A Stranger in My Own Country (17 page)

The Rowohlts also lived on the outskirts, but in the east end of Berlin, in another street lined with big villas, and here the seething populace did not stop at breaking glass or looting, but tried to set the houses on fire as well, so that everyone got to enjoy a free firework display. Dear old Rowohlt, who in addition to all his other virtues was someone who
liked to be where the action is, had been quite unable to stay at home, and had felt compelled to at least join the crowd of onlookers. And that's how it came about that the diminutive Mrs Rowohlt could no longer conceal her outrage at these shameful acts, and in the middle of the assembled crowd she had declared in no uncertain terms what she thought of all this wanton destruction and arson. Rowohlt had quickly dragged his wife away; the crowd had merely gazed at her in silence, but there were too many witnesses to her outburst of hatred: back then in Germany, wherever three people were gathered together, one of them was bound to be an informer. That same night they began to pack. It was high time: the concentration camp beckoned. In fact it was more than high time, because the very next morning a couple of Party officials called on him, asking various questions, but this time they went away again. The next time they would not be so easily deterred. Rowohlt went into Berlin, but they planned to leave for Switzerland that very evening, and they had already taken the precaution of getting a passport. And now comes a most touching episode, a real act of friendship which I must now relate – adding one more page of glory to the annals of this unique publisher's life. In all the rush and bustle of their travel preparations, in fear of his own life, with a wife and two children to look after, just eight hours before heading off into such an uncertain future, old Rowohlt found time to think about his author Fallada, who was still in need of a new publisher! Rowohlt couldn't leave Germany yet, he needed to sort something out first, he was not yet free to travel. In Berlin he located the man he thought would be the right publisher for me,
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put him into a car and drove with him out to our place in Mahlendorf. I had no idea what was going on, but the two men were sitting there in my house. The new contract was discussed, and clever old Rowohlt made sure that it was a lot more favourable than the old one: he wasn't the one, after all, who would be shelling out this time round. I pressed the gentlemen to stay for supper. Rowohlt shrugged his shoulders: ‘I'm afraid I can't, my dear Fallada. I'm leaving for Switzerland on the ten o'clock train, with my wife and children – perhaps never to return!' And in a few brief words he told me what had happened.

We took our leave of each other, my wife was crying, and I too had tears in my eyes. The tail lights of the car lit up one more time, and then they were gone. I said: ‘He'll be in time for his train, I'm sure.' And Suse added: ‘Hopefully they'll make it across the border all right.' We went back into the house. The coffee cups were still there, the folder with the contracts lay open on the table; it was all there, from the first novel I sent to Rowohlt back in 1918 – now lost
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– to
Wolf
. And all signed ‘Ernst Rowohlt'. But now the truest of the true had walked out of our lives, the latest contract on top of the pile bore a different signature: lost and gone for ever!

So what further news of him? We had a postcard from Switzerland, very cheery in tone, and then another card from Switzerland. ‘He's taking his time', we said. ‘Perhaps they won't get as far as Brazil, perhaps they'll wait out the thousand years in Switzerland.' But later on we heard that he was in Brazil after all, living with his wife's brother, and then we heard nothing more from him. The years passed, and we talked about him from time to time. The new publisher is fine, I've nothing bad to say about him, in fact there's a lot to be said in his favour; but I miss the old green letters,
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and I miss my old friend. He had such a gift for putting heart into one, eternal optimist that he was! But people like him don't come along twice in a lifetime! Lost and gone!

The war came, and we celebrated the first Christmas of the war, the Christmas of 1939,
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with an abundance of presents still. Then the telephone rang, cutting through the din of the excited children. Who could be so insensitive as to phone on business when the family is at home celebrating Christmas?! ‘You have a call from Bremen . . .' ‘Suse! A call from Bremen! Be quiet, you lot! Who can possibly be calling me from Bremen? I don't know anyone in Bremen!'

