by Alexis Clark
German immigration to the United States after the war was a complicated issue. Between 1820 and 1930, approximately six million Germans immigrated to the United States.25 After World War II, with the United States emerging as the world’s leading superpower, the nation had to get involved in the critical refugee crisis in Europe, and as an Allied occupying force, it also controlled Germany’s migration policy. Germans looking for a better life sought out their American relatives for visa sponsorship, but there were firm travel restrictions placed on German citizens, making it very difficult for them to leave their occupied state. There was also a quota system that the United States still followed: the 1924 Immigration and Naturalization Act had established a yearly quota of 25,957 visas for Germans.26
Any chance of Germans immigrating to America after World War II rested on them belonging to preferred groups the U.S. government allowed for entry and sponsorship. With the threat of the Cold War and tensions rising between the Soviet Union and the United States, German rocket scientists were given visas, even those with Nazi ties. War brides of U.S. soldiers were given priority as well. Victims of National Socialism or close relatives of American citizens were also allowed to apply for visas but weren’t guaranteed entry. The U.S. government required that immigrants from these groups have a sponsor to avoid dependence on social welfare programs. Sponsors, whether relatives, churches, volunteer organizations, or in some cases farmers who guaranteed housing and employment had to submit an affidavit pledging support of the immigrant. As a former POW, Frederick technically wasn’t even allowed in the United States because anyone in the Wehrmacht couldn’t reenter the United States until after September 1948, when the travel ban was lifted for Germans who didn’t fall into any prioritized groups. But exceptions were always made, including for sponsored ex-POWs who posed no threat.27 And in Frederick’s case, he was a fiancé to Elinor and father to a newly born American son who needed his support.
Frederick’s visa application was accepted, and Elinor saved a copy of the letter Gwyneth wrote. Her friend’s generosity paid off, and Frederick was granted entry into the United States, arriving on June 21, 1947, and marrying Elinor five days later at the courthouse in downtown Manhattan.28 The two saw no point in delaying their nuptials for any reason, and New York didn’t have an anti-miscegenation law, like several other states in the United States, where their interracial marriage would have been against the law.
Elinor could finally silence all of the doubters about Frederick’s love for her, her mother among them. He had come back and married her just as he had promised. And their nuptials helped bolster the less-than-flattering opinion Gladys initially had of her new son-in-law. From what she could tell, he did want to make a life in the United States, but as a husband and father, not as a hustler or manipulator.29
Elinor had endured nine months of pregnancy, much of that spent alone after Frederick was sent back to Europe, and another six months of single parenthood after Stephen’s birth. But she was now Mrs. Frederick Albert. Gladys, bedridden, didn’t witness the civil ceremony, but Hope Taylor, Elinor’s niece, remembered hearing years later about an official celebration of Elinor’s marriage back home in Milton. Even though Elinor defied all of the characteristics of a traditional bride, the etiquette that Gladys was accustomed to would have required a social gathering of some kind—one that was small and subdued given the extenuating circumstances, but a proper occasion nonetheless.
Although Gladys had a large-enough home, Elinor’s relationship with her mother had always been fragile, and Elinor most likely thought it was better to start fresh somewhere else. The young couple and their child stayed at Ruth’s place temporarily in New York when they first married, but a family of three could overstay their welcome within days, so Frederick took odd jobs to make enough money to find a place of their own.
If they were outraged by Frederick’s decision to return to America for a black woman, Karl and Margarete didn’t voice it to Charlotte. The story of how they learned of their son’s decision isn’t clear. Once he was back in Vienna he could have called or written to his parents about his plans, but that part of the story is unknown to surviving relatives. Chris Albert, born years after Stephen, even wondered with amusement about how his father broke the news about Elinor. “Did he say, ‘Now I’m going to go back to America because she’s pregnant’ or ‘because I love her,’ or ‘Oh, by the way she’s black and about six feet tall’? Who knows what.”30
There were always gaps in communication and unshared moments within the Albert family. Charlotte was barely in touch with her parents even though they were raising her daughter. The war only intensified the difficult dynamics in this already emotionally fractured family.
Whatever Frederick did or did not reveal to his parents didn’t alter his decision—that much is clear. Elinor and Frederick’s precarious plan to bring him back to the United States had worked. They were living together as a family. But they hadn’t thoroughly considered how they were going to raise their son, or where’d they live or work. When they got married, Frederick was almost twenty-two and Elinor twenty-six and neither had spent much time functioning in the real world as independent adults. Their entire lives had been structured for them—first by their parents, then by their schooling, and finally by their respective armies. Neither Frederick nor Elinor had lived on their own, really, let alone as a mixed-race couple with a baby who was half German and half African American. They were sure of their devotion to each other, but it is unlikely that they understood just how much and how frequently that love would be tested.
9.
Searching for Acceptance
ALTHOUGH THE MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE LISTED Frederick’s official name as Friedrich, at some point the couple decided to Americanize his name, and he became known to everyone as Frederick or by his nickname, Frika. Elinor and Frederick’s relationship was now out in the open for the first time since they had met. Emotions ran high as everyone tried to adjust to postwar life, but Elinor took comfort in being a married woman. She was unfazed that Frederick was white, and she wanted to put behind her the discrimination that she had endured in the army.
