Hitler and the Nazi Cult of Celebrity (12 page)

But there was a price to be paid: Goebbels ordered that Meta and son Michael be transported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Gottschalk insisted on accompanying Meta and Michael to Theresienstadt, but Goebbels ordered that he be inducted into the
Wehrmacht
. With little time to spare before they were separated, in November 1941 Gottschalk and Meta sedated their son, then they turned on the gas, and all three died. Goebbels ordered no mention be made of Gottschalk’s suicide in the German newspapers, but word got out and millions of German women mourned his death. Goebbels forbade any stars to attend the funeral at the Stahnsdorf Friedhof on the south-western edge of Berlin. But Brigitte Horney attended, as did Gustav Knuth and Werner Hinz in defiance of Goebbels, and regardless of political and career implications.
Goebbels was by then aware of considerable tension between him and the film community, although it’s doubtful that he knew he was often referred to as Mickey Mouse ‘because of his mousey face’.
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A long and distinguished career was no guarantee of survival for actors with Jewish blood. Ernst Arndt had appeared in silent films, but his first love was the stage, and in 1931 he was made an honorary citizen of Vienna for his stage work in Austria. But on 10 July 1942, at the age of eighty-one, he was deported to Theresienstadt, and from there, on 23 September, to Treblinka where he is presumed to have been murdered shortly afterwards.

The cult of celebrity only protected celebrities if they conformed to Nazi ideology and racial purity. In 1932 Max Ehrlich was one of Germany’s most beloved comics, a master of ceremony and a top cabaret star in the
Haller-Revue
and others. He made
forty-two
films – ten of which he directed – recorded eight gramophone records, and wrote several books including the bestseller
From
Adelbert to Zilzer
, a humorous collection of stories and anecdotes about his well-known friends in showbusiness. It was a true celebrity memoir long before memoirs were being written by everyone with the merest claim to celebrity. He also happened to be Jewish.

He went to Vienna to appear with the popular Rudolf Nelson Revue, but the show was interrupted by an organised group of Nazis with cries of ‘Jews, get out of Vienna!’ The troupe consequently left Austria to tour the show in Switzerland and the Netherlands. Homesick, and oblivious to the horrors that were yet to come, Ehrlich returned to Germany in 1935 where Jewish entertainers were permitted to perform only within the framework of the
Jüdischer
Kulturbund
.
232
He even became director of the
Kulturbund
’s light theatre departments, but following the 1938 pogrom that would become known as
Kristallnacht
, he decided to leave Germany for good. Both of his farewell performances immediately sold out, so a third was added on 2 April 1939. Before a full house which cried out and applauded with tremendous affection, Ehrlich made his final appearance in Germany.

He returned to the Netherlands and joined Willy Rosen’s
Theater
der Prominenten
(Theatre of Celebrities). But in 1943 the war and the Nazis caught up with him, and he and his Jewish colleagues, along with thousands of Dutch Jews, were imprisoned in the Westerbork concentration camp. There he created and became director of the Camp Westerbork Theatre Group, a cabaret troupe that staged six theatre productions, all within the confines of the concentration camp. The majority of the actors were famous Jewish stars from Berlin and Vienna, such as Willy Rosen, Erich Ziegler, Camilla Spira and Kurt Gerron. There were also Dutch celebrities like Esther Philipse, Jetty Cantor and Johnny & Jones. The company included a full team of musicians, dancers, choreographers, tailors, make-up artists, lighting and other technicians, and stagehands. This was accomplished under the persistent threat of deportation to an unknown but deeply feared fate.

Most of the shows combined elements of revue and cabaret, on one occasion including a revue-operetta,
Ludmilla, or Corpses Everywhere
– a precursor of what was to come. Ehrlich ensured his theatre group never produced a show that was openly political or directly attacked the Nazi regime; to do so would have called for the entire company’s immediate deportation. The Westerbork Theatre Group could only distract its audience momentarily from the surrounding horrors, but it gave people renewed hope and the courage to face an otherwise unbearable existence.

Inevitably, increasing numbers of Westerbork’s prisoners were transported to the extermination camps to the east. Of 104,000 camp inmates, fewer than 5,000 survived. Max Ehrlich was number 151 on the list of prisoners to leave Westerbork on 4 September 1944. Upon reaching Auschwitz, he was recognised by a
Hauptsturmführer
and immediately taken before a group of SS officers who aimed their guns at him and ordered him to tell them jokes. On 1 October 1944 he was sent to the gas chambers. When British troops liberated Westerbork on 12 April 1945, there were only several hundred survivors, and of them only two were Theatre Group members.
233

There were many others among Germany’s celebrities who
either fled or were exterminated, and many more who were lesser known but might have become major stars had Hitler not had them removed or murdered. They were just a tiny minority of the millions who perished in the Holocaust, but they left gaping holes in the entertainment world, which did what it could to fill the breach.

