Hitler, My Neighbor

by Edgar Feuchtwanger

  “What? If they came to power?” my uncle asked, amazed. “But that’s impossible! They got less than three percent in the last election. The country’s far too republican to vote for them. Since the war there are nothing but pacifists, pen-pushers, civil servants, leftists, and Communists, and the only word on their lips is ‘republic,’ as if that could feed the millions of workers laid off by the Treaty of Versailles and this wretched Black Thursday brought on by bankers in New York, London and Paris…Do you know unemployment has risen tenfold in the last year? There are now five million out of work. And all our leaders can think of is getting rid of business charges and reducing benefits for individuals. And look at the results! That’s not your neighbor’s fault, at least!”

  “Don’t start that again…”

  “Well, all right,” Berthold seemed to concede, but immediately started again. “Still, what I wanted to say was that if Hitler were elected to power, he wouldn’t do any worse than those other incompetents, these leftists who range from left-of-center to extreme left, these good-for-nothings in government at the moment. Not to mention giving a good kick up the backside to all the privileged who are stuffing their faces while the people are suffering.”

  “What about the Jews?” my father asked. “What do you think he would do with the Jews? And the Gypsies? The Communists, trade unionists, anyone who doesn’t share his views? What does he have planned for them?”

  “It’s bluster, just words, youthful talk, blurted out in anger, in prison. Besides, it’s been dropped from his agenda. Do you remember my friend Weiss Ferdl?” Berthold asked.

  “You mean the actor? You know him?”

  “Yes, we fought together,” explained my uncle, then he paused briefly before continuing. “Well, so, he knows Hitler. He told me he isn’t at all the man we think he is. In fact, Weiss mentioned me to him, saying I’m living proof that Jews aren’t cowards. Apparently Hitler agreed. Well, he said, ‘that’s the exception that proves the rule.’ But that was a quip. He’s quite a wit. Anyway, all that talk is misinformation, you know. The French have a lot of influence, the Americans too. And the British also. Look at Italy, Mussolini’s been in power for nearly ten years. I can assure you their country’s doing much better. Democracy has its weaknesses too. Denigrating anything that challenges it, among other things.”

  “Do you think they’ll spare you, then?” my father seemed to challenge him. “Have you actually read Mein Kampf?”

  One of the waiters dropped his tray. We heard the glasses break on the floor. Customers applauded. I looked up from my delicious ice cream. Smoke hung in the air, stinging my eyes as I scanned the room. I dove back into my ice-cream glass, so deep I could hear my breathing inside it.

  “I bought it like everyone else,” said my uncle. “But I have to admit I haven’t read it. Well, not all of it, just a few pages, about the war.”

  “You should read it. It’s more explicit than you think. I promise you.”

  “Maybe,” Uncle Berthold said slowly. “But look at the state the country’s in. Oh, if only we’d been able to fight for a few more months, instead of giving in like that and surrendering everything to our enemies who are now infiltrating us and exploiting us!”

  “You should get yourself a job, and a wife. You should—”

  “Stop, please,” my uncle said, holding up one hand. “I don’t tell you how to live your life. Let’s talk about something else…”

  Night was falling outside. I could hear the two of them talking but wasn’t listening to them. Voices reverberated around the room, making a lot of noise. A dulled sound, like when I put my ears underwater in the bath. I could hear glasses, chairs grating, car horns outside, and people calling to waiters.

  “Are you dreaming, Bürschi?” asked my uncle, startling me. I climbed onto his lap. My father and mother often criticize him, but I think he’s kind. And incredibly brave. He fought in the war! I adore him.

  “Did you know Hitler?” I asked. “Were you in the trenches with him? Was he your friend?”

  “My friend? Are you crazy? My enemy, you mean! A man like that deserved not to come back from the battlefield. You listen to me, Bürschi, your neighbor looks like any other man, but the most cowardly of maniacs is hiding behind that mustache. Your father’s right.”

  My father smiled. He paid the check and we stood up. Rosie was waiting for us outside. We kissed my uncle goodbye and went home.

