Brain of an engineer, soul of a poet

Dear grandchildren,

This entry from my father has been difficult to edit, as he jumps all over the place, from 1946-1947, back to 1945, and forward to 1948 and 1950! Try as I might, I can’t edit it to make chronological sense and still maintain his story. I’m leaving the chronology as is because I believe that it reflects Dad’s inner turmoil at the time, as well as his emotions when he deeply immersed himself in writing his memoir.

Whereas his storytelling of the war years focused on details of what happened in his physical world, his memoir at this point transitions to a focus on what was going on inside – his emotions, his sentiments, his fears, and his dreams.

I remember my mother (the original “Omi”!) complaining that when Dad wrote, he was “gone” to her. He would disappear into his office for hours at a time, deep into his writing and unavailable to the 21st century. I sensed this even from hundreds of miles away. NOW I finally get it, as I find myself doing the same thing – escaping from the real world of a global pandemic, insane and illogical people and politics, and an earth that is gasping and choking, choosing to focus instead on the past - and not even my own past, instead getting to know my grandfather and understanding my own father better, as I sit within the walls of my own office, deep into my own writing, unavailable to my own world.

Today is one of those days when I desperately want Dad back. I want to understand the young man who wrote this entry, the young man who lived so deep in my father, even to his dying day, but who so few people in his life since 1947 – including me – actually knew. His sister Ulli, my beloved aunt, is the only person still living who knew Dad back then, but she is trapped in her own world, one plagued by Alzheimer’s. I believe that her memories of those days in the distant past are still vivid and strong (because Alzheimer’s allows at least that one grace), but locked inside. I’ve encouraged her daughter, my favorite cousin, Claudia, to read some of this blog to Ulli, hoping to elicit some memories for her, but I fear that all these memories are left only in writings – and that breaks my heart. At the same time, I’m so grateful for my father’s prolific writings and for Ulli’s hunderds upon hundreds of pages of translations- letters to and from hers and Thomas’ parents, letters to and from friends in the 50s and 60s, and stories written in German, that we can now enjoy. My plan is to include some of Ulli’s translations on this blog.

I love Dad’s last line in this entry: “Starting with my mother, my most lasting lessons in life have always come from women.” 

While Dad was a bit of a chauvinist in some old-world ways, he had a respect for and appreciation of women unlike most men I’ve known. I believe that he always turned to wise women – including, and especially his mother and my mother -  for love, counsel, strength, and wisdom, and he mentioned a few times, when men were screwing things up politically, that if they would just step aside and let women run things, we’d all be better off.

Then he’d ask what’s for dinner.

Here are my father’s heartfelt words:

Wie kann das sein, daß diese nahen Tage

Fort sind, für immer fort, und ganz vergangen?

Dies ist ein Ding, das keiner voll aussinnt,

Und viel zu grauenhaft, als daß man klage:

Daß alles gleitet und vorüberrinnt...

- Hugo von Hoffmannsthal

-

How can this be, that those still-vivid days

Are gone, forever gone, and vanished all?

No-one can fully fathom this,

This thing too horrible that one could fret:

Everything flows and glides away from us ...

 

Writing about the immediate post-war years will be an intensely emotional experience for me. Bittersweet melancholy and great excitement are competing for my attention as I thumb through crumbling papers dated 1946 and 1947.

I entered those turbulent years during the last few days of 1945, when I arrived in München, exhausted, scared and confused, but full of wide-eyed expectations.

The mid-1940s were years of searching and defining. Where before there had been the external chaos of war, allowing only the energy needed to survive, now there was the internal turmoil of deciding who I was to become, requiring great emotional concentration. Now, things were happening much more in me than to me, and I began to realize that I had the soul of a poet, even as I prepared for life as an engineer – mostly because that’s what others expected of me.

Those years were the most wonderful time, when the war was finally over, when life lay open before me, and when love offered the purest happiness. But they were also the most terrifying time, when the pressures to somehow finish Gymnasium (high school) felt unbearable, when two eggs or a half a sack of coal were rare and coveted treasures, and when my heart felt like it could break in utter despair. My emotions felt raw and honest, turbulent and powerful. It was a time when hormones raged and discussions lasted deep into the night – discussions about what life was all about, what was to become of Germany, and who we ourselves would be.

I began to study engineering in 1948. I’m planning to end this narrative at that time, but the era didn’t really end until 1950, when I wrote: “My life has closed its circle. I have experienced all that life has to offer - all the triumphs of achievement and pains of failure, all the joys and all the pains of love. I have brought great happiness to some people and have received endless warmth from them. I have lost everything, and I have gained everything. If I die tomorrow, I will have had a full life.” I did not know then what riches lay before me, and I was fully satisfied with the wealth of the experiences I had already had because they felt so intense.

I write this memoir from the perspective of some sixty years later, no wiser, only more cynical.

In places I will quote from a wealth of letters, written at a time when we were fortunate to use pens and paper, not email, texts, or even telephones, as our main means of communication. I’m now very glad that I kept those letters through a dozen moves halfway around the world. In some cases, I even asked the recipients to return my own letters because nothing elicit images like words we, ourselves have written. Unfortunately, even letters don’t often reflect the little everyday tidbits, things that are the communal knowledge shared by all contemporaries, writers and recipients alike. Those significant details are often only found between the lines.

Poems were an integral part of my life, of my emotions, and of my outlook on the world. I will quote poems where they belong and will attempt to translate them in such a way that at least the meaning and the rhythm come across. It is very difficult to translate poetry, but I will try anyway so that someone with some knowledge of German can read the original aloud, hear the “melody,” and sense what it means. I read aloud and learned many of these poems by heart in those days, and they have retained their magnetism and power over the years. Even now, while weeding in the garden or walking on a hike, I find myself recalling them and trying to silently translate, coming up with different translations as I mull over what the original words and meanings.

