Thomas' Childhood Home, Then and Now (including mementos that live on)

Grandchildren mine, 

One day, you will look back on the house(s) you grew up in and you’ll remember details that will astound your own kids – the chip in the paint where the pantry door gently hit the wall (and the sound that it made)… the bathroom lock that got just a little stuck if you pressed too hard… the cabinet door that required just a bit more force to open. We all have those memories about our childhood home.

Here are my father’s memories of the house at 10 Reichstrasse, Chemnitz.

The house itself tells much about life in those days -- and about my privileged childhood. It was essentially a three-story building, plus a full basement. In all that space, there were only two real bedrooms, the parents’ and the kids’, which had a playroom attached. There was a whole slew of other rooms, though: a large entry hall, a music room furnished in Biedermeyer style, a “Queen Anne Room” (off-limits to kids), a dining a breakfast room, Father's "Collection" room and office, my Mother's "Damenzimmer,” (ladies’ room), the dressing room, and a large bathroom, one of four in the house. On the attic floor, there was a guest room, also furnished in Biedermeyer, and an assortment of servants' rooms, a laundry drying room, and (most importantly) the ping-pong table for the model railroad, and Rainer’s tools. Below the house, separate cellar rooms for furnace, coal, potatoes, wine, and storage.

A set of large glass plate photographs of my father’s childhood home survived the war. What a house it must have been!

   

The oval-shaped silver cookie bin on the table also graced our home as I grew up. Only the fanciest cookies went into it; “normal” cookies went elsewhere! I’m not sure how my father got it out of Germany, but I know that he loved it. Eventually, he bequeathed it to my oldest brother, Michael, who has it in his home today.

 

    

I wish I knew what rooms these were. I’ve tried to discern which room is which from my father’s descriptions. Perhaps you can figure it out?

Dad drew a layout of his home for us at one time, but I have no idea where it is. I have a vague recollection of seeing it after he died. Do I have it? Dang – down the worm hole I go…!

    

I believe that the photo of Irmgard, my grandmother was taken in her sitting room. The photo on the right is of Carl’s office, where he spent most of his time after he was stripped by the Nazis of his job as bank president.

   

Irmgard again, perhaps in her dressing room?

    

*I found it!* Here is the floor plan my dad created of his childhood house in Chemnitz.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My father was able to bring the etching above the bureau on the far left to America with him and it graced the walls of every house he lived in. It is “a portrait of the architect Hans Christian Genelli, the uncle of the artist, Bonaventura Genelli, created in 1814. My brother Stephan has it in his house now.

 

        

 

My father continues:

Thinking back, I spent as much of my childhood in the attic rooms as in the playroom. The attic was much more interesting - the slanted ceilings had an opening in the roof for skylights. From there you could see all the way to the airport. You could see the biplanes taking off, and once there was even a Zeppelin. The laundry drying room was as wide as the whole house, all unfinished raw wood, safe from all intruders. That’s where Rainer and I shot our air rifles for hours on end.

The attic contained all the things that our parents didn’t know what to do with - the architect’s model of our house, the Christmas tree decorations, our parents’ old Carnival costumes much older than we were, Mutti’s old doll house from when she was a little girl, and more. And best of all, Rainer's tool chest, chemistry table, and the ping-pong table on the very top floor where nobody lived but overnight guests and the servants.

We kids were allowed almost everywhere. The radio was in Mutti’s room, the homework desk was in the dressing room, the telephone was in the "table-service arranging" room (butler’s pantry?) between the kitchen and the dining room, and the tub in the bathroom sometimes held our model racecar track, complete with a sharply banked turn at the end.

         

(Thomas, Ulli, and Rainer, c 1935.)

It was not unusual at the time, in a society defined by class, to have a middle-class house fit for a lifestyle that seems out of time and out of place now -- much too big, requiring and accommodating two live-in servants, "cultured,” opulent, and impractical. In reality, it was probably much smaller than I remember -- doesn’t that always happen with childhood memories? I remember it as a Gone with the Wind mansion like the ones in the Old South of yesteryear America.

            

This photo of my father’s childhood home never elicited great emotion from me until I visited Chemnitz in 2018 (a trip worthy of a post or three itself!). Now it still gives me a lump in my throat because… well, because this is what that location looks like today.

    

This is my daughter Kat, Carl’s great grandchild, in front of 10 Reichstrasse, 2018.

  

And here’s Ulli in front of where her childhood home once stood.

It’s heartbreaking.

Telling memories are in that house. There was a spot in Father's art collection room with which I connect two later events. It was the spot where I was standing when I got the only slap in the face I remember, for a report card showing a "D" in Greek. The other memory, tied forever to the same spot, was Father telling me that Mother had died.

It’s not easy to explain my perception of the relationship between my parents. The simple answer is that I hardly noticed one. It was common for parents in those days not to show any emotion or affection in front of the kids, at least I don’t remember ever seeing them kiss or even touch. They were very proper and formal, at least as much as I observed. I have no doubt that they were dedicated and loyal to each other, but they didn’t show anything beyond it, ever. If they had, it might have - God forbid! - raised questions as to where I came from. I’m sure that there was no greater priority for my father than caring for his family.

My mother, as a non-Jew married to a Jew during WWII Germany, had a heroic role to play to provide for the functioning of the family under circumstances over which she had no control, and it was her sheer existence that allowed the family the title of “privileged,” at least in the eyes of the Nazis.

