Address Unknown
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So much for politics. Ourselves, we delight in our new home and have done much entertaining. Tonight the mayor is our guest, at a dinner for twenty-eight. We spread ourselves a little, maybe, but that is to be forgiven. Elsa has a new gown of blue velvet, and is in terror for fear it will not be big enough. She is with child again. There is the way to keep a wife contented, Max. Keep her so busy with babies she has no time to fret.
Our Heinrich has made a social conquest. He goes out on his pony and gets himself thrown off, and who picks him up but the Baron von Freische. They have a long conversation about America, and one day the baron calls and we have coffee. Heinrich will go there to lunch next week. What a boy! It is too bad his German is not better but he delights everyone.
So we go, my friend, perhaps to become part of great events, perhaps only to pursue our simple family way, but never abandoning that trueness of friendship of which you speak so movingly. Our hearts go out to you across the wide sea, and when the glasses are filled we toast “Uncle Max.”
Yours in affectionate regard, MARTIN
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SCHULSE-EISENSTEIN GALLERIES
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, U.S.A.
MAY 18, 1933
Herrn Martin Schulse Schloss Rantzenburg Munich, Germany
DEAR MARTIN :
I am in distress at the press reports that come pouring in to us from the Fatherland. Thus it is natural that I turn to you for light while there arc only conflicting stories to be had here. I am sure things cannot be as bad as they are pictured. A terrible pogrom, that is the consensus of our American papers.
I know your liberal mind and warm heart will tolerate no viciousness and that from yon I can have the truth. Aaron Silberman’s son has just returned from Berlin and had, I hear, a narrow escape. The talcs he tells of what he has seen, floggings, the forcing of quarts of castor oil through clenched teeth and the consequent hours of dying through the slow agony of bursting guts, are not pretty ones. These things may be true, and they may, as you have said, be but the brutal surface froth of human revolution. Alas, to us Jews they are a sad story familiar through centuries of repetition, and it is almost unbelievable that the old martyrdom must be endured in a civilized nation today. Write me, my friend, and set my mind at ease.
Griselle’s play will come to a close about the end of June after a great success. She writes that she has an offer for another role in Vienna and also for a very fine one in Berlin for the autumn. She is talking most of the latter one, but I have written her to wait until the anti-Jewish feeling has abated. Of course she uses another name which is not Jewish (Eisenstein would be impossible for the stage anyway), but it is not her name that would betray her origin. Her features, her gestures, her emotional voice proclaim her a Jewess no matter what she calls herself, and if this feeling has any real strength she had best not venture into Germany just at present.
Forgive me, my friend, for so distrait and brief a letter but I cannot rest until you have reassured me. You will, I know, write in all fairness. Pray do so at once.
With the warmest protestations of faith and friendship for you and yours, I am ever your faithful
MAX
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Deutsch-Völkische Bank und Handelsgesellschaft.
München
JULY 9, 1933
Mr. Max Eisenstein Schulse-Eisenstem Galleries San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
DEAR MAX:
You will see that I write upon the stationery of my bank. This is necessary because I have a request to make of you and I wish to avoid the new censorship which is most strict. We must for the present discontinue writing each other. It is impossible for me to be in correspondence with a Jew even if it were not that I have an official position to maintain. If a communication becomes necessary you most enclose it with the bank draft and not write to me at my house again.
As for the stern measures that so distress you, I myself did not like them at first, but I have come to see their painful necessity. The Jewish race is a sore spot to any nation that harbors it. I have never hated the individual Jew — yourself I have always cherished as a friend, but you will know that I speak in all honesty when I say I have loved you, not because of your race but in spite of it.
The Jew is the universal scapegoat. This does not happen without reason, and it is not the old superstition about “Christ-killers” that makes them distrusted. But this Jew trouble is only an incident. Something bigger is happening.
