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At this peak of anti-Nazi fervor, this professional low point, Fritz Lang became an American citizen. His citizenship papers were finalized on August 14, 1939. The two official witnesses were his secretaryTeddy Le Beau and the director's writer-friend Hy Kraft. Filling out a naturalization petition with details about his background, Lang declared his race and nationality as "German." He noted his height as five feet eleven, his weight as 180 pounds. The director stated that he was divorced from Thea von Harbou, though he made no mention of any other previous marriage. Lang had been in Hollywood only five years. Most European refugees were slowly adjusting, still uncertain about their host country. Lang was quicker than most to abandon his once-prized German citizenship and pledge his allegiance to the United States. Lily Latte, for example, waited a little longer—until the spring of 1941. Her witnesses were Le Beau and Pasadena Symphony Orchestra conductor Richard Lert, the husband of Vicki Baum. On her citizenship papers, Latte stated her occupation as a "collaborator and secretary" of film director Fritz Lang. After coming to America, Latte had had rocky years. Her daughter Susanne died suddenly, of diphtheria, while vacationing in Italy with her grandmother Schaul in 1936. In the meantime Latte had been trying to persuade her mother to leave Germany and come to the United States, but her mother—convinced that the idiocy of Hitler would not last—returned to Germany and passed away there in the summer of 1937. Lily's ex-husband Hans Latte died in Barcelona, Spain, in April of 1938. Either he was "killed while covering the Spanish Civil War" as a photographer, as Latte told some people; or he died of typhoid, as she informed others. Lily never forgave herself for the fate of her daughter, whom she had sacrificed to her husband in favor of her ambiguous relationship with Fritz Lang. By 1939, Latte was alone in life, and heavily reliant on Lang. In letters and conversations with ex-Berliners, the director stressed the emotional difficulties Lily had been experiencing since her arrival in America. He never mentioned whether he was affected by his own father's death, which also occurred during this time. C H A P T E R 1 3 1939 1941 1939-1941 261 In September of 1939, a deaf and very nearly blind Anton Lang was brought by his doctor to the doorstep of the Convent of the Sisters of Charity, whose nuns cared for the sick and dying in Gars am Kamp, the Lang family's rural retreat in Austria. There he would live out the few remaining months of his life, emaciated and infirm, suffering from glaucoma. On February 14, Lang's father suffered an attack of pneumonia. He died, after receiving Extreme Unction from a Catholic priest, on February 28, 1940, at the age of eighty. Although Fritz Lang had very little contact with his father, he, the favored son, was named heir to three-eighths of the estate, with five-eighths going to Anton's widow, his second wife, Malwine Lowenthal Lang. The eldest son, Adolf, received nothing. Anton Lang had married again in 1922, eighteen months after the death of Lang's mother Paula—which may have increased Lang's alienation from his father. Malwine Lowenthal was a divorcee, also with Jewish ancestry; and now that Austria was controlled by the Nazis, this affected the final dispersal of the Lang estate. The family assets had been whittled down to the villa at Gars am Kamp and four small fields east of Vienna, in Prinzendorf and Ort an der Donau. According to the Nazi racial laws, Anton Lang had been listed as "married to a Jewess," and his widow had trouble even obtaining a lawyer to claim her rightful share. Her "non-Aryan" classificationmade holding on to the property all but impossible. A lawyer represented Fritz Lang's interests at the reading of the will, and it was very swiftly arranged that the family possessions be auctioned off to pay debts. The house sold locally. The share set aside for the director now residing in America was 5285 Reichsmarks,but it is unlikely that this small sum was ever transferred overseas to his bank account. As for Malwine Lowenthal Lang, neither she nor her destiny was ever publicly acknowledged in any interview by the director. For a time Fritz Lang's stepmother was sheltered in a convent; she was then transported by...

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