What I Saw: Reports from Berlin 1920-1933

29. The Tour Around the Victory Column (1921)

The sky has got itself all blued up, as though it were going to get its picture taken, and the March sun is friendly and eager to please. The Victory Column* soars up into the azure, naked and slender, as though sunbathing. Following the law that governs the popularity of all outstanding personalities, it has now, following its accident, attained the level of popularity that only failed assassinations may confer.

For many years it was neglected and lonely. Street photographers with long-legged flamingoesque equipment liked to use it as a free backdrop for the vacant smiles of their human subjects. It was a little knickknack of German history, something that appeared on picture postcards for tourists, a suitable destination for school outings. No grown-ups or locals would dream of going up it.

But now, at lunchtime, two or three hundred Berliners stand around the Victory Column, sniffing what’s left of an averted calamity, and politicizing.

I know for a fact that the gentleman in the cape and the broad-brimmed hat, who looks like a giant mushroom that’s sprouted somewhere in the shadiest depths of the Tiergarten, is a private scholar, working on such matters as the crystallization of quartz. For a quarter of a century, he’s had the habit of taking his daily walk on a particular avenue, back and forth, with the regularity of a brass pendulum, and then home again. But today, see! He only walked once up the avenue, and then made straight for the Victory Column. And here he is, listening with interest to the disquisition of a little fellow who’s standing hat in hand and mopping his bald head with a blue-bordered handkerchief, about picric acid.

I don’t know whether picric acid comes into quartz crystallography or not. But the interest taken in it by the quartz expert seems positively boundless.

“Dynamite”—I hear—“is dangerous stuff. You use dynamite to blast tunnels. It’s even more dangerous on account of it’s kept in cardboard boxes.”

“What amazes me is that no one smelled the fuse right away!” observes a lady. “When I’m at home, I can tell if anything’s burning.” The lady sniffs as though some trace of the fuse might still be lingering in the air. All the other women sniff along with her, and duly agree: “Ooh, yes!”

“What’s with this picnic stuff anyway?” a nearby colossus asks me. A pink tinge suffuses his face, as though he were just gazing into an Alpine sunset. His picnic has cheered him up as if it were some mass entertainment.

A nationalist says it must have been a communist. A communist pops up and says that he suspects the nationalists. An argument breaks out, and the whiff of a party-political wrangle stinks up to high heaven.

Meanwhile the Victory Column soars blithely and insouciantly straight up into the air, and is pleased to have been put off-limits to visitors.

And I firmly believe: If I could go up the Victory Column now, I would hear the Almighty laughing at the folly and wickedness of this world, which lives by political parties and dies by picric acid.

Neue Berliner-Zeitung—12-Uhr-Blatt, March 15, 1921

30. A Visit to the Rathenau Museum (1924)

I’m sorry to say that the Rathenau* Museum is not open to the general public. To inspect the house on Königsallee, you will need a pass from the Keeper of Paintings. Foreign visitors on the whole don’t want to put themselves to the trouble of calling on government premises in Berlin, even though I have to say that the Office of the Keeper of Paintings in the Interior Ministry is more of a humane institution than an official one, an oasis, in fact, of humanity in a desert of bureaucracy. A “Rathenau Society” is “in the process of formation”—in other words: Such a thing will one day come about. Once it exists it may be possible to visit Rathenau’s house without the necessity for a prior detour to the ministry. For the most part it is foreigners who want to see where the man — who died so terribly — lived.

He lived wonderfully. Among great books and rare objects, amid beautiful paintings and colors, with useless, sublime, tiny, fragile, impressive, tenderness-eliciting, powerful, dreamy things; surrounded by evidence of the human past, of human wisdom, human beauty, human strength, and human suffering: by the breath of the eternal human. That is what makes outlandish things seem familiar and foreign things at home here. Even the downright “exotic” doesn’t dazzle, doesn’t overpower, confuse, or startle. Its surprise is gently administered. Distancing things extend an invitation. Intimate things are discreet. A loving hand has instinctively created order here. Following hidden inner laws, a prophetic eye has searched. A brilliantly imaginative pedantry has had its way here, classifying and bringing together. Everything here — the books, the cabinets, the tables — is lovingly and indulgently allowed the secret rhythm of its natural being.

