School and the gay nineteen twenties

At last I sit down again behind the computer. There was a long absence which I hope you’ll forgive me. Spring is fully upon us and my most favorite tree is in full bloom. In Hebrew it is calledבליל החורש (Klil ha choresh – perfection or beauty of the forest).

In English it is called “Judas tree” with a myth attached that Judas Iscariot hanged himself from this tree after he betrayed Jesus. It is a ridiculous story, because the tree is small and slender and its branches reach up diagonally. How can one hang oneself from that?

This tree was most probably derived from the French common name, Arbre de Judée meaning tree of Judea, referring to a region where the tree grows, but it blossoms all over Israel and gives glorious colour to the dark green Cyprus and pine trees standing around. It has another particularity; the buds grow straight out of the trunk and branches!

~~~

 Alfred and Diana Strauss moved to Dahlem in 1919. It was at that time an elegant village with mainly big villas on the outskirts of Berlin. Only a year later it was annexed to this big city. Dahlem is close to the Grünewaldsee. The Strauss family rented a big house in this suburb, which is described in the blog: ” A new born and the great war”.

The Königin Louise Strasse is one of the main roads in Dahlem and there was the Arndt Gymnasium, where Teddy started to go to school as soon as they had moved from Berlin. He was 15 years at the time.

Teddy on the way to school

Arndt Gymnasium, Dahlem

This school was established in 1908 as an elite private boy’s school (only in 1946 girls were admitted). During the war a bomb fell on the school, but it was beautiful restored to the original art nouveau building with a 70 meter tower. Today it still is an excellent humanistic oriented school with many branches in other German towns.

Maba and Tinka were “the little ones” in the family. In 1929 Maba was eleven and Tinka eight years old. They both started school at the Gertraude Schule on the Im Gehehe (see map) in Dahlem in 1919.

Tinka and Maba

 In 1909 this school was established as a school for girls. By 1911 classes were added up to Gymnasium level (Secondary High School).

Both schools had good sports programs and they had swimming and rowing on their curriculum. The Grünewaldsee was close by where the rowing clubs held regattas.

After the Second World War the Gertreude School was turned into a school for children whose fathers were serving in the American forces. Dahlem was an elegant and relatively undamaged suburb, where American army people rented housing and where their children went to school. In 1946 the school was renamed the Thomas A. Roberts School, in honor of the lieutenant colonel of that name, the first American to lose his life in the Battle of Berlin.

 If you look at the map, you can understand why Alfred Strauss rented this big house. Both schools were in walking distance and the underground was also 5 min. from the house.

Erika the oldest was sent to a finishing school in Switzerland. Founded in 1793, the High Alpine Institute Ftan (it used to be called Fetan) is a top private school in Switzerland in Graubünden near the Austrian border. It is in a very small village of the same name. (Today only about 25000 inhabitants.)

Erika in the library, 1937

When Erika returned, she first worked for three years in a bank, afterwards in the “Staatliche kunstbibliothek”. Still later she helped as the librarian for “das Kinderheim”. Lily Oberwarth worked there as a social worker and her husband, Ernst, was the pediatrician there.

 The twenties were an exciting time after the first WW. In art, theatre, cabaret, architecture, and music it was a kind of frantic period where all had to be achieved as fast as possible to catch up in lost time. Before the war there were the Dadaists, the Blaue Reiter, Klimt, the art nouveau and more. Now Bauhaus, a school founded by Walter Gropius for art and architecture brought a style, that shocked the German burger who had never seen square buildings wrapped in glass. Teachers like Klee, Kandinsky, Lionel Feininger, Anni and Josef Albers and many more changed art and architecture in the 20s century.

Berlin reveled in its new found permissiveness. In this hedonistic atmosphere cabarets mushroomed everywhere. Entertainment was by a master of ceremonies dressed in black and silver; girls danced in the nude on the stage; cocaine and morphine were used; lesbian and homosexual night clubs everywhere; transvestite bars flourished.

 Kurt Tucholsky wrote chansons which were sung all over Berlin, and which warned of the dangers lurking beneath the surface of frenzied gaiety. Bertold Brecht in collaboration with Kurt Weill produced some of the most memorable songs of the period, including Mack the Knife, Pirate Jenny, The Alabama Song and Surabaya Johnny. The avant-garde theater of Max Reinhardt in Berlin was the most advanced in Europe.

Concert halls and conservatories exhibited the atonal and modern music of Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, and Kurt Weill.

Writers such as Erich Maria Remarque and Thomas Mann presented a bleak look at the world and the failure of politics and society through literature. Foreign writers also travelled to Berlin, lured by the city’s dynamic, freer culture. The decadent cabaret scene of Berlin was documented by Britain’s Christopher Isherwood in his novel Goodbye to Berlin which was later transposed to the musical movie Cabaret.

And in cinema, when the sound films were made the popular musical The Threepenny Opera with Lotte Lenia was filmed by director Georg Pabst: the Blue Angel (1930), directed by Josef von Sternberg with the leads played by Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings, were a great succes

The strength of America’s economy in the 1920’s came to a sudden end in October 1929 – even if the signs of problems had existed before the Wall Street Crash. America was faced with a major crisis that was to impact countries as far away as Weimar Germany – a nation that had built up her economy on American loans.This caused a worldwide depression and in Germany unemployment rose to 30% in 1932.

In this kind of world my father and his sisters grew up.

Here the two girls wear identical sweaters. Teddy and Maba have skates with them. Tinka probably hides them behind her back. First I thought it might be a school uniform, but those two girls went often identical dressed, it is probably a skating outfit and they are on the way to the Grünewaldsee.

Tinka, Maba, Erika

 

Spring, Wannsee sold and a wedding

Last Saturday was the most wonderful spring day after a very wet, cold and stormy period. We loaded the dog and the twins (our grandchildren) in the car and ascended the Carmel Mountain. We were not the only ones but the area is big enough to absorb everybody and we wandered the narrow paths enjoying the sea of anemones, which were at its peak. The twins found a chameleon who probably also was sunning himself after this cold spell. Our dog, Dulcinea, ran ahead and was most   interested in the wild boar trails which were very visible, as they dug up whole areas to find roots.                                                        The views were beautiful; the air fresh and unpolluted,altogether a wonderful time was had by all.

 