The actors and filmmakers who remained seized the opportunity to demand higher salaries, which increased production budgets. Consequently, it became increasingly difficult to recover production costs especially as international boycotts cut the export of German films dramatically. (In revenge, Goebbels began banning some Hollywood films until 1941, when Hitler banned
all
American films.) In 1933, exports covered 44 per cent of film production costs, but by 1937, this figure had dropped to a mere 7 per cent. Many production companies went bankrupt, and the number of companies dropped from 114 (during the period 1933 to 1935) to 79 (1936 to 1938) to just 38 (1939 to 1941). Film production was maintained, however, because the surviving companies produced many more films than usual. This suited Goebbels, who had easier control over fewer film production companies, especially after UFA merged in 1942 with all the remaining companies –
Terra Film, Tobis, Bavaria Film, Wien-Film
and
Berlin-Film
– into the
UFA-Group
.

From outside Germany, actors and singers seeking fame and fortune realised that Germany was ripe for new stars, and they took advantage of the opportunity to become embroiled in the Nazi cult of celebrity.

F
our days after Hitler came to power, a film called
Der Choral von
Leuthen
(
The Hymn of Leuthen
) was premiered. It was one of a score of German movies about the great Prussian king Frederick II, played by Otto Gebühr, who appeared in 102 films between 1917 and his death in 1962. In twelve of them he played Frederick II, and would appear as Frederick four more times after
Der Choral von
Leuthen
, the last being in 1942 in
Der Große König
(
The Great King
).

Der Choral von Leuthen
, commissioned by Goebbels, received the rare ‘Film of the Nation’ distinction. As a trailer for the movie, and as political propaganda, Otto Gebühr appeared in a short film, in his Frederick the Great costume, to tell the German people: ‘This play is from a time when duty and sacrifice made a nation great. In our time too, duty and sacrifice are required. Give what you can for the Winter Aid for the German People.’

The
Winterhilfswerk
(Winter Help Work) was launched by Hitler in September 1933 to help the poor through the winter months. He explained, ‘This great campaign against hunger and cold is governed by this principle: we have broken the international solidarity of the proletariat. We want to build the living national solidarity of the German people!’ To raise funds there were monthly street collections, usually by the Hitler Youth, who began going door to door. Buttons were sold, some of which were hand sewn, and hand-crafted celluloid flowers. The Nazis claimed that in 1933–1934
Winterhilfswerk
beneficiaries exceeded 16.6 million people, meaning that one out of every four Germans received assistance.
234

Adding some glamour to the premiere of
Der Choral von Leuthen
was its leading lady Olga Tschechowa, one of Germany’s brightest stars. Yet she was not a German. She was born in Aleksandropol in
Tsarist Russia on 14 April 1897 to Lulu and Konstantin Knipper, a railway engineer. Konstantin’s sister Olga was a celebrated actress and married the great Russian playwright Anton Chekhov; she had the stage name Olga Knipper-Chekhova, but was usually referred to within the family as Olya. Her niece and future star of German cinema, Olga Tschechowa, was named after her.

The Knipper family had originated from Saarbrücken in Germany, but migrated to Tsarist Russia where Konstantin’s father Leonard Knipper had done well enough in the building trade – he ran a factory in a small town called Glazov, in north-east European Russia – to send his children, Konstantin, Olya and Vladimir, to private schools. Konstantin was to become an engineer, Olya an actress, and Vladimir a celebrated singer and director at the Bolshoi under the stage name Vladimir Nardov.

Leonard Knipper died in bankruptcy, forcing his widow Anna to make ends meet by giving singing lessons. But it was a family bursting with talent, and Konstantin and Lulu sent their daughter Olga to study art in Moscow where she met and fell in love with Mikhail Chekhov, the great actor of the Moscow Art Theatre and nephew of playwright Anton Chekhov. They married in 1915 and their daughter was born the following year; true to the tradition of naming children after parents and grandparents and other relatives, they named her Olga, although she was always called Ada – Olga’s sister’s name – adding to the confusion within the family where there were many Olgas and now at least two Adas.

In later years Olga Tschechowa would claim she had been an actress at the Moscow Art Theatre, but that is one example of the way she exaggerated her life and career. She was considered by her aunt Olga Knipper-Chekhova to be something of an ‘adventuress’ – it would seem her sense of adventure was what prompted her to marry Mikhail Chekhov in haste. She took on her husband’s surname but, as in the Russian tradition, added an ‘a’ at the end, becoming Olga Chekhova (before the Germans would rename her Olga Tschechowa).