The house is an organic whole, wisely divided into above and below: the upstairs with bedroom and bathroom, guest room, and small private study and the more professional, more official downstairs, where there is also the main study, the desk of the man in public life (the one upstairs is that of the private citizen and writer — I almost said: poet). Everywhere there are the books, the symbols of this life: Tieck, Ariosto, Kant, Chesterfield, Plutarch, Goethe. The list could be extended indefinitely. There is almost no name in the great and unending history of literature that is not represented here. Among significant modern and contemporary authors, very few are missing. Two bookcases are filled with volumes that were sent to Rathenau with respectful, humble, polite, fervent requests and dedications. So rich and unstinting was his contact with the creative and productive brains of the epoch that a stream of intellectual labor made its way into his house, as if following a natural law.

Again and again, one runs into the book of books, the Bible. Old Bibles of inestimable bibliophilic value, showpieces of the collection. Small, handy editions of the New Testament in places that bespeak their fond and frequent use: on the desk and by the bed. There is a New Testament with the Greek text and Luther’s translation. Rathenau compared the translation with the original, noted points of difference, sprinkled astonished and quietly plangent question marks in the margin. Discrepancies are shot down with discreet little arrows, the texts are treated roughly as a military strategist would treat his field of operations on a General Staff map. He campaigned with thoughts, put errors to flight, surrounded them, conquered new worlds and distant works, allied himself with lasting powers. He was like a peaceful commander of the intellect; with love for the little beauties of daily life, the ornamental culture of domesticity. Upstairs, on his own, his very own personal walls, he hung pictures that he’d painted himself, the works of a writer who liked to dabble in other arts. He never visited a foreign city without going to its antique shops. He sorted the grain from the chaff. His servant tells stories of how he once gazed at an old chest of drawers, and, in a sudden inspiration, instructed him to remove the metal adornments on the locks. “They don’t belong!” They were taken off, and under the metal there were facings of ivory. So visionary was his eye.

And yet it couldn’t see his end approaching. On his desk upstairs I saw a book called: German Youth and the Needs of the Hour. Oh, he always overestimated that section of German youth whose victim he was to be. In one room, on one table, in peaceful and significant proximity I found the wise old Shulchan Aruch, the religious rule book of Diaspora Orthodoxy, and the old Weissenfelsische Songbook.* Pervading the house and the being of this man was the spirit of conciliation. His life is characterized by its attempt to bring together antiquity, Judaism, and early Christianity. A strong chord of conciliation is sounded in the books he read and those he wrote. It was the effort to bring the various instruments of different cultural worlds within the ambit of a single orchestra. By day he read and studied the New Testament. It lay beside his bed to fill him with its love. He was a Christian; you won’t find a better one.

He made a simple man, released him from the ignorance and want that people fall into through poverty and bad background. How many great writers could make the same claim?

I am referring to his servant, today a state-employed guide in the Rathenau House, but a work of the deceased, a living witness to his goodness and efficacy. I want to print his name here: He is Hermann Merkel, from East Prussia. He has been a servant half his life, and in Rathenau’s house he became a fine, quiet, and thoughtful man.“Do you read these books sometimes?” I asked him. “Yes,” he said. “I don’t understand everything in them. But I think to myself: Even if a man doesn’t understand everything — at least reading won’t make him any more stupid.”

Rathenau’s servant talks in aperçus.

As I’m writing these pages, a man comes to call on me, a friend who is going through a bad time — and not just today. He sees that I’m writing about Rathenau, and he tells me: “Four years ago I wrote to him. He gave me a recommendation to the AEG.* But they didn’t have any work at the time. So he sent me four hundred marks.” “Did you know him?” “No! I wrote to him out of the blue. An old professor of mine suggested I do so.”

A stranger writes a letter to a stranger. The good man hears the lament of his brother from the depths. He will have heard many laments, and helped.

I walk past the place where he met his end. It is not true that a murder is just a murder. This one here was a thousandfold murder, not to be forgotten or avenged.

