Red Orchestra (53 page)

T
HIS BOOK BENEFITED FROM THE GENEROSITY OF MANY PEOPLE.
I begin with special thanks to my former students from Germany. Nicola Liebert tutored me in German, introduced me to Rilke, and taught me much about German history and culture. Kirsten Grieshaber did literary battle with the East German edition of Greta Kuckhoff's memoirs, and has offered me frequent encouragement along the way. Deborah Stein-born has been of immense help, offering the gifts of a close reading, a haven in Hamburg, and stolen hours with little Charlotte to cheer me on.

Others have provided timely assistance with translations. Heidi Philipsen read and assessed the novels of Adam Kuckhoff. Margit Rustow shared her recollections of the period and deciphered letters in vexing old German script. Amelie Wilmanns provided wonderfully helpful research assistance in Berlin. Bernard Pötter and his family welcomed us to Kreuzberg and befriended us in countless ways. I owe much to Erika Hall, along with her peerless mother and daughter. Erika's wartime memories informed my feel for daily life in Nazi Germany, and she also offered close readings of crucial literary works and reviewed translations.

Stefan Roloff belongs in a category by himself. I hope his book,
Rote Kapelle,
finds the audience it deserves in the United States. His companion documentary,
The Red Orchestra,
brings the resistance experience to life as no other medium can. I look forward to his next book and documentary
project on Katja Casella Meirowsky and the theme of survivors. Stefan has been fearless in challenging outdated notions and flawed conventions, and infinitely generous in providing me with his expert analysis, research materials, and friendship. His mother, Inge Roloff, offered me a welcome refuge in Zehlendorf along with her musical artistry and many wise insights. I only wish I could have met Helmut Roloff as well.

Professor Volker Berghahn was uncommonly gracious in reading an early draft of the manuscript and shedding light on the vagaries of German history in our conversations. I appreciate Peter Hoffman's seminal scholarship and the time he took to discuss it with me. Hans Coppi shared his encyclopedic knowledge of the Rote Kapelle, and guided me through the formidable archives at the Gedenkstätte Deutscher Wider-stand in Berlin. I also benefited from Johannes Tuchel's excellent scholarship and manifold insights. Rainer von Harnack offered many personal recollections of his extraordinary relation, Falk Harnack, as well as a priceless trove of family papers. I was inspired by a talk by Hartmut Schulze-Boysen some years ago, and admire his courage and his constancy to his brother's legacy.

It was humbling to interview the children of members of the Rote Kapelle, most of whom suffered the loss of one or both parents. Their sacrifices were exacted without their consent, but their parents surely acted out of love for them. Saskia von Brockdorff and Karin Graudenz were among those who kindly received me and answered my questions.

I am grateful beyond words for the chance to meet Katja Meirowsky, the last known survivor of the Rote Kapelle, who was located by Stefan Roloff. She is a true force of nature and a formidable painter. I hope that this book can contribute to a major revival of interest in her story and her art.

These individuals have informed my opinions and corrected many of my errors, but they cannot be held responsible for the mistakes that remain. These must be considered my own.

I have been very fortunate in my friends. Cornelia Bessie and her late husband Michael offered me much-needed advice and support from the beginning. Cornelia has been a touchstone for me regarding both the craft of writing and the mysteries of Germany. I was also grateful for
the encouragement of my Columbia colleagues Seymour Topping and Kenneth Jackson. The work of Aryeh Neier sparked many of the questions explored in this book. Many other friends, including Jane Owen, Marge Sorensen, and Kevin O'Kane, have helped to keep my faith alive through their interest.

I offer my sincere thanks to representatives of the German consulate in New York, who have been helpful beyond the call of duty, and exemplary in every regard. I also thank my colleagues in the human rights community, including Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protect Journalists. This book was born of a human rights perspective, and they helped me conceive a new framework for these historical events.

Much of this book is based on documentation that has only begun to come to light. My subject matter will be affected by material that will emerge at a later date. These are hazards of the profession, and I only hope that those who come after will recognize my good-faith effort in making sense of this complicated tale with the material I could find.

I thank my agent, Heather Schroder at ICM, and editor Kate Medina at Random House, who believed in this book from the start. Random House's Jonathan Jao improved the manuscript with his excellent notes.

