The Nazi Officer's Wife (5 page)

I poked him. He squeezed my hand.

“Did you hear that Hitler is taking children away from their mothers?” Wolfgang said. “If they don’t teach National Socialist doctrine, they lose their kids.”

“But surely the courts will not agree to that!” I exclaimed.

“The courts have been packed with Nazis,” Pepi answered.

“How can a gang of pompous little men so quickly destroy the democratic institutions of a great country?!” cried Wolfgang, pounding on the table in frustration, making the chess pieces topple.

“Freud would tell you it is a triumph of the ego,” Pepi said. “They think they are big men and their belief in themselves creates a light so blinding that all around are dazzled. The trouble with these Nazis is that they have no self-critical faculty, so in their efforts to achieve greatness, they achieve nothing but a parody of greatness. Caesar conquered nations, took their leaders captive, picked their brains, and so enriched his empire. Hitler will burn down nations, torture their leaders to death, and destroy the world.”

We sat stunned and silent at Pepi’s prediction. Our friends stopped dancing and chattering. The Ping-Pong game came to a halt.

“So what should we do, Pepi?”

“We have to fight for the rule of law, and have faith in the inevitability of the socialist paradise,” Pepi answered, throwing his arm around my shoulders. “One class. No masters. No slaves. No black. No white. No Jew. No Christian. One race—the human race.”

How can I describe my pride at that moment? To be Pepi’s girl, to be the chosen consort of our undisputed intellectual leader—this was exactly the place I wanted in society, and his vision was exactly the future I wanted for humankind.

W
HILE
I
WAS
attending the University of Vienna from 1933 to 1937, we had endless political turmoil in Austria. Chancellor Doll
fuss, determined to preserve us as a religious Catholic country, outlawed the Socialist Party. The socialists responded in ways that I, a socialist myself, often found downright foolish.

I went to an illegal socialist meeting. I seem to remember that Bruno Kreisky was the featured speaker. Our leaders had received permission to use the hall by declaring that we were holding a rehearsal of a choral society. They told us that if the police came, we must immediately begin singing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” So we practiced.

I tell you, the sound we made was indescribable. I bit my lip, I bit my knuckles, I practically ate the sheet music, but nothing could prevent me—and everybody else—from dissolving into hysterical laughter.

The socialists called a general strike. But in 1934 over one-third of the workforce in Vienna was out of work. How could you go on strike when you weren’t working in the first place? The equally foolish government called in the army, which shelled the workers’ houses. The socialists fought back. Hundreds were killed and wounded. And so the two forces in Austria that needed to be allied against the Nazis were divided for all time by anger, bitterness, and mourning.

Dollfuss would exile the Nazi leaders, and Hitler would welcome them and set them up with a powerful radio transmitter in Munich from which they harangued and threatened us. They would tell atrocity stories about how German burghers were being butchered by Bolsheviks in Czechoslovakia, and about how the “thieving, lying, murderous” Jews had caused the economic depression which had thrown millions out of work. I refused to listen to the Nazi radio, so I never once heard Hitler screeching.

Nazi students instigated fights and riots to disrupt university life. They beat up students and professors who spoke out against Hitler. They threw stink bombs into the auditorium, making it impossible to assemble there. The police in turn tried to break up student demonstrations with tear gas. If we had any doubt what it would be like in Austria if the Nazis came to power, there were German authors who came to lecture at the Konzerthalle and warn us: Erich Kästner, a hero of mine, author of
Emil and the Detectives
; and Thomas Mann, the Nobel laureate, author of
The Magic Mountain
, tall and severe and so grim up there at the podium that my heart froze to look at him.

“I don’t know what this evening means to you,” Mann said to the anti-Nazi crowd gathered in Vienna to protest the escalating violence, “but it means more to me.”

Some people we knew wore white socks to show that they were Nazi sympathizers. In addition to Rudolf Gischa, there was my old morning math student “Fräulein Einstein,” and Elfi Westermayer and her boyfriend Franz Sehors. I thought they had gone temporarily insane.

