The 1920s ushered in radical changes throughout Germany. The Eichenwald family, though not politically active, was not exempt. Dinner table conversations increasingly centered on politics, and primarily, the terms of the Versailles Treaty signed after the Armistice ended World War I. With the war behind them, Germans wanted to get on with their lives. But the terms of the treaty were harsh and it was clear that the country was being punished. The Eichenwalds knew, as did every other German, that they were looking at an industrial recovery that could set the nation back 20 years.
One evening during dinner, Anna became animated in her discussion about the French.
“Father, they want to humiliate us,” she exclaimed. “That’s their only goal.” An enormous problem was in the making for the democratically elected government. It was beginning to be viewed as the illegitimate child of the war. Five years earlier, two million front line defeated troops did not feel defeated, but were returning to a demoralized country spiraling into massive inflation and unemployment.
Despite this, not all of the radical changes in Germany were negative. In the miasma of defeat, the University of Berlin was establishing itself as the leading University in Europe. The 1921 Nobel Prize for science had been awarded to Albert Einstein for his 1905 paper describing the photoelectric effect. At least something in the country was going right.
Graduation ceremonies were routine for the faculty. But that was not the case for the graduates, and in particular, the Eichenwald and Nitschmann families. Daughters
Anna and Erin had both excelled and were now entering graduate school. Anna was beginning to build a reputation, as she was the first woman to be admitted to the medical school in the history of the institution. Her admission had been controversial. Three of the faculty had expressed opposition and threatened to resign if she were admitted. The Dean, however, was a progressive thinker. He realized that at some point, qualified female students would have to be admitted and he saw this time as the time to do it. Anna’s parents, Hanz and Marlene, could not have been more proud. But as they made their way to the graduation ceremony on that Saturday in May, they were both lost in their own thoughts of this unique young woman, born to them 22 years earlier on a rainy Sunday in Munich.
“Hanz, remember how loud she was when she was born?” Marlene said with a quiet laugh. “I could not believe how something so small could make so much noise.” Hanz chuckled and nodded. “I suppose she was trying to announce her arrival to the entire world.”
The assembly hall was packed when they arrived, but Anna and Erin had been watching for them and met them as soon as they entered the doors. Best friends for more than a decade, the two had been inseparable though they were as different as night and day. Anna was all business. She knew what she wanted to do and set out with determination to achieve it. Erin was all passion. Music was her life and she had never lost sight of her goal to become a concert violinist.
The Eichenwalds were soon joined by Erin’s parents, Paula and Isaac Nitschmann. They made their way through the assembly hall, the largest auditorium in Berlin, and found their places among the 4,000 seats. Situated on the campus of the main undergraduate college, the hall was an enormous gray stone structure with eight large paired Doric columns in front and three sets of massive 30-foot steel doors. Some 800 students were graduating so seating was limited to immediate family members. Both of the girls had received honors, not surprising their parents.
The ceremony was followed by a celebration dinner the parents had planned for the girls at the Romanische Café. It was a big unattractive building across from the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. Like a great barn, the Café seated 1,000 and was considered the place to go for Berliners. Up in the balcony, chess players sat at rows of small tables playing endless games late into the night. The only time Anna and Erin had been there before, they had seen two celebrities, Greta Garbo of the theater and Arthur Schnabel, the famous pianist.
Anna and Erin had both been awarded scholarships for graduate studies, Anna in medicine and Erin in music. They were sharing an apartment on Mittelstrasse, one block north of Unter den Linden and three blocks west of the main campus, in the center of the city. Their flat was on the second floor with two small bedrooms, a bath and a small front room with a stove and fridge. The fridge was essentially a wooden outer box covering an inner tin compartment. Ice, delivered on Mondays and Thursdays, was placed in a lower separate space keeping the compartment cool. Anna’s room was sparsely decorated. She had a small desk and three book cases lined up against bare walls. This was a place to study. Erin, as the opposite of the two, had already adorned her walls with pictures of her family and favorite composers. She often put fresh flowers into vases and placed them decoratively on lace doilies. This was a room for an artist.
Despite their differences, the relationship worked. They often took breaks and sat across from each other talking about boys or Hebrew school or the latest fashions.