 ~~~

 The war had ended, but morale was low the people were bitter, angry about the peace treaty, there was no food, and many soldiers did not return from the war.

Throughout the period from the armistice on 11 November 1918 until the signing of the peace treaty with Germany on 28 June 1919, the Allies maintained the naval blockade of Germany that had begun during the war. As Germany was dependent on imports, people starved in this period. Also the Spanish flue pandemic was a factor that must not be forgotten.

On 28 June 1919, Germany, which was not allowed representation, was not present to sign the Treaty of Versailles. The one sided treaty by the victors placed blame for the entire war upon Germany, a view never accepted by German nationalists. Germany was forced to pay 132 billion marks ($31.5 billion) in reparations. It was followed by a period of hyperinflation in Germany between 1921 and 1923, when finally the Rentenmark was the currency issued on 15 November 1923 which stopped the hyperinflation.

Hester Schwabacher

In this atmosphere my family continued their lives. The Spanish flue had taken Lily Oberwarth’s daughter, but my father Teddy Strauss was saved. See blog: https://relativelyrelatives.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/blog-celebration-and-spanish-flue-pandemic/

Hester Schwabacher lived in Wannsee with Babs, her daughter. There were two houses on this estate and one was made into a revalidation center for soldiers during the war, which Babs directed. When Gerald Mendl returned from the war, he studied engineering in Berlin. By 1920 Babs and Gerald fell in love. See post:

https://relativelyrelatives.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/blog-celebration-and-spanish-flue-pandemic/

The whole family got involved. Babs was 7 years older than Gerald and he was still a student. Everybody was debating the pros and cons of this relationship. William was very much against it. Lily tried to talk sense to him and told him that Babs had listened to all their advice and that now should do what she thinks is right. He would not agree and for some years he did not want to have anything to do with her until he finally came around.

Gerald had to go to Rumania to visit his family, because a brother was very ill. Babs also left Berlin with the family Nanny, auntie Pestell, for quite awhile. They wanted to be apart for a long period of time to see if they intended to stick to their decision. In September Lily went to the station to welcome Babs back home and to her surprise Gerald was also there. Both looked very happy to see each other and announced that they were definitely engaged.

Hester Schwabacher sold the Wannsee estate in 1920 on the advice of her son and Fred Strauss. She got a million Mark for it. Alas in a very short time the money was valueless.  With the hyperinflation it just disappeared. She could have done better to have kept the place, because ground was the only thing that did not deflate. Fortunately she did not sell the house in the Hohenzollernstrasse until 1925 and then she got a good price for it. She rented a small house near the old Wannsee house; alas it could not accommodate all the family at once.

The last summer in Wannsee was in 1922, when the house Hester rented was sold and she had to leave. The family Schwabacher spent 37 years here and all were very nostalgic about it. Tante Lily writes:” Since I was 6 we came here and now I am 44. It was a great loss for all of us”.

It is amazing that the family lived still a fairly tranquil and protected life, while there was a revolution going on.  Spartacists and communists revolted, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were murdered . The revolution sizzled down but there was indeed unrest.