Frankfurter Zeitung, June 24, 1924

31. Election Campaign in Berlin (1924)

The cold, clinical rhythm of this city is immune to “election fever.” So what if the billboards blazon out the parties’ slogans, the willfully inflated promises, the catchpenny philosophies, the phrases and metaphors couched in colorful images. I didn’t see one single person with the patience, the time, and the curiosity to read one of these proclamations — not one who didn’t let the leaflet he had just been handed flutter away. Maybe it takes a particularly dramatic and suggestive image to penetrate the consciousness of these people for whom only work exists, and pleasure. Maybe these fanatics of objectivity, of precision, of antifanaticism are so fixed in their political convictions that no rushed campaign mounted in a single week — consisting of slogans and billboards, speeches and posters — can persuade them. The candid observer is obliged to note, incidentally, that none of the party election machines works with one-tenth of the wit and resourcefulness that are employed by the advertising and PR departments of dozens of factories, businesses, stores, and fashion designers.

The sober bureaucracy of Berlin election propaganda (irrespective of party) confines itself to the old and unsuccessful means. It prints long communications on gray fibrous paper in small type (italic, as a rule, too) that present a curious typographical image. But with this vertiginous waste of words, not one manages to leap forth in the form of an arresting, compelling, bone-freezing optical shout. However many parties there are and however hard some of them try to brand the others as “un-German,” this type of propaganda proves how German they all are. How alien to all of them are the rowdy means of true effectiveness. How, with honest naïveté and a minute scrutiny of the fundamentals, they all seek to persuade the reader — and all they do is bore him. Even in their exaggerations they remain shy. Even in their lies, timorous. They work with the heavy and pathetic weaponry of ethics — made in Germany. No flames lick the walls. No shouts ring from the billboards. The announcements of music halls, movies, the promotion of cigarettes, the fervor of business advertising — their nightly blaze above the roofs of Potsdamer Platz — drown, suffocate, and obliterate any of the political battle cries in an inferno of light and noise and color. The machinery of this half-Americanized city remains clinical and performs its myriad sober functions without passion, without being brushed by even a whiff of political conflict.

I read in the Berlin tabloids desperate efforts by the main editorial writers to describe the “election campaign.” It’s as if they had a powerful telescope through which they viewed the phases and manifestations of the election — and then turned it around to view everything else. In this way they take upon themselves some of the work of the various party offices (admittedly, of all the parties equally), and blow up the confrontations into global conflicts. Anyone who reads their accounts and doesn’t know the city would think there were Wild West — style shoot-outs between the various orators and poster campaigns. In fact it’s not like that at all. A few youths sneak around at night on “glue patrols,” tearing down posters and putting up others. But it takes a trained eye to spot them among the crowds of sneaking pimps, gussied-up whores, love-hungry pedestrians, and reeling drunks. The business of pleasure, the tireless, well-oiled machinery of thrills, “Amüsemangs,” gambling clubs, and naked dancers, leaves the voter with precious few resources. It’s only in the market in the mornings that I heard women talking politics with their shopping bags; in among the vegetable stands the cut and thrust of campaigning. The markets are the electoral battlefields of Berlin: I have to say so in the interest of truth.

Admittedly, on Potsdamer Platz, a little forest of papers* has been planted. Its young trunks have such names as Völkischer Ratgeber, Kampfbund, Deutscher Ring, Deutsches Tageblatt, and they are equipped with the inevitable swastikas, which are carved deep into all bark nowadays, on the branches of sentences, in among black-white-red phraseology. On spongy banks of editorials the bluish buttonhole flowers of Scout movements and Wandervögel† grow rampant. Here the roving eye will look in vain for a clearing of common sense. The heavily mossed trunks won’t allow even the merest puff of wit to pass. You find yourself stumbling through ungrammatical, antigrammatical undergrowth. Solecisms flower and thrive in the yawning gulches of the lead articles. You hear the repetitive hack-hack-hack of the nationalist woodpecker.

But these newspapers find only sellers. I am their sole buyer.

Only on Sundays do you come across political scout troops with sandals, walking sticks, and knives. In the woods they do round dances, they rave about nature, and have big brawls with each other. It’s a strange, baffling young generation. It covets the poet’s eye in a fine frenzy rolling, but not his shy piety and love of nature. You see them at railway stations, the blooming, wheat- blond girls, born to be mothers, but turning into political Furies. They wear shapeless windbreakers, full skirts, and short haircuts. They have unnaturally long strides and absurdly mannish gestures, but nature takes its revenge on them, because as soon as they shout out their “Heil!” or their “Yech!” their voices take on the repellent shrieking edge of hysteria.