You see, I cultivated blindness the way my grandmother grew cactus in Stockerau. It was the wrong plant for this climate.

The Austrian Nazis began to assassinate socialist leaders. On July 25, 1934, they murdered Chancellor Dollfuss.

Martial law was imposed. The streets seethed with policemen, armed guards who stood watchfully at the gates of the many embassies in our neighborhood. Once, as I walked home from my law classes, two men walking ahead of me were suddenly cut off by a policeman on a motorbike who demanded to see their papers and made them open their briefcases. I turned the corner onto Argentinierstrasse, where a young man was being frisked. His girlfriend—just about my age—was being interrogated.

Truthfully, I would have enjoyed being detained myself. It would have been an exciting event for me to talk about with my friends. But no one noticed me! If anyone even glanced my way, it was without concern. Something about me said “silly,” “innocent,” “unimportant.” So I walked freely through the alarmed, dangerous town, a twenty-year-old law student who looked fourteen and posed no threat to anyone.

A new chancellor, Kurt von Schuschnigg, came to power after Dollfuss’s death. People did not love him so much, but they respected him and thought he might be able to extricate us from Hitler’s aggressive plans.

Pepi and I took long walks through the city, read to each other, and dreamed of the socialist paradise. Meanwhile the German Army invaded the supposedly demilitarized Rhineland, and then the Nazis instigated a civil war in Spain. The Italians, who were supposed to be Austria’s allies, instead allied themselves with Hitler so they could be free to attack Ethiopia.

And then my father died.

It was June 1936. He stopped at the doorway to the restaurant at the Hotel Bristol, looked around to make sure everything was perfect—the tables spotless, the waiters standing at attention—and fell down dead.

The news came to us with such force and suddenness that we were helpless to respond. Our pillar, our rock, had crashed.

Mama sat in our parlor, her eyes vacant, her hair unkempt, her face blurred behind a veil of tears. Mimi sat silent and devastated, holding the hand of her boyfriend, a fellow student and friend of mine named Milo Grenzbauer. Our darling little Hansi couldn’t stop crying.

I went back and forth from the kitchen, serving coffee to the visitors who came to pay their condolences. Our concierge, Frau
Falat, was there. My cousin Jultschi came with her fiancé, an arrogant, handsome Czech tailor named Otto Ondrej. Jultschi hung on him, clutching his hand, wiping her eyes with his handkerchief.

Pepi came with his mother. She sat next to Mama, talking about how hard it was to be a woman alone, and meanwhile not very discreetly inquiring of the other guests about how much money my father had left.

In the kitchen, Pepi stroked my hair and told me that everything would be all right.

I didn’t believe him. I felt suddenly much more vulnerable to politics than ever before. How could we withstand these tumultuous times without our father to protect us? At the Munich Olympics that summer, the German athletes saluted their ugly little Führer and every victory of theirs felt to me like a personal attack against the Hahns of Vienna.

To support our family, Mama decided to open her own dressmaking business. She would cut out pictures of elegant suits and make them up for her customers to order, in the fabrics they wanted and with the trimmings they requested. According to a custom of the time, she was obligated to ask all the other dressmakers in the neighborhood whether it was all right with them for her to set up shop. Without exception, they said “yes.” Given such a vote of confidence, how could Mama doubt that she was held in high esteem by our neighbors?

My contribution to my family’s support was to take on as much tutoring work as I could manage and to study without ceasing for my final state exam. Once I had become a doctor of law and could make a good living, I thought, our political problems might solve themselves.

But it was hard to concentrate. I went to my classes in a fog of despair and grief. I would sit in the library with a book open and
unread, my mind at a standstill. One day Anton Rieder, my old crush from high school, sat down next to me. He had been fatherless since we were kids. He knew the feeling—the loss of direction, the insecurity, the premature aging.

“You are still beautiful,” he said.

“And you were always gallant.”

“I’ve enrolled at the Consular Academy. I’m going there not because I am so eager to be a diplomat, but because they have given me a scholarship.”

“But it will be wonderful for you, Anton. You will be able to travel, maybe even go to England or America.”

“Come with me.”

“What?”