She knew that, by a stroke of some politician’s caprice, her role could change any moment. Her husband provided the cool head and stoic attitude. She was much more impulsive, but she managed to provide for us all under the most difficult circumstances, with the most outwardly emotional steadiness she could manage. She never discussed the pressures she was under in any terms beyond acknowledging everybody else’s difficulties.

Thomas' Early Childhood Memories

Dear grandchildren,

I only have a few things to add (left-justified copy) to this excerpt about my father's early childhood years from his book, The Rim of the Volcano.

I unfortunately have no idea about how my parents met, anything about their courtship, or anything about the circumstances of their early years.

I managed to be born the day before my brother Rainer’s fifth birthday. That five-year age difference was huge to begin with, and it stayed with me as hero worship until the day Rainer died in 1996.

Typical of German child rearing methods of the time, all privileges were handed out strictly by age and birth order. The older you are, the more jealous your younger siblings feel - jealous of your privileges and jealous of what you’re sure is more parental affection.

I was brought up in a sheltered and loving home with the help of nannies and servants. Rainer and I shared a bedroom next to the children's playroom, where my mother also had her sewing machine. I remember sitting on the rounded wooden cover of the sewing table, playing with a button box Mother kept. I remember the cook coming in to discuss with my mother the menu for the coming week. There must have been times when I sat on my mother's lap, but I don’t remember them specifically. I know now that close physical contact between mother and child was generally not considered proper in those days, mainly because it might not be hygienic. Disease and superstition were all around, and I can still hear Mother telling me not to wrap a banana peel around my wrist because that would give me a cold, or even polio. The fear of newly discovered bacteria at the time made physical distance between children and adults safer for both. What a high price to pay!

Oddly enough, I do remember sitting on Father’s lap, trying to get away from his cigar smoke. In those days, when I was still a small child, he could still buy what he considered “good” Cuban cigars. Sometimes, while I sat on his lap he’d open the huge Schnorr "Bilderbibel" (picture Bible) from his collection cabinet and tell me stories from the Old Testament -- never the New Testament. The Old Testament is what he knew from his own childhood. Of course, none of this struck me as the least bit odd at the time, in spite of the fact that I was brought up Protestant – definitely an influence from my mother.

One very strange difference between an America childhood and my own is this: before I was ten years old, I do not recall ever being in another child’s house or a friend coming to my house! Can you imagine? I very rarely played with children my age. It was strictly my nanny, my parents, and I, plus tagging along obediently with my big brother and, after 1932, my baby sister. No children my age. This continued from elementary school all the way through high school. I essentially grew up alone - safe from measles, diphtheria, whooping cough, polio, and all those nasty things for which the immunizations were just beginning to be invented.

I must describe some vivid memories of that house!

What I really remember are the images from when I was older, but my impressions didn’t change much over those years. Occasionally there would be a change in wallpaper: the laborers would arrive with their big long tables. First they wallpapered the children's playroom with old newspaper called "Makulatur,” and then they’d add yellow wallpaper with happy fairy-tale figures. What a nice, sunny room it became, even in winter!

We heated our house with coke, a gray, porous leftover from heating coal to extract gas from it. That gas, consisting of a combination of carbon-monoxide and hydrogen, is highly poisonous. In fact, its noxious odor is what still warns us of a gas leak today. Coke was used widely at the time to burn in central heating systems. Of course, during the war it became increasingly more rare, to the point that use of the central heating furnace in the basement became impossible.

My brother, Stephan, the “geekiest” of Dad’s four children, just sent me a text, correcting Dad!

One problem with the lack of central heating was that we no longer had running hot water circulating in the radiators. When that happened, we had to use the instant water heater in the bathroom, even in the winter, for our once-a-week baths. From the time our fuel ran low, to the day I arrived in America, hot running water was a rarely known luxury for me!

When I was less than a year old, I developed eczema all over my body. Mother consulted several doctors and tried all kinds of cures, including taking me to the local coke plant because its fumes were said to cure skin problems. Can you believe it? Of course, it didn’t cure anything in my case. Eventually Mutti took me to an experimental doctor in Dresden who wrapped me in coal tar from head to toes. In a letter to her mother, Adele, my mother Irmgard described the surroundings as “the most primitive ‘clinic’.” She was comparing her own privileged life to the scene at the clinic, where people were struggling to choose between Communists and National Socialists. “One has to give some credit,” she wrote, “to the poor, unhappy, and hateful people whose fate it is to look into such a grim backyard all their lives. Mankind cannot improve until living conditions do. Why did the first tenants in paradise have to become so uppity? Now all the world must suffer!” Nothing punishes you as promptly as hubris!

The tar wraps finally did help “her little black boy,” as she called me (or perhaps I just outgrew the eczema), but it left me with skin problems for life.

Summers in Germany are short, so we spent as much time as possible outside in the yard when the weather cooperated. In one corner of that yard stood a little tree called the Thomas-Bäumchen (the little Thomas tree), an almond tree that was planted by my godfather in the hour I was born on September 25^th, 1928.

That little tree grew up faster than I did!

To get to our house from the street, one first needed a key for the front gate. Then you’d climb a flight of outside steps to the front door, where you’d enter into a tiled "Garderobe" (wardrobe room) where my father would change from his street jacket to his house coat. In this entry, stenciled above the door to the house, was a quote by Philipp Melanchthon that I believe served as a guiding principle for my parents’ marriage and their idea of family: Translated it said “In essentials unity, when in doubt liberty, in everything charity.” So simple - and so difficult!

My most vivid memory of the Garderobe room was that I was not to leave my school pack in there after hanging up my jacket. If I did, Vati would dump everything from the backpack onto the floor. He did that only once, but I do remember!

