way in which he moves, as he gives his bandmates their cues, plays the saxophone and acknowledges the audience’s applause, has a coolness that most German musicians lack. Needless to say, Teddy is an inveterate womanizer. And then there are the songs. The Teddies play an almost exclusively American repertoire, including the hottest swing numbers from Broadway. One of the musicians, Walter Dobschinsky, will later recall: “We played really hot, with no inhibitions, real American jazz, as we musicians say. People wanted to hear it. They really went wild.” The swing music bug is highly contagious, and the Nazis can only stand back and watch as it spreads. “We didn’t have any problems because of it,” Bob Huber, the Teddies’ trumpet player, will remember. “No one said a word. No one told us we shouldn’t play American numbers.”
National Socialist cultural officials view Stauffer and the public’s enthusiasm for swing music, which reaches a high in August 1936, with a mixture of forbearance and indifference. On the one hand, the Nazis are glad to be able to present their international visitors with an internationally known performing artist. On the other hand, the officials don’t regard swing as important enough to merit intervention. Reich Radio Broadcasting Director Eugen Hadamovsky may have issued a blanket ban on “nigger jazz” in 1935, but the prohibition has been totally ineffective. The record company Telefunken—“the German brand renowned all over the world,” runs its advertising slogan—has been doing everything it can to make swing and jazz more popular in Germany. Two weeks before the start of the Olympics, Teddy Stauffer and his Original Teddies record their first four songs for Telefunken, and they will make many more recordings for the company in the next three years. Stauffer will recall that “They were all, without exception, globally successful songs by Jewish lyricists, composers and music publishers. We recorded them in Hitler’s Berlin in 1936.”
But Stauffer and Scheibel also have their enemies, of course. One of them is Hans Brückner in Munich. The 39-year-old composer specializes in popular music, writing awkward, kitschy ditties with titles like “Greetings from Faraway,” “Dear God, Protect Your River Rhine” and “What the Old Beach Chair Dreamt.” Brückner joined the NSDAP in 1928 and is considered one of the “old street fighters.” As the publisher of the polemical magazine Das Deutsche Podium: Fachblatt für Unterhaltungsmusik und Musik-Gaststätten (The German Podium: Specialist Journal for Popular Music and Music Clubs), he seeks to whip up hatred for jazz, people of color, Jews and anyone he thinks falls into one of those categories. Brückner’s role model is the Stürmer editor-in-chief Julius Streicher, whose vulgar turn of phrase greatly resembles his own. But Brückner has few friends within the party. In 1935, when he and the wife of a Düsseldorf dentist, Christa Maria Rock, published a pamphlet entitled “The Jewish Musical ABC,” even the Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter panned it. The book pretends to be a scholarly encyclopedia, but it is so full of embarrassing mistakes that complaints about it have begun to pile up in the Reich Chamber of Culture. Officials there have little good to say about Hans Brückner, dismissing him as a simpleminded fanatic who only causes trouble and is best avoided. As paradoxical as it might sound, the fact that Brückner is the one who has declared war on jazz protects Teddy Stauffer and his colleagues. Moreover, what Brückner and his lot put forward as a substitute for jazz-inflected dance music elicits yawns even in the highest Nazi Party circles. In November 1935, returning home after a “German dancing” event, Goebbels confided to his diary: “After that, you can only say ‘let’s go back to jazz.’ Terrible, pompous dilettantism. How I suffered!”
Stauffer has no interest in this entire discussion. When he takes to the stage in the Delphi Palast tonight with his Original Teddies, all he wants is to make good music. He couldn’t care less whether the composers and lyricists are Germans, Americans, Jews or Christians. Their music is the reason his audiences love him and celebrate him and his men, day in, day out. One song is a particular favorite of audiences in Berlin: “Goody Goody.” The number’s fanfare-like introduction has become something of a calling card for the band. “Goody Goody” is the soundtrack to the summer of ’36.
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Elegante Welt magazine announces: “Women with beautiful hair who use Alpecin are invited to send portraits of themselves printed on glossy paper to the ‘Permanent Prize Committee of the Dr. A. Wolff Company in Bielefeld.’ In 1936, in exchange for the rights to reproduce such images, we will be paying 10 reichsmarks each for up to twelve photos. They will be published, with names and addresses, in these pages. All jurors’ decisions are final.” The Alpecin model for the month of August is Hilla Kynast from Berlin Tempelhof.
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The current issue of Die Dame magazine has a half-page advertisement for Henkell sparkling wine next to the table of contents. It features a fetching young woman holding a glass and a bottle of Henkell Trocken in an ice bucket. “The high point of a summer night,” the ad promises. “Henkell Trocken is pure salubriousness!” The mood in diplomatic circles is rather less than sparkling when it is announced that a member of the Henkell family, Joachim von Ribbentrop, has been named Germany’s ambassador to Britain. In 1920 he married the daughter of the company owner Otto Henkell.
