The Woman Who Heard Color (21 page)

“He’s going to restore Germany’s military strength,” an old man with gray whiskers said to another in a quiet voice.

“His Brownshirts are nothing but bullies,” his companion replied. “They were over there at my neighbors’ last night throwing rocks at the window.”

“Jews?” the other man queried in an even lower voice. “Maybe they deserve it. Those Jews are the cause of this whole mess.”

Hanna shivered, and then the man sitting next to her, obviously also eavesdropping on the conversation, interjected, “Hitler’s Brownshirts?” The man had but one good leg, the other a stump, and Hanna guessed he was a war veteran. “Bullies and thugs, they’ve been called, but maybe that’s what it will take. I’m tired of being pushed around. Let’s do a little pushing of our own.”

She could hardly reconcile this Adolf Hitler with the timid artist who had come to the gallery years ago. She had seen him once after that, showing his paintings on Leopoldstrasse near the Academy of Fine Arts. Artists often displayed their paintings along the street, hoping to attract customers who thought they were enrolled at the art school and might be seduced into believing they could discover a student before he made a name for himself. Some shoppers were simply looking for a pretty picture.

Hanna had stopped for a moment to look. He was helping a customer, and she didn’t think he noticed her. He was showing his architectural pieces, which, Hanna remembered from his visit to the Fleischmann Gallery, were probably his most appealing work. They were nicely done, but she saw nothing innovative or original. She hoped he was doing well, as she did not wish any of the young artists the fate that would generally be theirs. She sincerely hoped he might find a way to use his talent.

Then he was gone. As were all the young artists. All the young men. The Great War had begun.

She might have forgotten him, but then some years after the war, as Germany struggled to find itself, as they were falling deeper and deeper behind with the reparation payments, she saw his photograph in the newspaper with an article describing an event that took place in Munich on the evening of November 8, 1923.

The article described Adolf Hitler jumping up on a table at the Bürgerbräukeller, a beer hall on the outskirts of Munich, where Bavarian government officials were meeting with a group of businessmen. He’d fired off two shots in the air and shouted, “The revolution has begun!”

He actually got the leaders into a meeting of sorts and threatened them with the supposed army he had ready to storm the place. The uprising was put down, though several of Hitler’s followers were killed. Hitler went into hiding in Munich and was apprehended within days. His unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the government was almost laughable.

This “Beer Hall Putsch” was attributed to a party called the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Adolf Hitler, the leader, was described as a veteran of the Great War.

He received a short prison sentence and then again he seemed to disappear. But now he was back.

 

 

H
anna attempted to push such thoughts from her mind, the very concerns she knew the men were discussing earlier in the library. Today was her son’s twenty-first birthday, and each year with Willy was another cause for celebration. She glanced over at Helene and could see a quiet sadness within her as she watched the children. Hanna knew she was thinking of the boy who had not lived to celebrate such an occasion. They seldom spoke of Little Jakob, and Hanna would never put into words what both women knew—that she would never lose her own son to the devastation of war. He would always be a child.

“Could we possibly elect this man as our next president?” Hanna asked one evening as she and Moses walked home from seeing a film. One couldn’t venture down a street in Munich without passing political posters plastered on every building and wall endorsing the Nazi candidate. Trucks with loudspeakers motored through the city, blasting his praise, sending off a spark of sharp color. Even in the movie theater that evening, a short film was shown before the feature—Adolf Hitler’s face larger than life, enormous flags with swastikas flying against a cloudless sky.

“No, never,” Moses replied. “The people hold much respect for President von Hindenburg. They look up to him as a war hero, defender of the German people.”

“But Hitler is playing to the same sense of patriotism and nationalism,” Hanna said, “representing himself as a war hero, too.” When he began his campaign, the opposition brought up the fact that he wasn’t even a German citizen. The party immediately responded by calling up his war record, his service in the German Army. In a skillfully orchestrated political maneuver, Hitler was named attaché of the legation of Brunswick in Berlin, and was thus granted citizenship.

