After the Reich (37 page)

Grünberg in Lower Silesia suffered because of the amount of alcohol in the town. Not only had it been the centre of Silesia’s small vineyard area, but the Nazis had made it their repository for wine - still and sparkling - and cognac, which they had shipped in from Hamburg, Bremen, the Rhine and the Mosel. The brutality inspired by the contents of the cellars led whole families to commit suicide. One priest estimated that a quarter of the population died in this way. The Poles came on 12 May 1945. On 24 June the remaining population was informed that they had six hours to pack their bags.
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In June and July that year a total of 405,401 Germans were expelled. The last official expulsions occurred in 1950 when 1,329 Germans were thrown out of Swinemünde.
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While the stench of death and brutality pervaded the German regions east of the Oder, one old German was allowed to live unmolested in his home. The new Soviet-Polish masters in Silesia showed a remarkable reluctance to expel the Nobel Prize-winning playwright Gerhart Hauptmann, who had lived in a palatial villa on the Wiesenstein in the small village of Agnetendorf in the Riesengebirge since 1902. The Riesengebirge
^bn
had been ‘Germany’s air-raid shelter’ and the Foreign Ministry had been evacuated to a ski-resort in the mountains. The old man was counting his days surrounded by the works of art he had collected over the years: the bust of Goethe by David d’Angers had pride of place in the Paradise Hall with its murals by Johannes Avenarius.
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Hauptmann ambled about wearing a frockcoat with his order Pour le Mérite in his lapel.
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He had been in Dresden on Valentine’s Day and had been badly knocked about by the blasts from the bombing. Months later he had still not recovered.
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Hauptmann’s amanuensis, the writer Gerhart Pohl, went to see the Soviet commander in nearby Hirschberg. The streets were festooned with posters repeating Stalin’s comforting words: ‘Hitlers come and go . . .’ Pohl explained that Hauptmann was living in his old house up in the mountains. The officer expressed surprise: ‘Hauptmann, the author of
The Weavers
?’ The first collected edition of Hauptmann’s works in Russian had been published as early as 1902. As a Russian major told Pohl (with a degree of hyperbole for all that): ‘Every schoolchild in the Soviet Union knows the writer of
The Weavers
.’ Visits by literary-minded Soviet officers began soon after. Hauptmann dealt with them patiently and flattered them with his admiration for Tolstoy and Gorky.
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A Polish professor came to see him from the Ministry of Art and Culture in Warsaw. He was Galician, and spoke German fluently with an Austrian accent (Galicia had been a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1918). He told Hauptmann, ‘Germany’s fate is hard, but not entirely undeserved. Think about the horrors perpetrated against my people. These are undeniable facts . . .’ The professor returned to his ministry to arrange for Hauptmann’s protection. The papers arrived on 7 August, five days after the break-up of the Potsdam Conference.
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For a while Hauptmann’s presence rallied the inhabitants of the nearby artists’ colony of Schreiberhau, where the Germans continued to live by selling off their possessions to the Poles. Ruth Storm sold her foalskin coat for 500 złotys and managed to procure two kilos of bacon, a pound of butter and a smoked sausage. She supposed that they were left in peace because Hauptmann received visits from foreign journalists.
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It was a brief respite. One day in the street Pohl recognised an old man in a dressing gown as one of his former teachers. It was Eugen Kühnemann, the biographer of Schiller. He had been robbed of all he owned and turned out of his house.
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Hauptmann continued to live on the Wiesenstein with his Polish protection papers. No one was allowed to enter Haus Wiesenstein or its grounds on pain of punishment. That didn’t always stop them. Some heavily armed Russian soldiers explained that they meant no harm: ‘Wir nicht machen bum-bum . . . Nicht machen zapzerap, bloss mal gucken. Du erlauben bitte?’ (We no make bang bang . . . no do stealing, just have a look. You permit please?).
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Some bogus journalists forced their way in on one occasion and ran about the place pocketing small objects. ‘Suddenly they stood in the Biedermeyer Room . . . before the old man . . . “Come closer, gentlemen! Your youth cheers my ancient heart. You wanted to visit my house at an unusual hour. You have had your wishes come true. How might I help you now?”’ Pohl sought clarification of Hauptmann’s position in the midst of all this harassment, and like many other Silesians he wanted to know what the future held for them. He decided to pay a call on Johannes R. Becher in Berlin. The future East German minister of culture chainsmoked nervously, while Pohl tried to pin him down. He mentioned the Potsdam agreement: that Silesia was under Polish administration until the peace treaty. Did that mean it would return to Germany? ‘Mann, verlassen Sie sich darauf nicht!’ (I shouldn’t put your faith in that, old man!).
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Becher consented to visit Hauptmann on the Wiesenstein. He wanted to win him over for his Cultural Alliance and Germany’s literary renewal. It was not easy to get there. There were no trains, and he and his Russian friend Grigori Weiss had to set out in two cars followed by a lorry containing food and benzene. It took two days to reach Agnetendorf. Hauptmann told the poet, ‘I am an old man, I have no more ambitions, but the fate of Germany concerns us all.’
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He nonetheless pledged his support: ‘I will go along with you . . . That is my national duty. Together with my people I shall dedicate all my last strength to the business of Germany’s national renewal.’
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He resisted all moves to shift him across the border, however - he wished to die in Silesia. The chief concern was the dwindling stock of brandy in Haus Wiesenstein. The old man was used to a life-saving glass every day, and now there remained just a few drops left in the last bottle. Becher and Weiss decided to do Hauptmann a last good turn and headed into Liegnitz to see the Soviet commander. Naturally this Russian knew Hauptmann by reputation too: ‘In the evening we returned to Agnetendorf with a whole car full of food and with twenty bottles of cognac [
sic
] of the best Caucasian brand.’
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Hauptmann finally expired on 6 June, three days after uttering his last words ‘Bin - ich - noch - in - meinem - Hause?’ (Am I still in my house?). The Poles preserved the great man’s residence, turning it into a children’s home. His body was expelled along with the living and the dying. Contrary to his wishes he was buried at Hiddensee on the Baltic coast.
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Transit Camps