The appointment has political observers pulling out their hair. How can Hitler give such an impor
tant ambassadorial position to a nitwit like Ribbentrop? The Führer is alone in his high regard for the aristocrat. “He’s a man of moderate intelligence and education,” writes the French ambassador, André François-Poncet, with tactful understatement. “His ignorance on diplomatic issues is astonishing.” Privately François-Poncet terms Ribbentrop a “fool and pretty stupid.” Others have quoted the Frenchman telling his American colleague George S. Messersmith that Ribbentrop “spoke English so well and was just the type that would appeal to an English gentleman as a gentleman.” Even within leading circles in the Third Reich, Ribbentrop has few friends. Most people consider him an arrogant snob, an unlikable pompous ass and a supercilious lover of clichés who bores others to death with his vacuous monologues. Ribbentrop came by his aristocratic title in 1925 by getting himself adopted by an aunt in return for a lifelong pension of 450 marks (1,116 dollars) a month. For Goebbels, that makes him a charlatan. “He bought his name,” the propaganda minister sneers, “married his money and cheated his way into his job.”
Ribbentrop is reluctant to go to London. He wants to take over the Foreign Ministry, but the top job there is occupied by the career diplomat Konstantin von Neurath. Hitler isn’t about to replace Neurath, and Ribbentrop is slavishly obedient to his Führer, so he complies, although in his eyes, the appointment to the British capital is nothing to celebrate. Unfortunately for him, he and his wife are throwing a party tonight for around 600 guests to celebrate the Olympic Games. When the invitations were issued, Ribbentrop had no idea he’d be heading to the banks of the River Thames.
At short intervals, one limousine after another pulls up with a VIP guest, and as they arrive each one receives a bound copy of the guest list. Flipping through the pages, you find a number of British names, including the Channons. Even Hermann Göring is attending, although perhaps because he wants to see what Ribbentrop and his wife, Annelies, are offering their guests. The day after tomorrow, Göring is throwing his own Olympic party, and he certainly doesn’t want to come out second best. It won’t be easy to top this, though. The Ribbentrops live in the wealthy Dahlem area of Berlin in an elegant villa with extensive grounds, a swimming pool and a tennis court. Money isn’t an issue.
Today the entire estate has been festively illuminated. Singers from the State Opera perform arias, and later there will be dancing. Liveried servants pour endless glasses of Pommery champagne—where’s the Henkell Trocken? guests might ask—while a whole ox is being roasted over an open fire. With forced cordiality and a sweet-sour smile, Ribbentrop accepts people’s congratulations on his new appointment. But the longer the evening goes on, the more pinched his expression becomes. The new ambassador can hardly conceal his true feelings about his future job. By contrast, Göring is having a marvelous time, going from table to table, whispering jokes about the “sparkling-wine baron” and “Herr von Ribbensnob.”
For Sir Henry Channon the evening confirms how tasteless and inelegant the wives of the leading National Socialists are. The Ribbentrops have money to burn and throw parties as wasteful as those in the ancien régime, but the hostess lacks any style whatsoever. “Frau von Ribbentrop is distinguished in the Berlin manner, that is she has intelligent eyes, appalling khaki-colored clothes and an un-powdered, un-painted face,” Chips wrote in his diary on 29 May. Joachim von Ribbentrop is described as looking like “the captain of someone’s yacht.” Rather ironically, given his own leanings, Channon asks: “How can Germans be so silly about things that don’t matter, or is it because their women are so unattractive that the race is largely homosexual?” Nonetheless, that doesn’t prevent Chips from having a good time at the Ribbentrops’ do. “We stayed at the party until three, and I enjoyed myself quite wildly,” he writes after the festivities. “The lovely evening, the fantastic collection of notabilities, the strangeness of the situation, the excellence of the Ambassador’s (or more correctly Frau von Ribbentrop’s) champagne, all went somewhat to my head.”
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While Ribbentrop is holding court in Dahlem, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is expected for a concert in the Olympic Village. The event is part of an entertainment series intended to introduce the athletes to musicians, dancers, acrobats and other more or less well-known contemporaries. The aviator Charles Lindbergh, the boxer Max Schmeling and the tenor Jan Kiepura have already visited the Village. Now it’s the turn of Germany’s most famous orchestra. To be precise, it’s the second time the Philharmonic have appeared here. In late July, shortly before the Games began, they gave a concert that was originally planned as an open-air event but had to be moved into the Sporthalle because of rain. Tonight the weather is much better, and the performance can go ahead outdoors. The orchestra is large, and the program is first rate, including works by Wagner, Carl Maria von Weber and Georges Bizet. Only the conductor, Alois Melichar, is less than top standard. The Philharmonic’s usual leader, Wilhelm Furtwängler, apparently couldn’t find the time or simply had no desire to pick up his baton.