I could not write about my life in those years without also talking about the women who crossed my path, and even walked it with me for a stretch. Some seemed temporary at the time, some did not. They were all significant to me, as they all helped who I am today.

Starting with my mother, my most lasting lessons in life have always come from women.

The Longest Year in the Young Life of Peter Bauer – an Introduction

My dearest grandkids,

My father wrote The Longest Year in the Young Life of Peter Bauer (which focuses on 1945), in 1979, thirty-two years before he wrote The Rim of the Volcano (which focuses on the years between 1928 and 1945). In 1979, I was in my senior year of college and completely immersed in (what felt like) the complexity of my own life. I read Dad’s book immediately upon receiving it for Christmas and I was completely immersed for a few evenings – but I read it with the same third-person detachment with which it was written. I felt a deep connection to the character of Peter Bauer, but that connection didn’t necessarily translate into a deep emotional understanding that it was Thomas Heumann, my father, who experienced such profound chaos and trauma. And by writing the book in third-person, Dad, in a way, gave me permission to distance myself.

Or maybe that’s just generational trauma speaking!

(Our family, c 1978. Dad was deep into the writing of Longest Year. I was deep into… well, being me.)

Here are my father’s words:

I originally wrote what follows - about the end of 1944 and all of 1945 - about a fictional character named Peter Bauer. I chose that alias because “Peter” means “rock” in Greek (strong and solid) and “Bauer” means builder in German. I’d need to be strong and solid to build my future life after enduring the life-altering chaos of 1945 Germany. I wrote this book in third person because it’s easier to step outside and look in from a distance, and it allows more freedom to make the truth truer by adding some “retrospective imagination” to details, without having to feel guilty of lying. In 1979, when I began to write The Longest Year in the Young Life of Peter Bauer, I found third-person to be the best approach.

(Thomas at about 16, circa 1945, the age of Peter Bauer in Longest Year.)

I’m sure I wasn’t half as likable as I made Peter Bauer!

I wrote The Longest Year in the Young Life of Peter Bauer for Michael, Stephan, Carol, and Christopher, and for their children. In my original Forward, I suggested that they had been “both spared and denied a 1945.”

“Spared” because their teenage lives in the U.S. were so much easier than my teenage life under persecution in a war environment. My kids never had to deal with forced exclusion from friends, with the loss of personal freedoms, or with persecution for their grandparents’ religion. Neither did they have to count on being exposed to death -- their own and that of others – at the sound of constant air raid sirens.

But my four children were also “denied” my greatest opportunity. They were not orphans, alone at the age of 16, in a most challenging world, nor were they faced with the necessity of growing up quickly, simply to survive. At the age of 17, I was solely responsible for every decision I made. My kids were rarely put to the test of having to find out for themselves “what one is made of” and to test the values they learned in childhood.

The Heumanns around 1974. We teenagers were both “spared and denied a 1945.” It hadn’t been said like that yet, but we definitely felt it.

We didn’t yet know Dad’s whole story, but we did know that, compared to him at our age, we lived a life of carefree luxury. And I believe that all four of us kids felt some guilt around that – but we wouldn’t have been able to identify or admit that at the time. I was so busy being a typical American teenager – friends, school, cheerleading, dates – that I had little time or incentive to even try to understand my father’s (and mother’s – she also experienced wartime in Germany!) perspective. Our family was different, and I hated it. My parents had strong German accents and listened to Mozart instead of Sinatra. Our lunch bags held liverwurst sandwiches on brown bread instead of PB & J sandwiches on white bread, and dinner consisted of Leberkäse or sauerbraten instead of tacos or hamburgers. Unlike my friends’ parents, who were active in PTA and in their kids’ social lives and friendships, my parents played very little role in my early school or social life – until, that is, my mother became a beloved German teacher at my high school, which I actually liked because she got to know my friends and had the opportunity to finally see what being an American teenager was like. My boyfriend was even in her class, and more than a few times my friends and I spent lunch hour in her classroom!

The 60s and 70s were tumultuous years in America, but they were peaceful and tranquil compared to Europe in 1945. Only a few years in all of history were as turbulent as 1945 in Europe. In Germany, especially, it was a year of death and birth, a year of demarcation of one age from another. All over the world, 1945 was a watershed year between old and new. It was the first year of the atomic age.

Whether my children and grandchildren know it or not, they, too, have much of 1945 in their veins because all of its terror and all of its beauty left such deep marks on my own life. The difference between the 1980’s in the US and 1945 in Europe might help explain some of my idiosyncrasies and maybe even excuse my being a bit of an embarrassment to my children by being (as they put it) “so ... so ... so different.”

In my next post, we’ll start in on The Longest Year in the Young Life of Peter Bauer, which my father basically “inserted” into The Rim of the Volcano, changing Peter’s words back to his own.

Carl Heumann’s art collection -- and those who keep it alive

Grandchildren dearest,

Let’s take a break from my father’s book, The Rim of the Volcano, and talk about something that has happened since he wrote that book.

I grew up with my grandfather’s art on our walls, but as a child I was oblivious about the history of those pieces and the journey they went through to find their way from war-torn Germany to our homes in Berkeley and Atherton, California – and some of them even on to our current home in Gig Harbor, Washington.

    

(“Sophia” in our Berkeley, CA house in 1957 and in our current Gig Harbor, WA home.)

Even with war raging all around him, Carl refused to remove his very favorite pieces from the walls of his home in Chemnitz, insisting that one cannot live in fear and that removing those beloved pieces was, in a way, giving up. As a Jew, he had already been relegated to his home and, even as those walls seemed to increasingly close in on him, he was determined to at least cover them with the art that gave him comfort and provided some hope for the future.

     

 

     

Here is just a small sample of art from my grandfather’s collection:

Eduard Bendemann (1811-1889): "Junger Mann, Trauernd" (Young Man in Mourning) Bequeathed by my father to the Kunnstsammlung Chemnitz.

