no one was allowed to enter. Through her curtained window I could see the dried herbs, flowers, and fruits that hung from her ceiling and walls—preparations that were earmarked for use against every conceivable ailment that might befall family or friends. Aside from practicing her herbal arts, she wrote poetry and over the years produced more than a hundred pages of neatly handwritten poems that celebrated every feast in the family and village. At the end of each poem, she signed off with the words “Heil Hitler!”
To the irritation of her fastidious brother, this aunt had her own plot of land just outside the village that had the appearance of a jungle compared to the neatly plowed fields that surrounded it—the perfect place for children to play hide-and-seek. This Schlßtante— “Castle Aunt,” so called because she had worked for the Prince of Lowenstein, whose ancestral castle stood near the edge of the village—was beloved by every child in Kleinheubach. Her pockets were always filled with candy. I felt privileged to be part of the family of which Schloßtante was a member. She would take me on walks in the late evenings and teach me the names of the constellations, everything from the Big Dipper to the Pleiades. She had dialect names for some of these constellations, animal names such as hen, horse, or cow, that replaced the more erudite Greek terms. For her, the Milky Way was the road outlined in the sky by God so that the good people could find their way to heaven. I am sure she believed that everyone in Kleinheubach would get there, except for her brother. After the war, she took care to cut the “Heil Hitler!” inscriptions neatly off the bottom of her countless poems with a pair of scissors.
About the time my father left for the German army and my stepmother and I moved to her parents' house, I turned ten and was drafted into the boys' division of the Nazi youth movement, the Jungvolk. Precursor of the Hitler Jugend, or Hitler Youth, membership was required of all non-Jewish boys. Gentile girls had to join the Jungmädchen and then the BDM (Bund deutscher Mädchen). During my early teens, I developed an interest in singing, a skill encouraged by the Jungvolk. When I was thirteen and a half, I knew more German folk and marching songs than any of my peers and was rewarded for this accomplishment with the post of Singführer (song leader). On rare occasions when I still touched the piano, I played passages I liked very slowly and rushed through those I didn't. I tried to teach such fluctuating tempi along with the lyrics and melodies of the Nazi songs to the boys in the Jungvolk. But because we were supposed to march at a steady pace while singing these songs, my idiosyncratic “rubato” style was not welcome. As quickly as I had been promoted, I was disqualified and demoted to simple marcher.
My demotion was not due to my erratic tempi alone. My buddy Ludwig Bohn and I had such a bad attendance record in the Jungvolk that we were accused of undermining the morale of the entire group. Ordered to defend ourselves at the Hitler Youth headquarters at Miltenberg, we arrived in our everyday clothes and were immediately reprimanded for not wearing uniforms. When we were asked, “Do you place any value on your ranks?” Ludwig, completely intimidated, became flustered and answered, “We place no value on our ranks whatsoever!” When the group leaders angrily mistook his confused answer for impertinence, Ludwig quickly corrected himself to maintain the opposite: “We place enormous value on our ranks!” The budding Nazis in charge decided that we were too young to be punished, but they threatened to punish our parents instead and demanded the address of my father. They already knew Ludwig's father's address. I said, “My father is away fighting the war.” My insolent answer infuriated the bullies all over again, and they literally pushed us both out the door and down the long flight of stone steps. But this was the end of the matter. There were no repercussions for Ludwig or me or our families.
Once a week we had to show up for roll call, or Appell, as it was called, which was followed by Nazi indoctrination, marches, and paramilitary field games. Everybody did exactly the same thing—sang in rhythm, marched in rhythm, shouted in rhythm, and recited quasi-religious cant about the high points of Hitler's life. There was hardly time left for my usual fantasies. Just to insert a contrary element into these rigid routines — and for no deeper reason than that—I once took the tiny American flag my parents had brought back from the United States in 1933 and stuffed it behind my Nazi brown shirt, so that it was concealed there during the Jungvolk exercises. I had removed the flag from its small, gold-tipped, black wooden pole, and the silk material from which it was made felt soft to my skin. My tightly cinched belt prevented it from slipping down and out through my pant legs. I reveled in the feeling of difference this hidden object produced. I was well aware that I had been born in San Francisco, but somehow I knew that my secret game with the American flag was dangerous, perhaps not to me but to my family for owning it.
Nazi politics and the war also insinuated themselves into my schooling. My teachers at the Gymnasium in Miltenberg were either very good or very bad. Some of them had been transferred from major cities to this provincial outpost as punishment for reasons unknown to the students. I held one teacher, Professor Schwegler, in particular esteem. He had been a tutor in France, and he had a gentle way of looking at literature; it seemed to exist for him in a world quite apart from the one guided by the controlled hysteria in which we all lived. He was different, and that is why I revered him. After his only son was killed in the war, my entire class brought flowers to school. The dignified, frail old gentleman lowered his head and wept—an unbelievable sight in the hierarchical atmosphere of the Gymnasium.
Although he wore the same clothes year round and never washed or shaved, our chemistry instructor was another good teacher, passionately devoted to his subject and nothing else. He justified his appearance by claiming that God wanted him to look unkempt and he was not about to interfere with divine will. But for the most part, the Gymnasium seemed like a milder version of the Nazi youth meetings. Rigid performance was demanded; no real questions asked, no real answers given. I withdrew further into the world of my own fantasies and, as I grew older, into a world of books.
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