The musicians take their seats on the “Birkenring,” a central square in the Village, and listeners fan out onto the surrounding open spaces. The sun is already setting when Melichar kicks off the overture to Wagner’s Tannhäuser. One hour later, by the time the orchestra plays excerpts from Bizet’s Carmen, it’s completely dark. Torches bathe the musicians in a yellow-and-reddish light. Looking down from the Village’s bastion, you’d almost think there was glowing lava in the Birkenring. It’s an enchanting sight.
One of those listening is Wolfgang Fürstner, a Wehrmacht captain who’s been in charge of the Olympic Village, which was built by the military, for two years. Up until the spring of 1936, the facility was under his command, and although as planned a higher-ranking officer officially took over as the Games approached, he’s still something like the Village’s unofficial mayor. By rights, the 40-year-old should be enjoying the evening. After all, the Olympic Village, which has been praised by everyone, is partly his work. But Fürstner is in a grumpy mood. He can’t even appreciate the fireworks that light up the heavens over Berlin once the concert is over.
Fürstner’s superior officer, Baron Werner von und zu Gilsa, is worried about his deputy. In his experience, Fürstner’s behavior has always been beyond reproach, but he’s heard from others that the captain has lost control of himself on occasions, that his reactions to things have been surly and erratic, and that his heart is no longer in this project. The truth is that Fürstner is in deep trouble. He’s recently learned that his wife, Leonie, is having an affair with his very own adjutant and wants to get divorced. And in addition to his private life, he’s got problems at work. Rumors about Fürstner’s non-Aryan background are circulating within the Village. Someone has hung up posters reading “Down with the Jew Fürstner!” and there are murmurings that he’s become the subject of an official investigation. Fürstner’s paternal grandfather is in fact Jewish, and one of his cousins is the Jewish music publisher Otto Fürstner. He is also distantly related to Yvonne Fürstner, the owner of the Sherbini Bar.
Under Nazi law, Fürstner is one-quarter Jewish, making him a so-called hybrid of the second degree. The Olympic Games have offered him a measure of protection. While tens of thousands of tourists are in Berlin, neither the NSDAP, of which he is a member, nor the Wehrmacht are going to take any action against him. The Nazis don’t want any scandals. But what will happen once the Games are over? What does the future hold once the international visitors are gone and the world’s attention is no longer focused on Berlin? It’s no wonder that Wolfgang Fürstner can’t enjoy the Berlin Philharmonic’s performance. He is consumed with fear. And a week from now he’ll be dead.
DAILY REPORT OF THE STATE POLICE OFFICE, BERLIN: “The Latvian national Olga Schwabe from Riga has reported via an SA section leader on the behavior of the alleged journalist Dr. Wilhelm Lindner. She says that while he was showing her some of Berlin’s sights, he remarked that he didn’t think it was right to have a swastika flag on Freder
ick the Great’s grave. In the course of their conversation, Lindner is supposed to have said that Hitler was a perilous adventurer, an Austrian only interested in waging war and building military barracks. Dr. Goebbels is a Jesuit, he said, who constantly repeats himself and has a club foot, as do all his children. Moreover, Lindner allegedly boasted that he has never uttered the words ‘Heil Hitler!’ in his life.”
Director Leni Riefenstahl makes the official film about the 1936 Olympics and often puts herself at the center of attention. Credit 12
Wednesday, 12 August 1936
REICH WEATHER SERVICE FORECAST FOR BERLIN: Bright skies early in the day with increasing clouds and thunderstorms as temperatures cool. Slight wind from the south and then the west. Highs of 24°C.
It’s the dawn of 12 August, and the provincial Rhineland city of Bonn is still asleep when Hans Eduard Giese is led into the interior yard of the court prison. The 32-year-old’s life is nearly over: in a few minutes he’ll be executed. Giese is no murderer. He’s been convicted of theft and embezzlement, and he recently did two years in jail for counterfeiting. Last June, Giese had a really bad idea. He kidnapped the 11-year-old son of a Bonn merchant, tied him to a tree in a forest, where he fed him apple juice, oranges and chocolate, and demanded 1,800 reichsmarks (4,500 dollars) in ransom. Giese’s plan went badly wrong. The boy was discovered after a mere six hours, and Giese was arrested. According to paragraph 239 of the Reich criminal code, kidnapping is an offense punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment. But the Reich government learned of the case and hastily pushed through a new law concerning the ransoming of kidnapped children. Hans Eduard Giese is to be made an example of, so that the government can win points with the general public. On 22 June, only six days after the kidnapping, the Reich legal gazette published paragraph 239a. It reads: “Whosoever kidnaps someone else’s child, using deception, threats or violence, for the purpose of obtaining ransom shall be put to death.” The law was backdated to 1 June 1936 so that it applied to Giese. On 1 July, after a trial that attracted a great amount of public attention throughout Germany, the judge handed down the death sentence. In his verdict he thanked the Reich government in the name of all German mothers and fathers for the new law.
Berlin 1936 Page 13