For the nurses who remained in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps after the war, a moment of progress arrived at last. The determination and activism of Mabel Staupers, the NAACP and other civil rights groups, the Negro press, and Eleanor Roosevelt eventually paid off when President Truman banned segregation in the U.S. Army and Navy in 1948. Executive Order 9981 stated, “There shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin.”1
A few years later, in 1951, Mabel Staupers dissolved the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses and folded its membership into the American Nurses Association, the very organization that for decades had denied black nurses entry. Staupers felt the goal of the NACGN had been met now that the ANA had to admit all qualifying nurses regardless of race and now that, by law, black women were able to serve in the U.S. Army and Navy without any quotas or restrictions.2
American society, however, had not evolved as quickly and was not prepared to deal with a couple like Elinor and Frederick. They did not exactly fade into the background: she was a tall, statuesque African American woman and a former army nurse; he was a handsome, reserved former German soldier. After marrying in New York, they decided to move to Boston, where Elinor thought they’d have a better chance to find affordable housing and low-skilled employment for Frederick.
They chose Roxbury, a no-frills working-class neighborhood populated mostly by families crammed into small apartments. The housing market was tight with the return of veterans and the baby boom. But Elinor and Frederick faced an even greater challenge. There were plenty of people who still harbored bitter feelings about the war and who thought all Germans were “Nazis” or “Krauts.” Moreover, some landlords weren’t thrilled about renting an apartment to a German with a black wife and mixed-race baby. Elinor and Frederick
would end up moving frequently, mostly because neighbors complained to landlords about living next to them and threatened to move.3
Elinor and Frederick stayed the longest in an attic apartment where they met an African American dentist, Edward Allen, who had served in the U.S. Navy and who would become a good family friend. Allen’s tiny apartment was across from theirs, and he remembered them as a loving couple who kept to themselves.4
The late Senator Edward Brooke, who was a Boston lawyer then, lived nearby and heard about Frederick. He sought him out because he needed some documents translated from German to English, and the two became friends. They had much in common as two veterans of the war, although from opposite sides. Brooke, who was African American, had been an officer in the segregated 366th Infantry Regiment. When his unit went to Italy, he fell in love with and married an Italian woman, and they had two children.5
Frederick’s career was on a far less promising course than that of his distinguished friend with political ambitions. Frederick worked all hours of the night at a bakery, which gave him very little time to socialize and acquaint himself with neighbors. The hours at the bakery were unforgiving—he had to wake up early in the morning to get the fresh bread out, and he struggled to make ends meet. It was a low-skilled job and the situation was stressful for Elinor, whose anxiety was already escalated by the passing of her mother in May 1948 of a cerebral hemorrhage.6
Gladys Farrow Powell had been very ill for years, but it was still a blow when the matriarch passed away at age fifty-two. The town of Milton mourned too; as previously noted, in her obituary Gladys was lauded for her role as a leader in the Girl Scouts. She had been the highest-ranking African American in a leadership position in the entire organization.7
With her two sisters living their own lives in different states, and both parents now gone, Elinor had to make her new family work without any of the support she had grown accustomed to having. She and Frederick had a child to raise and no money. Neither one of them had ever really known what it was like to worry about finances, because both of their families had prospered. Renting a cramped attic apartment was a frightening reality, and at some point Elinor and Frederick both realized they were on a path to poverty. They would not be able to buy their own house at the rate they were going, and given how society felt about mixed-race couples, getting a mortgage would have been extremely difficult even if they had the means.
After a few years of scraping by in Boston, living in dilapidated apartments, Elinor suggested they move to Germany to live with Frederick’s family. By then, Karl had a new engineering company that was doing well. And there was nothing keeping Elinor in Boston anymore—after her mother’s death, she and her sisters sold the house on Emerson Road—and she felt like she was at a crossroads. She never wanted Frederick to resent moving to America for her, and she knew enough about his background to understand that he was sacrificing a great deal to start over with nothing just to be with her. She also knew a life of poverty in Boston was not what they had dreamed about when they mapped out their lives as young lovers at Camp Florence.8
Frederick was hesitant. He was resistant to the idea of relying on his parents for anything, and he and Elinor would be moving to Germany with nothing more than the clothes on their backs, which meant they would have no choice but to live with his parents while he worked for his father. Frederick had no idea how his parents would receive his new family, and although he had suppressed his longing for his father’s approval, he knew that if he returned to Germany he risked falling back into a trap of rejection.
After much back-and-forth, Frederick finally agreed to the move with one caveat: he would give it one year. If they weren’t happy in Germany after that, they would return to the United States immediately. He decided to be cautiously optimistic about working for his father’s company because he would finally be able to provide for his family of three. He also knew that, as the only son, he was the natural choice for taking over his father’s business one day, which would help his parents warm to the idea of his move back to Germany to live with them. He would be groomed to be the next CEO, which would mean a significant upgrade to his current lifestyle. If his parents knew he and his family had been living in a shabby attic apartment, they would have been ashamed.