Another party was erected with only 7 members in1920. Hitler became the seventh member of this group, the name of which he himself changed from the German Arbeits Partei to the Nationalsozialistische_Deutsche_Arbeiterpartei; N.S.D.A.P. (National Socialist  German Workers’ Party). Its program was a convenient mixture of mild radicalism, bitter hatred of the politicians who had shamed Germany by signing the Versailles Treaty, and exploitation of provincial grievances against the weak federal government. They were not elected to the Reichtag that year.

Hitler was an Austrian, born 1889 in Linz. Moved to Vienna and with no means became a tramp. After being rejected a second time by the Academy of Arts, Hitler ran out of money. He worked as a casual labourer and eventually as a painter, selling watercolours of Vienna on the street. In 1909, he lived in a homeless shelter; Hitler stated in his biography “Mein Kampf” that he first became an anti-semite in Vienna.

In 1914 he volunteered to the German army in Bayern and finished the war as a corporal having earned an iron cross.

“The Beerhall Putsch”: Hitler wanted to seize a critical moment for successful popular agitation and support. On 8 November 1923 he, WW I General Erich Ludendorff and the SA stormed a public meeting of 3,000 people in the Bürgerbräukeller, a large beer hall in Munich. It had been organised by Kahr (a right-wing conservative politician, active in the state of Bavaria) Hitler interrupted Kahr’s speech and announced that the national revolution had begun, declaring the formation of a new government with Ludendorff. With his handgun drawn, Hitler demanded and got the support of Kahr. Hitler’s forces initially succeeded in occupying the local Reichswehr and police headquarters; however, neither the army nor the state police joined forces with him. Kahr and his consorts quickly withdrew their support and fled to join Hitler’s opposition.

To the members of the Bavarian Police, who gave their lives opposing the National Socialist coup on 9 November 1923)

The next day the Nazis marched through the streets of Munich. The police and the army stopped them on the Odeonsplatz and machine-gunned the Nazi column. Hitler narrowly escaped serious injury, Göring was badly wounded and sixteen stormtroopers were killed. He was imprisoned for nine months, during which time he dictated his autobiography and political testament, Mein Kampf (1925) to Rudolf Hess.

When I was in Munich two years ago, we had a wonderful guided tour by a German friend who lives in this town. He took us to the Odeonsplatz where Hitler was stopped by the police. We stood exactly in front of the Felldhernn Halle and the story was told so dramatically, that I could vividly imagine it and it made me shiver.

“The world between the wars was attracted to madness,” wrote the British philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970). “Of this attraction Nazism was the most assertive expression.”

Babs and Lizzy

Watching Hitler’s chanting crowds, and mass meetings, one could only get the idea that some kind of madness had come over Germany. In actual fact, most Germans cared less for Fascist or Nazi propaganda. They liked Hitler because he got things done, solved unemployment and restored the pride of all Germans.

Our family certainly was not one of the crowd. William Schwabacher foresaw what was happening, in the end of the 20ies: predicted the next war and had no good words for Hitler and his party. He regarded himself as a good German and a good citizen who defended his country during the Great War, but what was happening after that war and the hate that some Germans had for Jews he could not tolerate and he renounced his German citizenship and retained his Swiss one that he got at birth as his father had dual nationality. Thus his children became solely Swiss. See blog:  https://relativelyrelatives.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/william-schwabacher-and-a-sweet-potato/

Gerald and Lizzy

In May 1922 Babs and Gerald got married. Lily writes: “despite Williams forebodings, their marriage turned out to be the best I have ever seen in my long life, Gerald being more or less an angel or a philosopher whatever way one likes to look at it, or him”. As a 15 year old girl I visited them in Watford England, where they lived. Babs cooked me a special meal and Gerald was the most polite gentleman I ever met. He pulled a chair out for this teenage girl and impressed her mightily. He once took me to London and when we crossed the street he changed from my left to the right mid way, so that I was always protected from oncoming traffic.

Lizzy

Wulf

Family stories say that he was an ardent stamp collector. When they lived in England (again Hitler caused them to move). He sold his collection and was able to buy a house in Watford. With the doubles he started again and for years exchanged stamps with my mother who was also an enthusiastic collector.

In 1924 Elisabeth Gertrude was born and two years later Wulf Marco Louis followed.

After Babs and Gerald’s wedding Hester did not want to live in Berlin anymore. For a while she rented a place in Harzburg, but eventually she bought a nice little house there, where she remained until 1936, when she settled in England. Don’t forget that she was an English citizen.

Bad Harzburg is a town in central Germany, Lower Saxony. It lies on the northern edge of the Harz Mountains and is a recognised saltwater spa and health resort. It developed around a castle built about 1066 by the emperor Henry IV on the nearby Grosser Burgberg (1,585 feet, 483 m). The ruins of the castle remain. In 1892 it was given the title “Bad” (spa), received town privileges in 1894 and has since become an important tourist attraction.