Yes, our parents did punish us, but it was usually the "guilt" type, rather than the physical kind. "WE don't do that. I am disappointed in you.” "Don't," “No!” and "Stand in the corner!" were said often and clearly. Disobedience and protest on our part were unthinkable. You did as you were told, without question. We were not awarded for good grades, but we did get an allowance, complete with -- and under the condition of -- keeping a complete written record of how we spent it. Debits on the left, credits on the right. And yes, I must admit to my children here - I knew of no different way to raise a child. I must have used the same parenting practices, at least when Michael was little. We all experiment on our first children with our recollection of “the” methods of upbringing!

I vividly remember my father using the “I am so disappointed in you” line with me. I had recently gotten my driver’s license. My parents had gone to Sausalito to spend the weekend on our sailboat and gave me the explicit directions not to use the car unless there was an emergency. Of course, the left the keys with me … in case of said emergency. What did I do? I took the car to go to my friend Terrilyn's house and paint rocks! On the way home, I of course stopped at the gas station to cover up my tracks fill the tank with gas. Upon pulling up to the pump, my foot slipped and I backed right into it, damaging the bumper of the car (but fortunately not the gas pump). When my parents got home the next day, I confessed my crime (there was physical evidence; I pretty much had to!), to which my father responded, calmly… (you guessed it), “I am so disappointed in you!”

I would have preferred a whippin’ (which my parents would never have done)!

I did go on to use this on my own kids a few times…

WHAT?! It’s extremely effective! Thanks, Opa Carl!

Carl and Irmgard's Early Years in Köln and Wermelskirchen

Dearest grandchildren,

We continue now with my father’s description of his early years in Chemnitz, Germany, from his birth in September, 1928 until 1933, when Hitler rose to power.

As I’ve been doing throughout, I’ll be “interrupting” Thomas’ Rim of the Volcano narrative to contribute my own experiences, opinions, and perspectives. (For ease, his narrative is indented, while my contributions are left-justified.)

Thomas continues:

“My father was brought up Jewish, the oldest of four brothers.

My grandfather Leberecht died when my father was ten, so it was left to Carl and his mother to raise his three younger brothers in a fatherless family. The second oldest son, Hans, died at the young age of 21. I know almost nothing about him.

We do know that he was buried in the Judische Gemeinde graveyard in Dresden and that his gravestone is located at the "8th row from the back wall” (per my aunt, Thomas’ sister, Ulli’, based on her visit to Dresden in 1998). It is not known how Hans died. Suicide has been mentioned, but not confirmed.

I have tried for years to learn something about Leberecht (whose name I was given as one of my middle names), but I have been utterly unsuccessful in digging up any information on him - where he came from, what he did for a living, why and when he moved to Dresden, when his family came to Germany, with what family name, etc. I have not even been able to find a single picture of him. Any possible documents about him were either destroyed by the Nazis (because he was Jewish) or by the bombs in Köln (Cologne), where my father was born. I only know that he is buried with his wife Selma in the Jewish cemetery in Dresden.

I’ve been utterly unsuccessful too! I’ve been able to obtain names of his parents and even his grandparents and great grandparents, but I haven’t been able to find out anything at all about them!

(I circled the people discussed in this post. It always helps to have a visual, right?)

Here’s a rather telling anecdote about the relationship of my father to his younger brothers William and Edgar: One day, maybe in the 1920s, the three brothers were walking down a street in Berlin. William and Edgar were smoking cigarettes. Edgar, who also had lived briefly in France, had acquired the suave French habit of letting the cigarette dangle out of the corner of his mouth. So my father scolded him: "Edgar, put the cigarette in the center of your mouth, where it belongs!" In other words, ‘Draw on it momentarily and properly, holding it between two fingers, and then bring it to the center of your mouth. Don't keep it hanging there!’ What would passers-by think of them?

I keep looking for this photo on my PC to include here. I swear, I have a photo of the three brothers in their 20s, strutting down the street, cigarettes hanging from their mouths! But now that I think more about it, that “photo” is in my imagination! Dad described this scenario so often and so vividly that I actually thought I had the matching photo!

Yes, Carl Heumann, as I remember him, was an extremely strict, very proper, rule-abiding man. One of the principles that ruled all his actions and behaviors was to "get a good note from the people.” I personally believe that this attitude had a lot to do with why he was personally respected to the end, why he could exploit his position to the limits of legality and why he was spared deportation even when other Jews were taken to the Theresienstadt Concentration camp, even shortly before the end of the war. (More about that later.)

I disagree with my father here. Remember that Carl died when my father was only 16 and that my father adored him. As I mentioned before, my father remained forever Carl’s child, looking for his father’s approval, even from the grave. In a way, I think it’s kind of sweet that my father believed that Carl was spared transport to Theresienstadt because of his desire to “get a good note from the people” (which I think of as part being part suck-up and part bad-ass). We all know, at this point, that no Jew was spared because he was a mensch – even Carl. I believe that Carl was spared because he had a protectorate – and I even have a theory as to who that person was. I’ll dive a bit deeper into that theory later. For now, suffice it to say that Carl being the only Jew left in Chemnitz three months before the end of the war cannot, in my opinion, be attributed to him “getting a good note from the people,” no matter how a good a guy he is.

There are two things I still remember my father saying repeatedly when I was young. One was apparently Goethe’s motto “Wie es auch sei, das Leben, es ist gut.”^[1] I think it was the single most important philosophy that helped him face with confidence and acceptance whatever life threw at him. I quoted it often and used it like a life ring as I experienced my own ups and downs.

