Two Brothers

A Holiday in Munich 1937

FRIEDA BLAMED HERSELF. It had been she who had persuaded Wolfgang to leave the apartment for the first time in a month and go for a little walk. The result had been a nasty encounter with a Hitler Youth squad. He had limped back in agony and it was clear that whatever tiny improvements he had been making in his health and self-confidence had been set back tenfold.

‘The little bastard just pushed me out of the way,’ Wolfgang explained, his voice hovering between tears of anger and tears of despair. ‘It was at the market. They were marching right through the middle, stamping and singing. What else do they ever do except stamp and bloody sing? I just couldn’t get out of the way in time. I’d dropped some coins and I needed them. I was trying to pick them up. They could have gone round me but of course they didn’t. The front kid just gave me a kick and I went rolling.’

Frieda was probing gently at his ribs. ‘Well, it’s either very bruised or you’ve cracked one again,’ she said, trying to speak as if this was just a medical matter like any other, trying not to dwell on the fact that her husband had been sent sprawling in the gutter by a squad of adolescents.

The lift outside clanked. Paulus was home from school.

‘Post!’ he said. ‘One from Australia, one from Britain.’

‘Keep the stamps, don’t forget,’ Frieda said. ‘The little Leibovitz boy absolutely loves them. He steams them off so beautifully — you should see his collection. He’s so proud of it.’

‘Yeah.’ Wolfgang smiled. ‘Little Jewish kids certainly have the best stamp collections. All the countries that don’t want any Jews. Plenty of those.’

Paulus was already reading the letters.

‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘It’s from Government House in Darwin, Australia. The Northern Territory is definitely interested in doctors.’

‘Well, they do need people down there. Why shouldn’t it be us?’ Frieda said as she unbuttoned Wolfgang’s shirt and pulled the tails from his trousers. ‘You’ve heard of Steinberg?’

‘Yes, of course, Mum,’ Paulus said. ‘The Freeland League; he wants to buy a bit of the Kimberly and establish a colony of us. Believe me, there isn’t a rat hole I’m not looking into.’

‘Please don’t call it that, Pauly.’

Frieda studied Wolfgang’s chest and couldn’t help making a little noise of concern. There were black bruises down one side of his white bony torso.

‘Anyway,’ Paulus went on, ‘the point is they need working men as well as professionals. Maybe I’ll end up shearing sheep and studying for the Australian Bar at night.’

‘Ow!’ Wolfgang gasped as Frieda applied a bandage.

His chest was so skinny and hollow and the flesh so sensitive that it was impossible to tie the bandage tightly enough for it to stay on.

‘This one from England looks interesting too,’ Paulus said. ‘From the Central British Fund for German Jewry. They’re happy to help us with visa applications but first we have to find people over there who’ll put us up. I need a list, Mum. A list of every doctor you’ve ever been in contact with in the United Kingdom, in the States, France, Canada, everywhere. You’ve got to think back over all your years at the clinic. You went to international conferences back in the twenties. Forums on public health. Who did you meet? I don’t care how briefly. I want their names, and especially any correspondence. We need somebody to focus on us specifically, that’s the only way to do it now. Too many people are scrabbling for an exit. We have to find a champion, someone who’ll take up our case. I need a list, Mum.’

‘I know. I know,’ Frieda said.

‘You say that but you have to focus on it, Mum. We can’t even apply for any foreign-entry visa unless we can prove that someone will take us in when we get there.’

‘I have a lot to do, Pauly! I have patients.’

‘There’s plenty of sick kids in Britain and Australia that you can worry about.’

‘Pauly. Those kids are not excluded from society. My patients have no one else. They need me.’

‘We need you, Mum. We have to find someone who’ll help us look for a place. We don’t want much. Ottsy can stay here till we’re established and Pops and Grandma won’t leave so it’s just three of us. You’re a doctor, Mum! That’s a huge plus. I’m young and fit and in a year I’ll have graduated school, and I’m going to get top marks if it kills me. We have a lot to offer…’

Paulus’s voice trailed away. As it so often did at this point in their desperate discussions. There was an elephant in the room. A poor half-crippled elephant. All three of them knew that Wolfgang’s chances of convincing anyone that he could fulfil a ‘useful occupation’ had been slim enough when he was healthy but they were less than zero now.

‘Don’t worry,’ Wolfgang said, laughing and trying to cover his son’s embarrassment. ‘I’m sure they have dishes that need washing. That’s what most musicians do for a living anyway.’

‘Yeah, Dad. That’s right,’ Paulus said. ‘We’ll be OK.’