Runaway inflation had imposed a difficult time in Germany. Everyone felt the stress. Those with regular jobs got paid every day. Celebrated conductor, Bruno Walter, generally halted his symphony rehearsals for the mid-day rush. His musicians were paid with sacks of banknotes and they would dash out to exchange them for food. One day one of his trumpet players returned to rehearsal with a bag of salt, and a base player with two sausages. The wife of Henry Lowenfeld, a noted psychoanalyst, taught anatomy to three Chinese students. They could not understand German and she spoke no Chinese. So she used charts and diagrams and as a result, was paid with tea and ‘the most wonderful rice cakes’. The machinations employed during times of extreme economic instability were most imaginative.
Most Berliners were managing to survive. Neighbors looked out for one another, working together through bartering and sharing. As bad as the economy was, it drew out the goodness of people and drew neighbors together. Oddly, there was an influx of foreigners to Berlin because of the inflation. One American writer who came with his family lived in a duplex apartment with a maid and a cook, something he never could have afforded in the U.S. He booked riding lessons for his wife, put his children in private school and he and his wife dined at the finest restaurants, all for his monthly salary of 100 U.S. dollars.
Anna’s admission to medical school was unprecedented. And although that could have put her on a difficult pathway, there were three things working in Anna’s favor. She was the daughter of an associate professor in the department of physics. She had achieved the highest score on the entrance exam. And the Dean had stepped in on her behalf.
From the start, both girls found the course work strenuous. Anna was taking gross anatomy, biochemistry, physiology, histology, and bacteriology. Erin was fully ensconced in music theory, advanced composition, violin, music history and classic composers. While Erin basked in her artistic studies, Anna was drawn to anatomy. As difficult as the course was, it would eventually draw her to the field of surgery.
Being the only female in her class did have its drawbacks. Gross anatomy lab was every Monday afternoon for five hours. She was frequently the first of four dissection partners to her cadaver, a 19-year-old boy who had died in a farm horse accident. Horses were used for plowing and riding and also for pulling logs, buggies, and stumps out of the ground. This unfortunate young man had been in the process of getting his horse into harness. As he walked behind the animal, a cat jumped from a loft in the barn and landed directly in front of the horse. Spooked, the animal kicked both hind legs and one hoof caught the boy flush on the left side of the head. The force of the blow caused massive brain damage and he lived only 36 hours. His grieving parents donated his body to the medical school hoping medical science might somehow benefit from his tragic death.
Anatomy is best studied from human specimens. The course was challenging, and it fascinated Anna. There were literally thousands of structures to dissect and Anna was more than willing to look to her sixty-year old bespectacled professor for the knowledge she was seeking. He was a grandfather several times over and delighted to have a young woman in his class for the first time. He went to great lengths to instill respect for the cadavers. They were human beings – deceased, but human.
During the months of work there were occasions when this fact was lost on some of the young men. Anna was not amused on one morning when she found her young male cadaver propped up and holding a magazine filled with pictures of nude girls. As her male counterparts burst into laughter, she coolly took the magazine to the rubbish bin and tore it in two. “Children,” she said, in her best alto voice. “It’s time to get to work.”
Anna was tall, beautiful and bright, all attributes which enabled her to keep the respect of her classmates.
The rigorous experience of medical school produced a mutual respect and bond among the students. There was an unspoken understanding that the experience was not only unique but in a strange way, sacred. This may have been what appealed to Anna most during her course of study.
The Berlin Philharmonic was on a six-month tour of 20 U.S. cities and Erin’s parents went with it. As musicians with the symphony, they were reimbursed in U.S. currency. This put Erin’s family in the top 10 percent of wage earners in Germany. Simultaneously, Hanz Eichenwald was becoming internationally known in the new field of quantum physics. He was in demand as a speaker and being reimbursed in foreign currency stipends for his lectures out of the country. Sadly, most middle-class Germans were not so fortunate.
After the end of WWI, Germany was in turmoil. Campaigns of terror were being waged on the streets by both left-wing communist agents and right-wing extremists. The leading Catholic politician, Matthias Erzberger, was murdered by terrorists masquerading as patriots. He was the principle armistice signatory, and as such, was placed in an impossible position. He could only do his duty as a German diplomat to sign the document. The Allies had given the Germans no choice. Now he paid with his life. Another group threw prussic acid in the face of former Chancellor Phillip Scheidemann. The following year the highest-ranking Jewish official in Germany, Walter Rathenau, was shot to death while in route to his office. The assassin’s slogan: “Kill off Walter Rathenau now, that god-damned Jewish sow.” The anti-Semitism that was an undercurrent in all of Europe was now being openly displayed in Germany.
