Requiem for a German Past: A Boyhood among the Nazis

7. St. Mary’s Tower

7 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONM St. Mary's Tower M Y FATHER'S WORDS IN RADLIN had made it clear to me that he, too, struggled with the ambiguities that surrounded me, and that honorable men had good reason to be upset with the course their country pursued. I asked myself how a soldier like my father could remain so steadfast in the performance of his assignments when he questioned the righteousness and the honor of the cause he fought for. Was it true that duty came first and above everything else? And by what yardstick did he measure and condemn the actions of the SS? And what was it that gave him strength to hold fast to his sense of duty when he recognized the compromises with evil that this duty demanded of him? As I pondered these questions I thought of his and Bodo Wacker's tales of World War I and "Parson" Wille's prediction to us boys in the zyxwvutsrqponm Sexta that a time would come when we would fall back on the hymns of our Lutheran songbook for comfort and support. My thoughts turned to my grandfather Felix, the Protestant minister and Latin schoolmaster who had married my parents and baptized me, and to my grandmother Alma, who personified for me the Lutheran minister 's faithful wife and helpmate, and I wondered just what their faith had meant and did mean to them and my mother. When I was a small child my grandfather Felix had been a figure of imposing authority and control. By the time I came to know him, he had given up his pastorate and served as a professor at one of the municipal Latin schools in Chemnitz. He ruled over his family by the sheer power of his commanding eyes and his gravelly voice. He never had to raise it. A quick and threatening, "Afa, was soil's?" a stare of his steel-blue eyes, and a knock with his fingers on the table top, and 118 St. Mary's Tower zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTS everyone did as he was bid.1 My uncle Gerhard, my aunt Mausi, my mother, and my grandmother seemed to take it for granted that in his house his will was to be done. They did not question it and they did not seem to resent it. They also knew, as I did, that they could turn to him with their worries and requests, and that he would listen and comfort them. Because my grandfather was no tyrant. His authority was tempered with affection for us all, and an irrepressible humor pervaded his talk. When he refused my requests for a piece of his chocolate which he kept locked in the drawer of his writing desk, he would quote Wilhelm Busch, Abstinence we call the pleasure, from things we cannot have as treasure.2 By the time I had reached the age of six or seven, he also taught me the Latin version of Busch's Max and Moritz stories and the poems of Christian Morgenstern, such jewels as The Picket Fence One time there was a picket fence with space to gaze from hence to hence. and The Sniffle A sniffle crouches on the terrace in wait for someone he can harass. And suddenly he jumps with vim upon a man by name of Schrimm. Paul Schrimm, responding with "hatchoo," is stuck with him the weekend through.3 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZ 1. In tone and effect, my grandfather's,zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONM "Na, was soli's?" is more like the English, "Hey, what's that supposed to mean?" 2. Enthaltsamkeit ist ein Vergniigen An Sachen, welche wir nicht kriegen 3. Der Lattenzaun Es war einmal ein Lattenzaun mit Zwischenraum, hindurchzuschaun. and Der Schnupfen Ein Schnupfen hockt auf der Terasse, 119 n V1 1 ­ r l zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQP Grandmother Alma and Grandfather Felix 120 St. Mary's Tower zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTS At the dinner table where he presided over the whole family he laced his banter with learned references to Biblical phrases and classical myths, which he intentionally mixed up. When we then laughed at the wrong time, he took a fiendish delight in confronting us with our ignorance . He also loved to play cards with me—Sixty-Six or some such game that required thirty-two cards and whose rules I have long since forgotten—and demanded that I first deal out the deck, one card at a time, while we both recited a little...