Not I (2 page)

This memoir is unusual not just by focusing more on the father than the author, by leaving out major parts of the story, and by emphasizing contradictions rather
than linear narrative. It also takes certain liberties with the conventions commonly observed. It is customary to report only what is verifiable while indicating what is conjecture, since few memoirists, if any, can recall exact words or too much vivid detail. But Fest has decided to include direct speech, especially of family members, aided—he says—by notes taken in the past and consulted for this purpose. He thus imparts a distinctly fictional, highly literary tone to his narrative, which renders it both lively and rather unreliable. But he delights in language, especially the patois of Berlin which he likes to reproduce in the puns and cheap wordplays popular among schoolboys—all by way of creating an atmosphere which, however fictional, is very convincing and familiar to anyone who lived in Germany through those years. The reader must decide how much of this comes across in translation, which is not just one of language but also of cultural ambience. One example may suffice: he talks of cigarettes as the most valuable “currency” after the war—immediately recognizable to contemporaries—because the official currency was worthless and so was the “official” economy. Everything was available only through a universal black market with direct exchange of goods or services. His descriptions of the general blackout on the German side of Lake Constance contrasting with the blazing lights of neutral Switzerland on the other not only refer to the obvious realities of the air war but are also intended to contrast the darkness holding Germany in thrall as opposed to the bright lights of freedom outside. Echoes of famous and well-known sayings
and precepts abound in the German text, ranging from allusions to Ranke’s admonition to the historian to show things as they had actually occurred to Goethe’s dictum that man (in the abstract) ought be noble, helpful, and good. In short, there is a quite self-conscious attempt at a literary shaping of the personal and historical subject matter, which is as much a part of who Fest is, given his education and background, as it is a recognition by a skeptical, practicing historian that there are distinct limits to the objectivity of the writer and the accessibility of all historical subject matter.

Amazingly, Fest manages to present himself—a wisecracking youngster who likes to have the last word—and his family, from choleric father to long-suffering mother, in vivid detail, embedding all of them in their frailty and humanity in terrible times, trying to keep their values and principles intact, even if it meant becoming and remaining isolated, outsiders, mavericks.

All footnotes throughout this work are by Herbert Arnold, unless indicated otherwise.

1
A Gymnasium in Germany is a secondary school that prepares students for university or graduate studies; its final exams, the
Abitur
(a secondary-school certificate), are a prerequisite for admission at all German universities.

Preface

One usually begins to write memoirs when one realizes that the greater part of one’s life has been lived, and what one intended to do has been achieved more or less well. Instinctively, one looks back at the ground covered: one is startled at how much has sunk into obscurity or has disappeared into the past as dead time. One would like to capture what is more important or save it for memory, even as it is fading into oblivion.

At the same time one comes face-to-face with the effort required in calling up the past. What was it my father said when my mother reproached him for his pessimistic moods, when she tried to coax him into a degree of flexibility toward those in power? What was the name of the German teacher at Leibniz Gymnasium, who, in front of my classmates, regretted that I was leaving his class? What were the remarks Dr. Meyer
made as he accompanied me to the door on my last visit—were they somber or merely ironically resigned? Experiences, words, names: all lost or in the process of disappearing. Only some faces remain, to which, if one kept poking around long enough, a remark, an image, or a situation could be linked. Other information was provided by family tradition. But quite often the thread was simply broken. That also had something to do with the fact that when my family was expelled from our home in Karlshorst all keepsakes, notes, and letters were lost. Likewise the family photos. The pictures in this book were mostly given back to us after the war by friends who had asked for them at some point and were able to save their possessions through the upheavals of the times.

