While politics were still only a haze on the horizon of Manfred’s consciousness, albeit a haze that was charged with possibilities and future developments that might very well encroach on his own life one day, the here and now of his life at kindergarten and then at primary school absorbed the greater part of his energies, his happiness and his fears. The most powerful force that occupied his mind in the years following his father’s entry into the Party was the increasing unease about girls. Whereas girls had merely existed incognito alongside boys in earlier days, they now suddenly stepped out from obscurity and monopolised his awareness of the world, of himself, of everyone’s social behaviour.
In particular, there was a girl called Anna. She was slim and had long blonde hair with a touch of ginger, eyes as blue as Manfred’s, and she moved around the playground with a refreshing lightness. He sometimes stole a glance at her while she was jumping like a rubber ball round the big elm with Thomas and some other children, and it seemed to him that she could fly through the air. He also liked her bubbly laugh which sounded like a small silver bell from the distance. Manfred had always taken it for granted that Thomas was naturally entitled to the better treats in life. He got the larger pieces of cake on Sunday afternoons, he got the more valuable Christmas presents and he was the recipient of more attention when they had visitors. Manfred had never questioned that. So, it was also quite natural that his brother should get more attention from Anna when they walked home from school, first together as a crowd, then, as they passed their various friends’ homes, gradually reduced to the three of them. Anna was walking in the middle, Thomas to her right, Manfred to her left. Manfred wanted her to listen to him and to look at him, but she seemed to give more attention to Thomas. She seemed to laugh louder at Thomas’s jokes and she seemed to take a keener interest in his plans and visions. Feeling excluded, Manfred wanted her to turn her lovely face to him more often.
One day, when the brothers were on their way home, just the two of them, Thomas asked him, “What do you think of Anna?”
“I think she’s very nice,” answered Manfred carefully.
“You know what?” his brother asked. “I think she wouldn’t mind if I told you that she agreed to be my Schätzchen - my sweetheart.”
Manfred didn’t quite know what to do with this information. Nor did he know why his brother was telling him, but he was clearly puzzled. He had heard from other children that you ought to get yourself a Schätzchen sooner or later.
“So, what are you going to do with her?”
“Well, you know,” Thomas hesitated, “I don’t really know that I’m supposed to DO anything in particular. It’s more, like, you know, how we feel about each other. But now that you’ve asked, well, we might go for walks together.”
Manfred thought you could go for a walk with a girl without having to call her your Schätzchen. He himself liked Anna very much. Should he call her his Schätzchen, too? He wondered.
“Can she be my Schätzchen, too?” he asked.
“Of course not, you daft boy!”
“Why not? If you can, why can’t I?”
“Because, because, because... It’s very simple. A girl can have only one boy who calls her Schätzchen, and a boy can have only one Schätzchen. That’s how it is.”
“All right then,” Manfred stammered, “in that case I don’t want one. It’s too complicated for me.”
Thomas laughed. But despite his loud laugh he felt a sense of relief. How awful if his little brother had become his rival!
Manfred, on the other hand, was too young to know jealousy. If Anna could only be his brother’s Schätzchen, that would be all right. He could still enjoy looking at her, and she might also walk with him. What difference did it make?
Things changed when Thomas left kindergarten for school. All of a sudden, Manfred found himself in a new role, the role that his older brother had occupied before. Only about three weeks into the new school year, one morning in the playground of the kindergarten compound, Anna came up to him and asked him, “Will you walk with me after school?”
The children all referred to kindergarten as “school”, a habit that Thomas resented once he had joined proper school. He asked his younger brother to be more precise in this matter. So, Manfred found himself on the brink of correcting Anna, but when she gave him a playful wink, he discarded the impulse and just answered, “Of course, that would be fine.” He hoped she wouldn’t notice the slight jerking twitch in his left shoulder.
When, after school, they walked around the streets of Untermhaus, Manfred found it a very pleasant experience to have Anna to himself. Up until that day he had always been with her in the company of other children, mostly his elder brother. Now, alone with her, he was just a little excited. He didn’t know why, but it was a very good thing. They talked about the games they had played during the day and about their families.
“I’m an only child,” Anna explained. “So, I haven’t got anybody to play with when I’m at home. My parents say I can always bring home other girls to play with.”
Over the following months, the two became a fixed item. The other children accepted the fact that Manfred and Anna were together most of the time when it was possible. It was also clear to everyone that the two of them shared everything. If you told Manfred a secret, you could count on Anna to be informed, and vice versa. One evening, walking up the Galgenberg after saying good-bye to her at her garden gate, Manfred remembered his discussion with his brother about a Schätzchen. He smiled to himself, confident that by now Anna was his. He had no need to call her Schätzchen, because they had a tacit understanding that they belonged together, at least for the foreseeable future.