When the revolution was raging just after the war William Schwabacher was convinced of terrible disasters. So he brought a lot of banknotes home and hid them in the most impossible places: in the crystal chandeliers and a flowerpot. Lily came home one day and the pot was missing, the maid had thrown the dead plant into the dustbin. She rushed outside to fish the wet and dirty money out of the bin and then went to the balcony to dig up the rest of the notes from in between the tomato plants. Something like that happened to Hester and Babs in Wannsee. They had just moved to the rented house, when Babs remembered that William had hidden money behind the wall in the toilet. She hurried to the house and got it all before the new owners moved in.

More Strauss lore

We have had the most horrible winter weather. It stormed and hailed and rained buckets. There were lots of power cuts and streets became fast flowing rivers. It was also very, very cold for Israeli standards. Nevertheless in between the rain we drove to the beach with Dulci and had a wonderful walk; managed to get back in the car just before the next cloud burst.

A power cut put us suddenly in the dark and I had not yet saved this blog. It was very frustrating and annoying to have to start again from scratch!

~~~

Today we take a diversion and concentrate on the Strausses and their life in the beginning of the century. It was a life of luxury. First they lived in this huge flat off Kurfürstendamm …”Kudamm”…. the Berliners call it. I can imagine my very elegant grandmother shopping on this street being admired by all men.

Later they moved to Dahlem (see the blog before this one). It was a large house and even with 2 maids and a cook, Diana still was very busy. She was addressed as “Frau Doktor” as was custom in Germany: her husband was a lawyer and had his doctorate, which of course allowed him to use the Dr. before his name. She discussed the daily menu with the cook early in the mornings, went herself twice a week to the market, organized the laundry and always was ready for her children: sitting with them when homework had to be done. Listening in when Mademoiselle came several times in a week to speak French with the children.

She sewed dresses for the girls, but was also an ardent anglophile and thought that the clothes from England were superior. Once a year she ordered sailor suits, reefer coats, hats and more from Peter Robinson, the elegant department store on Oxford circle in London. She was teased for this by her husband. Still once a year the order from England arrived until 1914 when the Great War started.

The Peter Robinson store was founded by Montague Burton in Chesterfield in 1903. The Company was bought in 1946 by the Arcadia Group and in the 60ies was renamed”Topshop”.

Maba, Diana, Erika, Teddy, Tinka

In the summer holidays they all went swimming sailing and rowing in the Wannsee, where they stayed for three months on the estate of Diana’s father. Tennis was played on the court in the back. Diana and Alfred were keen horse riders and stabled their horses in summer at Wannsee and in winter in a stable in Berlin. Ice skating was loved by all on a sunny winter’s day.

After the Great War they took up skiing as a sport. Diana and Lily and all the children were enthusiastic skiers. These pictures are lovely. The daring of Diana to wear trousers! One still skied in a skirt. The skis are also quite simple with leather clasp bindings on normal shoes.

Only in the beginning of the 20’s century, skiing was an elite sport practiced by a few hard souls in about 6 mountain resorts in the European Alps. Hotels had just begun to stay open to extend the resorts season. They used to be built mainly for summer vacations, attracting wealthy clients that could afford to travel. In the 1920s the European alpine nations began to build ski lifts, which increased popularity of skiing to new heights. Simultaneously with innovation and the development of new equipment and techniques, skiing attracted more followers and became part of the Olympic games in 1925. Today “forty million skiers can journey to any three hundred major alpine ski resorts around the major mountain chains of forty countries.

Podbielski Ubahn station

As a teenager Erika had scarlet fever. One of the side effects is permanent hearing loss when the infection causes a blockage in the inner ear. This was a great worry for Alfred and Diana, because her deafness was growing worth. Alfred took her once to Switzerland to consult an ear doctor in Zürich. Afterwards they spend 10 days in St. Moritz not to ski but to go for long walks and to end up at Hanselmann, the most famous cake shop, where Alfred put down the rule for his greedy daughter: one cup of hot chocolate and three pieces of cake or no chocolate and 6 pieces of cake!  

In her twenties Erika became totally deaf. But this favorite and amazing aunt could communicate with everybody and as a small child I remember writing my barely learned letters on a pad and she would read it while I was writing, I never had to complete a word or sentence, because she guessed it usually before I finished. After leaving school she worked in a bank for three years. In the morning, she would walk with her father to the Ubahn (underground) at Podbielskiallee only minutes from the house. A beautiful little station built in Jugendstil in 1913. Or when Alfred was fetched by the Chauffeur, Herr Rabe, who brought him to the EVA, then Erika went along. Later she studied to be a librarian and was quite well known. In her eighties she volunteered at Princeton University, because she was about the only one who could bring some order in the religious tracts and texts in 4 languages.