I would have been unable to record my earliest memories if in the early 1950s I had not had a radio commission to write an account of recent German history. Wherever possible I supplemented the published historical studies—which at that time were far from abundant—with conversations with older contemporaries like Johann Baptist Gradl, Heinrich Krone, and Ernst Niekisch.
¹
Most frequently, however, and also at greatest length, I consulted my father, who, as a politically committed citizen, had experienced the struggles
and suffering of the time as more than a mere observer. Naturally, these conversations soon extended to more personal matters and drew attention to the family’s troubles, which I had lived through but hardly noticed.

On the whole I noted down my father’s observations only as headings. That caused me some difficulties when I came to write this book, because if I could not reconstruct the context of a remark it inevitably remained sketchy and often had to be left out. Some of his opinions did not stand up in the face of the knowledge I had meanwhile acquired. In the initial draft, however, I reproduced rather than corrected them, because they seemed important as the opinions of someone present at the time; in part they reflect not today’s historical view, but the perceptions, worries, and disappointed hopes of someone who lived through those times.

To make the book more readable I have also taken the liberty of reproducing some of my notes as direct speech. A historian could not possibly proceed in such a way, but it may be permitted the memoirist. Wherever possible these dialogues maintain the tone as well as the content of what was said. When individual remarks are placed in quotation marks they faithfully reproduce a comment, as far as memory allows.

Like all biographical notes, my observations make no claim to be indisputably valid. What I write about the friends of my parents, about teachers and superiors, remains my view alone. I present Hans Hausdorf and Father Wittenbrink, the Ganses, Kiefers, Donners, and others only as I remember them. That may not be
accurate or even fair in every respect. Nevertheless, I was not prompted by any prejudice.

In several historical accounts I have dealt more analytically with the years covered in the following pages.
²
For that reason in the present book I could largely dispense with abstract reflections. They are left to the reader. At any rate I have not written a history of the Hitler years, but only how they were reflected in a family setting. That means actual living experiences, sometimes even the merely casual and occasionally the anecdotal, will predominate here, as they do in real life. When, as a teenager in the early 1940s, I described the grimaces of a friend of my parents who had a nervous disorder, my father admonished me, “Don’t look too closely!” I responded that I neither could nor would close my eyes. Thanks to the generally nurturing environment in which I grew up that has never been difficult for me, nor was it used against me. It was actually a necessary prerequisite for writing this book. The temptation was much greater either to repress the grimaces of my youthful years or, even worse, to view them through a glorifying lens.

In writing this book I have accumulated many debts of gratitude. Here I would like to mention only Frau Ursel Hanschmann, Irmgard Sandmayr, my friend Christian Herrendoerfer, and my fellow prisoners of war Wolfgang
Münkel and Klaus Jürgen Meise. The latter successfully escaped from the POW camp some time before my failed attempt. I owe particular thanks to my editor Barbara Hoffmeister for her numerous important comments. Finally, the many friends of my youth who helped me with the order of events, dates, and names should be acknowledged.

Joachim Fest
Kronberg, May 2006

1
J. B. Gradl (1904–88) and H. Krone (1895–1989) were both prominent members of the conservative, Catholic Zentrum party during the Weimar Republic and became founding members of the conservative Christian Democratic Union party in the Bonn republic. E. Niekisch (1889–1967) was an antifascist National Bolshevik imprisoned by the Nazis; he later taught in the German Democratic Republic. A tellingly odd collection of witnesses.

2
Fest is referring to the books which established him as one of Germany’s foremost experts on the Nazi period. These books range from
The Face of the Third Reich
(1970) and
Hitler
(1974) to
Plotting Hitler’s Death
(1996),
Speer: The Final Verdict
(2002), and
Inside Hitler’s Bunker
(2005), to name some of the titles available in English translations.

ONE
•

How Everything Came Together

The task I have set myself is called recollection. The majority of the occurrences and experiences of my life have—as with everyone—faded from memory, because memory is ceaselessly engaged in casting out one thing and putting something else in its place or superimposing new insights. The process is unending. If I look back over the whole time, a flood of pictures presses forward, jumbled up and random. Whenever something happened, no idea was associated with it, and only years later was I able to discover the hidden watermark in the documents of life and perhaps interpret it.