One of the places that they felt particularly pleasant was the huge sandpit at the back of the kindergarten compound, a happy place where many other children liked to play too, but Manfred’s new roads through the sandy mountains were only embellished by castles and turrets along the way by Anna. No other child cared about the artistry of his even roads and daring tunnels. One afternoon in September, Manfred was digging a tunnel through the sand, his right hand already into the tunnel nearly up to his elbows, when all of a sudden, his hand was met by Anna’s hand, digging from the other side. Both of them worked quickly to shovel out the remaining sand at both ends, which finally allowed their hands to clasp each other in the middle of the tunnel. They held on to each other for several minutes, while neither of them spoke a word. They just smiled over the top of the sandy mountain and enjoyed the feeling of secrecy. What an adventure! Holding on to each other’s hands when nobody could see or know about it!
Suddenly Wolfgang, the pompous bully, stomped over the top of the sandy mountain and crushed the tunnel underneath. It was the end of a magic moment for Manfred and Anna. They never repeated that special digging adventure, but they would never forget that magic moment.
The children were still blissfully unaware of what was going on in the big world around them. The adult population, on the other hand, felt themselves gathered into a maelstrom of social and political developments that allowed no sentimentality. One had to make hard decisions. Thomas Weidmann also found himself in an uncomfortable dilemma over his allegiance to the Party.
While he was proud and satisfied over some of the measures backed by the Party because they promised to fight the terrible evils of mass unemployment and galloping inflation even before the Crash of 1929, he was made increasingly uneasy by some of the slogans emerging from some hardliners in the Party. He was particularly disgusted by the stupid and short-sighted opinions about foreigners, Jews and Gypsies, propagated by certain Party members. He found it unfair, because he knew that many of the industrialists of the town who managed to attract all those commissions from Russia during the two years following the great Crash - commissions that secured thousands of jobs for the people of Gera - were in fact Jews. Without the so-called Russenaufträge, t
he working population of the town would have been a lot worse off. Also, many of his friends and customers were Jews, and he tried to maintain a balanced view on the causes and effects of the War. The Siegermächte may very well have treated Germany very badly at Versailles, but then he had to admit that his beloved Fatherland was certainly not without blame either, if one wanted to be fair. Also, if the German government wanted its old enemies to relent and allow Germany to become great again, if one was hoping for a remission of debts and for permission of rearmament, then wouldn’t it be a lot wiser to be proactive in diplomacy, rather than to antagonise all the other nations?
Early one Saturday evening in the summer of 1932, he attended a political gathering in the market square. There were men in brown shirts and black boots, with black leather belts and red armbands displaying black swastikas in white circles, standing in rows around the square as if they had to guard the entire gathering. He suddenly felt cold and terribly uneasy. Fear crept up in him. Was this going to be the new healing force for Germany? He began to doubt his own role in the midst of all those over-confident faces. To him, they had a threatening aspect. Flags were waved, a military band played several brisk marches, and then there were speeches. Thomas listened to all three speakers very carefully and was horrified. What these men advocated amounted to sheer stupid blindness. To him, the Jewish population, together with all the other minorities attacked by those hardliners, formed part of German culture, they were all part of German heritage. He wondered why nobody in that crowd seemed to realise that what was being put forward was against the principles of mutual human respect, principles that Thomas considered of prime importance. He also found it absolutely unacceptable that all three speakers referred to British and American politicians as well as international banking and business leaders as “the Jewish Conspiracy”, blaming them for all the evils and all the social problems in Germany.
On that day, Thomas went home a disillusioned man.
Only a few weeks later, on the 13th of September, the National Socialist government of Thuringia dismissed the mayor of Gera, Dr Arnold, along with his assistants, and the Staatsbeauftragte Dr Jahn established his direct dictatorial rule over the town. When Thomas Weidmann was told this bad news in the afternoon, he was truly shocked. The old mayor had been elected, whereas this new Staatsbeauftragte had no democratic legitimacy. This was the end of democracy for Gera and probably for the whole of his Fatherland. In the evening, he went home to his house on the Galgenberg, assembled his family in the living-room and told his wife and his children that he was leaving the Party. Their ideals no longer had anything to do with his world and his convictions. They were an uneducated and uncultured Lumpenpack - a pack of scruffy scoundrels. Criminals.
His wife Elfriede seemed relieved when he told her, for she had already felt rather uneasy about everything that she heard from the National Socialists, but she hadn’t wanted to contradict her husband. She was a weak and frail woman, very thin and very pale. Her skin had an almost bluish hue, and her grey eyes looked quite sad. She never spoke against her husband’s wishes. In fact, several of the Weidmanns’ friends thought she behaved like a slave. But the truth was that her husband was a very gentle and considerate man. He was always kind to his wife and never even raised his voice in her presence. Quarrels were extremely rare, and differences in opinion were usually resolved by her leniency. To those of her friends who made critical remarks about her weakness, she justified herself that she was just very happy in her role of voluntary submission. For her, it was the proper role of a good German housewife. Everything in their marriage appeared to contribute to their common bliss. If only it hadn’t been for her poor health.
A few days before Christmas, one of his customers chatting with him in the delicatessen shop mentioned the greatness of Adolf Hitler. Thomas Weidmann hesitated before he carefully answered, “I’m not so sure about him. He seems a bit too radical for my taste.” He did not dare to go any further in his mild criticism. This might be a secret agent, one could never know.