I hear a disguised voice speaking down the line. ‘Guess who's on the phone?' For a moment I am thrown, and then I roar: ‘Rowohlt! Rowohlt my old friend, is that you? But how's that possible? Aren't you in Brazil? Rowohlt, it's so great to hear you! You must come and see us straight away, we've got some serious celebrating to do! I still can't believe it's you!'

‘Blockade runner', he said. ‘Got into Bordeaux the day before yesterday. I'll be with you next week or thereabouts. Got to report for duty first, of course. I'll call you again!'

It turned into a very weird Christmas, Suse and I still couldn't quite believe it. To think that he had risked coming back, after fleeing Germany and going into exile! And to think that he had actually wanted to, wanted to take part in this war after they had dragged his name through the mud in Germany! It made no sense to us. And it didn't make any more sense when he came to see us. He was deeply suntanned, but otherwise still the same old Rowohlt, the gambler, the adventurer, who always had to be where the action was. ‘Of course Germany is going to lose this war', he said again. ‘But I've been through this before, 1914 to 1918. And I can't just sit on my backside in bongo-bongo land while my old comrades are fighting for their lives here. It caused a terrific row with my wife, of course, and she just didn't want to let me come; she hates the Nazis even more than she did before, if such a thing is possible. I expect there'll be a divorce, and after that comes the fourth Reich!' Indestructible, irrepressible, the same old vitality and unquenchable love of life, a life that is always wonderful, even if one gets the occasional thrashing. But at least one is still alive.

And then he told us about the sea crossing. How he had begged his way onto a German ship in Rio as a seaman, finally succeeding after several rounds of drinks with the captain, and how he adopted the title of ‘seaman' only as a cover for the benefit of the port authorities. And how they then, one day out from Rio, handed him a can of paint, and to his surprise had him actually doing the work of a seaman for the entire crossing, for eighteen hours a day and sometimes even longer. How they then disguised the ship to look like an English vessel, and then spent two days cruising around on the high seas looking for a German commerce raider until they found her and transferred their entire cargo of oil, coal and food, while taking on a new cargo in exchange: over 300 captured crew members from enemy ships sunk by the raider. How they then set course for Europe by a circuitous route, with over three hundred defiant prisoners on board, and the entire crew
numbering no more than 35! How they had to be on duty day and night, only ever allowing six men up on deck at one time. I can picture him so clearly, the huge figure of Rowohlt, bellowing down into the dark ship's hold: ‘Sing up, my hearties, sing up, and there'll be bigger portions for lunch today!' And how they then approached Bordeaux, having made the crossing safely and without incident, and waited for the pilot vessel that would guide them through the mine barrier. Their arrival had been radioed ahead, but with a favourable wind they had got there sooner than expected. So they sat outside the mine barrier, in sight of the English coast, and the prisoners were getting more and more restive, and gradually, having steadfastly got through the most difficult weeks, they began to lose their nerve. Ten hours passed, and no pilot vessel appeared, fifteen hours passed, and still they were lying in plain sight of the English coast, at any moment the English could discover them. Finally the German captain said: ‘If they don't come in the next three hours, I'll take the ship through the minefields without a pilot, and if we are blown to kingdom come, then so be it!' Everyone's nerves were stretched to breaking point. But then a German plane flew overhead, and a short time later, led through the mine barrier by a pilot vessel, they lay at anchor in the port of Bordeaux, three days before Christmas. ‘And now I've got fourteen days' leave', said the old buccaneer. ‘And I've come just at the right time to collect a little inheritance that was waiting for me. So now I shall live it up for a bit, and then it's off to join my unit, as a lieutenant from the First World War!'

They even made him a captain, and he fought with the army in Crimea . . . But none of it made any difference at all. He had supposed that by coming back in wartime and volunteering to fight, he would be absolved of his former sins; but he had reckoned without the implacable malice of his enemies.