Bonaventura Ginelli, 1814, Portrait of Hans Christiam Ginelli, uncle of the artist. Now at my brother, Stephan’s home.

Friedrich Salathe, Italian Landscape with Trees, 1815. Now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Unfortunately, Carl’s most beloved pieces were destroyed along with Carl’s house – and Carl himself – when Allied bombs destroyed much of Chemnitz on March 5, 1945.

Fortunately, Carl kept most of his art collection in safe boxes away from the city. And fortunately, when the Nurnberg Laws declared that Jews were no longer allowed to own property - and certainly not “good German art”! –Carl was able to transfer ownership of the collection to his non-Jewish wife. (I do not know how Carl’s art collection escaped Nazi seizure during the year between Irmgard’s death in January, 1944 and Carl’s death in March, 1945. Hmmmm – this is something I’ll need to research!)

Family lore tells the story that, amid the chaos of post-war Germany, Rainer went to retrieve his father’s art from the vault of a bank that was now occupied by Russian guards. Piled high on the concrete floor were stacks of valuables – jewelry over here, paintings over there, sculptures in that corner, everything else tossed carelessly into the far corner.

Rainer located paintings, drawings, and sketches that he recognized from his father’s collection and attempted to persuade the guard to let him take them.

“These paintings… my father…dead… I take?” Rainer spoke no Russian and the guard spoke no German. The guard didn’t understand Rainer and seemed annoyed by the inquiry.

Rainer tried again. “My father… paint… draw… dead… I take? Yes?”

The guard suddenly smiled. “Your father… he was arteeeest? He paint? Hmmmmm…” Yes, Rainer nodded. The guard looked at the paintings and drawings. He was unimpressed. He shrugged his shoulder and drew heavily from his coveted cigarette.

“You take.” So Rainer did.

That’s the story, anyway. As my grandfather’s collection was large, containing hundreds of pieces of art, from very large to very small, I have my doubts that this is exactly how it happened. But it makes a good story, and I know of no other explanation for how my grandfather’s art collection – at least what survived of it – made its way out of what had become Russian occupied East Germany to Munich, where all three Heumann kids lived after the war.

Most of Carl’s art collection was sold at auction in Stuttgart, coincidentaly on my first birthday – November 29, 1957.

     

But Rainer, Thomas, and Ulli kept some pieces for themselves. When Thomas finally emigrated to the US in April, 1953, he took with him a large suitcase filled with art from his father’s collection. He had very little else to his name.

Now – fast-forward 61 years, to January, 24, 2014, when I received this email.

Dear Carol,

My name is Julia. I am a provenance researcher at the Albertina Museum in Vienna on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture.

My job is to inspect all collective objects which became part of the collection from 1933 until present in regard to their provenance and previous owners. In questionable or disputable cases, dossiers are being compiled. The reports will be presented to the Art Restitution Advisory Board which gives recommendations to the Federal Minister of Education, Arts and Culture regarding a potential restitution.

During my research in 2013, I discovered  that Carl Heumann sold drawings via the Kunstantiquariat C.G. Boerner between 1936 and 1943. The Albertina bought some of the drawings that once belonged to Carl Heumann. So I tried to search out what happened to him and his family. I got much information from archives in Germany, and today I also got the hint from a colleague to your blog.

I have already collected much information from different archives and literature, but nothing is so valuable than the memories and documents from contemporary witness.

I was so overwhelmed to read the letters your father wrote your sons....all the memories of this tragic time in his life and the documents he still has...

Carol, it would be a great pleasure and help for me if you and your family would be willing to support me in finalizing my report on the collection of Carl Heumann.

In hopes of hearing from you and best regards,

Julia

How exciting! I immediately forwarded Julia’s email to my father, who was… well, not excited.

Dad had already chastised me numerous times for “putting everything on the internet” (referring to my Northwestladybug blog) and he didn’t like the idea that his father’s name was now “out there” too, for “just anyone” to find.

Dad would later eat his words, but at that point in 2014, he was livid, saying in an email to me (with his sister Ulli cc’d), when I asked about posting more about Carl…

“Carol --

NO, NO, and NO again! The real reason is privacy, even if you don't want to understand what privacy is.  What I wrote was written to very specific people, not to the world, which your blog is. Yes, your friends on the blog may all be "good people," but what I wrote was not written to them, and is nobody's business. NOBODY'S!  In this day and age we are losing so much of our privacy.  I will not be part of it.  What I wrote there -- it even has names in it! ABSOLUTELY NOT TO BE PUT ON YOUR BLOG, even if what is there is public knowledge.  Our names are not.

If you want to write a novel, with all changed names, and not traceable to my family, that's your business. You can even make your novel very generally about "Privileged Mixed Marriages under the Nazis in Germany," but you have to have a lot of information about other such marriages.

Love, in spite of disagreements -

Dad” 

Just reading that again now makes me feel like a child being punished. Can you see why the prospect of writing a book about Carl and his family, even when my father asked me specifically to do so shortly before his death, was so difficult for me? 

Again, generational trauma…

Eventually I did write back to Julia (copying my father and aunt, to stay out of trouble):

“Dear Julia,

I will, coincidentally, be traveling in Europe this coming May and would like to briefly visit with you at the Albertina, if at all possible.  We are hoping to visit the museum anyway, so if there's anything that can be learned via an in-person meeting, I would be very happy and honored to do so. My husband and I will be in Vienna on May 9th.

Although my father and aunt are the keepers of the memories, I am very interested in my grandfather's life and experiences, so this would potentially be quite interesting for me.

Please let me know if an in-person meeting is a possibility for you.  If your schedule is too busy, I totally understand!

Thanks!

Carol”

Three months later, Julia and I did meet at the Albertina Museum in Vienna.