Of even more practical use was my father’s advice that one must do whatever is required at any given time and in any given situation to do the very best one can. It not only feels good, but it also goes a long way toward getting “a good note from the people” which, as you remember, was of utmost importance to my father.

In the last years of his life my father often quoted the refrain from a Clemens Brentano poem about a frail old woman who lived in a little cottage in the 1700’s, when Russian and Swedish soldiers maliciously roamed the country. Eine Mauer um uns baue!^[2] the old woman prayed. In the poem, her prayer is answered with a snowstorm that buries her little cottage. In my father’s case, I believe a wall was built around him, or he built it himself. I still do not know to this day what the wall was made of, but it saved him to the end of the war.

Again, I think someone helped Carl build this wall, and I think they worked together to build it – slowly, secretly, and brick by carefully placed brick. Of course there’s no documentation of this happening, but there are some vague pieces of evidence that lead to this possibility. I’ve done some of my own research and connected with some people who agree with me. We’ll discuss this a bit later.

My mother Irmgard came from an old (non-Jewish) family living in the Rhineland north of Köln (Cologne). Her father, Arthur Buddecke, was the CEO of whatever company would take him and give him enough status. He ended up as CEO of a major steel and machine tool factory in Chemnitz after “The Great War” (now called World War I). I believe from Mother’s letters that her parents were already living in Chemnitz when my parents married. My grandfather, Arthur and my father, Carl -- a factory CEO and a banker -- would have common interests.

My brother, Christopher Arthur, was named after our great grandfather Arthur who, it turns out (poor Chris), was an ass. He wasn’t nice to his wife Adele (who everyone adored) and, from what I can tell from some of my grandmother’s and aunt’s letters, he didn’t like having a Jewish son-in-law, at best, and was a Nazi sympathizer, at worst. We’ll leave it at that. For now.

Mother’s ancestors included the founder of a shoe factory in Wermelskirchen, named Eugen Kattwinkel, from whom I received my other middle name. Eugen’s factory is now the city library on Kattwinkel Strasse, and his family’s villa, which they called das Märchenhaus (the fairy tale house), where my mother grew up, is a beloved local retirement home today. My grandmother, Adele Buddecke, wrote a delightful memoir about the Märchenhaus, which I have translated for my American descendants.

There’s enough in that paragraph for another six blog posts! My great grandmother Adele, it turns out, wrote a memoir about growing up in the Märchenhaus and my father lovingly translated that memoir. I’ll include her memoir on this blog, under the tag “Das Märchenhaus (the fairy tale house) in Wermelskirchen.”

Here’s a little teaser, with a quote from Adele’s memoir:

In 1999, my parents (that’s Dad in the red tie and Mom in the white jacket) traveled to Wermelskirchen to visit he Märchenhaus. They were treated like celebrities in the town that still lovingly remembers my father’s grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. In fact, one of his cousins a few times removed even manages the retirement home in the house that my father’s grandparents built in 1872!

 

---

^[1] “Life, however it may be, is good.”

^[2] “Build a wall around us!”

A Protected Early Childhood in Chemnitz

 

Grandchildren dearest,

And so it begins: my father’s narrative of his youth as a “Mischling” (half-Jew) in Nazi Germany.

The first five years of my father’s life had nothing at all to do with “Mischling” or “Jew” or “Nazi.” Instead, it was a protected, idyllic, carefree early childhood in a loving, upper-class family in Chemnitz, Germany, about 250 miles south of Berlin in the state of Saxony.  

For me, Chemnitz was a word I’d heard all my life as the place where my father grew up - a “sooty, industrial town,” as he described it - but beyond that knowledge it held no meaning for me whatsoever, especially since it was “off-limits” to most Westerners, as it had become a part of East Germany after the war. Its name had even been changed to Karl Marx Stadt, after communism's most zealous intellectual advocate.

All that changed in early 2018, when I received a letter from Barbara Ludwig, the mayor of Chemnitz, inviting me and “my company” to Chemnitz to celebrate my father and grandfather, who were to be recognized with an art exhibit in their honor following my father’s bequeathal of three pieces from my grandfather’s collection. The city would even pick up the cost of our trip!

‘Whaaaaat?!’ you ask?

That was my reaction, too!

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

First, my father will introduce us to his Chemnitz. I’ll get back to the story of my Chemnitz later.

“Kamanist’n komm’n”-- that’s the caption Mother gave this photo of me: how a German four--year-old would say “The Communists are coming!” From the balcony of my play room, I could watch the street fights between the Nazis and the Communists below. We lived on Reichs-strasse in Chemnitz, the “Empire Street” of old, I guess, leading from Prague in the south to Leipzig to the north and beyond.

The city of Chemnitz was an industrial city of 350,000 inhabitants, not far from Dresden (the "Florence on the Elbe River") and Leipzig (Bach's City). Chemnitz was pretty ugly and sooty, with smokestacks all over.

What a strange phenomenon memory is! When you know a place before and after a war, two memories stick in your mind: the old one -- the real one! -- is alive and visual. You can close your eyes and walk through it. You can smell the soot and the smoke and the oil. You can feel the excitement of walking to the big drug store downtown, in that side street between the city hall plaza and the main post office -- the only one that has KMnO4 for your chemical experiments. You can hear the screeching of the street car as it goes around the curve, the flange of its wheel rubbing against the track in the roadway. You can feel the apprehension of the air raid sirens possibly sounding an alarm before you get home; well, probably not, because it’s still early in the day. That’s one picture..