This book would not have been possible without the research compiled by the Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, a remarkable institution. I hope more Americans will explore it when they visit Berlin. The Butler Library at Columbia and the New York Public Library also offered valuable materials. The McCloy Fellowship fueled my research at a crucial juncture, and the Guggenheim Fellowship supported a long and particularly thorny passage of the work. I offer my sincere thanks to the foundations, founders, and staff.

I am grateful to my family for living with me and this project over these many years. My parents—together with the countless uncles and aunts, cousins and in-laws who lived through the period—gave me a nearly insatiable interest in everything related to World War II. David and Julia have been good sports, exploring the haunts of Berlin and tolerating my conversion of the family room into a German resistance archive.

My greatest thanks go to George Black. I was immeasurably fortunate
to profit from his counsel as a writer and his acumen as an editor throughout this arduous process. His assistance with translations has been indispensable. He has generously served as sounding board, critic, and companion every step of the way, from the Görlitzer Bahnhof to our own private Erwin Geschonnek film festival. Whatever is good in this book owes a large debt to him.

1
. Greta Kuckhoff,
Vom Rosenkranz zur Roten Kapelle,
p. 25.

2
. Ibid., p. 37.

3
. Ibid., p. 23.

4
. V. R. Berghahn,
Modern Germany,
p. 71.

5
. Otto Friedrich,
Before the Deluge,
p. 52.

6
. Germany had stabilized its currency the previous year. Greta's 500 marks were now worth about US $110.

7
. Kuckhoff,
Vom Rosenkranz zur Roten Kapelle,
p. 45.

8
. Shareen Brysac,
Resisting Hitler,
p. 51.

9
. Kuckhoff,
Vom Rosenkranz zur Roten Kapelle,
p. 83.

10
. Ibid., p. 88.

11
. Hans Coppi, Jürgen Danyel, and Johannes Tuchel, eds.,
Die Rote Kapelle im Widerstand,
p. 97.

1
. Greta Kuckhoff,
Vom Rosenkranz zur Roten Kapelle,
pp. 96, 93.

2
. Ibid., p. 94.

3
. Germans were deeply resentful of the French demands, but the French had not forgotten the punitive reparations Germany had exacted after the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, nor the devastation of the recent war.

4
. Otto Friedrich,
Before the Deluge,
p. 174.

5
. Ibid., p. 301.

6
. Kuckhoff,
Vom Rosenkranz zur Roten Kapelle,
p. 98.

7
. Ibid., p. 99.

8
. Jessner was usually mentioned in the same breath as his principal rivals: Max Reinhardt, the genius behind the Deutsches Theater, and Erwin Piscator, who dominated Berlin's Volksbühne popular theater, bringing avant-garde theater to
factory workers and slum dwellers. Between them, these three giants revolutionized Western theater.

9
. The position of dramaturge originated in eighteenth-century Germany, and only gained currency in U.S. theaters in the late twentieth century.

10
. Kuckhoff,
Vom Rosenkranz zur Roten Kapelle,
p. 100.

11
. Adam Kuckhoff, “Arbeiter und film,” from
Fröhlich Bestehn,
p. 106.

12
. Friedrich Schiller,
Wilhelm Tell,
Act II, Scene ii.

13
. David Eggenberger,
An Encyclopedia of Battles,
pp. 7–8.

14
. Otto Rudolf,
Memoirs,
Cologne Zentralarchiv für Kriegstheater.

15
. Dieter Gòtze, online article “Ein Idealist der Linken: Adam Kuckhoff.”

16
. Details on Kuckhoff's editorship of
Die Tat from
on
www.luise-berlin.de
, and table of contents of journal.

17
. It later turned out that Diederichs was in the final months of a fatal illness.

18
. Note: This is the chronology provided by Regina Griebel, Marlies Coburger, and Heinrich Scheel in
Erfasst?,
which coincides with the dates in Greta Kuckhoff's
Vum Rosenkranz zur Rotin Kapelle.
Other sources place Adam at the theater a year later.

19
. Tony Meech, “Brecht's Early Plays,”
Cambridge Companion to Brecht,
p. 49.

20
. Ilse Brauer and Werner Kayser,
Günther Weisenborn,
p. 68; “Günther Weisen-born,” Viktoria Hertling,
Dictionary of Literary Biography.