The political street thugs created enormous instability and chaos. But while murder and lawlessness were actively being used as instruments to acquire political power, the greater threat to the country’s survival was inflation. Faith that the central government could turn the economy around was almost non-existent. The murder of Rathenau shook what little faith there was to the core.
One evening, Erin walked into Anna’s study. “The Allies want the government to re-pay 130 billion marks for the war!” she exclaimed. “That is outrageous. It’s going to be extremely difficult for Germany to honor this debt. Not only that, the Ruhr area of western Germany, which of course is being partially controlled by the French, is our most valuable industrial asset. How in God’s name do they think we can pay all of that money? We don’t have anything to pay it with!”
Erin was right. A year later, with no new resources, Germany defaulted on reparation payments. As punishment, France took complete control of the Ruhr area. Unemployment rose to 23% in only a matter of months. Even those with money found what they had evaporating. Families began selling things they didn’t need, then moved on to trade away their most cherished possessions and heirlooms simply to buy food. But as the savings of the bourgeois were being wiped out, there were still those few individuals who had money. Café’s with stylish ladies were available to foreign visitors in central Berlin, only a block away from the streets where starving children and the elderly languished in poverty. Along with malnutrition came other diseases; tuberculosis, rickets, and scurvy. One elderly writer, Max Bern, withdrew his savings of 100,000 marks for a one-day subway ticket he used to ride around the city. After taking in the ruins of his city, he went home, locked himself in his room and committed suicide.
The French occupation of the Ruhr industrial area was intended to humiliate the Germans. This spawned an undeclared war between the French troops and German citizens. German men and women could not accept their role as subservient to the French and the result was inevitable. The French did not use arms to wield their authority. They used arrests, deportations, and economic blockade to fight the German’s opposing tactics - strikes, sabotage and dissent.
To compound the onslaught of humiliation, the French began using African colonial troops. Giving an African authority over the Germans created even more hostility. Over time, the need to survive forced some liaisons between these troops and local German women. The racially mixed children who came into the world as a result, were viewed as inferior ‘Rheinlandbastarde’. As such, these children were accepted by no one.
Matters worsened. The majority of Germans had German Jewish friends and even relatives. But like the diseases spreading in the side streets, anti-Semitism was growing more contagious by the day. Germans were struggling and looking for someone to blame. Street talk and propaganda pointed to the Jews. Were they not controlling most businesses and banks? The economic problems brought on by the war were now being placed on the Jews. A new resentment was building against a group of people who were a convenient scapegoat.
Anna and Erin were not completely oblivious to this, but they were young and naïve, going about the business of being good students and fashionable ladies. They worked hard during class, studied hard afterwards, and lived for their weekends with friends and boys and family. The Sabbath was always a time of contentment. They attended Synagogue and spent the afternoon with their parents. The University was rife with ideologues whose tendency was to extol their personal viewpoints. So the Rabbi’s commentary on the Torah was a welcome change. Anna and Erin were fluent in Hebrew, and their families stayed amused at their attempts to confound the Rabbi with questions that would even stump the great minds of Jewish history.
“Did the great flood in the time of Noah cover the entire earth?” “Was the Tower of Babel in Mesopotamia?” “Why did Joseph show compassion to the brothers who sold him into slavery?” The Rabbi was a humble man and was visibly grateful when Anna’s father Hanz suggested the girls give him time to consider their inquisition.
Sundays were the only days that afforded the girls the luxury of sleeping-in. This was often followed by an afternoon at the Tiergarten or a performance at the opera. It was late May, a time of beauty in Berlin. Even the frequent thunderstorms were fascinating. The girls often donned their rain coats and umbrellas and stood outside to watch the lightning zigzag across the darkened sky in bold spears that hit the horizon and threw the city into silhouette.
The first Sunday in June was warm and the walking trails in the Tiergarten were lined with pink and white dogwoods. Rows of red and yellow tulips peeked out, surrounded by white daffodils, a fresco of tranquil colors. Strolling along the trails, thousands of Berliners sought to blot out the reprehensible forces surrounding them, if even for an afternoon.
Anna and Erin had gotten lost in the crowds. Anna, wearing a bare-backed sundress, absorbed the warm rays of the sun and the glances of more than a few young men in the park. She was aware of the dissonance in her country. But young people tend to live in the moment. It is difficult, historically, for them to denounce their feelings of immortality and instead, adopt an outlook that proclaims a bleak or frightening future. Nature does not seem to intend them to believe in the worst. So when they see it, they believe it will go away. It isn’t denial in the truest sense. It is youth at its best.
