They'll Have to Catch Me First: An Artist's Coming of Age in the Third Reich

Two

T w o WHEN GROWN-UPS WOULD WHISPER in my presence and my mother was dressed in black, I knew without asking that another member of the family had vanished. 1927.The first to go was my fun-loving Grandfather Zoegall. Soon after his laughter had died, my Great-grandmother Treumann and her croaked commands were gone as well. Her room stood empty, and only her sharp smell of old age continued to cling to the green plush upholstery. When my grandmother lay dying, my dutiful mother wanted to let her see her youngest grandchild one last time. Though I was unable to understand the gravity and meaning of her dying, I have never forgotten the sickroom and its misery. I was wholly unprepared for the old woman with waxen, contorted features who had once been Grandma Fränze. Thrashing about amid strands of gray hair and crumpled sheets, she now lay groaning in the grandparental bedroom. I have been unable to erase that scene from my memory. Deprived of its main pillars, the family continued to hold together. Aunt Luise and Uncle Richard took over the linen and lingerie shop on König Street. As in previous summers, my uncles, aunts and cousins would take the train to the shores of the Baltic Sea to meet in Heringsdorf. We had the poorest accommodations there, for Papa had slipped another rung down the social ladder. After a long and unsuccessful struggle to remain independent, he had to close his housewares shop and take a position as a traveling salesman. Who still needed brushes, brooms and baskets of pre-war quality, German handiwork that would last forever? I still have an old clothes brush from his stock. 22 I r e n e Aw r e t If post-war Berliners believed in anything at all, it was in the present, in cheap mass production and in department stores with escalators. For weeks on end my father was absent on business trips, and more and more often my mother was not feeling well. It fell to my older sister to drag me along on all her outings.“The child needs a breath of fresh air,” my mother said. Like many an eighteen-year-old of the period, Gerda, spirited, with racy Semitic features, gleaming white teeth and a beautiful singing voice, would have loved to become a film star. With me in tow, she made the tour of the studios. But there was no lack of young ladies of piquant appearance — and singing voices were not needed for silent films. In one of the smoke-filled offices an impresario, jabbing a finger under my chin, turned my head from side to side. “Whose boy is that here? What’s your name,little man?”asked a fat, deep voice. “My name is I-re-ne,” I drew out the three German syllables, offended that I had been taken for a boy because of my jump-suit and the fact that I was wearing my brother’s visored high school cap over short bangs. “Okay then, I-re-ne,” the agent laughed, with one hand redistributing the thin hair on his head, the other removing a cigar from his mouth,“Boy or girl, I-re-ne, you are the answer to my prayers.” I was given the part of a boy I vaguely resembled but who had fallen sick. After he was well again, I changed into his twin sister. In the film I sat with my twin in a wooden tub full of suds, and Lil Dagover, the leading diva, was our mother, washing us, a pleasant memory. The Weimar Republic already had a child labor law and while I sat splashing in the warm suds, a social worker waited for me in the wings with outspread towel, dry clothes and hot noodle-soup. If this was work, then I liked working. The only drawback was the mascara on my lashes and the constant admonition to stare straight into blinding reflectors. Playing the part of a boy was fun — every part was fun.And on the set of the studio at least, I had as yet no inhibitions. I laughed or cried with abandon, feigned toothache, fear, the sorrow of farewell or the joy of reunion just as needed. Whatever the director asked of me I carried out enthusiastically. T h e y ’ l l H a v e t...