When in 1938 she fled to Holland, she studied Dutch with a teacher and was quite good in that language. Sometimes she would pronounce a word wrongly, because she had never heard this language, but once corrected she would not make that mistake again.

I do not know how much truth is in this story, but she did have marriage proposals and refused them on the grounds, that with her deafness she could not be a good mother.

The Strausses were not art collectors, like the Ephrussis (the hare with the Amber eyes by Edmund the Waal), but they were well read and loved poetry. Alfred and Diana were devoted to the theatre and the opera. Alfred could quote Goethe, Schiller and Heine. Shakespeare he would read in German and later he used a bilingual edition. He encouraged Erika to learn poems by heart and once for his birthday he asked her to learn Schiller’s “Der Glocke’. Erika did so and Alfred had to listen: the whole poem took 20 minutes to recite! He told wonderful stories to the children. Usually retelling operas and dramas and elaborating and adding to them. When Teddy and Erika heard Lohengrin for the first time, they were deeply disappointed, because half the contents were missing.

The children were taken to the theatre and opera from a quite early age. My father, Teddy, took me to the Flying Dutchman by Weber, when I was 9 or 10; I think he did that, because it was his first opera too.

Missy, the Nanny read to Teddy and Erika and later also Maba and Tinka all the Beatrix Potter books. Peter Rabbit was their favorite.  I still have Erika’s Peter Rabbit. If one thinks that Beatrix wrote this in 1902 and it is still read by my children and grandchildren, then one can really regard it as a true classic! As the children were bilingual, English was no problem. Another classic, in German, and also read by me (in Dutch) and by my kids(in Hebrew) was Struwwelpeter.

Der Struwwelpeter written in 1845 is a popular German children’s book by Heinrich Hoffmann. It comprises ten illustrated and rhymed stories, mostly about children. Each has a clear moral that demonstrates the disastrous consequences of misbehavior in an exaggerated way. The title of the first story provides the title of the whole book. Literally translated, Struwwel-Peter means Shaggy-Peter. It is a remarkable book, because it is one of the first books solely written for children 165 tears ago….and still read!

Karl May as old shatterhand

Some of Teddy’s favorite books were Winnetou and Old Shatterhand. For generations Karl May (1842-1912) has ranked high as one of the best loved and most widely read German writers. His tales of adventures set in the American West and in the Orient have sold close to 100 million copies in German and dozens of more millions in translations (33 languages). He wrote Winnetou and Old Shatterhand in 1893 and 1894. He had never been in America when he wrote these stories about Indians. Only in 1908 he made a trip to the States together with his wife.

The Strauss children loved performing and play acting. For every occasion they dressed up and acted. I have still the play that Alfred wrote on the occasion of his mother’s 70^th birthday. Goethe wrote Faust in two parts and my grandfather wrote part three!

 The Spiegelbergs and Neukamps are the children of Alfred’s sisters.  The photo below is Juliana Strauss Hecht with Maba and Tinka, but at a later date, because her 70ies birthday was in 1911 when Tinka was born.

 Here the four children are dressed up. Erika and Maba are in beautiful embroidered folk costumes either from Hungary or Rumania. Their father returning from his business trips brought always wonderful presents and I presume that those dresses belong to that category. Why Tinka is a clown and Teddy a cook I do not know but am sure that they they composed a great play around those costumes.When I saw this picture I immidiately recognized the folk dress that Erika is wearing. It used to be in the dressing up trunk in our house. Later I took it to Israel, and for years it was lying in my cupboard, going to waste. Then one day I decided that it was time that somebody with a serious collection of ethnic costumes should have this. After inquiring I found the right person and sold the clothes for a minimal price, making the new owner very happy by adding this picture!

On Alfred’s 50’s birthday the children gave him a photo album with a poem on the first page.

Freely translated: When you wrinkle your brow and remember your 50 years, when shares rise or drop, when the pilfering becomes bolder, when they make long speeches in the Reichtag swaying from left to right , when Poincaré (a mathematician, but I think they mean their father) oddly rushes about and when “Faustpfand” (again their father: a lover of Goethe’s Faust) still occupies EVA (his firm), Then you should retire with this book and count your blessings!

The next page:

Four buds in your Bouquet (Strauss=bouquet), have grown into four different flowers that slowly grow to maturity, which is recorded in this album!

A new born and the end of the Great War

Very big and happy news; we have a new addition to our family. I have a newgrandson. He is a lovely baby of 4 kg., born on the ninth of February and he is also number 500 on my family tree!