21
. See Meech,
Cambridge Companion to Brecht,
p. xix. Early editions of the play included credit for Weisenborn's contribution, sometimes as coauthor, sometimes as dramaturge. Few modern editions of the play acknowledge Weisenborn's contribution; Brecht was known for rallying collaborators to his projects, then claiming sole authorship of the results. See the introduction to
The Mother
by Bertolt Brecht, translated by Lee Baxandall. Weisenborn's earlier version had been coauthored by Volksbühne dramaturge Günther Starki. Other collaborators on the Brecht project were composer Hanns Eisler and director Slatan Dudow.

22
. Martin Esslin,
Brecht: The Man and His Work,
p. 48.

23
. Neher missed the opening night in order to tend her husband on his deathbed, but she was cast in the film version and Brecht used her picture on the cover of the published work.

24
. The play is also known as
Luise Millerin.
It was the basis for the Verdi opera of the same title.

25
. Curt Trepte and Jutta Wardestzky,
Hans Otto.
See illustration following p. 80.

26
. Ibid., p. 20.

27
. Ibid., p. 19.

28
. Ibid., following p. 80.

29
. Hans Otto, reproduced in ibid., insert following p. 88.

30
. In 1932 the Soviet Communist Party decreed that “Socialist Realism” would now be the only acceptable aesthetic. Soviet theater became literalistic and pedantic, and the Communist modernists in Berlin found themselves in disgrace. Avant-garde dramatists such as Brecht had come to Communism as a form of rebellion, only to be met by Soviet philistines demanding their own brand of orthodoxy. This paradox would continue to dog Communist artists throughout the twentieth century.

31
. Greta Kuckhoff,
Adam Kuckhoff zum Gedenken,
p. 11.

32
. Kuckhoff,
Vom Rosenkranz zur Rote Kapelle,
p. 102.

1
. Mildred Fish to mother, October 18, 1930, Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand (hereafter cited as GDW) archive.

2
. Shareen Brysac,
Resisting Hitler,
pp. 82–87.

3
. Mildred Fish to mother, October 18, 1930, GDW archive. That night Mildred saw a play called
The Caucasian Chalk Circle
by the young consumptive poet who wrote under the name Klabund. He had died an early death two years before. His wife, Carola Neher, missed playing her lead role in the original cast of
Threepenny Opera
to be at his deathbed. Klabund's play was first produced in 1925 by Max Reinhardt at the Deutsches Theater, with Brecht serving as dramaturge, and Brecht wrote his own version after the war.

4
. Mildred Fish to mother, November 27, 1930, GDW archive. One of the lecturers was the editor of
The Nation
magazine, visiting from New York, who updated Mildred on the unemployment crisis in the United States. See Brysac,
Resisting Hitler,
p. 96.

5
. Brysac,
Resisting Hitler,
p. 96.

6
. Germany's total was 562,612, compared to only 51,000 in all of France and 46,000 in England. Gordon A. Craig, “Berlin, the Hauptstadt,”
Foreign Affairs,
July/August 1998, p. 164.

7
. David Clay Large,
Berlin,
p. 25.

8
. Ibid., p. 26.

9
. Over the 1920s Germany published some 7,000 periodicals, over 4,000 daily and weekly newspapers, and 30,000 book titles a year. Oron J. Hale,
The Captive Press in the Third Reich,
pp. 1, 143.

10
. Ibid., p. 4.

11
. Ibid., p. 3.

12
. Now the Polish cities of Cztuchów and Walcz.

13
. John Sieg,
Einer von Millionen Spricht,
p. 8.

14
. A decade later Halfeld was known as a Nazi writer, and published screeds of anti-Semitic prose.

15
. Sieg,
Einer von Millionen Spricht,
p. 20.

16
. Ibid., insert following p. 64.

17
.
Protokoll des Genossen Hermann Grosse,
September 29, 1967, GDW archive.

18
. “Nebel” means “fog.”

19
. Heinrich Scheel, introduction to Sieg,
Einer von Millionen Spricht,
p. 9.

20
. In January 1924, the month of Lenin's death, Stalin asked to meet privately with German Communist representatives in Moscow, ferreting out information about the German party structure and the best means to control it. Alan Bullock,
Hitler and Stalin,
quoting Ruth Fischer, p. 194.

21
. Ibid., p. 206.

22
. Ibid., p. 426.

1
. Greta Kuckhoff,
Vom Rosenkranz zur Rote Kapelle,
p. 105.

