The broken house

A short, easy-read memoir (reference 1) of growing up in Germany under Hitler, picked up as a result of a rare encounter with the TLS – only bought these days when I happen to be in Waitrose and have not bought one for a bit. With the review in question being reference 2.

A memoir which is not organised on the usual narrative lines. Rather we have a life compressed into six topical chapters, plus a short afterword, written some time after first publication. Some notes on these chapters follow.

An author who grew up in a Berlin suburb in the 1930’s, served in the army during the Second World War, surrendering to the Americans in 1945. Subsequently became a free-lance writer.

A place like Eichkamp

Southwest of Charlottenburg, just to the east of the Grunewald Forest of reference 4. Just to the south of the railway station which is now called ‘Berlin Messe Süd’. An oblong grid of a dozen streets, running southwest to northeast, perhaps as much as a kilometre by half a kilometre. In part at least, a dormitory estate for the office workers of Berlin.

A garden city built in the 1920s for people in what might be called the lower middle class, according to plans of one Max Taut, of reference 6. Sports fields to the left, railways top and right, this last now supplemented by a motorway. I have not been able to come up with a comparable estate in London, although the sea of inter-war suburban houses of south London, say between Epsom and Wimbledon, comes to mind. I also associated to the White City housing estate in Belfast, noticed at reference 5.

The only fly in the ointment was a workers’ estate just up the road. Probably all Reds, rabble-rousers and rioters. Probably drunks.

In the book, a lot of the houses in Eichkamp and a lot of the street names appear to have survived the carnage that was the end of the Second World War and the reconstruction which followed. At the time of writing, the author’s childhood home was an empty bomb site, of a sort which I can still remember from the central London of around 1960.

Looking at the area now, in Street View, say gmaps 52.4944762,13.2631116, there are a lot of leafy streets, some very narrow. The housing is modest and a lot of it looks to be post-war rather than pre-war. Quite a lot of people have asked for their houses to be greyed out, certainly by the standards of us here at Epsom.

We are told of a rather dreary childhood in a rather dreary – but decent – home. His father, after all, was a civil servant, a reward for service in the first war. Neither parent knew anything of politics, indeed of little beyond their own little world, but Hitler’s festivities and flags provided a bit of colour for their dreary lives. At least, that seems to be how it was seen in Eichkamp at the time. All rather nicely evoked here.

With the point being, I suppose, that there were plenty of other places in the Germany of the time, just like this one.

A requiem for Ursula

The suicide of his elder sister in 1938, by taking a poison which took three weeks to kill, is used as a lens through which to focus the world in which they lived. One feature of which was the Catholicism of his mother and the indifferent Protestantism of his father – but we are not told why the sister killed herself, although there is the odd cryptic clue. Perhaps no-one ever knew; perhaps it was not the sort of family which talked.

I associated to the mother and father of Lawrence’s ‘Sons and Lovers’, where the mother fancies herself as being of a superior social class to both her husband and her neighbours. Takes tea with the local priest, who was perhaps grateful for a bit of civility in a rather tough neighbourhood. As it happens there is an Ursula in that family saga too.

My Friend Wanja

The author was roughly the equivalent of a grammar school boy. Doing lots of Latin and Greek. Most of his fellow pupils came from posher backgrounds, just a few from poorer backgrounds. Even the odd son of a worker – one of whom became his friend. Both the products of  homes without much love.

Their adolescent rebellion took the form of fairly mild, clandestine protest against Hitler and his party, by then the governing party. Then, separated by the war, he wound up in West Germany, his friend in East. Both by then journalists, they meet up again years later, but there is nothing much left.

With one sidelight on life under Hitler being that if you were a known opponent – that is to say a traitor in the language of the time –  by far the safest place to be was in a regular prison with a regular sentence which carried one through to the end of the war. Gestapo thugs could not get at you so easily in there. And nor could the army.

The Arrest

The description of his arrest and subsequent time in prison is not that unlike that offered by Simenon twenty years earlier at reference 7. Drab, dreary, squalid and uncomfortable yes, but a life run on orderly rather than sadistic lines; a far cry from both the concentration camps of Hitler and the Arctic and Siberian punishment camps of Stalin. Well, up to a point. In this account, there is the threat of violence elsewhere on those deemed uncooperative, with this author not being so deemed. In Simenon’s account, the violence is rather nearer to hand. In both accounts, the police are very thorough, digging up all kinds of stuff about people of interest. Digging which might well include intercepting their mail and spying on them.