~~~

In the autumn of 1918 an enormous lot of things were happening, which ended in the signing of the peace treaty, but it started with the German Revolution on 29th of October 1918, when sailors at Kiel refused to obey orders to engage in battle with the British Navy. The sailors in the German Navy mutinied and set up councils based on the soviets in Russia. By 6th November the revolution had spread to the Western Front and all major cities and ports in Germany. By the 9^th of November 1918 the Republic is declared by Philipp Scheidemann from the balcony of the Reichstag. And as the head of the Social Democratic party Friedrich Ebert became the Reich’s Chancellor. Kaiser Wilhelm abdicates and flees with his family to Holland.

William Schwabacher returned early home in the autumn with a knee injury while riding in Rumania on the way to Turkey ….…….amazing the distances the soldiers covered………

On the 9^th of November the day the Germans gave up, Lily, William and her son Ulrich stood at the window looking at the square below. They saw the epaulettes being torn from the officer’s shoulders. Lots of shooting went on the day that the republic was declared and large crowds of workers were marching, marching.

Ernst Oberwarth was still in Strasburg and while he was leaving home to go to the hospital, a policeman warned him to return and change into plain clothes otherwise the people might be dangerous. As a good soldier he was reluctant to do it, but found the advice sensible to follow.

It took three days to sign the peace treaty, which happened at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918; the Great War ends. They signed it at Compiègne in a rail carriage.

This photograph was taken in the forest of Compiègne after reaching an agreement for the armistice that ended World War I. This railcar was given to Ferdinand Foch for military use by the manufacturer, Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. Foch is second from the right. There are only the British and French on the photo, the Germans left straight after the signing.

Both AEF commander Gen. Pershing and Allied supreme commander Foch of France were unhappy with the nature of the armistice and subsequent Versailles peace treaty. Pershing believed that it was a grave mistake to let the Germans simply lay down their arms without actually being beaten. (They were defeated, yes, but not beaten.) He correctly predicted that because they did not make the Germans beg for peace on their knees inside a ruined Germany, the Allies would soon be fighting them again. Foch was even more prescise. Upon reading the Versailles treaty in 1919, Foch was heard exclaiming, “This isn’t a peace. It’s a cease-fire for 20 years!” Twenty years and two months later, England and France declared war on Germany

Rosa Luxembourg (see blog: https://relativelyrelatives.wordpress.com/2011/10/07/social-work-women-movements-and-tante-lilly/) left the Social Democratic party, because the SDP fully supported Germany’s entry into the war and she was against the war. She started the Spartacist party (later the German communist party) with Karl Liebknecht. In January 1919, the Spartacists revolted in Berlin. Friedrich Ebert now saw his own power under threat and called in the German Army and the Freikorps (German volunteer military units. They formed the vanguard of the Nazi movement) to suppress the rebellion. On January 15th, 1919, Luxemburg, Liebknecht and Wilhelm Pieck, another Spartacist leader, were arrested. What happened next is unclear but Luxemburg, Liebknecht and Pieck were taken to the local prison. Pieck managed to escape. Luxemburg and Liebknecht were both murdered by their captors. Luxemburg’s body was found in a river half a year later. A revolutionary mass strike lasted until March 1919.

Although William Schwabacher returned early he was still in the army employed by the Reichkanzlei against the revolutionaries. Lilly and Ernst gave him Ernst’s waiting room as an office, where a secretary worked for him. It was an exciting time and everything was hush, hush. Lilly writes:” I remember one night: he did not come home at all and they were looking for him. It was after the incredible murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in which it was assumed that he was somehow involved. I never found out if anything of this was true and never knew what really happened.”

The Peace Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assasination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. One of the impositions on Germany was the sum of around 226 billion Marks they had to pay to the Allies. In 1921, it was reduced to 132 billion. Reparations of that magnitude would lead to hyperinflation, as actually occurred in post-war Germany.

Germany finally finished paying its reparations in 2012. (This week!)

TheTelegraphwrites: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/8029948/First-World-War-officially-ends.html (watch only the the movie) The First World War will officially end on Sunday 11 February 2012; 92 years after the guns fell silent, when Germany pays off the last chunk of reparations imposed on it by the Allies I quote Tante Lilly:” Economic conditions were catastrophic. Every day at noon the new rate was fixed and the people rushed out to buy something, may it have been ever so

one million mark

valueless, just to make use of the money before it again deflated. A tram ticket cost 1 milliard, all wages were valueless, and accounts could hardly be kept for the figures chiefly consisted of zeros. Fortunes dwindled to nothing and when inflation finally stopped by the stroke of the pen of Mr. Schacht on the 22^nd November 1923, most people had to start over again and everyone was penniless.”