  Standing in front of our house, we all looked up. I saw Adolf Hitler’s silhouette in the window. He seemed very small. He was looking far into the distance. We went upstairs in silence.

  Our cousins the Bernheimers have invited us to spend the day with them today. They’ve sent their car over, an American model. It’s a red Packard with white-edged tires and a running board along the sides that scrolls up like a wave over the wheels. Amesmeyer, the driver, is wearing a dark uniform with gold buttons. His black peaked cap matches the car, with its white edging, red stitching and a visor as shiny as the mirrors. Amesmeyer takes the roof down and I feel like a prince being transported in the back of a carriage. He starts up the engine. Off we go. Gliding. I see Hitler’s Mercedes, which looks smaller now. Is he at the window? The building disappears behind us.

  Amesmeyer opens the door of the Packard for us and we step out. The Bernheimers’ house is a private mansion; it feels like arriving at a hotel. We ring the doorbell and a butler opens it, letting us into the huge hall adorned with paintings the size of windows. Another servant, dressed in a tailcoat and gray pants, helps us off with our coats and takes them to a room I’ve never seen. I always feel a little awkward because I prefer taking off my coat myself. No hope of that, he’s always faster than me. He calls me Herr Edgar.

  My cousin Ingrid is here, standing waiting for me in the hall with her blond hair held back by a gold barrette. She reaches for my hand and takes me off to play. Her bedroom, a space barely smaller than our whole apartment, is furnished like a miniature palace, with a princess bed and a huge doll’s house we can go inside. We play there all day, dreaming up different worlds for ourselves: she’s a queen and I’m a knight, I’m a fishmonger, she’s a housewife. By four o’clock we’re hungry. It’s time for afternoon tea. We go out into the garden to get to the kitchen on the other side of the house. There we find delicious treats carefully lined up on silver trays. I just love the Bündnerfleisch and the tiny sausages you dip in mustard. Ingrid’s nanny has prepared fruit juices for us, orange, and grenadine all the way from Paris. In the drawing room, bearskins are draped over red sofas the size of the boats we take on the lakes in summer. Ingrid’s mother is playing a grand piano.

  We often go to the Bernheimers’. We celebrated Christmas with them one time. I was dressed like a grown-up with a little tuxedo and patent shoes. The women wore satin gloves and hats decorated with feathers. Their faces were half hidden behind black nets, through which everything sparkled: their heavily made-up eyes, the red of their lips and their pearly teeth. Guests allowed chambermaids to take their belongings and carry them away carefully: women’s coats in fox fur and sable, their husbands’ gold-handled canes, top hats and heavy coats, some dark, some brightly colored. Cars filed by outside. I watched their measured dance. Butlers opened the doors to carriages with their gloved hands, revealing the leather interiors in red, almond, gray, black, cream or white. In the drawing room an orchestra played familiar tunes by Mozart, Beethoven, Handel and Bach, and other, more entertaining pieces, jazz and fox-trots. Before we were taken to bed in Ingrid’s room, I watched the adults dancing, crisscrossing their knees and arms more and more quickly. Late into the night we heard the sounds of the party and grown-ups laughing. We fell asleep lulled by melodies played on the violin, piano and clarinet.

  We’re now at the Bernheimers’ country house in Oberföring. Their villa is the size of a castle. Our parents are so afraid we’ll get lost in the grounds that Ingrid’s nanny follows our every move, to the stables and the kitchen garden, into the greenhouses
and the orangery, around the maze and onto the tennis court. On our travels we meet the estate’s dogs and cats, including an adorable little puppy.

  This year we extend our vacation with friends of my parents’, the Siegels. They don’t have a castle, their house in Munich isn’t as large as the Bernheimers’ and their chalet in Walchensee is more like a shack than a villa. In the distance along the shores of the lake we can make out stilts where the locals regularly go to haul up their oyster beds, standing in their boats on the green waters. Cows graze unfenced, looking out over the mountainous scenery. But by far the best thing is that they have a daughter my age: Beate. We haven’t spent a moment apart all summer. We’ve watched the sun set every evening, hand in hand, and picked so many daisies in the meadow that there are no more to be found by the end of our stay. We’re sorry to say goodbye, but we know we won’t be apart long.