2
. Ibid.

3
. Leuppi's “Untitled,” 1933.

4. Kuckhoff,
Vom Rosenkrantz zur Rote Kapelle,
p. 105.

5
. Ibid., p. 114.

6
. The Social Democrats had moved their government temporarily to the provincial city of Weimar after World War I, seeking to avoid Berlin's civil unrest.

7
. Mildred Fish to mother, October 29, 1931, GDW archive.

8
. Mildred Fish to mother, December 29, 1928, GDW archive.

9
. Mildred Fish to mother, February 1, 1930, GDW archive.

10
. Mildred Fish to mother, October 18, 1930, GDW archive.

11
. Alexandra Richie,
Faust's Metropolis,
p. 349. The trajectory of Berlin's political satire was reflected in the career of composer Friedrich Holländer. In 1926 he could afford to mock the political system by having a comic feminist proclaim: “Throw all the men out of the Reichstag … they're blinded by their vanity… They're flushing the whole country down the toilet.” In 1931, riding on the success of his songs for Marlene Dietrich, Holländer opened a nightclub called the Tingeltangel. By this time much of the repertory was devoted to attacking the Nazis. One ditty about Hitler included the refrain: “Liar! Liar! Liar! Liar!” Holländer fled the country in 1933. See
http://www.cbs.com/specials/rise_of_evil/cast/hollander.shtml
.

12
. Peter Fritzche,
Germans into Nazis,
p. 150.

13
. Ibid., p. 133.

14
. Ibid., p. 189.

15
. Detlef Mühlberger,
The Social Bases of Nazism, 1919–1933(2003),
p. 46. See also Fritzche,
Germans into Nazis,
p. 188.

16
. Fritzche,
Germans into Nazis,
p. 157.

17
. Russel Lemmons,
Goebbels and Der Angriff,
p. 36.

18
. William Shirer,
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,
pp. 180–182.

19
. This can be clearly observed in two pre-1933 Nazi campaign posters. A 1932 election poster shows a large cross with a swastika at the center, publicizing the Nazi “martyrs” who have fallen in street battles. Another pre-1933 poster shows an angelic figure resembling St. George poised beside a Nazi, thrusting a sword into a dragon labeled with the abbreviations of the Communist and the Social Demo cratic parties. See
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/posters1.htm
.

20
. The manuscript had languished for eight years before it was finally released in 1929—by Eher Verlag, the Nazi publishing house.

21
. Lemmons,
Goebbels and Der Angriff
p. 37.

22
. The term, borrowed from electrical engineering, referred to the process of wiring a generator to make a connected motor run at the same speed.

23
. Jan-Christopher Horak, “Prometheus Film Collective.”

24
. Goebbels Diary, October 10, 1939. Quoted in Michael H. Kater, “Jazz in the Third Reich,”
American Historical Review
94, no. 1, February 1989, p. 31.

1
. Quoted in Shareen Brysac,
Resisting Hitler,
p. 110.

2
. Jonathan Wright,
Gustav Stresemann: Weimar's Greatest Statesman,
p. 211.

3
. Regina Griebel, Marlies Coburger, and Heinrich Scheel,
Erfasst?,
p. 72.

4
. Brysac,
Resisting Hitler,
p. 107.

5
. Ibid., pp. 107–119.

6
. Ibid., p. 110. See also Wolfgang Schivelbusch,
The Culture of Defeat,
p. 307. The
new director, Friedrich Schönemann, called Walt Whitman, a favorite poet of Mildred's, one of the northern “loser intellectuals” because he mourned the human cost of the Civil War.

7
. Brysac,
Resisting Hitler,
pp. 110–111.

8
. Ibid., p. 117; Griebel, Coburger, and Scheel,
Erfasst?,
p. 60.

9
. Named after an early practitioner, Grigori Potemkin, a courtier of Catherine the Great.

10
. Brysac,
Resisting Hitler,
p. 117.

11
. Ibid., p. 123.

12
. Martin Kitchen,
Cambridge Illustrated History of Germany,
p. 253.

13
. Richard Evans,
The Coming of the Third Reich,
p. 317.

14
. Roderick Stackelberg et al.,
The Nazi Germany Sourcebook: An Anthology of Texts,
pp. 130–132.

15
. The question of responsibility is still debated.