Hjalmar Schacht was a banker and the president of the Reichsbank. The Rentenmark (literally, “Debt Security Mark”) (RM) was a currency issued on 15 November 1923 to stop the hyperinflation of 1922 and 1923 in Germany.

Teddy and Alfred Strauss

Alfred Strauss returned home very soon after the war and resumed his old position as Director at EVA „Eisenbahn-Verkehrsmittel A.G. short for „EVA“(railway transport vehicle Co). In 1919 the family moved to a villa on the Im Dol 15 in Dahlem. Probably, because the flat in Meinkestrasse, although very central in the middle of Berlin, had no garden and I am guessing that schools were excellent in Dahlem’s elegant neighbourhood. Alfred rented this house. He planned to buy this or another one, but then the inflation started and alas he died too young.

The first written account of Dahlem dates to the year 1275. There was a landgood which was sold to the state of Prussia in 1841 and developed by dividing it into lots for building villas and mansions. In 1920 the village was amalgamated into Greater Berlin. During the Cold War Dahlem belonged to the American Sector of West Berlin. From 1945 to 1991 the seat of the Allied Kommandantura of Berlin was in Dahlem. Because so many of Berlin’s artistic, cultural, and educational institutions were located in East Berlin, West Berlin authorities established many museums in Dahlem, also the Free University in 1948.

The house in Im Dol was very large. Downstairs was a big dining room, study for Alfred and the salon with grand piano. Upstairs there were 5 bedrooms, sewing room with linen cupboard and only one bathroom! But every room had a washstand with running water. The cook slept in the basement, also the “portier” (concierge) with his family lived there. The maids slept in the big attic. This picture is from the back overlooking the garden. On the balcony a few family members are gathered. Erik and Teddy are recognizable; the rest is guess work, but note the blossoming fruit tree.

Im Dol15 front

The garden had some cherry and other fruit trees; a big lawn where they played crocket. There were gymnastic lessons at home; in the summer on the lawn and in winter in the dining room .

This kind of idyllic family life seems to me amazing in those very turbulent times,but then they lived in this very elegant neighbourhood far from the center of Berlin.