Frankfurter Zeitung, April 29, 1924

32. An Apolitical Observer Goes to the Reichstag (1924)

The location of the German parliament is symbolic. Only Königsplatz separates the Reichstag building from the Tiergarten’s green pastoral. The apolitical observer is sorry to lose the fine May morning on which the new German Reichstag first meets.

The great edifice will be thirty years old in December. It has irritated people of taste and democratic inclinations for the better part of three decades now. Over its entrance is inscribed the dedication: “Dem deutschen Volke” (To the German people). But on its dome, seventy-five meters above street level, is a huge golden crown, a massive weight, completely out of scale with the dome, and utterly at variance with the dedication.

One could be forgiven for thinking this was the front entrance to the building — for assuming that the magnificent facade with the six great Corinthian pillars is there to greet the representatives of the German people, a little pompously, perhaps, but with dignity. But this front entrance isn’t. The great doors are kept locked. They opened just once in the time of the republic — for Rathenau’s funeral. The stoutness of the six Corinthian pillars goes unrewarded. The facade is only for show. The front part of the Reichstag gives the impression of a vast mansion whose owners are away. Barefoot German youth plays on the steps. A green policeman sprouts like an ornamental palm — a lonely bit of green in that arid waste of stone.

Beer party for Reichstag members, 1925.

It’s to the side, through a small tradesmen’s entrance on Simsonstrasse, that the representatives of the people betake themselves to their work. It’s impossible not to see this as a symbolic leftover from the times of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Bronze casts of four German emperors stand in the entrance hall, as though to review the parade of delegates. The plenary room, grave and dark, paneled in brown wood, has little enclosures for members of the press and public — uncomfortable, unwelcoming, constricted, constricting.

Today, on the opening day of the Reichstag, they have been packed since two o’clock. The ushers take a ceremonially sharpened view of proceedings. Special correspondents interested in personalities and atmosphere hang around the corridors hoping to catch Ludendorff’s* arrival. The politically and vulgarly curious are there as well. Their breath is shallow and rapid. Gentlemen caress their damp pates with old-fashioned handkerchiefs. Ladies, related to the gentlemen who will appear today, take off their gloves to use them as fans. Only the public is not in the space provided for it. It has failed to take advantage of the favorable situation of its enclosure, which permits its visitors to stand above the parties. No one takes advantage of this favorable circumstance.

One would have expected the atmosphere to be a little festive, at least as festive as for the opening of some exhibition toward which the whole nation, irrespective of party, has been working. Even those delegates — thinks our apolitical observer — who are opposed to parliamentary democracy, should feel some respect, if not for it then at least for their own role, which they are about to begin to play. Perhaps the ceremonial, the useful uniform of every formal situation, should be sterner and more elaborate. Democratic institutions are bad at ceremony, but it gives the drifting participant at least a little distraction from his own drift and his desire to draw attention to himself, and keeps him quiet in spite of himself. A dignified person will gain composure. It deepens quiet and stifles noise. It would force this body of men, which is put together from opposites, to be quiet if only for a couple of hours, into one form of common purpose which is silence.

Here, though, in the German Reichstag, each party has not only its own political convictions but also its own ritual. There is no sense of overall decorum. Foreign ambassadors — the stately Lord d’Abernon,* for instance — are sitting in the box. The eyes of America, France, and Italy are directed at the representatives

of the German people. And what do they see? The goose-stepping of the nationalists. Wrangling among the communists. Ludendorff in dark glasses. The apolitical observer cannot understand why, more than any other professional grouping in the world, German politicians are so driven to make asses of themselves, before they’ve even embarked on their politics, which are a further reservoir of asininity. But then, what does the apolitical observer understand of the mysteries of politics?

The seventy-nine-year-old veteran president, who has a weak voice, receives a call from the right to “Speak up!” That boorish intervention — doesn’t it have a familiar ring to it? Wasn’t it at a cabaret, where a gentleman, remembering what he’d paid for admission and having ordered up a bottle of wine, called out to the emcee, “Speak up!!!” in such a way that the three exclamation marks, or better — indignation marks — were clearly visible? Oh — and where have I heard that whistling coming from the communist benches? It was in high school, wasn’t it, in my junior year! Is it that I’ve outgrown it because I’m apolitical?

