One Hundred Twenty-One Days

by Michèle Audin

  Where was this garden? One must open the map of the little town of N., sixty-two years after this photograph was taken.

  On the map, the train station can be identified right away, thanks to the thick black lines of the rails superimposed on the bright colors used by the illustrator. The eye then distinguishes the river (blue) and the bridge, the town center, with its main square and pedestrian streets, and finally a neighborhood of individual houses surrounded by gardens. A soft shade of green has been chosen to represent this neighborhood. It is situated near the town center, but far enough from the railroad tracks that the noise and other disturbances from convoys going east (or west) would not be perceived. The streets in this neighborhood are all named after famous German scientists, philosophers, or writers (Bunsen, Gauss, Kant, Spankerfel, Humboldt, Riemann, Schiller…).

  Going clockwise around the metal openwork table, one sees a teenage girl, then two men and two women, all four middle-aged. All of them are looking towards the camera, which means that some of them (the girl and one of the women) had to turn towards the photographer. Between the girl and this woman, in the foreground, is an empty chair. A clay tobacco jar has been placed at the center of the table. The men have drinking glasses in front of them. The man sitting nearest to the girl is in the middle of serving himself from a near-empty bottle. His hand obscures the label, but the contents are almost certainly a pale-colored spirit, which could be kirsch.

  To the right of the actual map (2005 edition) are five pictures (numbered and captioned) of places deemed by the little town’s tourist center as particularly interesting for visitors. The numbers on these pictures correspond to other (identical) numbers on the map itself. One of these places, the one marked with the number 4, is a pastry shop. Founded in 1858 (according to the caption), Korb & Schlag is located in a pink gabled house, with geraniums brightening up its windows, on the north side of the marketplace (Marktplatz), as shown in the photo.

  A careful handwritten inscription (in German) on the back of the photograph identifies the seven people and the dog. The place (Humboldt-strasse, N.) and the date (July 6, 1943) are also indicated. The dog is named Stefi (a diminutive of Stefanie, which tells us the dog was female). The teenage girl is Charlotte Kürz, daughter of the mathematician Heinrich Kürz. Two light blonde braids tied with white ribbons frame her young face, which is a little large for her body. She is dressed in a dark skirt, white socks, and a white short-sleeved blouse, with a dark neckerchief worn as a tie and tightened at the neck with a braided leather kerchief slide. Her head is slightly tilted and she is smiling at the camera.

  Picture number 1 shows a fountain located in the middle of the Marktplatz. The fountain bears the name Gretchen am Spinnrade, or “Margaret at the spinning wheel,” because of the little statue at the top that indeed represents a girl working at her spinning wheel. As the tourist center’s commentary explains, according to an old tradition, before passing their exams or leaving for the army, the students of the University of N. must climb the fountain to plant a kiss on little Gretchen’s stone lips.

  The girl in the photo is no more than fifteen or sixteen years old. The other individuals are all much older. The two men seated at the table, according to the inscription on the back, are Doktor (medical) Friedrich (the one pouring himself a drink) and Professor-Doktor von Apfeldorf. Both wear dark suit jackets, white collared shirts, and ties. Around von Apfeldorf’s left arm is an armband bearing a swastika. Behind them, one can distinguish the wall of a house and a window with a white frilled curtain and wooden shutters.

  Number 2 on the map is Gustav-August University, founded in 1687 by Prince Gustav August and host to many renowned scholars since that time. The description is followed by a list of these scholars, in which one can recognize the names of the streets in the neighborhood where the 1943 photo was taken.

  Another modern-day solution for learning about the individuals appearing in the photograph is the biographical dictionary of the University of N. (1991 edition). It identifies Ernst von Apfeldorf as “a historian specializing in the German Middle Ages.”

  The two women in the photograph are Frau Kürz, mother of Charlotte Kürz and wife of Heinrich Kürz, and Frau von Apfeldorf, the historian’s wife. Both women are blonde. One wears a white blouse under a suit jacket, its neck open wide to reveal a pearl necklace. The other has a flowered dress and a gold cross necklace. Their smiles reveal dazzling teeth and the use of lipstick. Between the table and the bench where the two pipe smokers are seated, a little to the side, is a flag mast, of which the cord can be seen. The flag, if there is one, is outside of the camera’s scope. The two men seem to have been interrupted in the middle of a lively conversation. They have raised their eyes towards the camera. Above them hang the shadowy branches of a linden tree, whose trunk cannot be seen. Even the way they both pet the little dog attests to a certain level of closeness between then. The one on the left, closer to the table, is the host of this pleasant gathering: Gustav Tiedemann. He is smiling.

