Resistance Women Page 10

  As reports of arrests and violence flew through Berlin, Mildred persuaded Arvid to leave the city immediately after he cast his ballot. Pretending they had been called to Jena on a family emergency, they took a room at a remote country inn on the outskirts of Berlin, where they could study, write, and follow the news of the election returns in anonymous safety.

  They worried about their outspoken friends and family who had not taken such precautions. Arvid’s cousin Dietrich Bonhoeffer continued to preach against fascism and to publish essays criticizing the Nazis and the fanatics who followed them. His brother Klaus, a lawyer, had publicly questioned the legality of the Nazis’ refusal to allow the Communist delegates to be seated in the Reichstag. Their father Karl Bonhoeffer, a prominent psychiatrist and neurologist at the University of Berlin, regularly discussed Adolf Hitler’s disturbing behavior and possible symptoms of mental illness with professional colleagues. The Harnacks, the Bonhoeffers, the Dohnányis, the Delbrücks—the entire clan was united in their abhorrence of Hitler and the Nazis. The only exception was Inge’s husband, Gustav, who made family gatherings uncomfortable and infuriated his son Wolfgang with his increasingly ardent praise for the National Socialists’ so-called accomplishments. Mildred and Arvid agreed that Gustav would be safe from persecution, and probably Inge and even Wolfgang by extension, but many other members of their extended family were in danger of arrest.

  Three days after the election, wondering what her family back in America might have read about the turmoil in Germany, brooding over what indiscreet remarks they might put in letters that would soon land in her unattended mailbox, Mildred wrote to her mother to let her know they had temporarily left the city.

  “We have come to a little country hotel in the woods outside Berlin where it is quieter,” she wrote. “Our curious ideas are not known here. We are safe, very well, and happy. Who would bother about two students sitting off in a corner and thinking thoughts about the future of the world? So don’t worry about us at all.” Then she added a note of caution. “And best keep still. If anyone asks you about us, we are not interested in the world from a political but from a scientific standpoint. That’s all you need to say.”

  With the right to privacy of correspondence abolished, Mildred could not be certain when she might again be able to write to her mother more frankly than that.

  She and Arvid could not remain at the inn indefinitely without burning through their savings and losing their jobs, so when the immediate danger faded, they returned home, wary that they might be walking into a trap. Their apprehensions eased as the days passed and Arvid was not arrested at the office, nor did the SA pound on their door in the dead of night. Many of Mildred’s students were anxious, and when they met in the privacy of the Harnacks’ flat, the study group could speak of little else but what would become of Germany now that the unthinkable had happened and Hitler had become chancellor.

  When Sara Weitz mentioned that her mother wanted to emigrate, other Jews in the group nodded somberly, admitting that they too had considered leaving the country. But where would they go, and why should they leave? They were Germans. They had been born in Germany, as had their parents before them. For some, their German heritage stretched back more generations than they could recall. Politicians came and went; Hitler was ascending now but he would fall out of favor eventually. Besides, if all of Hitler’s opponents fled, who would remain to defend the country they loved?

  One evening a fortnight after the election, Mildred returned home from her classes at the Berlin Abendgymnasium to find Arvid seated in the cupola, staring out of the window. He had hung his coat in its usual place by the door, but he had forgotten to remove his hat.

  “Darling?” she called anxiously as she locked the door behind her. “Is something wrong?”

  He turned away from the window, removed his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. “I heard from Rowohlt today.”

  “Your publisher?” Mildred hung up her coat beside Arvid’s and joined him in the cupola. She sat on the armrest of his chair, gently removed his hat, and smoothed his hair back in place. “What did they want?”

  “They’re canceling my book.”

  “But it’s coming out next month!”

  “They say they have no choice.” He reached for her hand. “No one dares publish a book about communism or the Soviet Union now. It’s too controversial, too dangerous. They fear that everyone in the publishing house would be thrown into prison.”

  “Oh, Arvid. I’m so sorry.”