On this account, Hitler’s regime seemed to be paranoid about resistance, perhaps one result of knowing that they had never got a simple majority in an election, before, that is, they were shuffled up the back stairs into power. The Gestapo would get a whiff of resistance somewhere and then lots of people would be rounded up and, potentially, have confessions of involvement in this resistance beaten out of them. Perhaps on the basis of very sketchy evidence. Unpleasant work which is apt to suck in unpleasant people.

I imagine the regime did not allow public dissent at all; what might be read now as a symptom of insecurity. As far as the public was concerned, the regime was all knowing, successful and invincible, ever marching forward, never taking a wrong step. But discussion must have been allowed in private or it would all have collapsed much faster that it in fact did.

1945. Zero Hour

The author hangs in in the army, apparently having been in it since 1941 or so, until almost the bitter end. But about a month before the end, appalled by  the summary shooting of a tired and wounded comrade for desertion, he sneaks over the Dortmund-Ems canal to the Americans. A little to the east of the Arnhem of bridge too far fame. For him the war is over. Where, as it happens, he is taken in hand by a German interpreter who had fled Germany for the US before the war and who is pleased to talk philosophy with him – something both of them appear to have been missing in their armies. Then off to the cage.

Release! Release from the dead hand of Hitler and his regime which had sat on his youth and young manhood. He might be at the bottom, but at least he could start to live again.

Day of Judgement

This being the second Auschwitz trial, held in Frankfurt am Main, 1963-1965.

Appalled by the spectacle of the defendants in this trial laughing and joking with their friends in the breaks. Mostly on bail for the duration of the trials. To all appearances, normal older Germans, with happy and well-fed lives.

Talk of being a corporal, not fit for front line duties. But he seems to have seen service in France, Italy, Russia and Poland. For me, the book would have benefitted from a short section giving a timeline, possibly a very brief biography, in which to insert the chapters we are given.

But the important point is his recognition that he, like millions of others, did what he was told. Had he been assigned to Auschwitz, he would have gone, probably in ignorance in the first instance. And had he found himself on the sharp end, he might have tried to wangle himself out of it, but who knows?

Most likely, he would have just wanted to live – and done whatever that entailed.

A curious lack of decorum in that the trial took place in the Römer, in Frankfurt am Main, a clutch of medieval buildings largely destroyed in the Second World War but since rebuilt. But as well as serving as town hall, the place is also a popular and famous wedding venue – with the procession of weddings not being interrupted by the nearby trial. 

Most of the defendants were sentenced to prison terms, some for life. But it seems that the terms actually served were rather shorter.

Confusingly, Wikipedia places these trials in a quite different building, in what appears to be the entirely new build town hall of the Gallus district of Frankfurt, the Sallbau Gallus, some way to the west of the Römer, in what I suppose is the old town centre.

The chapter almost closes with the Goethe house in a nearby street, the place where the famous Goethe was born and raised. Destroyed in 1944 and faithfully rebuilt in 1949. While the Germans of 1964 rushed about their business, not remembering what had been done twenty years previously and not wanting to be reminded. No wonder that some of the children of that generation rebelled in 1968.

Afterword

The book closes with a reflective afterword, written ten years after the book’s first publication.

It does not plug the biographical gaps, but we do learn that moving to Frankfurt, getting to know the prosecutor – who had some trouble bringing these cases to trial at all – and attending the trial were the triggers for the writing of this book. A book which, it seems, allowed the author move on.

Comment

A book I have now read twice. A timely reminder of how ordinary people can get sucked into and go along with, if not actually do bad things. Some atrociously bad things.

References

Reference 1: The broken house: Growing up under Hitler – Horst Krüger – 1966 & 2021.

Reference 2: Puppets of the party: Apolitical lives and the creation of Nazi Germany – Caroline Moorehead, TLS – 2021.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst_Kr%C3%BCger. A rather short entry for the author.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grunewald_(forest). 

Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/hearthlands-of-belfast.html. 

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Taut. 

Reference 7: La Neige était Sale - Simenon - 1948.

Reference 8 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_Auschwitz_trials. 

Reference 9: https://www.yadvashem.org/articles/general/auschwitz-trials.html. For an alternative view.

Reference 10: https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/album_auschwitz/index.asp. A photographic record.