“Frederick is convinced that he’ll make things better for the farmers,” Hanna told her husband, “assure them that food prices allow a decent living, that they aren’t overtaxed.” She had recently returned with the children from a visit to the farm that her older brother had inherited after her father died. “The Hinkels have been forced to sell. The farm has been in the family for generations. Frederick is frightened the family will lose everything. And now all this propaganda . . .” Hanna motioned as they passed a line of posters with Hitler’s face staring out at them with determination. “I’m just frightened,” she said. “So many are being taken in by his promises. Leni among them. She’s concerned if things don’t improve they’ll be moving in with us again.”

“God protect us from that,” Moses said with a laugh. Moses loved children but the thought of Leni’s brood moving in again was enough to have him talk about setting up a cot at the gallery.

“I’m just frightened that this Adolf Hitler will be our next president.”

“No,” Moses told her emphatically. “President von Hindenburg will be reelected.”

Her husband had a way of putting her at ease, yet Hanna feared the leader of the Nazi Party had enough support that he could actually win the election. “I hope you are correct.”

“Now, tell me, my dear, when have I not been correct?” he said with a gentle tease in his voice as he wrapped his arm around her protectively.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

 

“Despite the Nazis’ efforts, neither candidate attained the required absolute majority,” Isabella said. “In the runoff election, voters chose to retain President von Hindenburg.”

“Then he turned around and appointed Hitler Chancellor,” Lauren added.

“Yes,” Isabella replied. “I’m afraid he did. By then the Nazi Party was the most powerful in the Reichstag. Some said the appointment was an attempt to keep the Nazis under control, to bring them into the fold, to keep an eye on them.” Then, surprising Lauren, she laughed. “Others said the old man was senile.”

“How old was he?”

“Oh, let’s see . . .” Isabella threw the younger woman a selfmocking, squinty-eyed look, “Much older than I. He was eightysix, but very tired. He’d been president for eight years, through the worst times in Germany’s history.”

But, the very worst, Lauren knew, the most horrendous years, were yet to come.

“Shortly after this,” Isabella said, “the Reichstag, the Parliament building in Berlin, was set afire and gutted. The Communists were blamed, a Dutch man of limited mental capacity tried and convicted.” She glanced at the picture of herself and her brother, Willy, under the broken glass. “All of this played out in the public eye, the photos of the poor man in the newspaper, helpless, unable to understand the charges against him. Everyone knew it was really the Nazis. Mother never talked about it, but can you imagine how frightened she must have been at that? To see this mentally challenged man put on trial and then convicted?”

“She was afraid for Willy,” Lauren said.

“Yes, of course, and she was married to a wealthy, successful Jewish businessman. That was about the worst thing you could be at the time. A national boycott of Jewish businesses was proclaimed less than three months after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor. My father decided to close the gallery. By then, most of the business was conducted during private appointments with regular clients. Few sales were made to customers who walked in unexpectedly, and it had been months since they’d had an exhibition.”

“A terrible environment in which to run a business,” Lauren said, aware of how much life had changed for so many.

“If you were a Jew,” Isabella replied.

Lauren thought of what Mrs. Fletcher’s parents must have been going through at the time, and then she thought of her own grandparents, her father’s mother and father. Felix Rosenthal was a physician in Leipzig, Germany. A respected doctor. The Rosenthal family history had come to Lauren mostly through her mother, not her father, and much she’d filled in by studying history itself.

She was aware that after Hitler was appointed Chancellor, Dr. Rosenthal continued to treat his patients, both Jews and non-Jews, though Lauren had learned that state-supported health insurance refused to reimburse Jewish doctors. She imagined her grandfather treated many without pay. He stayed in Germany, feeling an obligation to those he cared for.

