Red Orchestra (38 page)

By the time Libertas got her job, the Nazis had nearly completed their consolidation of the entire German movie industry. At the center of their efforts was the giant company Universum-Film AG, better known as UFA.

UFA had gone through many metamorphoses since its founding as a propaganda film agency in World War I. The Kulturfilm department, where Libertas worked, was launched at the end of the war to create uniquely German educational documentaries. Many dealt with war-related health problems such as tuberculosis and venereal disease. “The wounds of war can only be healed if we devote ourselves to the tasks of humanity,” its catalog stated.
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In its early days, UFA was a freewheeling player in Weimar culture, employing left-wing artists such as George Grosz and John Heartfield, and releasing such daring films as Fritz Lang's
Metropolis
and
Dr. Mabuse.
But a 1927 financial crisis delivered UFA's management into the hands of right-wing press baron Alfred Hugenberg, who worked closely with the Nazis. After 1933 the studio terminated the contracts of Jewish employees. It was impossible to continue the old ways of doing business, as leading artists left the country and export revenues were slashed by foreign boycotts of German films. The country's smaller movie companies went out of business, allowing UFA to fill the gap. Again, consolidation of ownership helped the regime tighten its grip, until its hold on the machinery of filmmaking was absolute.

In 1940, UFA's Kulturfilm division was placed directly under Goeb -bels's control. Two years later the Nazis completed the consolidation of all of Germany's remaining film production companies (including Herbert Engelsing's Tobis Films) into a massive UFA conglomerate.

Libertas Schulze-Boysen's new job had her working on films dealing with “art, German peoples and lands, and other peoples and countries.”
²
The subject matter had ominous new overtones. The Nazi propaganda machine was aggressively promoting the new map of Europe. Conquered lands with ethnic German populations were depicted as lost relations happily restored to the Fatherland, not desperate nations shattered by bloody occupation.

Libertas Schulze-Boysen gathered footage and worked on scripts. She made certain to share the fruits of her success with her friend Adam Kuckhoff. She recommended him for her former position as Berlin film critic for the Nazi newspaper
Essener Nationalzeitung,
where she had spent the previous year, writing reviews that met Nazi requirements. She also helped get Adam freelance assignments as a UFA screenwriter, script doctor, and field producer.
³

Libertas found herself at the center of a dangerous world full of secrets and contradictions. The regime had instructed German filmmakers to keep the public inspired and amused. As the war dragged on, they were under increasing pressure to project a cheerful patriotic façade. But many of Libertas's colleagues were undergoing personal and professional torment.

Goebbels's constant meddling ruined both projects and careers. In 1938 he had flung himself at the beautiful Czech movie star Lida Baarova, declaring that he would abandon his job, his wife, and his children to run away with her. Hitler was greatly displeased, since he often pointed to the smiling images of Goebbels, his wife, Magda, and their brood of blond children as evidence of the Nazis' family values. Hitler finally ordered Goebbels to go back to his wife, and commanded Baarova to disappear.
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Renate Müller was another artist whose life was blighted by the regime. As a young actress she had overlapped with Adam Kuckhoff at the Staatstheater, and became a popular ingenue in a number of films, including the 1933 cross-dressing comedy
Viktor/Viktoria.
She was a good friend of the Engelsings and enjoyed playing Ping-Pong with them on summer holidays.
⁵
But she, too, ran into political difficulties. Some people said her difficulties arose from her anti-Nazi sentiments; others suggested that her problem was a Jewish lover. In 1937, Müller checked into a Berlin clinic with a serious but unnamed health problem. Shortly afterward the thirty-one-year-old actress fell to her death from a third-floor window. Witnesses reported that Gestapo agents had arrived on the scene slightly earlier, and there was disagreement as to whether she jumped or was pushed.