  The biographical dictionary describes Gustav Tiedemann as a “college professor of biology” and points out that he directed the dissertation of Emil Schreiber, the famous German-American biologist.

  On the map, not far from the marketplace, is a green patch representing Marienfriedhof, a little cemetery that looks more like a public park, with a blue pond. It is marked with the number 3. The tourist center’s commentary states that Marienfriedhof contains the tomb of Karl Ludwig Spankerfel, the famous mathematician and physician who died in 1815. Another old tradition dictates that foreign scholars invited to the University of N. be brought to Marienfriedhof to reflect on this tomb.

  On the far right of the photograph, the man petting Stefi the dog is the French mathematician Christian Morfaust. The foreign scholar’s presence in the little town was probably the pretext for organizing this gathering. Morfaust wears a mask of black leather that hides the majority of his face and ties behind his ears, underneath the sides of his round eyeglasses. Like his friend Tiedemann, he sports a satisfied smile, clearly visible in spite of the pipe.

  There is also the Kolloquium register. The huge hardbound register, in which, since 1888, the guests of the Mathematics Kolloquium of Gustav-August University have written summaries of their talks, shows little activity in 1943. Professor Morfaust, from the University of Paris, is the only foreigner to have written in the register since November 4, 1941 (the day Kirill Kristoff, from the University of Sofia, gave a talk on differential equations). Three German mathematicians visited in the meantime. Morfaust used violet ink to write both his name and the title, “On a Theorem of Spankerfel and Legendre.” His summary (originally in French) says:

  We give the formal statement of a theorem on prime numbers, as written by Karl Ludwig Spankerfel in 1809. Adrien-Marie Legendre found a proof for it the following year. We return to this fine example of amicable scientific collaboration.

  The talk summarized on the next page of the register dates from 1948.

  On the map, number 5 is the N. Museum of Printing. This museum mainly contains engravings and antiquarian books (which are often rare as well). One of the engravings, whose artist is unknown, is reproduced on the map. In spite of the small size of this reproduction, one can recognize a classic character from German legends: a horned, cloven-hoofed demon, with circumflex eyebrows and a pointy beard. He is seated in a public square in front of some gabled houses with his sharp chin resting on his fist and one leg crossed, and he appears to be in conversation with a little dog.

  Two people are missing from the photograph: Heinrich Kürz and Frau Tiedemann. The empty chair is probably where the man or woman taking the photograph was sitting. If the photographer was Kürz, the mathematician who invited Morfaust to N., then Frau Tiedemann was busy in her kitchen, and the photo would have been taken without waiting for (or thinking of) her. If it was Frau Tiedemann, then Kürz wasn’t there at all, but was rather called back to Berlin or elsewhere by his military obligations (decoding
enemy messages, recruiting collaborators to the German war effort). In front of the empty chair, there is no drinking glass, which favors the second hypothesis. Nothing allows for a definite answer, in spite of the inscription on the back.

  CHAPTER VII

  Trip to N.

  (NOTES FROM THE GRAY NOTEBOOK, 2005)

  5/1/2005• On the back of the map of the little town of N., near another photo of the statue on the fountain, the tourist center has included a summary of the town’s history, starting 500,000 years ago, lingering over the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, and ending with a leap from 1933 to 1945:

  Between 1920 and 1933, the university’s reputation grew due to the presence of several renowned physicians and humanists. During World War II, the town escaped the bombings. In 1945, the university reopened. Today, the population is 130,000 inhabitants, of which 20,000 are students.

  5/1/2005UNIVERSITY OF N.

  ADMINISTRATIVE ARCHIVES

  • Photos of Christian M. at the ceremony for the 250th anniversary of Gustav-August University in 1937.

  Photo No. 1: His speech in the grand hall, which has been decorated with flags.