I will never forget the moment when Julia brought me into her office and there, on her bookshelf were three large binders with the words “Carl Heumann” running down the spine. Who on earth knew enough about my grandfather to fill three binders? Julia, it turns out, was that person! In my broken German, I asked Julia question after question, and in her broken (but much better) English, she answered me.

(On Julia’s bookshelf: My father’s book, The Rim of the Volcano, which he gave to her after they met in person - read on - along with four binders full of information about my grandfather and his art collection.)

That meeting with Julia changed my life.

I suddenly wanted to know everything about my grandfather and about his life as a German Jew married to a non-Jew, with Mischlinge children, during WWII. Ironically, my father had been writing about his family experiences for years, even completing two books, The Longest year in the Young Life of Peter Bauer and The Rim of the Volcano, both of which I devoured. But Dad made it clear that his books were only for the eyes of his own family. Was it more than just the desire for privacy that led my father to be so protective of his family’s information? Could it have also been fear? Once persecuted and violated, as the Nazis had done to my father’s family, I can only imagine that the terror doesn’t go away – even 60 years later.

Now someone from outside the family was interested and I was determined not to be silenced. This would be my experience and my story. Carl was my family, too, and I was determined to follow this new lead where ever it would take me. Putting my life “out there” on my blog had reaped only great things – new friendships, new knowledge, and new information and, unlike Dad, I welcomed it.

After out trip to Vienna, Julia and I stayed in touch and my father and Julia began corresponding. At first, Dad was dubious, but within a few weeks he and Julia were enthusiastically exchanging information via email. Could it be that Dad’s attitude about “our information being put out there” was changing?!  Within a few months of my trip to Vienna, I got this email from Julia:

“Carol, there is something I want to consult with you about. Since you wrote me that there are further documents, especially on the collection, I hit on an idea! What do you think if I'll come to your (your fathers) place, officially?

Provided that your father agrees and I can see the documents and use them for my report? In addition the director of the Bureau of the Commission for Provenance Research gives his consent.

So, Carol, please be honest. Crazy idea!?!

Warm regards,

Julia”

It was Julia’s job to research as much as she could about my family in order to provide information to the Art Restitution Advisory Board which provides recommendations to the Federal Minister of Education, Arts and Culture regarding a potential restitution. In other words, the Albertina Museum was in possession of some pieces from Carl’s collection and they might be required to restitute those pieces back to us, his heirs.

If you’ve seen Woman in Gold, our story is similar – but with art worth nowhere near as much as the Altman family’s art.

In September, 2014, Julia did come to the US – first to Seattle, where she stayed with my family for a few days…

                  

… and then to Ashland, Oregon, where Julia and Dad GOT TO WORK!

     

That suitcase that Dad brought with him when he emigrated to America in 1953 has lived under the bed in all of my father’s homes since. Watching him share the contents with Julia was such an emotional experience!

   

Whereas just a few months previous, I was being admonished for putting pieces of our family’s information on the internet, the flood gates had now been opened and Dad was suddenly ready to share information with the others outside the family who were interested in his story. In fact, Dad had come to really enjoy meeting and working with Julia and he, too, had come to regard her as a new friend.

It was a turning point. After Julia’s visit, Dad’s attitude completely changed and, within a year, Dad was asking me to “tell my story when I’m gone.” Not just to tell his story to his descendants, but to tell his story to the world!

Thanks, Julia!

My father had hoped to see Julia again, but unfortunately he died before that could happen. I would see Julia again in Chemnitz in February, 2018 when the mayor invited heirs of Carl and Thomas to come to the opening of an art exhibit in their honor, and Julia traveled to Chemnitz to join us in the celebration.

(My daughter, Kat and son, Peter, and my cousin Claudia, with Julia to her left.)

(Julia with Jürgen Nitsche, expert on Jews in Chemnitz. My father wanted so much to meet Jürgen after years of corresponding with him, but unfortunately they’d never have a chance to meet.)

The Austrian Federal Minister of Education, Arts and Culture were unable to come to a unanimous decision about restitution of Carl’s art at The Albertina. Finally, in March 2018, after four years of deliberation, the board decided not to restitute the works to our family because “although Carl Heumann was undoubtedly persecuted, the sales in question were not motivated by the situation of persecution, but by his interest as a collector.” I was neither surprised nor disappointed. By that point, the most important result of our relationship with the Austrian board – a friendship with wonderful Julia – had already happened and for that, we continue to be so grateful.

In the years since, I have been contacted by museums in Berlin, Munich, and Dresden. Art from Carl’s collection with suspect provenance (in other words, the art that was ill-begotten by Nazis during the war) were discovered in their vaults. Unlike the Austrian board, ALL the German museum boards have decided to restitute art back to Carl’s heirs. Once this damn pandemic is over, my brothers and cousins and our families plan to travel to Germany to pick up these pieces:

Albert Kirchner, Fischerwiede, 1854.

Jacob Gensler, Maedchen mit Papagai

Jacob Schiller, Devil’s Bridge at Midnight, 1800

We’ve been told that more art from Carl’s collection will likely be found in other museums in Europe. Our biggest hope is to somehow create a book of high-resolution copies of all the art from Carl’s collection that we can find. This way, we can keep Carl’s love of art alive for future generations of his descendants.

A Chemistry Experiment Gone Bad

My dear grandchildren,

This is the post where the stars in my eyes fade upon the realization that, whereas my father was a prolific writer, he was not really a very good writer. I’m spending hours upon hours a day editing his writing for grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, and clarity. English was his second language, so it’s understandable, but this is the same father who (along with my teacher mother) was adamant that my ability to write well in English was as important as… well, as important as reading and writing French apparently was to his parents. (Read on…)

I apologize in advance if I am the omi who insists that my grandchildren be good writers. But seriously, guys, be good writers. It’s important!