The man who provoked this storm of whistling was General Ludendorff. The last time I saw him, we were both, he and I, still at war. We both came out on the losing side. Since then our paths have separated. He became a politician, and I didn’t. No one gave me any medals or decorations, even though I lost as well. Now I have the opportunity to view him in civilian clothes. There is a certain round amiability about his waistcoat and his double chin, which is supposed to inspire confidence. Why does everyone shout when he gets up? He’s changed. He’s older, slower, more settled and middle class. Perhaps he always was just a middle-class man in heroic garb. There’s not much about him of Mars, god of war.

Now they’re singing “The Internationale” on my left and “Deutschland über Alles” on my right. Simultaneously, as if it didn’t make more sense to sing them consecutively. Why not have music, my friends? Why shouldn’t politicians sing? Why will the one not hear the other out? Isn’t it possible that both songs have something to be said for them? In some respects Germany really is above other countries. And in other ways internationalism isn’t the worst. We apolitical observers know what we owe the world, and what we’ve given it. Why don’t the politicians know?

While they’re still singing in the plenary room, I walk down the empty corridors. I see a large library, the Reichstag library. It could be called “Book Room” if they wanted to avoid the very common “library.” And what is it called? It’s called “book depot.”* Well, let’s go into the book depot anyway! We find precious volumes on all subjects, but also kitschy allegorical statues, ponderous virtues hewn from rock. The library should be called a virtue depot. Majestic overload wherever you look. Most un-Prussian-kingly prodigality with the material; reheated tradition without innovation; show without warmth; frozen displays of pomp. How should humanity, understanding, compassion, exist here? In the “dome room” there is a chandelier that weighs eight metric tons — as heavy as the fate of the people who own the chandelier. They’ve shelled out twenty-six and a half million marks for their Reichstag. It looks imposing, no doubt about it. It would be nice if the delegates made it impressive as well.

Frankfurter Zeitung, May 30, 1924

33. Farewell to the Dead (1925)

Today republican Berlin bade farewell to the dead president of the German Reich.* This city, so heartless in its bustle, so cold in its evident urge to utility, and so often teetering on the edge of kitsch where it would be sensitive — just today this city wore a hurt, even a tragic expression on its face. In every street the cortege passed through there was silence. Silence moved the veiled lights of the candelabra, and it was as though silence were the sole force that was moving the people — as if they weren’t walking but were slowly being pushed along by silence.

In the morning Wilhelmstrasse was thronged with people. But not animated, no! Because there was a somber mood among them, even where there was no formal mourning. Wilhelmstrasse is blocked off. There are obelisks, erect, frozen, black guards standing at the entrance to the blocked-off part of it; exotic ornaments, fetched from afar and planted on the tarmac. Even so they don’t look out of place. They make one forget it was ever a street. The thoroughfare, the passage, the public street is suddenly reduced to a tragically beautiful courtyard. Obelisks, dark evergreen, dark in their durability — they turn that most living of human institutions, the street — into the stillest and most immutable: a cemetery.

President Ebert’s funeral cortege outside the Reichstag.

There is the courtyard of the house. Resting along the walls are wreaths with colored ribbons, like visitors who have come a long way, and are tired. A few steps have decked themselves in thin black crepe. Suddenly they are not steps anymore that you climb to gain access to a house. They are signposts of grief. You pass up these steps, you don’t climb them. In the first room there are wreaths propped against the wall, waiting. People as they pass bend down to read what is written on the ribbons. It looks like a visitor greeting another visitor.

On the table lies a book for visitors to write their names. An ordinary book, quite small, bound in green cloth, a neutral sort of prop. After all, it only contains names. A lot of names, moving in their simplicity, names of ordinary people: Franz Kruleweit, innkeeper; Frieda Beckmann, guesthouse manager; Arnold Krug, war veteran; Robert Weitig, carpenter. Did they come so that they could say they had once been inside the house of the president of the Reich? Out of curiosity, making the most of the occasion? And maybe they were just curious when they set out. But by the time they wrote out their good, simple names, I am sure they were moved. Because they are simple people. It is easier for grief to find its way into the hearts of such people. They are not guarded by bitter skepticism.