  Beate lives very close to us, on the other side of the square that runs along the side of Hitler’s house.

  Since we’ve been home from our vacation, there’s been talk of nothing but politics in the house. Uncle Lion’s book has been published. It’s in all the bookshops. When we go for our walks, Rosie points it out to me in windows. I feel proud when I see it. The bookseller told us it seems to be selling better than Mein Kampf. I know it says bad things about Hitler; I also know our neighbor’s a dangerous man. My parents, my grandparents, and Beate’s relations too are all saying the same thing: he’s a liar and a thief. Even the milkman talked to Rosie about it. He told her Hitler was taking all the milk for the neighborhood so there was less for everyone else. My mother was furious. According to my father, the milkman was wrong because no one can requisition their neighbors’ milk. He also said that Hitler couldn’t single-handedly drink the usual milk consumption of several families. Otherwise it would be good news because it would kill him!

  He’s right in front of us, outside his building. We’ve stopped in our tracks. Rosie is stock-still. I can see he’s cut himself shaving, as my father sometimes does. He has blue eyes. I didn’t know that. You can’t see that in photos. I thought his eyes were completely black. I’ve never seen him so close up. He has hairs in his nose, and a few in his ears. He’s shorter than I thought. Shorter than my father. Shorter than Rosie. Passersby stop, like us. He looks at me. I should look away. But I can’t. I stare at him. Maybe I should smile? I’m his neighbor, after all! Does he recognize me? Does he know I watch him from my bedroom? Can he see inside our house? Does he watch us eating in the dining room? Does he know I’m Jewish? I don’t want him to hate me. Or my father. Or my mother. Are people looking at me? He’s climbed into a dark car, black as night, its lines as hard as stone.

  On the way home from the park with Rosie, I ran along the sidewalk, rolling my hoop ahead of me with little nudges of the stick. Uncle Lion was at home when we reached the house. I’ve come to sit on the floor in the sunshine in the drawing room, to listen to what they’re saying. My mother looks worried, my father serious. Only Uncle Lion is still smiling. They’re all looking at a newspaper open on the coffee table.

  “Look what they’re doing, it’s disgusting,” says my father.

  There’s an illustration of a great fat man wearing a bow tie; he has a big nose and eyebrows like bushes.

  “Don’t get in a state about nothing,” says Uncle Lion. “Wait till you see the review by Herr Goebbels himself, the newspaper chief and a regular guest at your neighbor’s table. He says they’ll make me pay when they’re in power. What do they mean by that? He doesn’t say. Probably because it’s not likely to be legal. A public lynching? Murder? Torture? There’s no knowing what torments the Nazis will dream up for those they despise, in other words nine tenths of the planet.”

  “Could they ever come to power?” my mother asks.

  “I don’t know,” Uncle Lion sighs. “Goebbels certainly managed to get himself elected to the Reichstag. Do you know what he said? That he and the eleven other Nazi congressmen were infiltrating the Reichstag like wolves in a sheepfold. The Fascists had no trouble taking power completely in Italy. The elections are in a month, in September. Everyone’s expecting them to improve on their last performance. They had only a 3 percent share of the vote three years ago. But unemployment has gone through the roof since then. The Wall Street crash is still casting its long shadow over us. German companies can’t sell anything anymore, they’re running out of cash. The banks have stopped lending, and their customers are going bankrupt one after another. People are desperate. Because Hitler and his gang have never been in power, they’re being credited with every virtue. Well, let’s say that some people believe—or hope—that things would be better with them in power, given that their leader says so with such conviction. And the culprits have been identified. The Jews. Of course. Just like in the past, in Rome, in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance. They’ve started all over again.”

  “You’re exaggerating,” says my mother.

  “I can promise you I’m not. There are things they’ll say to everyone, and then there’s what they say among themselves. I read everything they publish. And it never changes. It’s obsessive. All they talk about is Jews, foreigners, bankers, saying the world would be a better place without them, of course.”

  One day my parents went out to vote. They didn’t take me with them. When they came back, they were in a good mood.