And that’s how generational trauma happens. Go ahead – blame me!  :-)

Here is my dad’s (edited) writing for today. This entry has nothing to do with war and everything to do with the experience of being 14 years old.

In 1942, I was fourteen. It is an age when any young person, anywhere in the world, at any time in history, seeks answers to what life is all about – particularly regarding “those things that must not be discussed.” In our home, two subjects were taboo: sex and any information about my father’s relatives and ancestors. No one ever spoke to me about either of them, especially about sex. Grown-ups giggled and whispered, but we were never let in on the secret.

My research on the “sex secret” was limited to the noon hour, when both my parents had their mid-day nap. In their beds, in darkness, clad in their night clothes. That was when I had the library to myself and I could explore Vandervelde, a sex education book for grownups whose own parents probably never mentioned anything like sex, either. Like us, they were probably left to find out from friends who might know more than we did. What was all that secrecy about? Must be something great!

I looked everywhere for information about “Vandervelde, a sex education book” in Germany. I couldn’t find anything anywhere about such a book! Maybe Dad meant Van der Velde?!

These are from Amazon. Maybe I should order them and sneak a peek?!

 

I knew all about the birds and the bees because of the book Das Liebesleben in der Natur^[1]. Maybe my parents left that book out on purpose. I learned all about the birds and the bees, and did my own extrapolating about humans - wrong, of course.

     

(From The Booklooker)

I found this one, too!

My life was protected, again and still, from all that went on outside of my direct involvement with the world. My world revolved around my own life and my own concerns. One of them was Rainer’s chemistry lab that was set up on the third floor near Rainer’s tool closet. 1942 was Rainer’s last year at home. He had gotten his Abitur (basically, high school diploma) and was ready to move to München, which meant that I would inherit his tools and his chemistry lab. I was thrilled.

Our house had three stories plus a basement below. The central hall of the top floor had been turned into what amounted to big brother's territory: his tool chest and a table for his chemistry experiments. I was still relegated to the playroom for the "two little ones" (and with a girl,!), so Rainer's attic hall required his permission for entry and was to me a paradise yet to be attained, a prime reason in my mind to grow up fast. 

One day, while our little sister Ulli and our parents were out of the house, Rainer gave me an orientation on the details of his chemistry lab, showing me some of the important items in his lab, including a water hose that ran from the attic bathroom to the lab table (because you can’t run a lab without water, right?). Rainer was deep into his chemistry experiment that day, one that used stinky sulfur dioxide, something that was best done with parents and little sister out of the house. He allowed me to watch and even gave me the job of washing out the vials, which wasn't easy because the garden hose he had rigged between the bathroom faucet and the chemistry table ended in a tiny little valve from his chemistry set. But I was proud to have gotten everything clean and not breaking anything in the process. Too bad we had to stop for our Saturday bath, a directive from our parents to have completed by the time they returned.

We took a bath in the nearby bathroom. (One bath, of course, to save water.) To young boys, the purpose of a bath is not to get clean; it is for underwater car races, for submerging the toy submarine, only to have to pop up high out of the water, clearly lacking the properties of a real submarine... and it is a time for boy talk.

Our bath was interrupted by a loud voice coming from downstairs."Where are the boys... and is someone frying eggs?!" Clearly our parents and Ulli had arrived home.

Ulli, with great anticipation, thought she heard dinner frying in the kitchen. But that blip-plop-pott-pud wasn't the sound of bacon frying. Wrong. It was a steady stream of water pouring from the hose on the chemistry table, now minus its tiny valve. When we turned off  the faucet after our bath, it turned out, the sudden increase in water pressure separated the maybe-not-so-ingenious hose from the attic bathroom to the lab table. Now water was dripping from the ceilings into the bedrooms, the hall, the playroom, even running down the attic steps,rivulets forming on and under the wallpaper and finally pooling into puddles in the wood parquet! Yikes!

"Buckets! Quick! And mops! Towels, more of them!" Herr Pennsdorf, the caretaker who lived above our garage, was summoned and requested to bring with him his wife and children.It would take everyone to deal with this flood! Being an expert at all things structural, Pennsdorf looked panicked, but never lost his Saxon lethargy. "Herr Gonsuhl, he droned in his broad Saxon dialect, "That ceiling's coming down."

The fancy coffered ceiling never actually did come down, but it sported a big brown blotch throughout the war until, a few years after our domestic flood, it suffered the same grim fate as the rest of the ceilings in our house which, unlike this one, had preserved their snow-white luster.

When the excitement that naturally followed this catastrophe was over, Rainer showed me his diary entry for the day, a page filled to near-blackness with circles, spirals, confused jagged shapes and a whole cacophony of round and jagged scribbles. Rainer’s journal entry was all about our parents’ different temperaments. We spoke of our parents not by using affectionate terms like "Dad" and "Mom," but rather as "he" and "she," characterizing them as "round" and "jagged" -  and their response to the chemistry debacle illustrated their round and jagged temperaments perfectly.  Father, the “round” one (even by appearance), planned, directed and punished and worried, with all the deliberate rationality he could muster under the dire circumstances, while “jagged” Mother, in contrast, was nervous, panicked, and fastidiously practical, mopping up water and finding more buckets and towels than I knew we had.

At that time, we were still rather sheltered children, not at all conscious of how cruel life was becoming for people like my parents, while life on the surface shone with Nazi glory. How bizarre the new realities must have been to anyone accustomed to the normalcy of the life they had known. It wasn't until much later that we realized the extreme pressures weighing on our parents at that time, making it completely understandable (in retrospect) that they were acting "round, " "jagged," or any other way they could manage without losing their sanity. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chemistry was exciting, but most of the time I was busy with schoolwork, especially private French lessons from Herr Epping, a staunch Social Democrat who had been stripped of his job as principal of the local girls’ high school. Herr Epping would come to have a major influence on my life in years to come.

