Fall, 1944: Thomas' First Love

My dear grandchildren,

My father wrote Longest Year (his first book’s nickname) in 1979. My feeling is that, unlike Rim (his nickname for his second book, The Rim of the Volcano), which he researched incessantly and which he insisted be politically and historically accurate, Longest Year just flowed out of him because it was simply his memoir. Dad’s approach to Longest Year is much more natural and engaging because he takes on the role of a storyteller, which came naturally to him, whereas with Rim, with its factual political climate sections, he seemed to be more of a history professor, a role a bit less comfortable for Dad.

As I mentioned in the previous post, Dad originally wrote Longest Year in third person, telling the story of Peter Bauer, a Mischling (half-Jewish) boy who is forced to grow up far too quickly in WWII Germany during the Holocaust. When Dad merged Longest Year with Rim, he switched back to first person, but I think Peter’s personality still shines through.

I grew to really love Peter Bauer as I read Longest Year – which makes sense, since I’m positive I would have loved young Thomas Heumann!

What do you think?

 

Here we go!

Tuesday morning.

Tuesday was the day when Lippmann’s Butcher Shop sold beef broth. Watered down, but broth it was. Broth was one of the few items the butcher could sell without ration coupons. You had to get there early, though; the line began forming just after five o’clock, and there was no hope of getting any broth at all if you didn’t get in line well before seven.

I did. There were only twenty or thirty people in front of me.

Getting broth on Tuesday mornings was one of my housekeeping jobs. Since my mother died early in the year, I had to accept more of the duties around the house. Chores to exist, to survive. The simple business of living took so much time, so much attention and alertness, plus a certain amount of cunning.

We had been good customers at Lippmann’s for many years before the war, and Frau Lippmann was particularly fond of me, as she had watched me grow up from a carefree toddler to the serious boy I now was. It was only natural that the job of getting broth would fall on me. Who knows, Frau Lippmann might just slip me a small package of kidneys or a piece of liverwurst when no one was looking. For her, it was just good business to do that for some long-time customers. Eventually, at some time in the future, things would be normal again in Germany, and then one could not afford to lose customers like the Heumanns. Some time. Right now, anything normal seemed so long ago, and so far in the future.

There was no little package this time. I pushed my bicycle up Friedrich-Schlegel-Straße so I wouldn’t spill any of the bouillon from the aluminum pitcher hanging from my handlebar. By now, the sloshing liquid had formed a thin skin of cold fat, like miniature floes of ice. What a ridiculous thought: ice! I knew from the heavy smell and the texture of the dawn air that today would be another one of those warm late-fall days, the days of grace before the long winter set in.

I kicked the leaves in the gutter as I shuffled uphill, hoping to find a few freshly fallen chestnuts, dark brown and still with that smooth grain of highly polished wood, before they were all scuffed up, run over and shriveled. I collected chestnuts for no reason in particular, just to feel and enjoy their smoothness when I put my hands in my pocket. Neighborhood kids competed fiercely for chestnuts because the schools held war effort collections to ship to the soap factory.

When I opened the kitchen door, Liesbeth was already up, hobbling through the large kitchen in small, shuffling steps, making Ersatzkaffee^[1] for breakfast.

Liesbeth was a leftover from old times, the only household help the Nürnberg Laws would allow Jews to have. According to the Laws, female household help had to be over 45, so there would be no danger of racially impure offspring in case master and servant forgot themselves and committed “Rassenschande.”^[2] Rudolf, the butler — the other kind of permissible domestic help — had long ago been drafted into the army and was now somewhere in Russia. The Heumann kids had always whispered and snickered about Rudolf and Liesbeth, good souls, having a rather cozy “Aryan” arrangement up there in the servants’ quarters in the attic. No more.