  Photo No. 2: The French delegation poses in the public square, in front of the gabled houses and the Nazi banners, with a man in a dark uniform (knickerbockers and riding boots, armband) holding a panel for the photographer that reads “Frankreich”; the two men in the delegation are both in French academic dress, one with a handsome mustache, wearing an épitoge with three ermine stripes, and M., with his black mask and the Commander’s cross of the Légion d’Honneur hanging around his neck over the white cotton rabat.

  • M. His desire for knowledge (insatiable curiosity) transformed after his injury into a need to be recognized as the best in everything. The physical transformation led to a mental transformation (obviously!). He himself speaks of a “second birth.”

  5/3/2005KÜRZ COLLECTION

  • Kürz saved everything. His journal (Paris, 1942). Photographs, notebooks, log books, mathematical manuscripts, articles written by others that he annotated, letters he received and copies (carbon) of his own letters. An enormous collection.

  5/4/2005• Correspondence between Kürz and M. No (or very little) math in these letters. Letters twelve pages long. Their common love of Greater Germany. Written in French! A bit boring and then, all of a sudden, a surge of lyricism, to express the love of the French lark, or “alouette,” (M.) who flies under the protection of the German eagle (Kürz). The eagle and the lark…

  • Other letters, notably from:

  -Silberberg, in 1939, from Strasbourg. He sent a lemma.

  -Slawek, a Polish mathematician, employed as a feeder of lice (serving as a blood source for lice in order to create a serum to combat typhus). A letter of appeal for help (1943). No carbon copy of a response.

  -Ernst von Apfeldorf, thanking him for a dinner invitation, 1950.

  -Yersin (senior), Paris, 1942, thanking him for food tickets.

  • In Kürz’s archives, articles by Silberberg, but also separate copies of his two notes published by the Academy of Sciences. Lots of annotations and writing crossed out in pencil. He really worked on these papers!

  Must go see the archives of Harold Smith, in Oxford: he worked with Kürz’s son-in-law after the war.

  5/5/2005TIEDEMANN COLLECTION

  • Letters, photos. He lived on Humboldtstrasse.

  He was a cellist. His wife, a pianist. Lots of chamber music. A trio with Schreiber, a student of Tiedemann’s who played violin.

  A photograph shows them in action. The violinist’s bright blue eyes. Became a more famous biologist than his mentor. Emigrated in 1938 (his stepfather was Jewish). Found a job at a small university in the American Midwest.

  • Another photograph: an evening in his garden on Humboldt Street, in 1943.

  This picture leads to a few questions.

  -In 1943, no one could have known that the little town of N. would be spared from the bombings. The threat must have made dinner invitations and receptions risky. Even in pretty houses with gardens, festive gatherings must have been rare.

  -What products were available to make a tart, for example? Butter, etc.? What if you were an individual (Frau Tiedemann)? A pastry shop (Korb & Schlag)?

  -Who is the doctor in the photo? Haven’t found any mention of this Friedrich elsewhere, in any of the university archives. Was he there as a doctor? Called to come treat one of the guests? M.’s neuralgia?

  • M.’s presence in the photo, his presence in N., raises more questions.

  -Official forms to fill out in order to enter Germany in 1943, both before traveling and at the border: the usual bureaucratic details, but also a declaration of religion, certifying that one was not Jewish (for French citizens, this was noted on passports).

  • Coincidences: the young and brilliant mathematician Otto Zach was reported missing from the Eastern Front (battle of Kursk) the very day M. gave his talk in N.

  5/6/2005On the train (back to Paris), questions:

  • Concerning another one of the people present in the photo of the charming summer evening in 1943, Ernst von Apfeldorf. This fact doesn’t appear in the university’s biographical dictionary, but he was among those addressed in the letter of appeal that Marcel Schmitt sent to several German historians asking them to intervene in favor of Daniel Roth, a historian who specialized in the historical events referenced in Dante’s Inferno. Evacuated to Clermont-Ferrand with the University of Strasbourg, he was arrested in June 1943 as a member of the Resistance and sent to Germany. He was beheaded in Wölfersheim on December 5, 1943. Impossible to know whether the letters Schmitt wrote actually reached their destinations. Ernst von Apfeldorf, who was well placed and very influential, didn’t come forward, according to Schmitt.