The Normanns received their marching orders on 29 June 1946. Barkow was to be evacuated within two hours. The 200 or so inhabitants were to pack for two weeks. Accompanied by Polish soldiers and policemen they went as far as Plathe in the gruelling heat. The first stop was to be Wollin, where they were to stay in a camp until they could be shipped across the Oder.

Transit camps like Wollin existed all over the new Poland. Once notified, Germans had to assemble in their town or village squares with one suitcase. Some Poles were worried what the outside world might think of them: Lehndorff was asked to speak to the 400 Germans in his camp to explain that their treatment had been ordered from above, and that it only imitated what the Germans had done to the Poles.
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For the people of Breslau, the camps were at Freiburg Station and Kohlfurt. Once the railways were ready to handle them, they were put in bolted railway trucks to be taken west. For those living in the depths of the country, the journey to the transit camp was an ordeal in itself. Frau von Normann’s cart lost a wheel in the next village, but she was lucky to find help from the old Polish village policeman, Dombrowski, whose wife she had protected from the SS. He loaded her belongings on to his bicycle. The twenty or so Polish soldiers who accompanied the troop were not too hard on the refugees in general.

Treks of this kind were hindered by disputes between the Russians and the Poles. When Frau von Normann’s posse arrived in the village of Trieglaff, the Russian garrison ordered them back to Barkow, blocking off the road with men brandishing machine guns. Night fell and the refugees squatted together on the road. Then came the order to return. It had all been for nothing.