Rudolf was no longer needed. The household had shrunk to where it consisted only of Father and me, now that Rainer, the oldest, was away in München, where he worked in a machine shop. He was serving the apprentice year he would need to become an engineer -- later, after the war, when they would admit half-Jewish people to universities again. For now, it was good to be a machinist because workers got somewhat higher food rations, and for the moment that mattered most, certainly more than pay or status.

My younger sister Ulli was living with our cousin Gaby in Adelsberg, on the outskirts of Chemnitz. It was lucky that Uncle Heinz and Aunt Gert could take her in. Living with them, Ulli escaped the constant threat of air raids and could be with Gaby, a much better companion than a big brother. And Gaby’s family was certainly a more suitable habitat for the 12-year-old girl than a household managed by a sickly spinster housekeeper and a solitary, grieving, and very impractical father.

(Ulli and Gaby, c 1944.)

So it was that Carl Heumann lived a withdrawn life, alone at home, alone with me, with his art collection, and with his relentless thoughts of present and future. If his thoughts were desperate, he did not let on. Sad, serious, guarded — yes, but he was too much of a romantic to admit to himself, let alone to me, how bleak their situation really was.

While the Nazi system tried to fit all the young kids into the Nazi mold in Germany, Father gave me the confidence that one could remain above the baseness of persecution simply by living a life of uncompromising integrity and correct behavior. Although he never talked to me about it, I began to understand that striving for this sense of superiority could make or break a character when the chips are down.

In a way, I believe Father repressed many of the events that he saw around him. In the early Nazi years, he was convinced that the Nazis could not last long. That is why he had not followed his brothers to America in 1938, when public intimidation and abuse of anything Jewish had accelerated to a pitch where one could foresee what lay ahead. After all, he reasoned, Konsul Heumann was a respected and law-abiding German citizen and “they just couldn’t do that to me.” He clung to this belief to the end.

Our house had lost much of the joy that I had known when I was a small boy, when these walls had been alive with warmth and music, and when well-groomed people who smelled good and spoke of things I didn’t understand came to visit. Now the air was cold, except in what used to be the children’s playroom. In other rooms of the large house, a thick dust, like the frost of a winter morning, had settled on the Biedermeyer furniture.

I hurried up the steps to my room because I still had to do some homework to finish for the Latin lesson at 9:00. I didn’t like Latin, I didn’t like Dr. Epstein who taught me, but I had come to like Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which I was in the process of reading. There was so little that was stable or consistent in our lives, and here was Ovid who seemed to accept -- even embrace -- a constant flow and change, and do it with a twinkle in his eyes. I liked that.

Dr. Epstein was just one of my tutors. For more than a year now, ever since the Party had decreed that Germans classified as “Mischling Ersten Grades” were no longer allowed to get a high school education, I had been given private lessons by teachers who themselves were barred from teaching school, either because they, too, were racially not acceptable, or because they had been Social Democrats or had other subversive ideas. There was now a completely withdrawn elite underground intelligentsia whose only means of support was tutoring.

It was Herr Epping who introduced me to a much wider field of thought and of art than I would have been taught in public schools. While the high school muddled on under a new uniformed Nazi as Principal, while my former classmates spent the mornings in crowded classrooms and afternoons at mandatory Hitler Youth meetings, I, the outcast, received a broad, humanistic, and liberal education -- exactly the kind of thing the Nazis were trying to prevent!

Herr Epping was also the one who taught French to me and to two of my former classmates. These weekly French lessons were the only means of keeping in touch with my old friends from school, or, for that matter, with anybody my own age. Of course, I was also spared (or not permitted, as they saw it!) membership in the otherwise compulsory Hitler Youth, so the only other young people I ever talked to were Ulli and Gaby and, sometimes their neighbor children.

One of those neighbor children, Gisela, was the reason why, on this day, much of Ovid went in one ear and out the other. Last night, she and I had sat hand-in-hand way up there on the balcony, listening to Haydn’s Schöpfung. The melodies were still swirling around in my head, along with the memories of her sweet sideways glances when I had walked her home in the moonlight.

How could Ovid compete with that?