But even then images intervene, especially when it comes to the early years: the house with the wild undergrowth at the sides (later, to our sorrow, removed thanks to our parents’ sense of orderliness); catching crayfish in
the River Havel; our much-loved nursemaid Franziska, who one day had to return to her home in the Lausitz; the trucks which raced down the streets with a bright flag, packed with bawling men in uniform; the excursions to Sanssouci or Lake Gransee, where our father told us a story about a Prussian queen, until we began to get bored with it. All unforgotten. And once we children had reached the age of ten, we were taken one Sunday in summer—when the band was playing and the aristocrats’ two-wheeled carriages were standing in front of the emperor’s pavilion—to the racetrack. Like the district of Karlshorst in Berlin, it had been developed by my grandfather on the out-of-the-way Treskow Estate, and had later gained the reputation of being the largest steeplechase course in the country. As if it were yesterday I see the parade of huge horses with the little jockeys in their colorful clothes, and the solemnly pacing gentlemen in their mouse-gray morning coats with bow ties at their throats and bulging starched fronts. The women, on the other hand, mostly stuck together and watched one another in the shadow of hats as big as wheels in the hope that some rival could be discovered and dismissed with a crushing remark.

It was a strange, genteel world that had brought my grandfather to Karlshorst. He had been born into the respected Aachen drapers’ family of Straeter, whose branches were spread across the Lower Rhineland and which was so wealthy it could afford every two years to hire a train for a pilgrimage to Rome, where its members were received by the pope in a private audience. Circumstances
had brought him into contact with the high nobility; in his twenties he was already travel marshal of the Duke of Sagan, and a little later he went to Donaueschingen as inspector of Prince Fürstenberg’s estates. His early years were largely spent at aristocratic residences in France, and at Château Valençay (once the property of Prince Talleyrand) he had got to know my grandmother, who came from a Donaueschingen family and was a lady-in-waiting to the Fürstenbergs. It was a great love that like Philemon and Baucis’s, lasted until old age, when the Second World War smashed everything.
¹
For a long time French was mostly spoken in the family and the cooking—onion soup, duck pâté, and crème caramel—was also French. Most of the classics of the neighboring country were in my grandfather’s library in awe-inspiring, leather-bound editions. I sometimes heard him declaiming Racine as he walked up and down in front of his desk, but his favorite authors were Balzac and Flaubert.

My grandfather had arrived in Berlin in 1890, at the time of a sensational murder case. The Heinzes, a married couple, had killed a night watchman. The Heinze case, which my grandfather and many others often compared to the murders of Jack the Ripper, had the side effect of drawing attention to the housing conditions of the poor. As a result two—and later three—groups of wealthy families joined together to establish
philanthropic societies to build housing estates. The largest of these projects was initiated by the judge Dr. Otto Hentig, with Prince Karl Egon zu Fürstenberg in charge. Also involved were the Treskows, who had resided in nearby Friedrichsfelde (outside Berlin) since 1816, as well as August von Dönhoff, the Lehndorffs, and other respected families. The well-known architect Oscar Gregorovius also played a part, as did, somewhat later, the more famous Peter Behrens.

My grandfather had never accepted the Heinzes’ excuse that the misery of the slums or the horrors of backyard housing in Wedding had driven them to it. So he tried to find out everything he could about Gotthilf Heinze, whom he often called “Gotthilf the Slasher.” He even carried out detective work to discover masterminds, secret societies, and above all the depraved, red-haired beauty, who was mentioned in some sources, albeit dubious ones: the “angel of the gutter,” as he once described her to me, years later. It was never clear to me, as a boy, whether she had been a prostitute victim or an accomplice of the murderer. My grandfather believed she was an accomplice, and growled, “Typical! He involves his wife in the murder. His lover stays in the background and is there for pleasure.”