The other memory, the fading one, is of the post-war city, a different city, really. Its name is no longer “Chemnitz”; it’s “Karl-Marx-Stadt” now, as if Karl Marx ever had anything to do with Chemnitz!

The drug store is gone now. The entire street is gone, and so are the streets around it, replaced by an open-air bus depot. A wing of City Hall is still standing, restored the best they could. Even Brunner’s bookstore is there, on the street floor of City Hall, but it’s selling different books now. Very different. In front of City Hall is a children’s railway, run by someone unshaven with a heavy Czech (or is it Polish?) accent.

People look as they always have, with long unsmiling faces, only a shade shabbier. And they speak the same dialect, heavy and ugly on the ears, like a kid learning to play a cheap violin. It’s a dialect no adult can learn, nor would one want to. If you learned it as your only language when you were a child (a sure sign of being very much “of the people”), no matter what foreign language you may have learned later, you could not help but pronounce “e” as though you were saying “hair.” And you would always use the “soft” consonants g for both g and k, and d for both d and t, and b for b and p: “boat” and “bode” would sound alike, as would “coal” and “goal.” If, however, you wanted to sound educated, you would pronounce them both “hard”: “bank” would come out “pank”, “dent” would be “tent”, and “bail” would be “pail.”

My mother grew up in Bavaria. My father grew up in Saxony. THIS I knew, from the very beginning! I heard it often – sometimes in jest and sometimes in anger: “Du… BAYER!” (“You Bavarian!”) “Du… SAXE!” (“You Saxon!”) To them, this was a defining difference – and neither of them ever let the other forget it!I Did my father really speak like a kid learning to play a cheap violin? I never really heard their German accents (though my friends sure did) and I certainly never heard the differences between their German dialects.

There are hardly any cars on the streets, and the few there are black. They belong to Communist Party offices. Most people use bicycles or the streetcars instead. The Wanderer Car factory, one of the brands of the original “Auto Union,” with its four-ring logo (Omi’s note: Audi?), was in Chemnitz. It made cars and bicycles - and typewriters! Bicycle lanes on highways were are the norm. Unlike in the US, bicycles are used by children and adults alike. When I first came to American in 1953, bicycles in the US were considered toys, sold by “Toy and Bicycle” stores.

I remember Chemnitz by its net of streetcar lines. One of the main streets in Chemnitz was (and is) Zwickauer Strasse, leading to where most of the industry was located, not only Wanderer, but many factories making machine tools and textiles, stockings in particular. (In 1958, when I interviewed with American Machinist magazine at McGraw-Hill in New York City, the editor rattled off all the names of the machine tools made in Chemnitz when he found out I was born there!) Streetcar #1 ran along Zwickauer Strasse, and was one of the lines we could use to get to our house. It was a long uphill block from there. For an easier downhill walk to the house, one would use streetcar #8, along Weststrasse.

The house where I was born was a large single-family house in a “good” mixed neighborhood called The Kassberg, where one could find villas, schools, offices, and shops. Our house was at 10 Reichstrasse, a large corner property surrounded by a garden with an iron fence which sat on a stone wall. (Later, during the war, we had “donate” that iron fence, to be re-cast into cannons, tanks, and guns).

Next to our house was a separate garage with a laundry room and apartment above it. In the early years, the garage was used as Father's fencing arena -- the only kind of sport, other than cross country skiing and ping-pong, that my father had an interest in. The apartment above the garage was the place where the "Hausmeister^[1]" family lived. The Hausmeister took care of our house, firing up the central furnace and partly smothering it for the night, stoking it again in the morning. He shoveled the fuel from the coal cellar and did handyman work around the house. He also taught my brother Rainer and I to play chess. On the side, he had an assembly-line job in one of the nearby factories.

In addition to the Hausmeister, there were people who came to our house on a regular basis: the baker delivered fresh rolls before anyone got up in the morning, every day, summer and winter. The milk man came later, the wash woman once a week, the ironing woman the week after.

I remember laundry days in particular, when the two big built-in brick tubs in the laundry room would be heated with wood and coal until the water boiled and the whole room was so steamy you could hardly see the opposite wall. The steam even engulfed the drying centrifuge that I got to try to crank sometimes. The clothes lines were strung outside on poles, covering the lawn and part of our play area, leaving only the sand box exposed.

Across Reichsstrasse from our house in one direction was a central postal administration building, and in the other direction stood a large synagogue and a small private hospital.

This postcard depicts Stephansplatz, where my father’s house was located. I believe that my father’s house is the one in the front left, behind the railing. The synagogue can be seen on the right. I believe the hospital is behind it.

Within a couple of blocks was our grade school, the dentist's office, and a tiny round park where one could learn to skate or ride a scooter. To one side of that little park was one of the high schools. The justice building, with its small jail, was a long block away. There were no stores in this part of the neighborhood, except for a small grocery store where one could buy candy or juice powder, if one had the money. Most of the individual houses around were other villas, all of them occupied by professionals. Some of the tenement apartment houses, occupied by factory workers, were only a block away, but we were never allowed to play with the kids from there.

-----

After serving an apprenticeship in accounting at a famous bank in Dresden, and an internship at the Paris Bourse^[2], my father, Carl Heumann worked his way up at the private bank of Bayer & Heinze in Chemnitz, where he, by 1920, had already become a partial owner and a Kommandatist^[3].

But there was a serious problem. Carl lacked a university education. No college degree meant no no title, and in Germany you were a nobody if you had no title. To become a “Herr Kommerzienrat^[4]” would take years, at best. So the solution for my father the banker was to become a vice consul of some country whose interests he could represent professionally. I am not aware of the process he went through, but my father obtained the title of Vice Consul of Portugal in 1929, thus becomming "Herr Konsul Heumann.” Mother became “Frau Konsul.” Problem solved.