      

Last week, Gisela and I had spent a whole afternoon at the Stadtpark.  We rented a boat on the lake, and I rowed it across to where the big willow tree hung its branches all the way down into the water. We hid from the eyes of the world there and sat by the park aviary until it was dark.

The aviary was no architectural beauty, but to me it was more glorious than all of the Austrian Baroque Herr Epping kept talking about.

One day, as I left the house to see Gieslea, Father was ill at ease. “Um … er … Thoooomas,” he finally said, “there will be no such thing as kissing or things like that, OK?” Little did Vati know that smooching was exactly what I was going for, and we (at least I) were much too innocent and romantic for “things like that.”

That one sentence from my father comprised the total sex education I ever received from home.

In my mind, every moment of this relationship had grown into a major event, central to my whole being. After all, ahead of us was a whole life together. Last August we had promised to love each other as long as we lived — how could it ever be different? I even immortalized our whole romance in a tongue-in-cheek “Epos” (in hexameter!) which I brought to the vegetable nursery where Gisela worked as part of her war-time labor duty. I could see absolutely nothing unusual about a parody of Homer being recited right there, between cabbages and compost heaps. Gisela was so much a part of every minute of my waking day that, say, even reciting the passé composé of sentir in French class would quite naturally recall for me the scent of Gisela’s hair.

You know how I said that I devoured Longest Year when Dad gave the book to me for Christmas in 1979? I did – except for the “love scenes” – because that wasn’t… well, my mom! Silly, I know. But editing Dad’s words today was the first time that I carefully read my father’s memories about his first love. That’s just a plugging-my-ears thing, right? You’ll do it about your own parents, I’ll bet!

---

^[1] “Coffee replacement” - the stuff made from roasted barley that didn’t taste like coffee, but was called coffee because it looked like it.

^[2] “Racial Defilement” the worst crime possible: sex between an “Aryan” and a Jew or other race the Nazis chose to consider inferior

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.

Irmard’s Illness and Death… Now What?

Dearest grandchildren,

Originally  -- as in, after my father died -- I was going to write a book, per his request to “tell my story when I’m gone.” The central theme of that book was to be the daunting role of the non-Jew in a “privileged mixed marriage” in WWII Germany, and the horrifying reality of what happened to a family when the “guardian angel” (as my father called his Aryan mother ) died. My father was correct when he said, “I believe that the non-Jewish partners in Germany’s “privileged mixed marriages” have not, to this very day, been given enough credit for what they did. They had to be incredibly strong in a brave and quiet way.”

(The last known photo of Irmgard, 1943.)

After four years of wringing my hands, writing numerous outlines, agonizing over approach, and wondering constantly whether Dad would approve (see also: “generational trauma”), I decided to change my whole approach. Instead of writing a book, I decided to start a blog in which I would simply offer my father’s works as he wrote them (how wrong I was in that; they needed heavy editing), adding my own commentary, perspectives, and opinions. I feel comfortable with this approach, but it doesn’t allow Irmgard’s character and experiences the spotlight they deserve. This post, about her illness and death, and their impact on the family, come closest to the intended theme of the book I decided not to write. I hope that someone, someday does write about the excruciating role of the non-Jew in a “privileged mixed marriage” during WWII Germany. I wish that person could have been me. But alas…

Here are my father’s words:

It was in September of 1943 that Mother developed physical symptoms that neither she nor the doctors she consulted could explain.

Sorry – immediate interruption! I actually disagree with my father’s assertion here. In Letters from Chemnitz (in which Ulli translated over 600 pages of letters, mostly between Irmgard and her mother Adele), it is clear that Irmgard began to mention mysterious physical symptoms as early as 1942.

This letter from Irmgard to her mother, dated March 15, 1942, mentions both the terror and uncertainty of war (first paragraph) and symptoms she was experiencing (highlight) – which she attributed to the terror and uncertainty of war.

Just a month later, Irmgard refers to a strange headache, and again attributes it to something else – menopause and the coming of spring (?!).