“Come on now, Herr Weidmann, a businessman like you must be in full support of Hitler. Men like you have the potential to become the true backbone of our great nation. You should read the new book that’s only come out. It’s about the Party, about its history.”
“How can anyone write a book about the history of a political party that’s only been tottering about for a decade or so?”
“Oh, you see, Herr Weidmann, this is a very clever book. Konrad Heiden, the man who wrote it, indeed calls it History of National Socialism, but what he gives us is a view into the glorious future of the Party and our glorious Fatherland. So, it’s a case of future history, very clever, can’t you see?”
Thomas Weidmann mumbled, “That looks like a contradiction.”
The man looked at him with big eyes. He was clearly fascinated by this new book. Such gullibility could hardly come from a secret agent, Thomas thought.
Walking home in the evening, Thomas Weidmann thought about what that customer had told him. If indeed such a book had been published, he had to get hold of it. Two days later he got it, and between Christmas and New Year he sat down in his study every evening after Elfriede had gone to bed and devoted his attention to Konrad Heiden’s new book. As he read page after page, a gradual feeling of unease rose in him. What this book showed him was not really Adolf Hitler’s greatness, but rather his despotic methods and his hypocritical and dangerous rhetoric. It pretended to show the way towards the country’s future greatness, but if you could read between the lines, as it were, you could see a clear warning. Such a leader might easily lead the country into total disaster.
Finishing the book, Thomas felt a cold shiver down his spine. He had been right to leave that Lumpenpack, and it was only to be hoped that the intelligent people in the country would eventually succeed in getting the people away from such a Rat-catcher of Hamelin.
* * *
Life for Manfred became more serious when he moved up through school. He was placed in the same class as Anna, but they were not allowed to sit together. The girls were seated in one row, the boys in another, and school life gradually took on a more military-like atmosphere. Their teacher sometimes yelled at them like a drill-sergeant, and he wanted them to stand up straight, put their heels together, keep their arms stiff down their sides and always address him as “Herr Lehrer”. When their country had elected a new Reichskanzler in January 1933, the teacher explained the importance of this event to the children.
“This new Führer of our Fatherland is going to save us all from those who only want to destroy our nation, our culture and our German heritage.”
Manfred wondered who that might be, who wanted to destroy the country. He was too young to understand politics. After school, he asked Anna.
“Do you understand our teacher? What does he mean when he speaks of those who want to destroy us? Who are they?”
“I don’t really know,” Anna answered, “but my father says it is the Jewish Conspiracy.”
Neither of the children knew what the “Jewish Conspiracy” was supposed to be. They both knew several Jewish families in Gera, but they couldn’t connect them with any conspiracies. They discussed the word “conspiracy” and came to the conclusion that it had to mean something like getting together to plan evil things. But neither of them could imagine any of their Jewish friends being involved in evil plans. Manfred thought of Isaac, a very nice boy, about the same age, the son of his father’s business acquaintance Mr Rosenbaum. The Rosenbaums sometimes came to lunch on Sundays. Mrs Rosenbaum was a very sturdy woman, always very charming and cheerful, and she always brought some sweets for the boys when they visited. Isaac was a very gentle boy, and Manfred really admired him a little because he was so clever and so knowledgeable.
Anna said she also liked their Jewish neighbours, the Mendelssons, but her father had already warned her not to become too intimate with t
hem. They couldn’t really be trusted. “So perhaps we’d better be careful,” she mused.
“I don’t care what they say,” Manfred stated categorically, “I won’t believe that Isaac has anything to do with any conspiracy. He’s a really nice chap, and I like him a lot.”
They left it at that.
A new development in Manfred’s life was his relationship with Wolfgang. The big boy with his rasping voice and his bullying manner used to be someone to be avoided. Manfred even used to be a little afraid of him. And now, gradually, Wolfgang became more agreeable, and before long Manfred began to like him. When Anna asked him about Wolfgang, it came as a revelation to him that one could actually change one’s feelings towards another person in such a way that he found it hard to explain his new attitude to her. All he managed to say by way of an explanation was, “I was wrong about him. He’s actually quite nice.”
Anna accepted this. She admitted to herself that if there was one thing about Manfred that she particularly admired it was his easy way of finding other boys “nice”. To her, this was a sign of a gentle nature, a positive view of humanity.
Only just over three weeks later, the country was shocked because some Communist - a Dutchman, a foreigner, of course - had set fire to the Reichstagsgebäude, the National Parliament Building in Berlin. In Gera, two days earlier, Dr Jahn had dismissed many of the local councillors and appointed new ones from his own party, the NSDAP. The official explanation was that it was done in order to strengthen the local government against the threats of the Communists. Again, Manfred and Anna discussed these events. They had heard about the evil nature of Communists before, but this was really too much. And when the media reported the national duty to eliminate all Communists and supported the stricter measures taken by the government, the children thought they understood the logics of it, but Manfred couldn’t help feeling uneasy when he watched the faces of the men marching through the streets in their brown uniforms and their polished boots.
White Lies Page 2