Home to the Reich

The Krockows’ decision to leave was prompted by an unseasonal descent by a pack of Russian soldiers demanding ‘Uri!’ The watches had all gone months before. One of their number panicked, however: she knew of a watch. It was up in the attic. It had belonged to Robert von Puttkamer, Libussa von Krockow’s grandfather, a right-wing minister of the interior whose sacking in 1889 had been the only successful action of the so-called liberal empire of the Emperor Frederick’s English-born wife Vicky. The watch had been a present from Emperor William I, and it had the imperial signature engraved on the cover. The loss of this one last contact with a more glorious past prompted them to make the journey. Libussa would go first, to see how the land lay.
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On 20 November 1945 the Allied Control Council had worked out the finer details of the Potsdam Agreement. The ‘orderly and humane’ deportations were to go ahead. The first tranche covered 3.5 million Germans from the east. Of these one and a half million were to go to the British Zone and the other two to the SBZ. Another two and a half million were coming from Czechoslovakia, half a million from Hungary and 150,000 from Austria. These were to be housed in the Soviet Zone (750,000), the American Zone (2.25 million) and the French Zone (150,000). A year later the British Zone had grown by 3.1 million souls, the American by 2.7 and the Russian by 3.6. Berlin’s population had risen by 100,000 and the French Zone had taken in 60,000. The population of Germany in its reduced state had grown by 16.5 per cent.
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By mid-winter 1946 Stolp possessed a proper office with ‘Emigration’ written in German over the door and an official who spoke the language without a hint of accent. Forms had to be filled in using the new Polish names: Rumbske (which was Slavic anyhow) had become Rumsko; Pommern or Pomerania, Pomorze. The applicant had to swear that he or she was leaving of his or her own free will, and would not return on pain of punishment. The certificate cost 150 złotys. That was two months’ wages for Lehndorff, once the Poles began to pay for his services. A kilo of bacon cost 400 złotys, and 500 grams of sugar, 90.
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It looked deceptively simple: there was a train leaving that morning at 10.14 arriving in Stettin at two. From there it was only an hour or two to Berlin. The ticket cost another 150 złotys. Already half Libussa’s money had been spent. She was taken to a cattle truck, the door was pulled open, she was pushed in, and then it was slammed shut. In the gloom she began to pick out the shapes of other refugees - women, children and old people. The train stopped at the main towns: Schlawe, Köslin, Belgard. With every halt the door flew open and more refugees were crammed into the crowded space. It was dark by now. Then it came to a stop. A shot rang out. Then there were more shots.

The door was ripped open - cries of terror, lanterns flickering, a horde surging in: wild figures dimly glimpsed amid the chaos and the confusion, men, but also youths and women, savage women, perhaps the worst of all, screaming, slavering, striking, snatching. More pistol shots, right over out heads, booming like cannon in the small space, numbness, knives and axes, fists, kicks, feet trampling over bodies, and always this bellowing, and the cries of fear and pain. Suitcases and crates, boxes and bundles, sprouted wings, flew up in the air and out of the door. The horde followed them out, and the door banged shut.
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The bandits had done their business in a matter of minutes, perhaps five at the most; but it was just the first attack. At one point militiamen opened the door and pretended to be concerned. When the Germans said they had been attacked, the men laughed. As they no longer possessed suitcases, the next wave went for the clothes on their bodies, stripping off coats, jackets and dresses. Libussa lost her precious rucksack in the second attack, her złotys in the third and her boots in the fourth. The train stopped in Stargard. So much for the timetable: they reached Scheune, near Stettin, in the middle of the night.

Stettin, on the left bank of the Oder, had been awarded to Poland, but many would have seen it as a safe haven. It was anything but. After the train had been shunted around for a while the doors were opened and everyone ordered out. There were guards with submachine guns ordering them to line up in twos. It was snowing hard. A crowd of some 400 was marched towards an old sugar factory, and beaten with rifle butts to make them move faster. One girl understood Polish. She told Libussa that anyone caught with letters would be punished, as a spy. Libussa tore up her letters and threw them into a hedge. The Poles did not want the world to know about life in the Recovered Territories. The sugar factory offered no more than a concrete floor and broken windowpanes, with a couple of full buckets for bodily needs. Dawn came, they waited, then sunset. The Poles ‘needed darkness for whatever they had in mind’.
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The Germans were marched out in pairs. They were beaten with rifle butts again until they reached a hall half lit by candles. Behind a table sat an official. He had a book in front of him and a pile of valuables. They were told to strip naked and throw their clothes to two men who were ready with knives to discover any hidden valuables. Libussa lost her last RM2,000.