It is an easy thing to feel moved in this house. The Reich’s Keeper of Paintings, Redslob, and the director, Jessner, have turned the small, relatively low-ceilinged rooms into spaces that elude conventional measurement. The walls are all draped in fine black cloth. The veiled mirrors are learning to live without light. It is no longer their purpose to reflect life, but to absorb death, to hide it in their silver surface, that is capable of producing so much depth. Colorful paintings mute their tones behind veils. Walls, corners, and ceilings seem to flow into one another in one softened, edgeless blackness. Only the candles that stand at either side of the bier are bare and uncovered, and the two honor guards. Their stillness softens the good, calming, golden light. There are gold chairs for the visitors. They seem no longer to be made of bright metal. It’s as though the chairs were carved from the yellow candlelight. Their splendor is undeniable, but grievously reinforced and simultaneously softened.

Outside, more and more people are now filing past the house. Confused carriages turn away, automobiles slow down, the closer they come, people pack together, treading on one another’s heels, shoulder to shoulder.

A memorial service for the dead man is held at twelve noon in the State Opera House on Königsplatz for the schoolchildren of Berlin. The orchestra of the State Opera plays Mozart’s K.477.* Max von Schillings conducts. The National and Cathedral Choirs sing under their choirmaster Professor Hugo Rudel. On either side of the stage are members of the government, seated on two rows of chairs. The Minister for Education, Arts, and Sciences, Professor Dr. Becker, addresses the young listeners. He reads a surprisingly well-written speech, objective for all its dignity, and interesting to follow in spite of its heavy use of stock phrases. The minister is a professor. To go by his speech (which was a sort of confession), not a born democrat, but one made from his understanding of the historical circumstances. He refers to the United States, where political struggle is every bit as intense as it is here, and where the death of a historical personage is nevertheless sufficient to silence the day-to-day arguments. He explains the difference between Bismarck’s centralized and authoritarian state and the ideal of antiquity: the res publica. He lends his support to the latter, and calls on his young audience to support it likewise. It is a politically significant speech, more democratic than one would have expected from such a man, and therefore thrice welcome. Marx† says a few words. Then the orchestra plays the Adagio from Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony. The hall is full of young people, pupils and students, and teachers of all ages. All those sitting here probably have some political affiliation. Many are probably on the far right, a long way from their education minister. And yet this ceremony must have made some impression on them. It would be nice to have a few more democratic ceremonies like this for teachers and students, without the melancholy occasion.

At one o’clock the streets of the city center are filled with a hurried dignity. People are trotting off somewhere or other, then just stop. Anxious automobiles are desperately looking for a way out. Heavy trucks roll slowly by. Coachmen stand up on their boxes and let their horses go where they will. Around the Reichstag everyone is pressed together, twelve deep, behind blue cordons of police. Anyone hoping to get into the Reichstag has to be pulled out by the police past eight pairs of shoulders. If you look out from the platform at the front of the Reichstag onto the expanse of Königsplatz, you see one enormous field of swaying faces. It’s as though the faces and the invisible bodies grew out of the ground, out of the lawn, and perhaps one could pluck some of these people. Above them are red and multicolored flags. They flower and unfurl. Policemen and soldiers stand around like leaden shapes: a watchful fence around an endless garden of humanity.

The Potsdam Station is no longer a station, no longer a gateway to the world, but a gateway to death. One descends black steps. Put away behind black cloths are all the noisy, merry sounds of a traveling, jingling, calling, tooting world. Signals are asleep, silent in silent corners. Do any trains still depart from here? Are there still such things as ticket counters, lights, red and green signals, switchmen? The waiting room has become an anteroom to eternity.

Outside, off to one side, where you can already make out the city streets, waits the hearse, all green on the inside with pine branches. It is an ordinary truck. Companies of men once sat in such trucks and rolled into the open arms of death. The truck bears a factual, undignified, meaningless number on its chest. It has been shrouded in black. Now the number looks like the black-bordered name of a mourner.

Outside the station the coffin stands on a catafalque. Incense is burning on both sides. The fragrance rises. Pine twigs have been spread over the paving stones, and muffle the stride of passersby. The coffin is all on its own, without any honor guard; given over to the street, the city, the people. No one guards it. The Reich flag is spread large and luminously over the coffin. It’s the visual equivalent of a farewell speech. You see it, and you understand what it says.

It grows dark. Life jingles, toots, and hammers. The coffin has disappeared. Travelers hurry in and out of the station. You hear the shout of a newspaper vendor. For the first time in years, piety — respect — has been more audible than the city’s normal clamor.

Frankfurter Zeitung, March 5, 1925