(30.IX.44.)
I had repeatedly encountered people in Berlin who viewed his return to Germany as an act of unbelievable effrontery. These people seemed to have no conception of the courage, and also of the
capacity to forgive and forget, which that return betokened. When I pointed this out to them (and these were people who were just kicking around in civvy street at home, of course), they replied: ‘Rubbish, the old rogue just wants to start up his old business again after the war!' – something that Rowohlt the army combatant was not even thinking about at the time, I'm sure. These enemies, who for the most part had permanent or casual jobs in the book world, knew that Rowohlt now had a powerful protector in the Wehrmacht, and the kind of feeble charges they had used to bring him before the court of honour and get him expelled from the publishing profession just wouldn't wash now. In the First World War Rowohlt had ended up as an aircraft observer, and he still had some courageous friends from that time – especially at the Air Ministry, among them General Udet.
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But it turned out that General Udet suffered the fate of so many prominent figures in this war: he died in a ‘plane crash'. And it turned out further that Rowohlt's enemies, digging away in the dark like the rats they were, unearthed a petition from 1922,
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requesting that the death sentence for Max Hölz
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be commuted to imprisonment. Max Hölz had been leader of a Communist gang, who demanded money with menaces from Saxony's industrialists in 1921/22, and set fire to their villas if they refused to pay up. The petition to spare this man's life was dug up by Rowohlt's enemies; it was nearly 20 years old, but still, there was Rowohlt's name at the bottom. Such a thing was unthinkable for the German Wehrmacht: the name of a German army captain on a petition in support of a murderous Communist arsonist! These same enemies were not at all bothered by the fact that other names were also on this petition, names of people who today occupy the highest offices in the land, and who are quite secure in those high offices despite having signed the petition. People like Professor Carl Froelich,
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who at one time had even been a fully paid-up member of the Communist Party, who had signed his name to this petition, and yet had risen to become President of the Reich Chamber of Film. One of the most baffling mysteries about the Nazi leadership has always been where they chose to exercise forgiveness and where not. With most people everything was weighed
in the balance down to the last scruple, while in some cases they just turned a blind eye. Or, as Göring is once supposed to have said: ‘
I
decide who is a Jew!' Whereupon he went and made the Jewish officer Milch
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a German air-force general. In Rowohlt's case certainly they weighed every last scruple in the balance, and he was dismissed just like that, without formality or ceremony, receiving the princely sum of 50 marks in redundancy money!

It was a heavy blow for him. Had he come back all the way from Brazil, leaving behind his wife, his children and his security, just to be brought down over some trivial matter dragged up from the distant past? But he would not give up yet; he drove to the Air Ministry instead. Udet was dead, but he had other friends there, perhaps not quite so influential, but they could still be useful to him. And they were willing to help, saying to him: ‘My dear Rowohlt, of course we'll get this business sorted out. It's disgraceful, the way they have treated you! But this time we'll make sure the bastards can't touch you again. Get all your papers together, the originals of course, those from the First World War and those from now. The day after tomorrow one of our colleagues is flying out to the Führer's headquarters. He'll see to it that none of these little whippersnappers dares to shit on you again. Just you wait and see – the Major is still looking out for you!'

Rowohlt did as he was asked, the aircraft took off, with his original papers on board, and all his hopes, and Rowohlt waited. And then came the news: the aircraft had crashed and burned, everyone on board was dead, the irreplaceable papers were lost in the fire, his hopes were dashed for ever!

As I have already mentioned, Rowohlt is now taking the air on the island of Sylt, fanned by sea breezes. I hardly hear from him now – well, not at all, in fact. It's as if he is in waiting, in a foreign land; if he were in Brazil he could not be further removed from me. The great optimist, the perennial Mr Hopeful, is now living in the great land of hopelessness. Or is he perhaps still hoping for something after all? I think he probably is, I think he is hoping for what we are all hoping for, in this final autumn of the war, in the year 1944!