(The importance of having a title became clear to me a quarter-century later. I had finished Engineering School in München, thus I was entitled to - but very rarely used - the title “Diplomingenieur^[5].” It was very important to my father-in-law at the time that his daughter married the “right kind” of engineer, not just any old “Ingenieur” from a non-academic engineering school, but one from a college that was accredited to also bestow a PhD degree in engineering. So now his letters to his daughter Edith in America could be addressed to Frau Diplomingenieur E. H.”)

Before I was born, my father started an art collection, probably as a balance to his daily business work at the bank. He started with famous Adolph Menzel (1815-1905), a Prussian engraver, but he soon added Ludwig Richter (1803-1884) who was more representative of the art that my father loved.

For my wedding in 1983, Dad gave me the full collection of Richter…

    

    

…as well as a small Menzel which I love.

German Romanticism became so much of his personality that over the years that his name and his chosen art were often spoken in the same breath by other art collectors. He eventually became a respected expert on German Romantic art, and his collection became one of the most important of that time. This, above everything else, speaks to the fact that he felt so much more “German” than “Jewish.” How ironic that a man who would soon be classified by the Nazis as an “enemy of Germany” picked the most essentially “German” art form one could imagine!

---

^[1] The Hausmeister, - literally “house master” - in our case a family of four.

^[2] Bourse = Stock Exchange

^[3] Bayer & Heinze was a Kommanditgesellschaft, the German form of a Limited Liability Corporation.

^[4] A “Councilor of Commerce”, an honorable title for real big shots in business

^[5] i.e. and engineer with a “Diploma” from a university-level college.

A Protected Early Childhood (1928-1933) THE POLITICAL BACKGROUND

Dearest grandchildren,

Every time I read my father’s words about the events that led to Hitler’s rise to power and, subsequently, to WWII, I get a shiver down my spine. Hasn’t the phrase “never again” reverberated in our society for decades? Have we not listened to our own warnings? Have we not learned our lesson?

So much of what my father writes here about the political environment in Germany in the late 1920s and early 1930s reminds me of America under Trump’s presidency – which, thank god, is about to come to an end. Dad explains that Hitler didn’t invent anti-Semitism in Germany; he simply played into the anti-Semitism that already existed, making bigotry, intolerance, and hate completely acceptable.

Sound familiar?

In the summer of 2016, I promised my father that Americans would never vote in a clown like Trump. I confidently promised him – and look what happened.

Dad was right: we forget all too quickly.

After Trump was voted into office, Dad reminded me that Hitler didn’t seize power in Germany. No - he was democratically elected by an enthusiastic, educated  electorate. It was only after he was voted in that he began to strip away the protections of the German democracy – he dismantled the press, he decreed “emergency” measures in order to increase his power, and then he dismantled the German constitution.

Trump wanted to do the same thing. He wanted us to hate immigrants. He insisted, exactly as Hitler had done, that the press was “the enemy of the people,” and he proclaimed, with no evidence at all, that the 2020 election was “rigged” and that he won “in a landslide.” Bullshit, all of it. Fortunately, in 2020, most Americans saw exactly what Trump was trying to do and they knew that our democracy couldn’t survive another four years of Trump.

So they voted in Joe Biden by 7 million votes. But Trump still won 74 million votes to Biden’s 81 million votes. After all the destruction Trump has caused over the past four years, he still won an astounding 46.8% of the votes cast (to Biden’s 51.3%). And those 74,000,000 people seem to love Trump. He is a bona fide cult leader.

The fact that so many Americans can still adore Trump after everything our country has gone through in the past four years shows that no, we don’t know the meaning of “never forget,” and no, we haven’t learned our lesson. If you’re wondering how a man like Adolf Hitler could have ever risen to power, just look at America’s dysfunctional relationship with Donald Trump.

It is all still scary. We have three weeks to go before Biden takes office. This is an extremely dangerous time because, well, Trump is mentally ill and wouldn’t hesitate for a second to torch this country as he exits, never conceding and incessantly whining.

My father died suddenly just a month after Trump took office. I believe that the election of Trump killed him. Almost 70 years after the fall of the German Reich and the almost total destruction of the country my father called home, the country to which he emigrated with such high hopes elected a man who wanted to be a dictator – and not even because he had a vision for the country. The only vision this man had was for himself.

Keep all of this in mind as you read my father’s words about Hitler’s slow, steady rise to power:

“Protected Early Childhood -- 1928-1933

The political background:

Before the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party -- the Nazi Party) came to power:

Feb. 24, 1920: Party Program of the NSDAP: (Wahl *13, pg. 3)

4. “Only Ethnic Germans (the text says “Voksgenossen”^[1] -- an untranslatable Nazi terminology for people of German descent, even if living outside of Germany proper) can be citizens of the State. Only persons of German blood, regardless of religion, can be Volksgenossen. Therefore, no Jew can be a Volksgenosse.”

5. Whoever is not a Citizen can live in Germany only as a guest, subject to laws for foreigners.”

1925: ( Adolf Hitler., “Mein Kampf”, 1933 Edition # 78, pg. 334): “<The Jew^[2]> is always a parasite in the body of other people.... he always looks for new sustenance for his race ... he will always remain a typical parasite who, like harmful bacteria, will constantly spread .... Wherever that parasite shows up, the host country will sooner or later die...”