In 1940, Goebbels oversaw the production of
Jud Süss.
He decided that the actor Ferdinand Marian, whose dark good looks often cast him as a Latin lover, was perfect for the part of the Jewish villain. Marian was horrified by the idea, but Goebbels forced him to comply by threatening the safety of his half-Jewish stepson. Marian acquiesced at the cost of a nervous collapse.
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Once the shoot was completed, Goebbels declared that Marian's depiction of “Jew Süss” wasn't vile enough, and he took over the editing himself to address the problem.
⁷

Jewish actors were barred from working altogether. Cabaret and film stars Paul Morgan and Fritz Grünbaum, who compounded the crime of being Jewish with their political satire, had already perished in Buchen-wald and Dachau.
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Other popular figures occupied a gray area. One of these was Joachim Gottschalk, a matinee idol known for his portrayal of calm, sensitive characters. (He was called the “German Leslie Howard.”) Gottschalk's
liabilities were his long and happy marriage to Jewish actress Meta Wolf and their young son, Michael. After Kristallnacht, the regime pressed him to divorce his wife. Gottschalk refused. He wanted to flee the country with his family, but his possibilities for flight were limited by his high profile and UFA contract. He continued to appear in highly popular films, while his wife disappeared from public view.

One night in April 1941, Meta Gottschalk succumbed to the temptation to attend the premiere of her husband's new film
Die Schwedische Nachtigall (The Swedish Nightingale).
There, she charmed prominent Nazis in attendance—until they learned she was Jewish. Goebbels ordered her and eight-year-old Michael to register for deportation to the concentration camp at Theresienstadt. Gottschalk begged to go with them, but the officials refused, and told him instead to report to the army. The couple spent the next few months in an agony of indecision. Gottschalk was banned from working on further films, but he made a few appearances on Germany's nascent television service. Then those, too, ceased.

On November 6, 1941, Gottschalk, thirty-seven, and his wife, thirty-nine, sedated their son and turned on the gas in their apartment, killing all three.
Time
magazine reported that Gottschalk willed his skull to the Deutsches Theater, where he had often appeared as Hamlet, “so that I can continue to act in the play, although in another role, and by my personal presence inspire my successors to do their best.”
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The Nazis forbade the German press to mention the incident, but word of the event spread quickly and created a public uproar.
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For the Schulze-Boysen circle, the news hit close to home. Gottschalk's only other starring role that year was in the film adaptation of Günther Weisenborn's novel
Das Mädchen von Fano
(
The Maiden from Fäno,
released in January 1941). His death occurred only five days after Libertas Schulze-Boysen started her new job at UFA, Gottschalk's studio.

Some situations were more complicated than they seemed. Formerly leftist actors Heinrich George and Gustaf Gründgens were harshly criticized for selling out to the Nazis. Nonetheless, they helped old friends with political problems that no one else would touch. When Heinrich George was named director of the prestigious Schiller Theater, he appointed Günther Weisenborn chief dramaturge, even though he had
long been banned from writing under his own name. As a darling of the Nazi regime, George was in a position to do his old friend a favor.

Gustaf Gründgens employed the actress Pamela Wedekind, daughter of the banned author of
Lulu
and
Spring Awakening,
and offered parts to a number of actors who had been threatened with blacklisting because they had Jewish wives.
¹¹
But their private lives showed the strain. Hein-rich George's drinking got seriously out of hand. Gründgens worked anxiously under Göring's protection, but it was rumored that Goebbels was seeking ways to have him eliminated for his “unconventional lifestyle”—he was bisexual.
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The Schulze-Boysens' and Kuckhoffs' friend, lawyer, and film producer Herbert Engelsing worked at the heart of this maze of loyalty and betrayal. Between 1937 and 1944 he served as producer or executive producer for thirty-four films, featuring Germany's leading stars and directors. He oversaw his own division of Tobis Film, which maintained its brands even after it was consumed in the UFA consolidation. In short, Engelsing was a major player in the industry, escorting his lovely (half-Jewish) wife to gala premieres, surrounded by the bedazzled Nazi hierarchy.