And this letter, written in late May, 1942, tells of a probable fainting episode, which Irmgard chalk up to “hunger and constant anxiety.”

My father goes on to describe Irmgard’s symptoms:

A few times a day, she would get a strange taste in her mouth brought on, she assumed, by what she described as the “terrified and angry feeling of being a mouse caught in a trap, running into bars of the cage all around.” The taste in her mouth, which she described as “something unidentifiable from my past,” would come and go within seconds.

Irmgard doesn’t mention symptoms again until July, 1943:

And then again in August, 1943…

And then, in the fall, she began to mention symptoms quite frequently. In September, 1943…

In October, 1943…

In November, 1943…

And then, finally, on December 4, 1942…

My father continues:

Her doctor blamed it all on menopause - from dizziness to depression to attacks of anxiety. Before long, her entire right side became numb when the taste came on, ‘Oh my God! Epilepsy? What would happen if I died?’ she wondered. ‘The whole family depends on me, they need me to be here and alive, to keep the marriage privileged! What would happen to Carl? What would happen to the children? Oh my God, help me!’

To convey a feeling for Mother’s state of mind and her worries for the fate of others in December, 1943 -- only weeks before her death -- it is best to let her speak for herself. She wrote to her mother:

“A broken fountain pen is annoying, but I am embarrassed to even mention it. Thousands of people have lost everything, and I am distraught thinking about all of them. Every day brings hundreds more. I had a postcard from Miss Ball and Miss von Lüttwitz. Both of their houses burned to the ground. Another friend of ours has six (!) burned-out family members. Frau Grossmann‘s brother’s house is completely destroyed, the Bahners’ son is 100% wrecked. Just now another air raid alarm. It began at 7:45 with the all-clear at 10:00. How many more people have been torn from their families? I can’t handle it anymore. I’m going to bed now.”

The next morning, Irmgard continues.

“Poor Kätchen! Is it really an ulcer or neurosis? Nobody can help anyone else anymore. That poor woman is so terribly alone. Anything we try to say now is so ridiculous, just null-and-void in face of everything else that is so enormous. It is simply cataclysmic. Thousand of people are becoming homeless each day now and they need to be housed somewhere. The most amazing thing is that everyone seems to want to return to the spot on earth where he came from. Our K’s (?) haven’t returned, and that’s good because the attic is not habitable now because of the horrible anti-fire spraying that isn’t getting completed yet. A stove is supposed to be delivered on Monday, but who knows what will happen between now and Monday. And who knows whether all the anti-fire spraying would do any good (in a bombing), anyway??

“What I am so afraid of is what can happen after a horrible shock or accident or a terrible event: epilepsy. When I tried to find out more about the strange taste I get in my mouth, I read that “… attacks are often preceded by physical unrest or the sensation a strange taste or smell…” And the numbness, always on my more sensitive right side. The pills from Dr. E. help with my nervousness, but they don’t help with that obscure, indescribable sensation that happens to me two or three times a day. I can’t tell whether it’s a taste or a smell, but it scares me to death! The more I must do, especially if it includes something enjoyable, the less it happens. Well -- enough now!”

Irmgard continues her letter.

“Now I must write down emergency addresses and put them in the air raid suitcase. Ever more emergency preparations. How useless it all seems! We are hoping for a quiet night.

If we could only get some good news soon!” -- Irmgard.

No one knows exactly what happened after December 4th, the last time Irmgard wrote to her mother. The next letter in Letters from Chemnitz is written from a hospital in Halle, by Margaret Wendt to her sister, Adele, Irmgard’s mother. (I find this confusing; why was Margaret at the hospital instead of Adele?) Irmgard was still alive, but obviously unconscious.

This, from my dad, breaks me heart. I can’t even imagine.