“I know you go with Pepi Rosenfeld, but believe me, he’s too smart for his own good—his brains will always get in the way of his conscience. He’s not fine enough for you. I have always been in love with you; you know that. Leave him and come with me. I have nothing. Now your father is dead, and you have nothing. We’ll be perfect together.”

He reached across the library table and took my hand. He was so handsome, so earnest. For a moment, I thought: “Maybe. Why not?” And then of course all the reasons why not spilled onto the long oak table, and Anton could not fail to see them there; and like a wise young diplomat, he rose and kissed my hand and took his leave.

W
E HAD A
visit from a new neighbor—an engineer named Denner, a nice-looking, gregarious man. He had recently lost his wife to tuberculosis after a long, miserable illness. He had two daughters: Elsa, age eleven; and Christl, fourteen. Since he often had to
travel on business and leave the girls to fend for themselves, he was looking for a tutor to keep them involved in their studies. The concierge had recommended me highly, and I readily accepted the job. So now, every day, I came from the university and spent the afternoon with these delightful girls.

The Denners lived on the ballroom floor of our house, in a large space that defied subdivision, where people with “von” in their name had once gathered to dance to baroque music. The windows were enormous. They reached from floor to ceiling. The floor was wood and seemingly endless. To see those two children polishing that floor was enough to break your heart.

“Who’s coming to the ball?” I cried as I watched them scrubbing and rubbing. “The Hapsburgs have been deposed. The Bourbons are out of town.”

“Father likes us to do our part to keep up the former glory of our country,” Christl groaned.

Each girl had a puppy with a Russian name, in honor of Frau Denner, who had come from White Russia. Elsa’s puppy behaved well and slept in her lap. Christl’s dog wanted to chase pigeons and leap into the arms of visitors and slobber over them lovingly. So it was with the girls themselves. Elsa had things under control. Christl’s life was an adventure.

Christl was taking a business course, but she couldn’t manage the bookkeeping, couldn’t write a neat letter, and couldn’t concentrate. I sat with her while she plowed through her homework; I walked with her and her dog in the yard of our building. Soon she was coming to me with every sort of adolescent problem. She was tall and vivacious, with light-brown hair and almost violet eyes, and she was beset by boys. They stood in the street and sang to her, followed her home, sent flowers, bought treats for the dog, anything to get her attention.

When she was fifteen and I was twenty-three, Christl fell in love. His name was Hans Beran. Everyone called him Bertschi. “He’s a bit of a fool,” said Herr Denner, “but at least he doesn’t throw his money around like the rest of these young people.”

Bertschi gave Christl a hard time. First he wanted her desperately. Then he was too shy to accept her affections. Then he decided she was too beautiful for him and he simply couldn’t bear the jealously of the other boys. Then he phoned very late at night and said that he couldn’t live without her, that she must meet him at the Café Mozart so he could tell her how much he adored her.

Every time I came to their house, Christl would greet me breathlessly at the door and whisper wildly: “I have to speak with you—in private!” And she would bundle me into the shadows of the hallway and tell me what marvelous stupid thing Bertschi had done now, and how she had to write a letter to him, and how she couldn’t possibly do it without my help.

“Oh, please, Edith, please. If you write the letter it will come out perfect. Please, please!”

How could I resist her? I could never resist a little sister.

When she passed the final exam at the business school, her father gave a party. He hired a boat and invited his guests for a moonlight cruise on the Danube. Toward the end of the evening, a waiter presented me with a bouquet of red roses. There was no card, and I wondered who could have sent them.

My mother, sitting in the parlor, appliquéing pretty birds on my new yellow blouse, knew immediately. “The flowers are from Herr Denner,” she said. “Because when his girls needed a substitute mother, someone to listen to them with a caring heart, you were there.” Mama grinned. “So you see, you must become a mother, Edith—because obviously you have a talent for it.”

T
HE
N
AZI BULLIES
roared that Chancellor von Schuschnigg was determined to restore the Hapsburg monarchy and if that happened, Germany would be forced to enter Austria and destroy this idea by military might. That was a direct threat, a preface.