That was in 1925. By 1933, “Mein Kampf” had gone through 78 editions, and had become almost, but not quite, required reading for all Germans. But in 1945, after the war, most Germans would say they had “no idea of what was going to happen to the Jews when Hitler would come to power”? Hard to believe.

The early 1930’s were the time when many people -- literally scores of them -- died in Germany in street brawls, mainly between Communists and National Socialists (Nazi) bands.

None of those frequent protest marches and street fights could solve the huge unemployment problem and the generally desperate situation of the country, brought about by losing “the World War” (as WW I was then called). The Nazis steadily increased their influence by increasing their number of representatives in the Reichstag, in democratic but hotly propagandized election,. Over years, they tried for, but never got, an absolute majority. Finally, on January 30, 1933, after months of legal cunning, and semi-legal political maneuvering and grandstanding, the aging and beleaguered President Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor of Germany. They had won. (Descriptions of that struggle are fascinating, see books like *Wm. Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” (*3), or Warren Morris’ “The Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany” (*20) and many others.

 

On March 13, 1930, when the NSDAP (“National Socialist German Workers’ Party”) was still a minority in the Reichstag (Legislature), they proposed that the following be made the law of the land:: (Joseph Walk: *13 - pg 3)

“Para 5: “Whoever contributes, or threatens to contribute, to the racial contamination or injury to the German people, by commingling with members of the Jewish or colored races, is committing racial treason, and therefore is subject to penitentiary punishment.”

Para 7: “... in particularly serious cases, in lieu of disciplinary action by imprisonment in a penitentiary, the death penalty <may be applied>.”

And the Germans were unaware of how the Jews would be treated as soon as the National Socialist Party and Hitler came to power?

After they came to Power on January 30, 1933:

Immediately, the Nazis issued an avalanche of specific directives and “laws” in their first year in power. The Collection by Joseph Walk (*13: “Sonderrecht für die Juden im NS-Staat”^[3]) lists over 300 of them for the year 1933 alone. Below, for each Nazi-era chapter, are only a few samples of typical or fundamental decrees. Some of them represent openly the Nazi ideology. Many of them are local, possibly responding to local public demands. But did the local governments and officials do it because of real pressure by local people? Or was it that anti-Semitism had now become government policy, and local bureaucrats wanted to be politically correct by being “holier than the Pope”? I don’t know.

It is interesting to look at the almost 2,000 “laws” the Nazis issued between 1933, when they came to power, and 1945, when World War II ended. The Nazi Party’s need to issue new directives diminished noticeably over time. There were more than ever after in the first year of their reign. Over the years, the number decreased, except in those years that saw specific major anti-Jewish actions: the Nürnberg Laws in 1935, the Kristallnacht in 1938, and the Wannsee Conference with its “Final solution of the Jewish Question” in 1942. You will notice that the most amazing aspect is the speed with which the Nazis implemented and “legitimized” their racial ideology. At that time, I believe, anti-Semitism was the genteel, generally accepted way to think, and many - if not most - people considered it not offensive. Once those laws laid the groundwork for establishing their policies, “The Party” could do the next nefarious thing: tighten the screws only little by little. Repressions were instituted almost imperceptibly, so that the public would hardly notice it. If anybody did question it, it was easy to excuse it by saying: “Oh, that’s nothing new, we’re only clarifying the existing laws and policies!”

What is clear is this: centuries-old anti-Semitism was strong in Germany. The Nazis did not invent it. It already was in existence, openly, ready to be exploited. Any act that played to the public opinion could only improve the regard people had for their local officials. It was as though a flood gate had been opened for anti-Semitism to pour forth. Some of those laws listed here were eventually changed or superseded by nation-wide laws, yet: they were issued, not in secrecy, not behind closed doors, but passed and published, at the rate of about one a day, day after day. Very few of these “laws” and directives were issued in secret; quite contrary: they were published, at least in judicial magazines, but often even in the daily press, which was under pressure to “cover the Jewish Question continuously without pause” (*13, pg. 398). Anybody who wanted or needed to know them could read them in publications.

Feb. 17, 1933: (Walk *13 , pg. 3):

Directive to Police: The existing law, which ordered that Eastern Jews accused (not convicted!) of hostile activities against the people, were not to be deported, is herby rescinded.

Feb. 28, 1933: (*13 , pg. 3):

The Articles (114, etc.) of the Constitution, which concern basic civil rights, are declared repealed. (This decree forms the basis for the much of the anti-democratic legislative activity of the Nazi era.)

March 15, 1933: (*13 . pg 4):

Reich Ministry of the Interior decreed:

1. Immigration into Germany of Eastern Jews is to be avoided.

2. Eastern Jews without residence permit are to be removed.

3. No more Eastern Jews are to be naturalized.

 

March 21, 1933: (*13 . pg 5):

Decree (issued by the same as above, and others):

Actions against the National-Socialist movement, or against the reputation of the NS (National-Socialist) State, are subject to severe punishment, ranging from prison to the death penalty. Also subject to punishment is the wearing of NS uniforms while putting down disturbances or declarations of claims that are untrue or distorting, whether on domestic or foreign soil.

March 24, 1933: (*13 . pg. 5): The infamous Enabling Law (Ermächtigungsgesetz^[4]):

Art. 1: National Laws can be issued by the Government of the Reich.

Art. 2: Those laws may deviate from the Constitution.

Probably the most far-reaching (and effectively the last) Law passed by the Legislature. It had the effect of eliminating the function and authority of the Legislature. It made “laws” issued by the Cabinet, i.e. the NSDAP, “legal” for all practical purposes. It was a substantial justification for anybody’s future actions on behalf of the State or the Nazi Government under those “laws” (“...it’s OK to do it, the law says so...”).