It wasn’t just Frederick’s anxiety about working for Karl that gave him pause. He knew his parents still believed in the German empire. With the fall of the Third Reich and for survival reasons in occupied territory, no one in Germany still openly supported Nazism after the war. However, his parents were German nationalists, and that strong national pride came with feelings of racial superiority. Frederick couldn’t guarantee Karl and Margarete would accept his new black family.
Elinor didn’t let that dissuade her. As far as she was concerned, his parents’ opinions couldn’t have been worse than what she had endured living in Arizona. With the same optimism, devotion, and determination they had exhibited at Camp Florence and while they waited to be reunited from across the ocean, Elinor and Frederick began to pack for Germany.9
On August 1, 1952, Elinor, Frederick, and five-and-a-half-year-old Stephen boarded the TSS Neptunia, a passenger liner sailing from Boston to Bremerhaven, Germany.
Life had irrevocably changed everywhere in Europe after World War II. Even before the war ended, Margarete and Karl had been reduced to using food ration cards just like every other Austrian and German who survived the collapse of Nazism. Toward the final months of the war, fearful of bombing, they left their apartment in Vienna and retreated to a home in the Austrian countryside that Charlotte claimed her father had previously shared with a mistress.
That he was a German officer in the reserves made Karl a prime target for reprisals in Vienna after the war, undoubtedly adding to the decision to leave Austria permanently. Even though Austria was once part of the Third Reich and took part in Nazi atrocities, the country’s narrative after Germany’s defeat became that of a victim of a brutal dictatorship, not that of a collaborator.
With territories redrawn, millions of Europeans would have no choice but to live elsewhere—mandates implemented by British, French, American, and Russian occupation forces, which needed to control and keep track of displaced populations. Charlotte even kept her mother’s Allied Expeditionary Force DP Index Card, the ID the Allied governments gave to displaced persons during the war. The card provided serial numbers that allowed governments to track people who were being resettled. After their temporary stint in Siegen, Karl and Margarete moved to Vogel beck, in Lower Saxony, Germany, where Karl started another company. He didn’t sit back and wait for Germany to figure out its next steps as an occupied and battered nation. He loved working, being in charge, and making money too much, and he quickly figured out a way to profit from the country’s rebuilding efforts.
His new company in Vogelbeck was called Feuerfest, later renamed Refratechnik. It developed refractory bricks made of slag from the steel and iron industries. Soon Karl had acquired enough money from contracts to move the factory to nearby Göttingen and build a beautiful house, in which he, Margarete, and Charlotte’s daughter, Kristina, were able to live quite comfortably.10
Elinor and Frederick were naive about the climate of post–World War II Göttingen, and would soon discover it wasn’t a congenial place for a mixed-race couple. Their primary concern was that Karl and Margarete had the means to house them and provide employment for Frederick, and that Kristina could be a playmate for Stephen.
Göttingen had been spared the structural damage from bombings that most other German cities suffered during the war. It was a university town in a valley along the Leine River, just south of Hanover. Göttingen was conservative in values and politics, and renowned for being the home of Georg-August University, founded in 1737, which was also the city’s largest employer. The university was one of Europe’s leading institutions for science and mathematics and churned out a substantial number of Nobel laureates in the twentieth century. By all accounts, the to
wn’s citizens had embraced Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.11
Despite the presence of a university, which usually would include a population of forward-thinking scholars, Göttingen favored right-wing ideas over left-wing ones, particularly during Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s, when the Hitler Youth, SA, and SS were embraced by the community. Like in other German towns during the Third Reich, the small population of Jews was persecuted in Göttingen. Professors at the university were forced to leave and the local synagogue was burned down in 1938. Denazifying the city after the war wasn’t going to be a quick transformation.12
For Frederick and Elinor, moving in with Karl and Margarete brought with it a host of uncertainties. Not only would Frederick be introducing his non-German-speaking African American wife and son to his non-English-speaking parents for the first time, but they would all be living under the same roof.
Frederick’s communication with his parents had been just short of nonexistent during the war. Charlotte remembered that the family did receive one letter informing them that he had been taken to the United States as a prisoner of war, but they had no contact after that. Frederick hadn’t spent any significant length of time with Margarete and Karl in years. Many unpalatable scenarios could have resulted from the move, but Elinor reassured Frederick that it was better to test the situation rather than look back with regret. More than anything, she never wanted him to struggle in the United States wondering what could have been and to resent her for denying him a chance to run his father’s company.13
Karl and Margarete’s home in Göttingen was a definite upgrade in sophistication and size from Elinor and Frederick’s Boston accommodations. “The house was very beautiful,” said Kristina. “It was newly built according to the plans and wishes of my grandmother, quite modern for the fifties.” What Margarete designed was a two-story white stucco home that included a small goldfish pond and a large garden that she spent countless hours tending. The home’s interior, grand and airy with sizable windows, had a formal yet comfortable aesthetic. The living areas included large velvet sofas in green and gold, and dark hardwood floors covered with soft carpets. Large crystal chandeliers adorned the main entertaining areas. There was a two-room suite in the back of the house where Frederick, Elinor, and Stephen would live.