Her marriage that ended in 1917 when, unable to cope any longer with Mikhail’s drunkenness and infidelity, she left him, taking
their daughter with her to live with her Aunt Olya in Moscow. Olga Chekhova’s sister Ada also moved in, as did Konstantin and Lulu, to escape the danger Russia was facing as the First World War was coming to an end and the Bolsheviks were causing unrest. Konstantin and Lulu stayed only a while before moving to Siberia to escape starvation, which the citizens of Moscow were facing; they took with them Olga’s daughter, while Olga remained behind with her sister Ada and their aunt.

Olga did her best to earn money selling pictures she painted, and she also managed to get a little work as an actress in the films
Anya Kraeva, Cagliostro
and
The Last Adventure of Arsène
, which were made without interference from the new Bolshevik authorities.
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Determined to escape the troubled new Soviet Union, Olga chose to try her luck in Berlin; why she chose Berlin is unclear, but she arrived there sometime in 1920, probably in August. She expected to be back in Moscow within six weeks, but she didn’t return for another twenty-five years.

In Berlin she found that her name Chekhova carried some weight among the Russian community, which led to her being able to meet important people such as a Russian grand duke for whom she did some sculpting. He introduced her to film producer Erich Pommer of the UFA studios and also to director Wilhelm Murnau. She told them she had worked at the Moscow Art Theatre and in a few small Russian films, and Pommer gave her a screen test. She was given a leading role in Murnau’s
Schloß Vogelöd
(
The Haunted Castle
), which was a success when premiered on 7 April 1921. She was not an overnight star but she had a new name, Olga Tschechowa, though it was still pronounced Chekhova.

UFA was still an expanding studio, having been founded in 1917 under military sponsorship to make propaganda films. Erich Pommer was turning it into the largest studio in Europe, producing films by such great directors as Ernst Lubitsch, Fritz Lang and Wilhelm Murnau. (Lubitsch emigrated to America in 1922 to further his career, not to escape the Nazis, and Murnau did the same in 1926.) Olga had arrived at just the right time and played
in more than forty silent films during the 1920s.
236
She learned to speak German well and shook off her Russian accent, enabling her to work in the
Berliner Renaissance-Theater
. Germans affectionately referred to her as
Die Tschechowa
, or even
La Tschechowa.
She never commented on politics, either those of the German Weimar Republic or any of the more extreme parties, or even about the Communist Soviet Union. She saw herself as a ‘fellow traveller’, but secretly she had agreed to assist Soviet intelligence, having been recruited by her brother Lev.

Lev Knipper had become a composer of operas with a considerable reputation. He had been a White Guard during the civil war and escaped Russia for a time, returning in 1922 when he was recruited by the OGPU (forerunner of the NKVD and later the KGB); his reputation as a composer and conductor allowed him to get in and out of many countries relatively easily. He recruited Olga in Berlin as a ‘sleeper’ whose contacts in ‘high places’ might be useful. Her incentive was the provision of exit visas for her mother and daughter – her father had died in January 1924 – and so Lulu, little Olga/Ada and a niece, Marina, came to live with Olga in Berlin.
237

Olga Tschechowa made four or five films a year to keep earning reasonable money at a time when inflation was rife. She moved from her apartment at Berchtesgadener Strasse 21 into a much larger one, with fifteen rooms, at Klopstock Strasse 20 in the Tiergarten district of Berlin. After her disastrous marriage to Mikhail Chekhov, she was determined never to have to rely on a man again, and worked so hard she had no time for personal relationships. She worked by day on films at the studio in Babelsberg, then often in the evenings in plays at the
Berliner Renaissance-Theater
, but all the hard work allowed her to commission a very expensive stained glass panel with the Knipper coat of arms on it, and she bought a new Talbot convertible and hired a chauffeur, although she preferred to drive herself. She was in control of her own life.
238

Her film star status ensured that her plays were well attended by her fans; on 16 March 1924 she wrote to her aunt Olya that ‘the theatre is full all of the time’, and she found it ‘funny that I have
become famous here’, noting that ‘people go to the theatre just to see me and that they believe in me’.
239
In 1927 she had a new fan. Adolf Hitler saw her in
Brennende Grenze
and admired her greatly;
240
he also saw her in the first of the films about Frederick the Great,
Die Mühle von Sanssouci
(
The Mill of Sanssouci
), in which Otto Gebühr made one of his many appearances as Frederick II – later she would make
Der Choral von Leuthen
with him.