My parents believed that, while learning languages like Latin, Greek and English is important, one must know how to speak and write the “only truly cultured language,” French, in order to call oneself a well-educated person. My own interest in French got so strong that I began to read the French newspaper (by then of course totally controlled by the German Occupation of France!) and had French conversation with Father at dinner. That year, my Christmas present to my parents was reciting a memorized French fable by La Fontaine, including, for extra credit, a German translation.

Ulli, meanwhile, was finishing elementary school. Her teachers were impressed with her intelligence and diligence, assuring our parents that she was well qualified to enter the best high school for girls, but the Nazis would not allow it. Like us, she was a Mischling Ersten Grades and therefor would not be admitted to high school, just as Rainer was not admitted to the Technical University in München. Mutti knew that, if some Nazi, somewhere, would be willing to stick his neck out, Ulli could continue to go to school, but no official anywhere would stick his neck out. So Ulli was told that she was “still too tender” to go to high school with her friends, which was the one and only thing she really wanted. For years into her future, Ulli thought that the reason she was not admitted to high school was that she was not smart enough. Just imagine!

Everyone was constantly hungry and cold. By this time, life was interrupted numerous times during the day, and often at night, by air raid sirens. Nothing was normal anymore.

My mother Irmgard was well aware that her sheer existence as a non-Jew was the only thing that stood between her Jewish husband and an evil and hostile regime that wanted him dead. During this time, she wrote to her mother, Adele, that she was completely disheartened by a world full of madness and irrationality and that she was often “drenched in tears” over the lack of smiles and any humor in her family’s life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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^[1] “Love Life in Nature”

Being Jewish in the mid-1930s: The Political background

Dearest grandchildren,

I remember questioning my father regarding what genre his book, The Rim of the Volcano, would fall into.

Was it to be historical fiction, in which he’d tell the story of a German woman (Irmgard, who he’d call  “Irene”) who married a Jewish man (Carl, who he’d call “Karl”… huh?!) in 1919 and, by 1933, found herself in the dreadful position of being, by her sheer existence, the only thing keeping her husband, and likely her children, from a concentration camp and certain death?

Or was it to be an autobiographical memoir, told in the first person? If so, Dad insisted that the historical and political background must somehow be included and it must be correct, since the political environment of Nazi Germany had a huge influence on every aspect of Thomas’ family’s life – even though it was never discussed (at least with the kids).

Ultimately, Dad decided that he would write an autobiographic book, but that he would preface his memories with applicable Nazi politics of the time. So each chapter would begin with the political background – laws, decrees, and political actions -  and then be followed with Dad’s personal memories. It was a good approach.

In theory.

As I mentioned previously, my father was an obsessive researcher. With the vast amount of available information on WWII politics, I’m pretty sure Thomas “went down the worm hole” a few times, gathering more information than was really necessary for the short “political background” sections of his Rim of the Volcano book. And I believe that, in his desire to research thoroughly, he probably felt overwhelmed at times. I have a feeling that this feeling of overwhelm led to things like this:

Fortunately, Dad did eventually finish his book – or at least the first version of it. (I have been doing some heavy editing as I post it here.)

My father was absolutely correct in his assertion that factual information about Nazi politics would be critical to include previous to each chapter of personal memories. That is evident in the long, detailed political background section of Dad’s memories of the tumultuous years of 1934 to 1938, which appears here:

The political background:

The Nazis consolidated their political power into a firm dictatorship  between 1934 and 1938. They used the first year to grab the tools they needed. Then, when Hitler was made Chancellor, they enacted the notorious Empowerment Act that let them make their own laws, unencumbered and unobstructed. They got control of the press and outlawed all other parties.

I am writing this blog post on January 2nd, 2021. Two months ago, Americans elected Joe Biden to replace Donald Trump as president. Two days from now, a group of Republicans will try to nullify those election results, claiming fraud. POSITIVELY NO FRAUD HAS BEEN DETECTED and the results of the election is 100% legitimate. The Supreme Court says so and lower courts have said so SIXTY TIMES since November’s election. Trump and his cronies would have loved to do what Hitler did. In fact, since the day he was elected in 2016, Trump has insisted, just as Hitler did, that the press is “the enemy of the people.” Unlike Hitler, though, OUR democracy has – so far, at least; the next two weeks will be precarious and scary – withstood Trump’s attempts to completely take over.

74,000,000 people, a full 46.8%of the electorate, voted for Trump. Most of those would probably love to see the legitimate election results overturned and the will of the people simply ignored. That alone is terrifying. “Never forget,” my ass! Americans have already forgotten, in barely more than a generation.

Now that they had eradicated the Weimar Republic, the time had come to prove to the world that their anti-Semitic measures were working, that they had the approval of the masses, both domestic and international, and that they were a cultured regime that restored Germany to its pre-war greatness and civility.

“Germany first”? Well, yes – “Deutschland über alles.” That’s where Trump go his whole “America First” slogan. MAGA: “Make America Great Again.”

They successfully reduced a vast unemployment problem by construction of the Autobahn and offered the prospect that soon every German would own a Volkswagen (“people’s car”). They supported the heavy steel industry. They created the Gestapo^[1], and along with that they also initiated a popular program called “Kraft Durch Freude” (Strength Through Joy), a popular lure to allow masses of “common people” to enjoy the same cruises and culture that had previously been reserved for the upper class. That propaganda trick worked well with many people inside and outside Germany, even some politicians.

