told her parents that she had become a Communist. She was never to forget the look of horror, mingled with fear, that transformed their faces. Her father left the room and a few minutes later she heard him being violently sick. Her mother simply sat down on a chair in the hall and wept.
A young officer, Otto Müller, who had been slightly wounded during the street battles, was bivouacked in their house. He came up behind her as she was staring out of the window at the old cedar and the swing and whispered in her ear.
‘I heard everything. I greatly admire your decision. I wish I had been on Leviné’s side. He refused to plead for mercy. His face was proud and held high just before they shot him.’
The initial shock gave way to amazement. If men like him, men on the winning side, could say things like that to her at such a time, then all was not lost. Strange, the trivial incidents that leave such an impact. Your grandmother was sure that the young officer’s encouragement made up her mind for her. Many years later she met Müller in Berlin, where he was practising as a doctor. He was in a hurry. It was 1933 and he was helping to get his best friend’s furniture to Denmark. The name of his childhood familiar was Bertolt Brecht.
When Gertie’s father recovered he spoke to her in a hard but trembling voice. ‘You are no longer my daughter.’
Her mother did not speak. Gertie went to her room and wept. ‘Mutti, Mutti,’ she sobbed. ‘Why did you not speak? Why?’
Then she packed a few clothes, a framed photograph of Heinrich and herself, her books, and a tiny green shawl that had once belonged to her grandmother. Her brother was away on a school trip. She sat down at her desk and wrote him a farewell note: My dearest Heiny, I have to leave now, but I will miss you terribly. Don’t forget me. I will write and give you my address in Berlin. Many kisses and a big hug from your loving Gertie.
She walked out of the house and down the drive. As she reached the bend after which the house became invisible she was desperate to turn round one last time, but she was proud and resisted the lure. Heiny later wrote and told her that their mother’s tear-stained face had been pressed to the first-floor window, watching Gertie leaving her family house. She had told him so when he returned from his trip. I’m sure that none of them really believed in the finality of the breach, but then none of them knew what lay ahead.
Some years after the war, when she had returned to Berlin, Gertie wanted to return to Munich and see the house again. That was before the Wall was built. Travel between the two zones was easy. She took me with her. I was eleven at the time. I remember well our trip to Schwaben. The house was still there, just like it used to be. Gertie held me close and began to cry. She, a Communist, had fought the Nazis and survived. Her father, a staunch German nationalist, a man of the Right, perished in the camps with Heiny, her mother and the rest of the family. Gertrude and I were the sole survivors. We had been staring at the house from the driveway. Gertie was too frightened to go in. Slowly we turned round and as we began to walk out we noticed an old man on crutches who had stopped and was observing us from outside the gate.
‘Who are you?’ he asked Gertie.
She tightened her hand on mine. ‘I used to live here a long time ago.’
The old man came close and stared right into Mutti’s eyes. ‘Fräulein Gertrude?’
She nodded.
‘Haven’t you recognized me? Frank. The gardener. I used to give you and little Heinrich rides on my back.’ The old man’s eyes filled with tears. Gertrude hugged him. When finally she moved away she was going to ask him what had happened, but he read the question in her eyes even before she spoke and shook his head.
‘I was conscripted in ’36. They were still here. The Doctor had many influential patients. Nazis who respected him, wouldn’t change doctors for anything. When I returned in 1942 – I was one of the first casualties on the Russian front – they had all disappeared.’
We nodded. ‘And the house, Frank?’
‘You remember the young doctor who sometimes assisted your father. He joined the Nazi Party. This was his reward. He moved in with his family. Took the practice, the house, the furniture. Everything. A few years ago he got scared and sold the property. It’s empty now. They’re going to knock it down and build apartments. The garden will disappear completely. He’s still in Munich. One of our distinguished citizens. He’s set up a medical publishing house.’
We had lunch with Frank in a cafe. Gertie wanted to give him some money, but realized that she had none herself.
I thought of that visit, Karl, when, about two years ago, the inquisitors arrived from Bonn. I remember the date, because it was Helge’s birthday. The sixth of April. These three men had come to investigate me and to decide whether I was a fit person to teach at the university. They were not in the least interested in the fact that I was opposed to the old regime, that I had shielded dissidents, distributed pamphlets, marched on the streets, helped bring down the Wall. They actually laughed when I showed them the manifesto I had helped to draft for the Forum for German Democracy.
‘Marxist gibberish,’ was the verdict of the man with red hair.
‘You may have brought them out on the streets, but they voted for Chancellor Kohl!’ his colleague informed me in a polite voice.
I never discussed this event with you before now Karl, because I was frightened. I thought you might agree with them. I was wrong. Forgive me. I wanted to shout at these hypocrites. Remind them of Schwaben. Ask when I could have Gertrude’s house back. Ask why the Nazi who had stolen my grandparents’ house was still thriving while they were making us all redundant. Instead I remained calm. I explained the volatility of the situation. Reminded them of how Turks and Vietnamese were being burnt alive in their homes while the citizens of the new Germany stood by and the Chancellor washed his hands.
‘Why,’ I asked them at one point, ‘do you despise us Easterners so much? For us, not even a Treaty of Passau!’
They looked at me with blank impressions, none of them wanting to admit that they had no idea when or what the Treaty of Passau was. It was my only triumph that day. I explained that through the Treaty of 1552, the Lutherans had accepted a surly and grudging co-existence with the Catholic Church.
They questioned me for three hours, but it took them fifteen minutes to reach a verdict. They called me in to the investigation room, where, in the old days, I had often faced the hostility of our own ideological commissars.
‘Professor Meyer, please sit down. After careful consideration, the Commission has decided that you are not fit to teach the course on Comparitive Literature at Humboldt University. We are aware of your gift for languages, your knowledge of English, Russian and Chinese. We are confident that you will carry on your translation work, which is of a high quality. But teaching. Now that, in our new conditions, is something different …’
I wrote you a brief letter telling you that I’d been sacked. I wanted to tell you how I was haunted by fear, tormented by insecurity, desperate for your mother to return. I walked around the city aimlessly for several hours. There was dust everywhere. Scaffolding on every main street. Hitler and Speer had wanted to rebaptize Berlin. Germania was their favoured name. Berlin will be a capital city once again.
At least it will bring you back here, Karl, away from the Ollenauerstrasse and quiet, old Bonn. That will be nice. I get the feeling that the architects are reverting to the nineteenth century, trying to forget that this century even happened. If they succeed, they will destroy Berlin.
I