She also directed one film,
Der Narr seiner Liebe
(
The Fool of Love
), casting her ex-husband Mikhail Chekhov in a leading role. By this time Mikhail – known as Michael Chekhov to English-speaking audiences – had established his place in stage history, having studied under Russian theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavksy and thereafter developing and teaching his own variation of the ‘method’. In 1928 he arrived in Berlin to run his own actors’ studio aided by Olga, who found him and his second wife Xenia a small apartment near to her own so Ada, then eleven, could visit her father. She also helped him find work in films, leading to their collaboration on
Der Narr seiner Liebe
. In 1930 Olga and Mikhail were cast together in
Troika
, his last film for more than a decade – in 1931 he moved to Paris to found the Chekhov Theatre Company, and established himself as a star of the stage as Hamlet, Malvolio in
As You Like It
and in Strindberg’s
Erik XIV
. He took the Chekhov Theatre on tour to New York and in 1938 moved to the United States to start his own school, and to direct and act. He was nominated for an Oscar for his performance as the psychiatrist in Hitchcock’s 1945 thriller
Spellbound
, which starred one of Mikhail’s students, Gregory Peck. Other famous students of his included Marilyn Monroe, Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman, Anthony Quinn, Jack Palance, Yul Brynner and Elia Kazan.

Mikhail was a featured player in MGM’s 1944 pro-Russian film
Song of Russia
, which starred Robert Taylor as an American conductor who falls for a Soviet pianist, played by Susan Peters, during a tour of Russia in which happy, healthy Soviet citizens live in bliss until the Nazi invasion. This film would later come under scrutiny from the anti-Communist House Un-American Activities
Committee, which cited
Song of Russia
as one of three noted examples of ‘pro-Soviet propaganda films’ made in Hollywood, the other two being Warner Brothers’
Mission to Moscow
and RKO’s
The North Star.
The blame was laid on the film’s two screenwriters, Paul Jarrico and Richard J. Collins, who were subsequently blacklisted.

In 1930 Olga went to America to make the romantic comedy
Love on Command
for Universal; the studio hoped she would become its own Marlene Dietrich or Greta Garbo. Olga quickly learned to enjoy the Hollywood lifestyle, such as the big parties where she met Douglas Fairbanks, Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin and Garbo, but Universal criticised Olga for looking too heavy and critics complained about her Russo-German accent, so she returned to Germany where she was already an undisputed star.

Her daughter Ada also became an actress: aged eighteen she was cast in
Pompadour
, released in 1935, then co-starred with her mother in
Der Favorit der Kaiserin
(
The Favourite of the Empress
) under the name Ada Tschechowa. (Ada’s daughter would also become an actress, known as Vera Tschechowa.)

To celebrate Hitler’s appointment as Reich Chancellor in January 1933, Goebbels gave a reception at the Propaganda Ministry. A number of Germany’s greatest celebrities were invited to add glamour to the proceedings; it was Hitler’s desire to be surrounded by famous people. In Hitler’s Germany, a curious relationship between culture and politics had evolved, not necessarily out of a true political design but out of Hitler’s obsession with his own celebrity cult which, once it had taken root, was carefully cultivated for no real purpose other than to feed his vanity. In his Germany, celebrities, whether they were actors, writers or musicians, could be only one of two things: tremendous status symbols for the regime – that is, those who were compliant – or traitors, if they resisted or were Jewish. Therefore, those who were compliant, regardless of their true motivations – either because they were true Nazis or just eager to maintain a career – were seen as Nazi sympathisers. In time, they would all pay a price, but not as heavy as those who were sent to the extermination camps.

The presence of Hitler’s favourite actress Olga Tschechowa was required by order. She attended accompanied by the 69-year-old
grande dame
of German theatre Adele Sandrock, who called Olga ‘Mouse’ for reasons that were unclear even to Olga. Sandrock had become one of Germany’s first film stars with her screen debut in 1911, and by 1933 was one of Germany’s most beloved celebrities. Hitler approached Olga and Adele and went into one of his monologues, in which he talked about the
Burgtheater
– where Adele was currently playing – and about how much he admired the plays there except for one in which Jewish actors had been enthusiastically applauded. At this point, Adele cut him off: ‘
Herr Reichskanzler
, please drop this subject. I don’t want to talk about it. But between you and me, I must admit that my best lovers were Jewish.’ Hitler was stunned into silence as Adele rose from her chair and said to Olga, ‘Mouse, can you take me home, please?’

‘Of course, dear Adele,’ Olga replied, and bade Hitler and Goebbels, ‘
Alles Gute, meine Herren
.’
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