It was to be a temporary measure for only four years, in order to “synchronize” (or “gleichschalten”^[5]) the governing functions for a country that was in deep trouble and in almost hopeless political and social chaos. They gave it a noble title: “The Law to Alleviate the Distress of People and Country.”

A two-thirds majority was needed to change the Constitution. No longer a problem: President Hindenburg had released the Chancellorship to Hitler after the Reichstag fire, so now Hitler could keep out the Communists and enough Social Democrats from voting. The still remaining Social Democrats objected strongly, but Hitler shouted them down: “You’re too late! You’re no longer needed!”

The vote was 441 yeas to the 84 nays (from the Social Democrats.) The street fighters got the vote they wanted for running a dictatorship. By democratic means, democracy had lost (*3 - pg. 196-200.) in the name of “National Security.”

March 29, 1933: (*13 . pg. 6)

The NSDAP issues directives for the handling of a well-planned boycott of Jews that was directed toward professions such as physicians, lawyer, as well as against “Jewish goods,” This well-planned boycott action was, of course, presented publicly as a “spontaneous action of the people.”

Early April 1933: (*13, pg. 9 and pg. 7 -11)

“Gleichschaltung” resulted in immediate actions: in Berlin, the Public Health Insurance System was directed to no longer honor claims for treatment ordered by Jewish doctors. Jewish Jurists were dismissed, and were not allowed on juries, or even to enter Justice buildings. Teachers who were Jewish by race were fired. Jews in Frankfurt had to surrender their passports, and in Cologne, any Jews, even those who had converted to Christianity, or Aryans married to Jews, could no longer be in municipal offices. All Chambers of Commerce, Labor Unions, economic businesses, etc, now became subject to supervision by the NSDAP. Newly installed NS (or “Party”) “Commissars” had to see to it that those units were organized to conform to Nazi ideology.

April 7,1933: (*13 . pg. 12/13)

A major Law was issued which supposedly allowed only “Aryans” to remain in Civil Service jobs, but the eventual real effect was to remove any Jews from any job, pretty much at the discretion of their bosses. The law excluded World War (I) veterans. There were many subsequent regulations to this law, such as the specific inclusion of other professions, and inclusion of so-called half- and quarter Jews, but (on May 5) not “privileged” Jews. This law was eventually referred to simply as the “Aryan Paragraph” (Arierparagraph) when applied wholesale to other than Civil Service Employees, from physicians to chauffeurs, from lawyers to use of sports fields.

April 7, 1933: (*13 . pg. 13) Bavaria no longer admits Jews to Med Schools, and on May 12, Munich dissolves all Jewish Associations and seizes their property.

July 3, 1933: Admission as Stock Exchange Traders is limited to “honorable, trustworthy,” and (if stateless) to persons “of German descent.”

July 14, 1933: (*13 . pg. 38)

The “Law for the Confiscation of Property Hostile to People or State” applies to anything utilized for “Marxist or other anti-state” purposes. That could also be applied to the confiscation of property of Jews.

July 20, 1933: (*13 . pg. 39)

The Law concerning the dismissal of Civil Service Employees is expanded to include persons who have been members of or have been active in “Marxist Interests”, such as in the Communist or Social Democrat Parties.

July 26, 1933: (*13 . pg.42:

Emigration of people of Jewish descent is desirable, but subject to a sizeable tax called Reichsfluchtsteuer or “Reich Escape Tax.”

Sept. 22, 1933: (*13 . pg. 52)

Membership to a Kulturkammer (Cultural Camber = any culture-related association), had already excluded Jews. (Both of my father’s brothers had been active in the Berlin cultural life. This decree by the Chancellor’s office may well have been the reason for their emigration to France and the USA.)

Sept. 29, 1933: (*13 . pg 53):

Hereditary Farm Law: (Erbhofgesetz): The owner of a farm is called a farmer. Only honorable citizens of German or equal blood can be farmers. Nobody is considered being of German or equal blood whose ancestry after 1799 includes a Jewish or colored person.

Oct. 4,1933: (*3, - pg. 245):

One of the most significant laws: The Reich Press Law said that, aside from being Aryan, editors had to see to it that nothing is printed that might tend to weaken the Reich, the defense, or culture, and could offend the honor or dignity of Germany. [That, by edict rather than by business or market acquisitions, gave them all the propaganda tools they needed to spin or suppress any news according to the political value to the Party. It was soon applied not only to newspapers, but also to radio, film, etc. Don’t forget that “propaganda” was not a derogatory word, but in effect it was the title of Joseph Goebbels (“Minister of Propaganda”), who, by many accounts, was the most gifted, diabolical, and successful propagandists who had ever lived.]”

Speaking of Minister of Propaganda, Stephen Miller, Trump’s senior advisor, gives me the creeps. As Trump wants to be Hitler, Miller wants to be Goebels. It’s terrifying.

I miss my dad like crazy, but I am so glad he didn’t live to watch this catastrophe unfold.

January 20, 2021 can’t come soon enough.

---

^[1] literally: “Folk Comrade” -- “Volk” used here in the Nazi meaning of “a racially pure society”

^[2] The Nazis usually used the singular with the definitive article - “der Jude” - for Jews to designate a racial category, not a group of individuals.

^[3] “Special Law for Jews in the National Socialist State”

^[4] Literally: Empowerment or “Delegation of Power” Law

^[5] gleichschalten is what is done to synchronize alternating currents, so that the outputs of, say, two AC generators have an additive, rather than reductive, effect.