Ingeborg Engelsing enjoyed the glamour. Her life, she wrote, was “a constant round of movies and parties.” But she struggled with the protocol. At one film opening Goebbels made a sudden entrance, and the gathered company greeted him with a “Heil Hitler” salute. Ingeborg was dismayed. She had sworn never to give a Nazi salute out of allegiance to her Jewish family members. (She also considered it “unfeminine” and particularly unattractive in evening dress.) Ingeborg managed to finesse the moment by raising her arm to fidget with her hair.
¹³

The Nazi hierarchy was so thirsty for cinematic glory that the film community was often allowed to stretch the rules. The Nazis were particularly stung by the desertion of Weimar stars like Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich for Hollywood, exacerbated by Dietrich's public contempt for Nazism. But UFA found other stars to promote, sometimes ignoring inconvenient details from their past. One of them was Olga Tschechowa, the beautiful German-Russian actress. Engelsing appreciated her work, and 1939 was their banner year, when Tschechowa starred
in Engelsing's productions
Bel Ami
and
The Fox of Glenarvon
(which included dialogue by Adam Kuckhoff).

But 1939 was notable for Tschechowa in other respects as well. That was the year she was photographed in a spectacular evening gown leaning against Hitler himself at a diplomatic reception. Tschechowa declined to inform the Führer that she had a brother in Russia working for Soviet intelligence, or that she was serving as a go-between for the Soviets and German military officers who opposed war with Russia.
¹⁴

Herbert Engelsing was close to many members of the Babelsberg film community who opposed the Nazis and helped victims of the regime. He worked with Heinrich George and Gustaf Gründgens, and wrote contracts for Olga Tschechowa. The Engelsings were forever grateful to musical star Käthe Dorsch for lobbying Göring to make their marriage possible, and supported her ongoing efforts to rescue Jews from persecution. They grew so close that they named their daughter after her.

It is not known how far Herbert Engelsing pursued political discussions with his stars, who were frequent dinner guests and cocktail companions, but the circumstances encouraged intimacy. Ingeborg wrote that friendships blossomed quickly when the glamorous company had to flee the dinner table and spend the evening squatting in cramped air-raid shelters. On the other hand, it was always risky to show one's hand. One might be excused for trying to help an old friend, but the wrong joke at the wrong time could mean a concentration camp or worse.

Engelsing's shadowy figure could be detected in many areas of the Schulze-Boysens' resistance efforts. Their friendship ran deep, in both political and personal terms. One night in November 1938, the Engelsings and the Schulze-Boysens were on the way to dinner with a Swedish diplomat when they suddenly glimpsed a synagogue going up in smoke. It was the onset of Kristallnacht, and the two couples shared their anger and distress. Over the summer of 1940 the Engelsings were guests of the Schulze-Boysens at the lake. Herbert was photographed on a sailboat with Libertas, every inch the lawyer on holiday in his swimming suit and bathing cap worn with horn-rimmed glasses.

The Engelsings remained close to the Kuckhoffs as well. In December
1941, Ingeborg Engelsing brought her little boy, Thomas, to see the miniature world Greta and Adam had created for their son. It was the Engelsings who had engineered the meeting of the Schulze-Boysens and the Kuckhoffs, and the Engelsings who recruited additional members of the circle, such as their dentist friend Helmut Himpel and his fiancée, Marie Terwiel.

Herbert Engelsing offered the group material support as well. According to one account, he rented a room for Harro's underground activities at 2 Waitzstrasse in Charlottenburg, near the Schulze-Boysen apartment.
¹⁵
The group typed the leaflets in the Waitzstrasse room and stored them in Kurt and Elisabeth Schumacher's cellar.

Engelsing and his wife were particularly close to Harro. Like many of his friends and relations, they could be exasperated by his inchoate politics, but they admired his courage and sense of justice. He was especially kind to their children. Engelsing carefully maintained a state of deniabil-ity regarding the Schulze-Boysens' resistance activities, but he also created space for them to expand.

The individual who was best positioned to take advantage of this space was Libertas. When the Nazis decided to groom her to be a documentary producer, they inadvertently exposed her to shocking raw material.

After the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Harro, Libertas, and their friends were exposed to internal reports of atrocities committed by German troops. Over the following months, the news only grew worse. Libertas resolved to use her position to create an archive documenting the atrocities. Initially she intended to use the material to dissuade young Germans from joining Nazi organizations, but as time passed, her purpose evolved. Someday, she reasoned, the Nazis would be brought to justice, and the prosecutors would need hard evidence of their misdeeds.