And there is another man from our circle of friends who has now gone – was it really two years ago? We got to know him relatively late, but we became very fond of him, a tall man with clever, laughing eyes behind large, dark horn-rimmed glasses, and with a mop of brown hair that he combed all the way back from his lofty and elegantly formed brow. Sas,
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that's what we always called him, just Sas, he never had a first name, even for his closest lady friend. Sas came from the Sudetenland, and his relatives still own a bakery there to this day. But he was a teacher himself, a primary school teacher in some town in Saxony, one of those densely populated industrial towns where hunger and hardship have taken up their abode. He discovered Communism early on, he was a Communist in mind and heart, and his heart drew him to the poor of this earth; his profound, primal sense of compassion hid all their faults from his eyes with the cloak of suffering. I can see him now, sitting on the floor in my big study, surrounded by a group of young people from the Hitler Youth and the
Bund Deutscher Mädel
, discussing the party program of the NSDAP. And how cleverly he went about it, how he ignited the flame of independent thought in these young heads, which had systematically been broken of the habit of thinking for themselves and filled, day in, day out, with glib slogans; how he carefully fanned the spark of doubt, how the eyes of the youngsters lit up with joy at things they thought they had discovered for themselves, how they suddenly saw a light, a way forward – it was just wonderful to behold! He was always a child, and never happier than when surrounded by children, from the very youngest to those who are fully grown up, and can never grow old; I loved to sit on the carpet with him, quietly watching him and observing with sweet joy the light that shone in his eyes, the light that only pure intellect can kindle. His party had earmarked him for the post of education minister, but then the Nazis came to power, and instead of that he became a forced labourer in a concentration camp. They held him there for a long time, but he survived, and returned to the outside world unbroken in mind and body. What should he do now? He wasn't allowed to practise his profession any more; anyone who had once embraced
Communism was forever unfit to be a teacher of the nation's youth. He went to Berlin, he had always had a great love of music, and now he planned to give children piano and singing lessons and instruct them in the rudiments of dance. But would he be allowed to? It all seemed so difficult – and then it worked out after all, for some mysterious reason they turned a blind eye and allowed him to become a member of the Reich Chamber of Music. He had plenty of pupils, he met a woman
¹⁰⁵
and fell in love, he led a busy and fulfilled life. He shut himself off from all the evil that was going on around him. He had learned during the bitter years in the concentration camp how pointless it was to rebel openly, because all that did was to make things worse for oneself. It was better to keep one's head down, to hold oneself together – for the day that must surely dawn sometime. But he didn't live to see that day; a small thing led to his downfall, a moment of thoughtlessness, a careless lapse that could have happened to anyone. On the street in Berlin he bumped into a man he had known many years previously, when they were both members of the same party. They greeted each other, asked each other how they were doing . . . Now the other man, he was just the same as ever, still working clandestinely for the old party, and boasting that they wouldn't catch him so easily! And what about him, Sas? He couldn't believe that Sas, one of the staunchest of the party faithful, had thrown in the towel and given up the fight! But Sas was on his guard, as everyone in Germany has learned to be. Anyone could be a spy, and fratricide stalks the land. No, he explained, he was no longer an activist, he was a music teacher now, teaching children. It gave him a lot of pleasure, and he wasn't interested in all that other stuff any more. The former party comrade was disappointed, and fixed him with a steady gaze: so much for loyalty to the cause! To hell with them all, then! He hesitated a moment, they were about to part, and then he said: ‘Well look, we can still be friends – you go your way and I'll go mine! But could you do me a favour? I've got this great heavy suitcase here. I'll be back in Berlin in two days, and I'll pick it up from you then. Could you hang on to it for me until then?' And Sas, always friendly and ready to oblige, took the suitcase, carried it home, put it
down somewhere and forgot about it. Weeks went by, and he suddenly noticed the suitcase again because it was in the way. ‘Well fancy that!', he thought. ‘The good comrade didn't come back for it in the end – maybe the old fox has been snared by his enemies after all?' The suitcase really was in the way, and so he put it up in the attic. Then he forgot about it completely.