  • Also in summer 1943: the bombing of Hamburg. 40,000 civilian deaths? Flames 8,000 meters high? Corresponding exactly with the dates of Kürz’s visit to Paris (June 1942): the filming of Les visiteurs du soir in Paris. The flames coming up to lick the hands of Jules Berry (the devil). How high? A girl’s love being stronger than the devil (this is a film!).

  • “History is the science of man’s misfortunes” (Queneau, Une histoire modèle). Mathematical modelling? A truly complex predator-prey system—certain sardines can become sharks, for example.

  • Testimonials from those who survived the Nazi camps. During the transportation in uncovered freight cars following the evacuation of Auschwitz (march of death), survivors saw the corners of these cars as relative shelters.

  • A circle has no corners. Neither does a cylinder. Hence, perhaps, the descriptions of hell: circles (Dante), a cylinder (Beckett’s little book The Lost Ones).

  • List of hells: Homer (steersmen, the dog of hell), Christian (pain and a black pit), Dante (wretched hearts), Brueghel (succubus, lemures), Goethe (cloven-hoofed demon).

  Plus musicians, Liszt (After a Reading of Dante: Fantasia quasi Sonata).

  And now.

  Beckett.

  • Thinking of other books. For example: Painting at Dora (Dora was the camp where they developed the V-2 rockets). Le Lionnais was deported to Dora. During the roll call, he mentally recreates a museum of paintings (Brueghel at Dora). Painting numbers, which he speaks about with another deportee, beautiful numbers, π, the square root of 2. The finer points of number theory. His book Les nombres remarquables, dedicated “to my lifelong friends, delicious and terrifying, numbers.” Terrifying? Why terrifying? See, for example, what he says on the 7th positive integer. Or on the 24th?

  CHAPTER VIII

  One Hundred Twenty-One Days

  On the 24th of August, 1944 at 8:45 p.m., the first tanks of General Leclerc’s 2nd Armored Division made their entry into Paris via the Porte d’Orléans. The uprising had started on the 13th, the French flag was fluttering over the Sorbonne on the 19th, the Hôtel de Ville and the ministers were free on the 20th, but the fighting wasn’t over and Paris was covered in six hundred bar
ricades. On August 25th, at the Montparnasse train station, Colonel Rol-Tanguy and General Leclerc accepted the surrender of the German troops. The most beautiful day of our lives, some said. That’s it, it’s over! We’re going to live again! everyone thought. The black vehicles were covered in a rainbow of summer dresses and flags. People were singing “La Marseillaise,” girls were dancing in the streets and boys were kissing them.

  This glorious and symbolic liberation was soon joined by the liberation of Troyes, in the east, and those of several cities in the Paris Basin and the middle of France.

  On August 27th, Clermont-Ferrand was liberated as well. This, too, was a collective outpouring of jubilation. The female Alsatian students who had been taking refuge in the town along with the University of Strasbourg for almost five years made traditional costumes with big black headdresses and danced in the Place de Jaude. It’s over, thought Mireille and her mother, we can go back home.

  Since the end of June 1942, the two women, both Parisians, had been living (or, in any case, surviving) in a hamlet near the town, more or less hidden away with the villagers’ discreet complicity. The two of them had left Paris and crossed the Demarcation Line a few days after it had become mandatory to wear the star, just before the big roundups in July. Only Mireille and her mother were mentioned in the previous sentences because Mireille’s father died “pour la France” during the fighting that took place in May 1940. As for the star, it came up because French law had decided that Mireille’s mother Nicole, with a maiden name of Gorenstein, was Jewish, and therefore so was Mireille. This imposed Jewishness was a novelty for the two women. It did not accompany any religious beliefs, any rituals, any family traditions—in fact, not one specific thing Nicole and Mireille could have possibly shared with other “Jews” or “half-Jews.” What’s more, the women had thought for a few weeks afterwards that because Mireille’s father, a Parisian lawyer from a family of practicing Catholics (though he himself was an atheist and a free thinker), had been killed in action, they would be protected from the anti-Semitic decrees of October 1940. They had quickly understood that that wouldn’t be the case. But now it was over, France was going to be free, they were going to live again.