  “They’ve already destroyed the printing plates.” His voice was dull with exhaustion and resignation. “They’re letting me keep the advance.”

  “That’s the least they could do,” said Mildred. “Anyway, they couldn’t get it back. We’ve spent it.”

  “Mildred, darling, I’m so sorry. This book—” He interlaced his fingers through hers and brought her hand to his lips, but he could not meet her gaze. “I was counting on this book to get me a position as a university professor at last. We could have stopped living from hand to mouth—”

  “What about your second book? The manuscript’s finished, and I think it’s even stronger than your first. Since it’s based upon your graduate research at the UW, I’m sure Professor Commons would write a foreword. Perhaps Rowohlt would publish this book in place of the one on the Soviet Union.”

  “I don’t think they’ll consider the Marxist labor movement in the United States any less dangerous a topic than the one they’ve rejected.” He shook his head, pensive. “Perhaps I should burn the manuscript.”

  “You mustn’t,” Mildred protested. “It’s a powerful, important book, representing years of research and analysis.”

  “But if the police raid our flat—”

  Mildred thought quickly. “You could give the manuscript to Reverend Turner at the American Church. I’m sure he’d keep it safe for you until the political winds shift.”

  “By that time, my research may no longer be relevant.”

  Nevertheless, the next morning, Arvid carefully packed up the manuscript and took it to the minister for safekeeping.

  Mildred meant to spend the day writing and preparing for her evening classes, but she felt restless and uneasy, watching from the cupola windows for the police truck she feared would soon appear at the curb below. When Arvid finally came home from work, her relief faded at the sight of his stricken expression. Over dinner, he told her that after leaving his manuscript with Reverend Turner, instead of going to the office he had gone to the home of his ARPLAN colleague Paul Massing, a sociologist actively involved with the Communist Party in Berlin. “He was not there,” Arvid said. “His girlfriend said he had been taken to a detention center across from the Tempelhof airfield. When she went to visit him, she was told that he had been sent to a prison camp in Oranienburg.”

  “On what grounds? What prison camp exists for someone who hasn’t been tried and convicted?”

  “A concentration camp for political prisoners, from the sound of it.” Arvid pushed his food around on his plate, then set down his fork without taking a bite. “I left in haste, in case his flat was being watched. When I arrived at the office, I phoned Friedrich Lenz at the University of Giessen. I thought that as president of ARPLAN, he should be informed.”

  Mildred studied the lines of tension in her husband’s face. “Professor Lenz already knew?”

  “Not specifically about Massing, but he’d had his own encounters with the local Schutzstaffel. The Blackshirts raided Massing’s house, and apparently they found something that suggested he has close ties to Moscow. They denounced him as a Communist and perpetrator of Marxist ideas, and the university responded by suspending his lectures.”

  “How has he managed to avoid arrest?”

  “I don’t know. A good number of our members aren’t waiting to see if they’ll be next. They’ve fled the country.” Arvid’s gaze turned inward, and when he spoke again, his voice was quiet and resigned. “Professor Lenz and I agreed to disba
nd ARPLAN. We’ve notified everyone we could, and I’ve destroyed the membership list.”

  “I’m sorry, darling.” She reached across the table and took his hand. “It’s a shame, but I think you made the prudent choice.”

  “It was the only choice,” he said wearily, but he managed a thin, reassuring smile as he took up his fork again and tried to eat.

  Her heart went out to him, full of love and sorrow and pride. How well he bore it, seeing so much of his life’s work destroyed or undone, all in a matter of days! A lesser man would have crumbled beneath the weight of so much disappointment, but not her Arvid.

  “I hope you know how much I love you,” she said.

  He responded with a look full of warmth and thankfulness.

  His dreams of an academic career thwarted, Arvid resolved to find other work in economics, if not in the university, then in government. In the meantime, his cousin Klaus helped him find a more lucrative position as a lawyer with Lufthansa, where Klaus was the corporate counsel. Arvid worked as his cousin’s assistant by day, and in the evenings he prepared for the state examinations to qualify for the civil service.