On this sunny afternoon, time seemed suspended and Anna was in her own cloud of contentment. She had no interest in politics. University life kept her isolated from much of the chaos. While her homeland was being pulled into anarchy at a frenetic pace, Anna was lost in her books and the laboratory. When she did allow herself to dwell on the current situation, her deepest concern was that too many of her countrymen seemed to be going along willingly.
As evening approached, Anna and Erin walked past the Brandenburg Gate and down Unter den Linden. They turned north on Friedrichstrasse to the Weidendammer Bridge that spanned the Spree River. The street name changed at the bridge to Chausseestrasse. This was one of the centers of Berlin night life. University students often brought what little money they had to the bars and cafés, enjoying the freedom and entertainment, but mostly unaware that Berlin was being transformed into the ‘Babylon’ of the world. The collapse of the country’s currency was leading to bankrupt businesses, unemployment, food shortages, and loss of housing. Marriage by middle class girls was accomplished by the paying of a dowry by the girl’s family. Even maids saved and saved so they could get married. As the money became worthless, so began the decline of the cultural structure for marriage.
One of the many consequences of inflation was the discovery among young girls, that virginity was no longer valued. Berlin’s prostitutes wandered up and down Friedrichstrasse and across the bridge to Chausseestrasse. Some strutted flagrantly in miniskirts and black leather boots. Others flaunted the image of youth and schoolgirl innocence, with pigtails and tight, white shirts. On occasion, a young girl turned out to be a young guy. They, too, needed fast money. When their physiques would allow it, make-up and effeminate moves could seal the deal as easily as any woman. Dimly lit bars often set the stage for hungry, high school boys to connect with government officials, financiers or any man prone to the affections of other men.
As Anna and Erin walked past the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church on their way to the Romanische Café, one young girl caught Erin’s eye. She was standing in a group of several other women. When her eyes met Anna’s, she quickly looked away. She was tall and blonde, dressed in a low-cut orange blouse tucked into a tight, black leather miniskirt. Her high heeled boots hugged her thighs tightly, intended to draw the eye further up along her legs to the hem of her skirt. She carried an umbrella and had a jacket slung over her shoulder. She took a confident drag from the cigarette held in her right hand. A well-dressed man approached her.
“Na? Spazierengehen?” she asked with a smile. Her inquiry about where he was going and if he would like to take a walk was rebuffed.
“Noch eine zeit,” he replied. Another time.
It seemed a harmless encounter. But Erin knew exactly what was going on. “Anna! That’s Naomi Wiesner!”
Anna stared at Erin then looked back at the leather-clad blonde. Naomi had been a high school classmate. She had also played with Erin in the school orchestra. Anna had worked with her in student government. Without another word they turned to approach their friend.
“Naomi,” said Anna. “Naomi.”
Their friend turned toward them with downcast eyes. Her smile was gone. She had already recognized them and had tried to turn away before they saw her. “Come with us,” urged Anna.
Reluctantly, Naomi left the group of women and began walking alongside Anna and Erin. They walked silently together and entered the Café where they found seats at a table in the back, in a quieter section of the mammoth building.
“Talk to us,” urged Anna.
Tears welled up in Naomi’s eyes. “Please, it’s okay.”
Anna took Naomi’s hand and held it for a moment. Then Naomi took a deep breath and began her story. Her father had lost his job at the Deutsche Bank. He migrated to the coalmines of Ruhr, but there had been no word from him in three months. Her mother took a job as a maid in order to care for Naomi’s three younger brothers. Then they were given notice they would have to vacate their apartment.
“So I must do this,” she said. Her bottom lip quivered but her jaw was set. “Does your mother know?” asked Erin.
Naomi nodded. “It kills her,” she said, steadying her mouth with her fingers. Her nails were painted a dark burgundy and they ran across her lips in quivering movements. Erin focused on this. It was too hard to think of what was really happening to her friend.
“Don’t you worry about…?” Anna started to ask. Then she stopped herself. She was studying medicine. It was natural to think about things like pregnancy and venereal disease.
“And my choices are what, Anna?” Naomi asked defensively. “It may be killing my mother. But at least she and my brothers have a place to live.”