If I could show you, if I could make you see — the rebirth of this new Germany under our Gentle Leader! Not for always can the world grind a great people down in subjugation. In defeat for fourteen years we bowed our heads. We ate the bitter bread of shame and drank the thin gruel of poverty. But now we are free men. We rise in our might and hold our heads up before the nations. We purge our bloodstream of its baser elements. We go singing through our valleys with strong muscles tingling for a new work — and from the mountains ring the voices of Wodan and Thor, the old, strong gods of the German race.
But no. I am sure as I write, as with the new vision my own enthusiasm burns, that you will not see how necessary is all this for Germany. You will see only that your own people are troubled. You will not see that a few must suffer for the millions to be saved. You will be a Jew first and wail for your people. This I understand. It is the Semitic character. You lament but you are never brave enough to fight back. That is why there are pogroms.
Alas, Max, this will pain you, I know, but you must realize the truth. There are movements far bigger than the men who make them up. As for me, I am a part of the movement. Heinrich is an officer in the boys’ corps which is headed by Baron von Freische whose rank is now shedding a luster upon our house, for he comes often to visit with Heinrich and Elsa, whom he much admires. Myself, I am up to the ears in work. Elsa concerns herself little with politics except to adore our Gentle Leader. She gets tired too easily this last month. Perhaps the babies come too fast. It will be better for her when this one is born.
I regret our correspondence must close this way, Max. Perhaps we can someday meet again on a field of better understanding.
As ever your, MARTIN SCHULSE
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SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, U.S.A.
AUGUST 1, 1933
Herrn Martin Schulse (kindness of J. Lederer) Schloss Rantzenburg Munich, Germany
MARTIN, MY OLD FRIEND :
I am sending this by the hand of Jimmy Lederer, who will shortly pass through Munich on a European vacation. I cannot rest after the letter you last sent me. It is so unlike you I can only attribute its contents to your fear of the censorship. The man I have loved as a brother, whose heart has ever been brimming with sympathy and friendship, cannot possibly partake of even a passive partnership in the butchery of innocent people. I trust and pray that it may be so, that you will write me no exposition, which might be dangerous for you, — only a simple “yes.” That will tell me that you play the part of expediency but that your heart has not changed, and that I was not deluded in believing you to be always, a man of fine and liberal spirit to whom wrongs are: wrongs in whosoever’s name they may be committed. This censorship, this persecution of all men of liberal thought, the burning of libraries and corruption of the Universities would arouse your antagonism if there had been no finger laid on one of my race in Germany. You are a liberal, Martin. You have always taken the long view. I know that you cannot be swept away from sanity by a popular movement which has so much that is bad about it, no matter how strong it may be.
I can see why the Germans acclaim Hitler. They react against the very real wrongs which have been laid on them since the disaster of the war. But you, Martin, have been almost an American since the war. I know that it is not my friend who has written to me, that it will prove to have been only the voice of caution and expediency.
Eagerly I await the one word that will set my heart at peace. Write your “Yes” quickly.
My love to you all,
MAX
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Deutsch-Völkische Bank und Handelsgesellschaft.
München
AUGUST 18, 1933
Mr. Max Eisenstein Schulse-Eisenstein Galleries San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
DEAR MAX:
I have your letter. The word is “no.” You are a sentimentalist. You do not know that all men are not cut to your pattern. You put nice little tags on them, like “liberal” and expect them to act so-and-so. But you are wrong. So, I am an American liberal? No! I am a German patriot.
A liberal is a man who does not believe in doing anything. He is a talker about the rights of man, but just a talker. He likes to make a big noise about freedom of speech, and what is freedom of speech? Just the chance to sit firmly on the backside and say that whatever is being done by the active men is wrong. What is so futile as the liberal? I know him well because I have been one. He condemns the passive government because it makes no change. But let a powerful man arise, let an active man start to make a change, then where is your liberal? He is against it. To the liberal any change is the wrong one.