“In ways, it came about gradually,” Isabella went on, “or that’s what many claim. As though it just sneaked up on them, this government takeover of virtually every aspect of German life. Yet, after Hitler was appointed Chancellor, in those first few months the changes were substantial. The Reichstag fire was followed by the rescinding of civil liberties; the Enabling Act was passed.” She paused for a moment and cleared her throat. “That was basically the end of the Republic. Hitler seized power. On a temporary basis, of course, to protect the people from this Communist revolution. Oh, Communists were considered nearly as low as Jews. An equal threat to the people of Germany. According to some, there was no difference.”

Mrs. Fletcher might have been reciting facts from a history book, yet Lauren knew how deeply these events had touched Isabella’s family. And Lauren’s family, too.

“By the summer of 1933 all political parties,” the woman explained, “except for the Nazis, were banned. The government continued to go after the Jews. Again, to protect the people.” She ran her fingers along the side of her neck, and then clasped her hands together in her lap. “Government positions were available only to Aryans. Jewish professors were dismissed from the universities. Books were burned and cultural chambers were set up to control the arts—instruments of propaganda. Oh, yes, the Nazis were especially skilled at that. I’m not even sure that President von Hindenburg knew what was going on.” Isabella’s body stiffened as she leaned back in the large winged chair. “A concentration camp was set up outside of Munich. A place to send political foes of the German government. And who could object to that?” She breathed deeply and exhaled. “This government that promised to restore Germany to its proper place in the world.” Her tone was hard and cold. She picked up her napkin and wiped a spot of moisture that had formed at the corner of her mouth.

The room seemed very still and quiet. Now and then, during their conversation, Lauren had heard a low whir or hum that she guessed might be the air-conditioning. No street sounds climbed up to penetrate the stone walls or sealed windows.

“Then, in the summer of 1934,” Isabella said after several moments, “President Paul von Hindenburg passed. Hitler declared himself Führer. That was the official end of the German Republic, though the Germans were by then living under a dictatorship anyway.”

“The Republic,” Lauren said quietly, “that was so supportive of the type of art your parents sold in the gallery?”

“Yes,” Isabella replied.

Lauren knew that in 1935, the Nazi reign now fully under way, Hitler in charge, Felix Rosenthal sent his wife, Miriam, and his two-year-old daughter, Mimi, to London to stay with Miriam’s sister and her family. He was to join them later. At the time Miriam was one month pregnant with their son. Lauren’s father, Felix Rosenthal II, was born in London in 1936. He would never know his father.

“Hitler was quite adept,” Isabella said, breaking into Lauren’s thoughts, “at removing any obstacle that might stand in the way of his ultimate plan. In a night of murder, sometimes called the Night of Long Knives, often the Blood Purge of 1934, he did away with a number of fellow Nazis, those who might challenge his authority or impede his rise to even greater power. It’s all in the history books.” Waving toward the bookcase, her hand rested for a moment in midair before dropping to the arm of her chair. “I wasn’t yet six when Hitler became Chancellor. The summer President von Hindenburg passed away, I celebrated my seventh birthday. We had such a lovely life in Munich. I had no idea what was going on. Much of what was happening then I learned later.” Her voice was soft, almost a whisper. “Much later.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

 

One afternoon Hanna and Leni took the children on an outing. Leni, her husband, and children had just moved into a new, larger apartment. “Things are improving. Life is much better,” she told Hanna.

They had bundled up the children to take them out for some fresh air. It had been a long winter and they had all been confined by the weather. But today the sun was out, the sky an exquisitesounding blue, and Willy had been begging to see the mechanical jousting knights and dancing coopers in the clock tower. Leni and Hanna watched the children as they giggled and pranced in the square to the tune of the chimes. Despite the lovely, cloudless sky, a substantial chill hung in the air, and little puffs of breath escaped from their mouths as they hopped and skipped joyfully to the music. Observing them, Hanna felt a shiver come over her, and she thought how great a contrast this scene of happy children was to the emotions that were roiling inside her.