This was a moment of reality for Anna and Erin. Here was a friend, a bright and gifted young girl, who had been forced into a dangerous and seedy lifestyle – in order to survive. She seemed to have no other choices. This was the most difficult part of the story to comprehend. Anna had always believed that having a good heart and strong values would lead to good things and a lifestyle that perpetuated good values. It is what her parents had taught her and what the Rabbi taught. How could the world be otherwise? How could it extract so high a price from so sweet a young girl? Naomi was good. She was now doing something bad – for the good of others. It was all suddenly upside down.
Anna and Erin ordered food so Naomi would eat. As they left the restaurant, they gave Naomi all the money they had and encouraged her to go spend the evening with her family.
“I don’t want to let go of you,” Anna said as she embraced her friend outside the Café. She pulled away and took Naomi’s face in her hands. “Be strong,” she whispered fiercely.
Anna and Erin walked silently home together sharing a profound sense of loss. Each girl quietly said a prayer of thanksgiving. Such a tragedy had not befallen them. There were untold miseries in their country, but they had remained unscathed. They were safe. They were blessed. Two young women on the cusp of a promising future could not think otherwise.
* * *
Explanations as to the cause or causes of the inflation were complex. Some held a conspiracy theory that accused the German government of trying to perpetuate a gigantic fraud. This idea laid blame on a government that deliberately allowed the mark to fall to free the state of its reparations debt. German industry could decrease its indebtedness by refunding its obligations with worthless marks. This assumed that the average German did not understand complex economics. So when the idea hit the streets, most were outraged. One banker told one of his customers that in all of Germany there were only three men who correctly understood economics and two of them were out of the country. At least they were able to laugh about this tragic situation.
Karl Helfferich, the Imperial Treasury Minister proposed an idea for an economic solution. The plan, which eventually worked, was a National Mortgage Bank (Rentenbank). The bank began to issue ‘Rentenmarks’ backed by the nation’s gold reserves, which were backed by a ‘mortgage’ on all of Germany’s land assets. With these measures the German people accepted the value of the mark at pre-war levels - 4.2 marks to the dollar. This created an attractive situation for foreign investors. British and American loans were acquired to launch a new business boom. Within five years an American journalist observed, “businessmen were in business, generals were still generals, and the number of street prostitutes had dramatically dropped.”
From time to time after Synagogue on Sabbath, the week-ends would find the girls going back home. As professional musicians, Erin’s parents were usually performing on Saturday nights, opportunities that allowed Erin to go back stage at the symphony. Marlene Eichenwald especially looked forward to these week-ends. She did not work outside her home and was especially lonely because of Hanz’s frequent travel and lecture schedule. She was delighted to spend time with Anna. Marlene had always been protective of Anna and tried hard not to show it. After all, Anna was grown and in graduate school. But every time she looked at Anna’s sweet, innocent eyes, she could see nothing but a little girl.
On this particular week-end, Hanz was returning from a conference in Zurich. The train from Switzerland was arriving Sunday at 4:28 p.m. The previous day Marlene and Anna shared lunch after Synagogue in the Tiergarten. The garden paths pulled them away from the crowds to enjoy the flowers. Today, Marlene had a special surprise. In the midst of the inflation crisis, and to some degree because of it, foreign investment was pouring into the country. Many of the older department stores were being refurbished with lavish surroundings. One of the largest was Wertheim’s on the Leipzigerplatz. It was only a fifteen-minute walk from the Tiergarten.
“Anna, I have been saving for this for weeks. I have a surprise! We are going to Wertheim’s for a little shopping and then to the theater.”
“And how did this come about?” asked Anna. She’d been so involved with her medical studies she hadn’t taken much time for a social life much less shopping.
“It’s time you had some new clothes and a night out. Your father makes plenty of money and I don’t want him to be burdened with too much of it.” They both laughed. “And the night out?”
“Well, Anna, we are going to a musical. It’s called ‘It’s in the Air.’ The cast is mostly unknowns. But one of the girls is getting very good reviews.”
Marlene looked proud, as though she’d just received an award. “Sounds interesting,” Anna replied. “What’s her name?” “Marlene Dietrich!”
The following day, Marlene and Anna ate a late breakfast, then Anna tried on the new clothes. They laughed about times gone by, times that were less hectic, more tranquil. The train from Zurich was running two hours late, so Marlene dropped Anna at her flat so she could study. She waited at the bottom of the stairs until she saw Anna disappear safely behind her door. These were uncertain times. Though Marlene, careful as she was, had no real concept of the dangers from which her daughter would need protection.