  At breakfast the next day they didn’t speak at all. They read the newspaper. Rosie was quiet too. I asked her whether Adolf Hitler had won. She said he hadn’t, but he hadn’t lost either. He took 18 percent of the vote. This means that out in the street, one in five people voted for him, as if one person in our household had voted for the Nazis, and so on in every house. Did Rosie vote for him? She shrugged her shoulders wistfully. She’d voted for the Communists, and only one person in ten had done that.

  “The Communists wanted to share everything,” she said, “they wanted equality. In the past they fought for workers to have a day of rest on Sundays. Everyone’s forgotten that. Now people are happier voting for Hitler, who’s never done a day’s work in his life.”

  I’ve decided to be a Communist when I grow up.

  In this period my eyes were opened to two menaces of which I had previously scarcely known the names, and whose terrible importance for the existence of the German people I certainly did not understand: Marxism and Jewry.

  —ADOLF HITLER, MEIN KAMPF, ON HIS EARLY YEARS IN VIENNA

  It was my first trip to Dr. Arndt, the dentist. I couldn’t wait for the day because I’d lost several baby teeth and the new ones were already coming through, bigger teeth that I’d keep my whole life. I was longing to show them off.

  “They’ll check you don’t have vampire teeth,” Rosie teased, imitating the Vampire of Düsseldorf.

  My mother and I walked to my appointment, passing the “King of Munich’s” house, Prince Regent’s Place and the opera house. Mama and I sang together as we walked; sometimes I ran ahead, avoiding puddles and aiming for the joints between paving stones on the sidewalk. Mama opened the front door to the building where the dentist worked. I huddled closer to her, and she stroked my hair and the back of my neck as if she knew what I was thinking. I wanted to leave. We climbed to the first floor, she rang a doorbell and the door was opened by a small woman in a white uniform. Mama gave my name and the stern-looking woman frostily showed us into the waiting room. We weren’t alone: a fat lady swimming in a huge fur coat was looking into the mirror of her powder compact and applying makeup. I saw her eyes alight on me, stare at me and then flit back to the Bakelite box. She turned to her neighbor, a small woman dressed in black.

  “Who on earth does he think he is?” she said, loudly enough for everyone to hear.

  She meant Adolf Hitler, I was sure of it. I’d heard Papa say the only thing he had in common with Adolf Hitler was his dentist—he’d spotted him going into the building one time. So the King of Munich must have been undergoing treatment in the adjoining room that very minute.
When the dentist’s door opened slightly, we all went quiet, including the woman who talked so loudly. I wondered whether Hitler might have heard her. Or had the padded walls muffled her strident voice? The door stayed ajar a long time. We could hear the dentist talking deferentially to his patient, but all we could see through the opening was a small section of the patient’s jacket. I was watching the dentist’s wrinkled hand holding the door handle when the door suddenly opened, and we all saw the dentist’s face, his white smock and small glasses. And Herr Hitler appeared. He was a short bearded man who looked nothing like our neighbor: he wore a big hat and his hair was arranged into payot curls in front of his ears. Not him.

  The unknown patient greeted us and left. I thought the woman would get up and go in next. But it was my turn. The dentist kissed Mama’s hand, shook mine and showed us in. We each sat in an armchair facing his desk. I was aware of the worn leather under my thighs while he asked Mama questions. He made a note of her answers on a sheet of paper, slowly repeating what she’d said in his deep, gravelly voice. Between his sentences we could hear his pen gliding over the paper. His desk was like my father’s: leather topped with a blotter covered in splashes of blue. There was also a small bottle of midnight blue ink, a gleaming paper knife and long silvery scissors that reflected the chandelier hanging from the ceiling. The tick of a clock standing on the mantelpiece before a tall mirror filled the room. I could hear the sounds of car engines and horns from the street. I couldn’t help myself looking over to the far side of the room, where a large steel chair stood on a single foot, fitted out with lamps, metallic instruments, mirrors, cables and iron rods. Beyond it, in a dark corner of the office, another leather-padded door opened and a nurse came in. She was wearing a white uniform and a small hat. She looked like Marlene Dietrich.