  Soon after Arvid’s first day at Lufthansa, on March 23, the new Reichstag convened at the former Kroll Opera House, on the Königsplatz across from the ruins of the former Reichstagsgebäude. There the National Socialist coalition pushed through a measure that essentially abolished what remained of the Weimar Constitution. The “Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich” granted Chancellor Hitler and his cabinet the authority to enact laws without any oversight or involvement of the legislature. The Social Democrats voted against it, but it passed regardless. The Nazis celebrated their victory by banning the Social Democrat party altogether, eliminating them as rivals as they had the Communists before them. The political parties that remained, fearing that they would be next, quickly disbanded rather than risk imprisonment in Oranienburg or at the new concentration camp that had opened at Dachau only two days before.

  In a single day, the Reichstag had rendered itself obsolete.

  Swiftly, inexplicably, willingly, the people of Germany had voted themselves out of a democratic republic and into a dictatorship.

  Part Two

  Chapter Twelve

  March–April 1933

  Greta

  On the morning after the last vestiges of the Weimar Republic crumbled, Greta strode to campus with her shoulders squared and jaw set, seething with outrage she dared not express. How could her fellow citizens have been so reckless as to hand over their country to a ranting madman? Was it ignorance or malice that had compelled them to embrace fascism?

  As she passed other men and women on the streets going about the business of an ordinary day, she wondered if they were as horror-struck as she was or if their impassive expressions masked jubilation. Unless they bore the swastika on an armband or lapel pin, or strutted triumphantly in the uniform of SS or SA, her searching gaze revealed nothing. Outward appearances betrayed little of the truth of someone’s heart, whether one secretly raged and lamented, or hated Jews, women, and Communists and was bursting with satisfaction that soon they all would get what the Nazis promised they had coming.

  When Greta arrived at Professor Mannheim’s office, she found him seated at his desk, gazing out the window over the rims of his glasses, shoulders slumped in resignation. When she shut the door behind her, he nodded in greeting and began arranging papers on his desktop without truly looking at them. His face was gray and haggard, as if he had not slept in days.

  “It’s a grim day for Germany,” she said, going to the bookshelves to pick up her work where she had left off the day before. “My academic training never prepared me for this.”

  He strangled out a laugh. “I understand. As a sociologist, I recognized the ominous signs, and yet somehow I still believed that ultimately the German people would reject fascism, that we would choose liberty, equality, and progress. And yet—” He gestured to the window, to the newly unfathomable world beyond it. “Here we are.”

  “Here we are,” Greta echoed, wondering where that was exactly, where this sudden, drastic shifting of the axis of life as she knew it would tumble them.

  “Miss Lorke, I have a proposition.” Professor Mannheim fixed her with an appraising look. “You enjoy traveling abroad, do you not?”

  “Yes, very much.” With a pang of wistfulness, she thought of the Henrichs’ lovely home in Zurich, of dinners with the Friday Niters at the University Club in Madison. How distant they seemed to her now, how warm and safe and welcoming, how inaccessible.

  “You’re fluent in English?”

  Honesty compelled her to admit, “I’ve fallen out of practice since I left America, but I’m sure I could quickly regain whatever fluency I’ve lost.”

  “I’ve received an offer to join the faculty of the London School of Economics,” he said. “Recent events have convinced me to accept.”

  “I see.” Greta struggled to conceal her distress. What would this mean for her, for her work, for her dissertation? “When will you be leaving?”

  “As quickly as it can be arranged.”

  She nodded, heart plummeting. Too soon for her to complete her degree, then.

  “I had hoped that you might assist me,” he continued. “I have many details to sort out here—selling my home, settling accounts, preparing my family, packing, visas—” He closed his eyes and shook his head as if to clear it of noise. “I’d like to send you on ahead to London, if you’re willing, to set up my office, find a suitable residence, and otherwise prepare for my family’s immigration.”