‘And in the meantime,’ Wolfgang announced with exaggerated cheeriness, ‘while you’re trying to get us a bolt hole and Mum’s attempting single-handedly to ensure the health of every Jewish child in Berlin, I’m going on holiday!’

Whatever Frieda might have been expecting her husband to say, it certainly hadn’t been that.

‘A holiday? Wolf, kindly explain.’

‘Just a short one. A holiday for the soul.’

‘Wolf,’ Frieda said, smiling but with a touch of impatience, ‘I don’t really have time for games. What holiday? Where are you planning on going?’

‘To the ends of the earth and to the edge of the conscious.’

‘Wolf! I don’t have time for this!’

‘Into the minds of genius and to the furthest corners of my soul.’

He was almost laughing now.

‘Right, that’s it!’ Frieda said. ‘I’m not listening any more. Sorry, but I have to read up on rickets and juvenile malnutrition.’

‘All right! All right!’ Wolfgang said, producing a newspaper from his pocket and showing it to Frieda. ‘I’m going to Munich to look at this. The Entartete Kunst — the Exhibition of Degenerate Art. They’re actually mounting an exhibition of art they want people to hate. It’s incredible. Every artist I ever loved — Kirchner, Beckmann, Grosz of course. Amazing names: Matisse, Picasso, look, Van Gogh! Can you believe it! All in one exhibition! And for free. All I need to find is the train fare to Munich.’

Frieda took the newspaper and looked over the article.

‘I always, always think,’ she said with a sigh, ‘that they can’t surprise me any more.’

‘But they just keep on doing it, don’t they?’ Wolfgang replied almost cheerfully now. ‘And for once, gawd bless ’em for it! I mean, this really is incredible. They’ve raided every museum and gallery in Germany. They’re that confident in their Philistine vision that they’re putting the best art on the planet on display on the presumption that people will laugh at it.’

‘Incredible,’ Frieda said, looking at the list and shaking her head. ‘No rhyme nor reason, everybody in together. It says here it’s all Jewish Bolshevist but most of these artists aren’t even Jewish, or Communist for that matter.’

‘Ah, but read on, it turns out the Leader has decided that it’s possible to paint like a Jew even if you aren’t one. Apparently it was our influence that created decadent art. I’d say we should be proud, only Pauly would leap down my throat. Anyway, Jew, Commie, Cubist or Expressionist, I want to see that bloody exhibition! So thank you, Herr Goebbels, for organizing that I may be suitably’ — he quoted from the article — ‘revolted by the perverse Jewish spirit which once penetrated German Culture.’

‘Wolf,’ Frieda said with a look of concern. ‘Do you really think it’s wise? If they suspect you’re not there to hate but to admire, and find out you’re a Jew?’

‘Frieda,’ Wolfgang assured her with absolute confidence, ‘I don’t think I’m going to be the only one.’ Wolfgang was right.

He travelled from Berlin to Munich the following week on the night train, squeezed into a third-class carriage amongst a group of noisy soldiers who were being moved south to be deployed on the Austrian border.

During the night, bouncing along on the hard wooden bench, every jolt shooting agonizing pains through his chest, Wolfgang found his mind dwelling on memories of Katharina. She had made this very same train journey from Berlin to Munich in order to see Brecht’s first play. Rattling through the darkness in search of spiritual balm, just as he was doing. That had been fifteen years ago and in a different country.

Arriving early in the morning, Wolfgang freshened up at the station lavatory, treated himself to one cup of coffee from the café and began making his way to the exhibition. This was being held in what had previously been the Institute of Archaeology, but the Nazis had closed that. They had no need of it. Clearly, having established their own thousand-year civilization, they saw no need to study any previous ones.

Wolfgang arrived very early at the venue, but it was fortunate for him that he did, for as he had predicted the exhibition was proving an enormous hit. Many thousands of people each day were struggling to have the chance to be properly revolted by decadent art, and even though it was scarcely seven a.m. the queue already snaked all round the building. Looking at the people waiting, Wolfgang could hardly believe that the Nazis could not see what was so self-evident to him. That almost without exception the people waiting patiently had come not to be outraged but to admire. There were no Brownshirts in the queue whatsoever, no party badges or police. Not a single one. The Exhibition of Degenerate Art was probably the only public event in all Germany that summer in which not a single uniform was to be seen amongst the clientele. Wolfgang thought that if the Gestapo wanted to make a good haul of the remaining free spirits hiding in Munich in 1937, they had only to attend their own propaganda exhibition and arrest everyone.