After Hindenburg’s death on August 1, 1934, the Nazis held a plebiscite to decide whether Hitler should become the one and only Führer (leader) in Germany. The voting participation for this election was 95.7%! Of those, 89.9% voted for him. The Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936 was tailor-made for the showmanship of Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda, but is remembered as the occasion when Jesse Owens challenged Hitler’s theory of the supreme Aryan race. A jubilant Austria “came home into the Reich” in 1938. Then, in Munich, the Western Allies gave in to Hitler’s so-called “final territorial demands” and sacrificed the freedom of Czechoslovakia to a vain dream of peace. Hitler promptly gabbed the Sudetenland and made Bohemia and Moravia a German protectorate. But the “peace in our time” didn’t last long. Six weeks later, the true face of the regime showed itself to the world in Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” when practically all synagogues in Germany were burned and when the homes of thousands of Jews were ransacked, and its habitants arrested. But the worst of the Holocaust was still years away.

I was horrified to see Trump’s “children in cages.” His administration really did separate children, some as young as a few months old, from their parents – and then these children were literally locked in cages. Even now, two years later, these children are without parents, as no one kept track of who those parents were (that wouldn’t have happened in Nazi Germany, only because the Nazis documented everything). For Some of these children will NEVER see their parents again! This is a direct result of Trump’s hatred of immigrants – not unlike Hitler’s hatred of Jews. Plenty of Americans are still siding with Trump, even treating him like a cult leader. The difference between Germany under Hitler (in the beginning) and America under Trump is that enough Americans refuse to allow Trump to get away with what he’s trying to do.

And thank god for our Constitution which, amazingly enough, still stands, and which guarantees freedom of the press and freedom of speech. Those two freedom are what separate America from 2016 to 2020 from Germany from 1934 to 1938.

It is particularly interesting to note how much the government-sponsored anti-Semitism became accepted and understood as “the right way to think now.” It was self-perpetuating with more and more (but step-by-step, almost unnoticeable) decrees against Jews. Most decrees were not particularly severe, just a continuation of policy, not in secret, but proudly published. The thought of “I’m not a Jew -- why should I worry?” became common. Anti-Semitism had become widely practiced and fully accepted.

Drip, drip, drip. The frog in slowly heating water. That is how these things happen. As my father told me on multiple occasions, “Hitler was democratically and enthusiastically elected by an educated , dignified electorate. Don’t think that can’t happen here.” You were right, Dad. You were right.

(Side note: Anti-Semitism didn’t suddenly disappear in Germany at the end of the war. Six years after the end of the WWII, my father-in-law-to be, Max Reiss reluctantly accepted me a his son-in-law, but asked that we don’t disclose the fact that my father was Jewish to his then-wife Maria, for fear of her disapproval.)

To my knowledge, laws issued in May and June, 1938 are the first documented and published instances where the word Konzentrationslager (concentration camp) was openly used, though in 1938 they were not yet the death camps they became later. It is my understanding that a “concentration camp” was known then as a place were “undesirables” (like Jews) were being concentrated - unlike prisons - which still required conviction by a court.

Decrees issued 1934 - 1938:

The flood of laws and regulations to “fence out” Jews from public life and public schools continued in 1934 to 1938, but at a somewhat slower rate than in 1933. Many decrees encouraged emigration of Jews, specifically to Palestine. The treatment of “Devisen^[2]” was increasingly limited, strictly controlled, and severely punished if not followed.

December 20, 1934: (*13 - pg. 100)

An ominous law specified that the divulging or spreading of “malicious claims” concerning people in authority or their orders, which were likely to damage the Party or state, carries a prison penalty. (This kind of “law” justified frivolous arrests by police and others and encouraged informers!)

The Nürnberg Laws: (*13 - pg. 142) and many other sources:

By far the most important laws of 1935 were the “Nürnberg Laws,” passed on the occasion of a flamboyant party congress in Nürnberg on September 15, and November 14, 1935. Practically every reference in literature speaks of those laws, their creation, contents, and their far-reaching implications. They had their origins in the many partial and local regulations that tried to arrive at a unified approach to the “Jewish question.”

In November,1935, the Nazi Party held a very big and showy Party rally in Nürnberg. They named Nürnberg the “CIty of the Party Congresses” -- one reason the Allies chose Nürnberg after the war to try those same Nazis for war crimes and “Crimes against Humanity.” (I believe that term was first used in he Nürnberg Trials.)

The Nürnberg Laws, with the euphemistic title of The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor defined, for the first time, who was a Jew - not by religion, but by race. For the first time in history, conversion from the Jewish religion would no longer remove the designation of being Jewish. Spanish Jews could still do that under the expulsion orders from Spain, under Ferdinand and Isabella. But now, under the Nürnberg Laws, which reflected Nazi ideology, whether one was considered a Jew depended solely on the number of Jewish grandparents one had and no longer on the religion of the mother.

Here are the key provisions:

1. “Reichsbürger” (German citizens) are people of “German or related blood.”

Only Reichsbürger have political rights.

2. “Staatsangehörige” (Members of the State) are all inhabitants of the state, including non-Aryans.

3. “Being Jewish” was defined thus:

“Full Jews”: those who have three or four Jewish grandparents.

“Half Jews” (or “Mischling”): those who have two Jewish grandparents and are member of a Hebrew congregation.

Regardless of religious practice:

Mischling of the first degree means having two Jewish grandparents;

Mischling of the second degree: means having one Jewish grandparent;

 

4. Jews cannot be Reichsbürger ; they have no voting rights.

5. Marriage between a Jew and a Reichsbürger is forbidden.

6. Sexual relations between Jews and Reichsbürger are prohibited. The Nazis called this Rassenschande (“defilement of the race”), considered by the Nazis to be the greatest sin. (More severely punished: the Jewish part…) (Apr. 2 ’36 - *13 - pg. 159)

7. Female employees in Jewish households must be over 45 years of age.

As time went on, there were separate decrees related to these laws, putting “racially impure” people into pigeonholes with restrictions and exceptions for each. Some of these classifications were specific, others were general or unspecified, making enforcement arbitrary.