  She listened, speechless, as he set out the terms—departure date, an increase in salary, room and board gratis until he arrived in London, expedited enrollment in his new department if she wished to complete her doctorate there. Even if she did prefer to return to Frankfurt after he was settled in London, she could still continue to work on her dissertation in the meantime, with all the resources of the London School of Economics at her disposal.

  When he suggested that she take a few days to think it over, she found her voice. “That won’t be necessary,” she said, overwhelmed by relief and hope and the sudden shift in her fortunes. “I accept.”

  After a brief trip to Frankfurt an der Oder to visit her family, Greta traveled by train to Calais and from there by ship across the Channel to Dover. On the train to London, as overlapping conversations in English seemed to come at her from every direction, she was struck by a jarring sensation of reliving a slightly distorted memory from her own past, the strange dissonance of hearing her native tongue again upon her return to Germany from the United States.

  After a few days in London, immersing herself in English as she completed the long list of tasks Professor Mannheim had entrusted to her, Greta felt nearly as comfortable in conversation as she had in Madison. The city deeply impressed her, its history, its charming boroughs, the people’s passion for turning even the smallest patch of earth into an abundant and orderly garden. If the food was not as satisfying and flavorful as German cooking, it was plentiful, and her cheerful landlady kept her well supplied with tea and biscuits in the parlor of her Covent Garden boardinghouse.

  Greta quickly became familiar with Clare Market in Westminster where the school was located, and as she strolled the streets between her boardinghouse and campus, she could well imagine remaining in London to complete her doctorate, as Professor Mannheim had suggested. She felt as if she had left a heavy burden of wariness behind her on the pier at Calais, and that once again she could think and speak freely without fear of repercussions. No swastika flags flapped in the wind off the Thames, no Brownshirts paraded on Pall Mall, and a rational if imperfect gentleman with strong ties to the labor movement served as prime minister.

  In the absence of the pleasant distractions of her friends and her study group, she resolved to make steady progress on her dissertation. At first, every evening after a full day of work, she dutifully settled down to her books and p
apers in her boardinghouse room, taking notes and writing a few pages. But outside her window the West End beckoned, and after a few days the enticement of the theater proved irresistible. She scrimped on meals and walked everywhere, saving her wages for cheap tickets to the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, the Prince Edward, the Adelphi, the Phoenix. She enjoyed the cinema too, indulging in comedies and musicals as well as dramas and literary adaptations. And when the newsreels played alarming reports of growing fascism in Germany, she found comfort in the indignant murmurs of the audience, a sense of vindication that her worries and her anger were justified, not products of an overactive imagination or a zealous liberal mind-set.

  One night after a screening of Shanghai Express at the Carlton Theatre, Greta was walking home, lost in thought about Marlene Dietrich’s marvelous performance, when she heard someone call her name. Glancing about, she spotted a choreographer she had known in Berlin hurrying across the street to meet her. They embraced, marveled at their unlikely encounter so far from home, and quickly decided to catch up over tea and cake at a nearby café.

  Anna’s news from Berlin was unsettling. “German theater is dead,” she said flatly, stirring sugar into her tea. “The geniuses who created our golden age—whether Jews, Communists, or simply opponents of fascism—have fled the country or have fallen silent. Their only other choice is to conform to the new regime, which I believe is a fate worse than death.”

  The renowned playwright and director Bertolt Brecht had left a hospital bed to flee to Prague with his wife and eight-year-old son, leaving their two-year-old daughter behind in hopes that relatives could bring her to them later. The celebrated Jewish filmmaker and stage director Max Reinhardt had escaped to his native Austria. The Jewish and socialist producer Leopold Jessner, to whom Adam had introduced Greta at the Internationaler Theaterkongresse, had gone to New York. Erwin Piscator, an outspoken member of the Communist Party, had found refuge in Moscow.