He calls this the “long view,” but it is merely a bad scare that he will have to do something himself. He loves words and high-sounding precepts but he is useless to the men who make the world what it is. These are the only important men, the doers. And here in Germany a doer has risen. A vital man is changing things. The whole tide of a people’s life changes in a minute because the man of action has come. And I join him. I am not just swept along by a current. The useless life that was all talk and no accomplishment I drop. I put my back and shoulders behind the great new movement. I am a man because I act. Before that I am just a voice. I do not question the ends of our action. It is not necessary. I know it is good because it is so vital. Men are not drawn into bad things with so much joy and eagerness.
You say we persecute men of liberal thought, we destroy libraries. You should wake from your musty sentimentalizing. Does the surgeon spare the cancer because he must cut to remove it? We are cruel. Of course we are cruel. As all birth is brutal, so is this new birth of ours. But we rejoice. Germany lifts high her head among the nations of the world. She follows her glorious Leader to triumph. What can you know of this, you who only sit and dream? You have never known a Hitler. He is a drawn sword. He is a white light, but hot as the sun of a new day.
I must insist that you write no further. We are no longer in sympathy, as now we must both realize.
MARTIN SCHULSE
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EISENSTEIN GALLERIES
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, U.S.A.
SEPTEMBER 5, 1933
Herrn Martin Schulse c/o Deutsch-Voelkische Bank und Handelsgeselschaft Munich, Germany
DEAR MARTIN :
Enclosed are your draft and the month’s accounts. It is of necessity that I send a brief message. Griselle has gone to Berlin. She is too daring. But she has waited so long for success she will not relinquish it, and laughs at my fears. She will be at the Koenig Theater. You are an official. For old friendship’s sake, I beg of you watch over her. Go to Berlin if you can and see whether she is in danger.
It will distress you to observe that I have been obliged to remove your name from the firm’s name. You know who our principal clients are, and they will touch nothing now from a firm with a German name.
Your new attitude I cannot discuss. But you must understand me. I did not expect you would take up arms for my people because they are my people, but because you were a man who loved justice.
I commend my rash Griselle to you. The child does not realize what a risk she is taking. I shall not write again.
Goodbye, my friend, MAX
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EISENSTEIN GALLERIES
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, U.S.A.
NOVEMBER 5, 1933
Herrn Martin Schulse c/o Deutsch-Voelkische Bank und Handelsgeselschaft Munich, Germany
MARTIN :
I write again because I must. A black foreboding has taken possession of me. I wrote Griselle as soon as I knew she was in Berlin and she answered briefly. Rehearsals were going brilliantly; the play would open shortly. My second letter was more encouragement than warning, and it has been returned to me, the envelope unopened, marked only addressee unknown, (Adressant Unbekannt). What a darkness those words carry! How can she be unknown? It is surely a message that she has come to harm. They know what has happened to her, those stamped letters say, but I am not to know. She has gone into some sort of void and it will be useless to seek her. All this they tell me in two words, Adressant Unbekannt.
Martin, need I ask you to find her, to succor her? You have known her graciousness, her beauty and sweetness. You have had her love, which she has given to no other man. Do not attempt to write to me. I know I need not even ask you to aid. It is enough to tell you that something has gone wrong, that she must be in danger.
I leave her in your hands, for I am helpless.
MAX
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EISENSTEIN GALLERIES
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, U.S.A.
NOVEMBER 23, 1933
Herrn Martin Schulse c/o Deutsch-Voelkische Bank und Handelsgeselschaft Munich, Germany
MARTIN :
I turn to you in despair. I could not wait for another month to pass so I am sending some information as to your investments. You may wish to make some changes and I can thus enclose my appeal with a bank letter.
It is Griselle. For two months there has been only silence from her, and now the rumors begin to come in to me. From Jewish mouth to Jewish mouth the tales slowly come back from Germany, tales so full of dread I would close my ears if I dared, but I cannot. I must know what has happened to her. I must be sure.