Feb. 4, 1935: (*13 - pg. 103)

Law for Handling of Foreign Exchange. (Note: this “law” updated several previous regulations, providing the justification for the 1938 action against my father.)

Dec. 19, 1935: (*13 - pg. 146):

Only Jews and Gypsies are considered “foreign races” in Europe. (“Negroes” were not mentioned, because very few lived in Europe, but they were certainly included.)

December 1935: (*13 pg. 149)

Judges are forbidden to quote commentaries or papers by Jewish authors.

Sept. 1, 1936: (*13- pg. 170)

Penalties for Rassenschande are increased and expedited. (The degree to which Rassenschande was spurned went to ridiculous extremes, such as -- reportedly -- a woman who ever had sexual contact with a Jew was in theory no longer able to produce purely Aryan offspring.)

Oct. 26, 1936 (*13 - pg. 174) “SECRET REICHS SUBJECT!”

To maintain maximal deterring effects, duration of confinement must under no circumstances be revealed. Confinement into a concentration camp must always be presented as “until further notice.”

December 1, 1936: (*13 - pg. 176)

Underhandedly moving or leaving property abroad is considered economic sabotage and is punishable by death.

June 1, 1938: (*13 - pg. 227): (TOP SECRET!)

Jews who received a penalty of more than one month in prison are to be sent directly to a concentration camp upon release from prison, without a hearing.

June 14, 1938 (*13 - pg. 229):

The principle that the “Aryan paragraph” does not apply to the economic sector is no longer valid. Jews must be removed as quickly as possible. A Kommanditgesellschaft (limited partnership) is considered Jewish if one of the principal members is Jewish. (Note: per this decree, my father was forced to leave his position as President of Bayer & Heinze Bank on January 1, 1938.)

August 17, 1938: (*13 - pg. 237):

All males who are Jewish by race must adopt the official middle name of “Israel”, and all females must adopt the official middle name of “Sara.” Signatures must include the new middle name, and all Jews must introduce themselves with this mandated name, without being asked, in all official verbal or written transactions.

“Carl Isreal Heumann,” Jew.

Sept. 28, 1938; (*13 - pg. 242):

Until this point, the emigration of Jews had been tolerated, and even encouraged. This regulation stipulated that emigration into neighboring countries now be illegal.

Oct. 10, 1938: (*13 - pg. 244):

Passports belonging to Jews are invalid and must be returned. They become valid again only after they are prominently stamped with the letter “J” (“Jew”).

To get a sense of the racial hysteria that escalated after “Kristallnacht,” one must look at the details of some of the orders and decrees:

November 9, 1938: (*13 - pg. 249):

“SECRET! To all State Police offices: These measures against Jews will take place throughout Germany. They must not be interfered with. Important archival materials in synagogues is to be secured immediately (especially the high-value material from the Köln synagogue). Prepare countrywide for the arrest of 20,000 - 30,000 Jews. Rich Jews are to be targeted with priority.

[Note: this may be part of the reason why I have been unable to find any information about my paternal grandparents in Köln!]

Order to Gestapo group leaders:

All Jewish stores are to be destroyed immediately by uniformed SA “(Sturm Abteilung” or “Storm Troopers”). Place an SA guard to avoid looting of valuables. Involve the press. Synagogues must be incinerated immediately, and Jewish symbols must be seized. Jews must be evacuated from their homes since Aryans will soon occupy those houses. Police must not interfere. Any Jews who resist must be shot on the spot. Post signs that read, for instance, “No Treaties with Countries that Listen to Jews!” or “Death to the International Jewry!”

November 10, 1938: (*13 – pg. 253):

From the Reich Leader of the SS: Arrest all Jews, especially rich Jews, and send them to existing holding facilities. Immediately contact appropriate Concentration Camps (“KZ’s”) officers for expedited placement. State Police units must not interfere.

The KZ’s of Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen will each admit at least 10,000 Jews each.

Official orders are not required to arrest Jews and the Minister of Justice has been directed to not initiate legal investigations into anti-Jewish actions.

November 12, 1938: (*13 - pg. 254):

From head of the Four-Year-Plan: All Jewish owners are responsible for the restoration of residences and facilities that were damaged in recent days by the people’s outrage over the agitation by the international Jewry against the National Socialist Germany. The State will collect any insurance claims.

Jews under age 60 and able to work, who were arrested in the “Protest Action,” will be transported to the nearest Concentration Camp.

(Note that by 1938 the term “KZ” for concentration camps was used quite freely, although the horrific magnitude of the words’ implications was not generally known until years later.)

Jews are forbidden to attend any theaters, movies, concerts, exhibits, etc..

German Jews as a group must pay RM 100,000,000 to the German Reich.

The individual property levy on all Jews is 20% of all assets.

... and many more ....

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^[1] Geheime Staatspolizei - -Secret State Police

^[2] foreign exchange and currencies

Thomas’ insane amount of research

Dear grandkidlets,

As I mentioned, my father was a passionate (okay, obsessed) researcher.

I’m amazed at the binders full of research Dad left for me, and I believe that the sheer magnitude of information gathered by my father has served to inhibit both his writing and my own.

I’ve been known to “go down wormholes” when I research. Something catches my interest and there I go – following every detail google gives me, assuming every last bit of it is critically important.

Big mistake!

I’m not sure Dad did this (I have a feeling he did), but somehow he ended up with literally BINDERS full of pages that look something like this – lists, tables, topics, etc.

 

Somehow… SOMEHOW Dad was able to take his throngs of research and funnel it all down to the two-page bibliography that he included in The Rim of the Volcano!  My guess is that he overwhelmed himself and decided to just keep it simple – though it wouldn’t surprise me if he actually culled all his research down to the most pertinent nuggets.

In any case, here are the two – yes, only two! – pages he included in the book as a bibliography. You might need to refer back to this as you read Rim. You can always find this post again under the “Bibliography” label.