The exhibition was on the second floor of the building and it could only be reached via a small back staircase, up which it was really only possible to shuffle in single file. Wolfgang intimated from this that the organizers had not expected a big turnout. It was obvious that the exhibition had been mounted simply that it might be reported. So that the principle that there was such a thing as Jew-inspired ‘degenerate art’ would be established. That smug burghers might be able to sneer at an example or two offered up for ridicule each day in the newspapers.

The exhibits on display had been mounted in a deliberately alienating manner, crowded together, sometimes skewed, tucked into corners and placed in unsuitable settings for their scale. The place was also hot and the crowd thick, but Wolfgang determined to appreciate every item. To mentally isolate himself within the throng, focusing with all his might on each piece, allowing people to push past as he obstinately took his time.

Everywhere the organizers had posted little slogans in an effort to remind the patrons to make sure they continued to hate.

Madness becomes method!

The German Peasant through the eyes of the Jew!

Cretins and whores, the ideal of the Degenerate.

Nature through sick minds!

Wolfgang revelled in it all. Wallowed in it. Staying until the very last moment, leaving only as the doors were being locked behind him.

This was his holiday. A trip around the world and across the universe of the imagination in a single day.

Before he took his leave.

Because Wolfgang had a plan. A plan which he explained to Frieda in the last note he ever left her. On the kitchen table they had shared together all their adult lives.

He wrote it on the train back to Berlin. My dearest, darlingest, beloved Freddy, it began.

Please don’t be angry with me. You must know that what I am doing is right.

You must also know that I have spent my last full day on earth in the company of some of the greatest spirits that ever lived. I would have preferred to have spent it with you, of course. But I couldn’t. You would have guessed — you always do — and would have tried to stop me.

Fred. You know I have to leave you.

You DO know that.

There is no possibility in all the world of any country agreeing to take me as a refugee. I am broken and there’s an end to it. If you insist on trying to take me, as I know you will, you will never leave this hell, and if you stay I do believe the end will be soon and it will be terrible.

You must get out and so must Paulus. Ottsy, too, I hope with all my heart. But you cannot if I am with you.

And so I must leave Germany by another route.

I pass without regret.

Believe that!

Believe it with all your heart or my soul will not rest.

How could I regret? I shared my life with you. No other man living or dead could ever have filled his time on earth more beautifully than that. To have lived life with you.

And with our boys.

But now that time is ended. Seventeen years of love.

And had those years been five or fifty, a minute, an hour or the half a century they should have been, it would have been just the same.

The same amount of time really. Do you see?

For in that time, no matter what length its earthly span, was contained all the love in the world.

Ha ha! There, you see! I can say something without trying to be funny!

And now it’s goodbye.

Freddy.

Once again.

You know I’m right. You know I have to do this.

Here’s hoping those heavenly choirs (in which I’m choosing at this last moment to believe) know some jazz!

Your own

Wolf

The night train arrived back in Berlin shortly before dawn. Wolfgang took a taxi back to Friedrichshain. It was an extravagance but a necessary one as he wanted to be sure to arrive home before Frieda awoke.

Asking the taxi to wait in the street outside their building, he crept slowly up the stairs to their apartment. He could not use the lift for fear of rousing Frieda. He tried hard not to wheeze as his infected lungs laboured with the climb, and almost held his breath as he approached his own front door. Creeping silently into the flat, Wolfgang left his note on the kitchen table and weighed it down with his house keys. Then, pausing only to pick up his trumpet, he made his way back out. He didn’t linger. He didn’t turn to look. He knew that had he done so the temptation to remain, to creep back into bed and kiss his beloved, would be too much.

And he had a taxi waiting.

Outside as the morning sun began slowly to find the first colours of the morning, Wolfgang asked the driver to take him to the old Moltke bridge.

Once in the middle of the bridge, Wolfgang got out and watched the taxi drive away.

Then, taking his trumpet, he stood beside the sandstone parapet above the central arch and played. He played Mack the Knife, that mournful, hypnotic hook that Weill laid down to support Brecht’s sinister lyric about the shark’s teeth and the hidden blade. Back when Berlin was beautiful and crazy.

It took him a number of stops and starts to complete the short tune even once. Wolfgang’s lungs were almost gone and even these few notes presented a challenge.

Then, rolling himself up on to the parapet, his trumpet still in his hand, Wolfgang Stengel threw himself off the Moltke bridge and into the river Spree below.

Later, when Wolfgang’s body was dragged from the river and his death was duly recorded, it was said that he had committed suicide. But Frieda knew that he hadn’t. Nor had any of the hundreds of other Jews who took their own lives that year when the whole world still recognized Hitler as a great and inspiring leader of the German nation.

‘My husband was murdered,’ Frieda said. ‘They were all murdered.’