She appeared in the Berlin play for a week. Then she was jeered from the audience as a Jewess. She is so headstrong, so foolhardy, the splendid child! She threw the word back in their teeth. She told them proudly that she was a Jewess.
Some of the audience started after her. She ran backstage. Someone must have helped her for she got away with the whole pack at her heels and took refuge with a Jewish family in a cellar for several days. After that she changed her appearance as much as she could and started south, hoping to walk back to Vienna. She did not dare to try the railroads. She told those she left that she would be safe if she could reach friends in Munich. That is my hope, that she has gone to you, for she has never reached Vienna. Send me word, Martin, and if she has not yet come there make a quiet investigation if you can. My mind cannot rest. I torture myself by day and by night, seeing the brave little thing trudging all those long miles through hostile country, with winter corning on. God grant you can send me a word of relief.
MAX
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Deutsch-Völkische Bank und Handelsgesellschaft.
München
AUGUST 18, 1933
Mr. Max Eisenstein Eisenstein Galleries San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
DEAR MAX:
Heil Hitler! I much regret that I have bad news for you. Your sister is dead. Unfortunately she was, as you have said, very much a fool. Not quite a week ago she came here, with a bunch of storm troopers almost right behind her. The house was very active — Elsa has not been well since little Adolph was born last month — the doctor was here, and two nurses, with all the servants and children scurrying around.
By luck I answer the door. At first I think it is an old woman and then I see the face, and then I see the storm troopers have turned in the park gates. Can I hide her? It is one chance in thousands. A servant will be on us at any minute. Can I endure to have my house ransacked with Elsa ill in bed and to risk being arrested for harboring a Jew and to lose all I have built up here? Of course as a German I have one plain duty. She has displayed her Jewish body on the stage before pure young German men. I should hold her and turn her over to the storm troopers. But this I cannot do.
“You will destroy us all, Griselle,” I tell her. “You must run back further in the park.” She looks
at me and smiles (she was always a brave girl) and makes her own choice.
“I would not bring you harm, Martin,” she says, and she runs down the steps and out toward the trees. But she must be tired. She does not run very fast and the storm troopers have caught sight of her. I am helpless. I go in the house and in a few minutes she stops screaming, and in the morning I have the body sent down to the village for burial. She was a fool to come to Germany. Poor little Griselle. I grieve with you, but as you see, I was helpless to aid her.
I must now demand you do not write again. Every word that comes to the house is now censored, and I cannot tell how soon they may start to open the mail to the bank. And I will no longer have any dealings with Jews, except for the receipt of money. It is not so good for me that a Jewess came here for refuge, and no further association can be tolerated.
A new Germany is being shaped here. We will soon show the world great things under our Glorious Leader.
MARTIN
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CABLEGRAM
MUNICH, JANUARY 2. 1934.
MARTIN SCHULSE
YOUR TERMS ACCEPTED NOVEMBER TWELVE AUDIT SHOWS THIRTEEN PERCENT INCREASE FEBRUARY SECOND FOUR-FOLD ASSURED PAN EXHIBITION MAY FIRST PREPARE LEAVE FOR MOSCOW IF MARKET OPENS UNEXPECTEDLY FINANCIAL INSTRUCTIONS MAILED NEW ADDRESS
EISENSTEIN
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EISENSTEIN GALLERIES
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, U.S.A.
JANUARY 1, 1934
Herrn Martin Schulze Schloss Rantzenburg Munich, Germany
OUR DEAR MARTIN :
Don’t forget grandma’s birthday. She will be 64 on the 8th. American contributors will furnish 1000 brushes for your German Young Painters’ League. Mandelberg has joined in supporting the league. You must send 11 Picasso reproductions, 20 by 90 to branch galleries on the 25th, no sooner. Reds and blues must predominate. We can allow you $8,000 on this transaction at present. Start new accounts book 2.