I remember nothing, absolutely nothing about the Christmas, 1943. I have probably completely blocked it out. The next thing I remember is the 7th of January 1944, when Father went to the University Hospital in Halle, near Leipzig, for Mothers operation. I remember keeping myself busy all day, building small naval models. It did not help. When Father came home, I knew. He called me into his office and told me that Mother had died.

I was standing in the same place where I had gotten the only slap in the face of my life. This time it hurt more.

Irmgard died on January 7, 1944 the day after Ulli’s 12th birthday. Thomas was 15. Rainer was 20.

I could not cry.

I, however, cried like a baby when I read in Letters from Chemnitz that Irmgard had died. It’s not like I didn’t expect it. I’d known all along how and when my grandmother died. But I had been immersed in Ulli’s translations for days, and when I read the letter from Margaret and saw the death announcement, I was completely overcome with grief – almost as if I had known and had a relationship with my grandmother and loved her unconditionally, like (I now realize) grandchildren love their grandparents.

Once again, dear ones… generational trauma rears its ugly hear, right?

My father didn’t have the luxury of indulging his emotions. He continues:

After all, I was a teenager who gangs up with his older brother to rebel against parents. For years, Rainer and I had made fun of our parents. We thought their behavior was just an expression of their personalities: “Er ist rund und sie ist eckig” (he is round and she is jagged).

”He” was round -- a perfect sphere, closed up, inscrutable, rolling with the tide. “She” was jagged -- nervous, distracted, unpredictable. They shielded us in every way they could from the realities of the outside world, making sure we had a happy, carefree childhood, which they regarded as the foundation for a happy life. They managed to do that very well.

I only knew of a limited number of maltreatments and hostilities. How many more there must have been! The hardest part for Father must have been the constant uncertainty of what the next day may bring. For years, my parents had been at the complete mercy of a government that meant to treat them as well as possible. They had very limited rights.

What stress their marriage must have suffered!

This is the last known family photo, taken around sometime in 1940, about two years before Irmgard’s death and three years before Carl’s.

Father’s inclination was to accept what he could not change, whereas Mother wanted to change what she could not accept. Where Father would say, “Let’s wait and see what action is necessary,” Mother would insist, “How can you accept all this with so much equanimity?!” To which Father would reply, “Bad times are filled with opportunities to evolve as a person,” emulating his life-long hero, Goethe, who said “I treasure the commotions of bad times because they make you stand on your own feet.”

Father insisted that everything bad is good for something. But Mother, who never gave up hope, but was extremely frustrated by her inability to change anything. “Everything is good for something? No -- there are some things that are absolutely not good for anything or anyone!” she’d protest. “New and bigger boulders are being placed in front of us at every step and no one is willing (or dares) to help us roll those boulders out of our way!”

Mother had a lot of contempt for Father’s patience and willingness to comply where needed. His constant drive to be accepted by everyone drove her crazy, but it served him well. He, of course, was afraid of the opposite -- that her impulsiveness might cause her to act dangerously.

And yet, Mother stood by Father through good and bad. Vati must have suffered extreme guilt from preventing Irmgard’s happiness due to the fact that he was Jewish. Having been raised Jewish, guilt came natural to him. He had married her to protect her, to give her a good life, and here he was, depending on her as the guardian angel who, by her sheer existence, would protect the entire family.

I believe that the non-Jewish partners in Germany’s “privileged mixed marriages” have not, to this very day, been given enough credit for what they did. They had to be incredibly strong in a brave and quiet way.

Mothers death changed life for me and for everyone around us. Rainer was already in München. Ulli, having only turned twelve the day before Mother died, was taken in by Uncle Heinz and Aunt Gert in Adelsberg -- a fortunate and generous gesture that was appreciated by all – especially by Ulli and her cousin Gaby, who were delighted to be together.

Father was in deep mourning for his wife, and busy with all the technicalities connected with her death - executing her will, writing to her friends, and most troubling of all, dealing with the terror of losing the “privileged” status of being in a mixed marriage. Therefore, many of the every-day tasks of living fell on me.

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