Blog celebration! And Spanish flue pandemic

Yes let the trumpets blast and the flag hoisted, garlands and champagne! On the 29^th of January one year ago I published my first blog.  https://relativelyrelatives.wordpress.com/2011/01/29/to-blog-or-not-to-blog/  Quite impressive, that I stuck to it and even have more and more followers. Thank you all for being so patient and for being such faithful fans.

~~~

Now we get to a person I have hardly mentioned: My  great-aunt Babs.  Bertha Doris Schwabacher (1891-1974), the youngest of Hettie and Adolf Schwabacher was always sickly after she caught scarlet fever as a child. When war broke out she was only 23 and very much affected by what was happening. It was so bad that she took to her bed being very depressed.

 All during the war Hester Schwabacher had decided to stay in Wannsee (see blog: https://relativelyrelatives.wordpress.com/2011/07/16/villa-colony-wansee/) and live there throughout the year. She closed up their house in Hohenzollern Strasse in Berlin for the time being. Later in the war she sold it. By 1915 she turned das Kinderhaus into a “Genesungsheim” (convalescent home) for soldiers. Hettie gave her daughter Babs the task to look after the place with the help of a trained nurse. She made an excellent job out of it throughout the war years and was the advisor and friend of many of the men, who even after the Second World War kept contact with her. By that time she lived in Watford, England, where she settled after Hitler took the reins in Germany.

At this time an English friend of Hettie’s, who lived with her Austrian husband in Rumania, asked if her son Gerald Mendl could stay with them at Wannsee as he started studying engineering at the Berlin Hochschule, because he could not return to Rumania, after he had finished his abitur in Vienna. He became a great help with the soldiers, who nicknamed him “der Neutrale” (the neutral one).

He stayed for more than a year, but then he had to join the Austrian army and took part in the terrible fights in the Dolomites against the Italians.

Between May 1915 and October 1917 the Dolomites were the stage of one of the most horrific moments in history. In an exhausting war of  attrition the Italian and Austrian Armies fought out First World War battles in these mountains. For twenty months the soldiers of the two opposing troops endured terrible battles of indescribable suffering and hardship, loss of life and deprivation. Think of the two long winters spent on those peaks, one man against the other, more often than not only separated by just a few meters. Suffering together, yet controlling one another and shooting at each other, each enduring the same cold and hardships.

Nowadays there are war museums in the Dolomites and there is a fantastic week long walking trail one can follow, visiting all those places where there was a terrible war fought 100 years ago and enjoying this beautiful landscape at the same time.

Lilly’s husband Ernst was send to the Russian front somewhere near the Polish border in the winter of 1914-15, always in the capacity of a medical doctor. By July Lily gets a telegram, that he is on sick leave in Gleiwitz, Silesia, a coal miners town just over the border to Germany. This I find an amazing story…… Lily packs her bags and in the middle of war travels to Poland. She writes that it was a dreadful journey in a crowded train. Arriving she found that he suffered from some kind of dysentery. She lived in a hotel in town and after two days, they had not seen each other for 10 months, she realised that he longed to see the children, so she returned to Berlin packed up those kids and came back to Gleiwitz .

Later they all returned to Wannsee where Ernst recuperated and then was appointed Doctor at the Tempelhof Lazeret in Berlin (Hospital), because he never got completely well. He suffered also from nightmares. He could not forget the horrors that he had seen, but it was a bonus to be able to live at home.

The Great War brought a new age of warfare to human history. The war would be fought as much on the home front as it would on the battlefield. The production of military equipment, ammunition and food became the war behind the war.

All of these battlefield requirements had to be met while keeping the civilian population fed and clothed as well. Tremendous sacrifices were made by the people of all warring nations to keep the soldiers in the field ready to fight. All aspects of a nation’s population, industry and culture were mobilized to fight. The age of total war (the entire military and civilian population dedicated to the war effort) had arrived.

As the Great War entered its last year, food and materials had reached a breaking point within Germany. One example of the shortage of food during this time came with the substitution of finely ground sawdust as flour alternate in bread. Soldiers on leave would return home to see their children undernourished, short of heating fuels and wearing old threadbare clothing. With all the best food going to the frontlines, civilians paid a heavy price for the war effort. Even the troops in the frontlines began to suffer from the lack of foodstuffs available during 1918. Allied food, discovered during trench raids and offensives, was a highly sought after prize.

Lily writes: “Things went from bad to worse. Apart from the food difficulties there were no fabrics available. In the poorer homes no linen was left; I remember visiting a woman who had just given birth to a child and was using newspapers as sheets. My own children were wearing shoes with wooden soles like everybody else”.

Lily’s daughter Diana was nearly eighteen and insisted to leave school. She wanted to be useful and started to work and study at “das Kinderheim” where her father used to work as a pediatrician.  She loved children and learned civic law, cooking, kindergarten helper and more.

1918 brought another curse to this world. World War I claimed an estimated 16 million lives. The influenza epidemic that swept the world in 1918-‘19 killed an estimated 50 million people. One fifth of the world’s population was attacked by this deadly virus. Within months, it had killed more people than any other illness in recorded history. Scientists, doctors, and health officials could not identify this disease which was striking so fast and so viciously, defying control. Some victims died within hours of their first symptoms. Others succumbed after a few days; their lungs filled with fluid and they suffocated to death. It was truly worldwide and reached the Arctic and remote Pacific islands.

The first cases of influenza were registered in the continental U.S. and the rest of Europe before getting to Spain. The 1918 pandemic received its nickname “Spanish flu” because of the early estimation of the disease’s severity in Spain. Spain was a neutral country in World War I and had no censorship of news regarding the disease and its consequences. Germany, the United States, Britain and France all had media blackouts on news that might lower morale and did not want to disclose information about disease and the number of deaths to their enemies.

World War I did not cause the flu, but the close troop quarters and massive troop movements hastened the pandemic and probably increased transmission; it may also have boosted the lethality of the virus. Immune systems of soldiers and civilians were weakened by malnourishment, as well as the stresses of combat and chemical attacks, increasing their nonresistance to the disease. A large factor in the worldwide occurrence of this flu was increased travel. Modern transportation systems made it easier for soldiers, sailors, and civilian travelers to spread the disease.

It raged also through the Schwabacher and Strauss families. Diana Oberwarth fell ill on the 5^th of October. Lily telegraphed her husband, who at that time was working in the hospital in Strasburg. Alas the telegram was delayed and he arrived when Diana was in a coma. She died a day later on the 15^th of October without regaining consciousness or recognising her father. A month later she would have been 19 years old. Lily was always very grateful, that she had such a wonderful last year doing and studying what she liked most-working with children. Erika Strauss stayed with the Oberwarths, because in the Strauss family everybody was also ill. She writes:” I attended Diana’s funeral in the late evening. Six women in trousers (unheard of at that time) carrying the coffin as no cemetery workers were available. I can still see Tante Lilly in black veil throwing a bunch of roses into the open grave. For me that was practically the end of the war.”

Alfred Strauss had pneumonia after the flu and was very ill, but recovered, Maba, then 10 years old, was ill but got through. The worse off was Teddy, my father, 14 years old. Lily writes:”He was in a complete coma and everybody despaired of his life. I spend 4 nights at Diana’s house as she could not cope with it all …..and that just after her daughter died!……….He was completely unconscious and the nurse called me to show me that he was breathing like a dying person. The next day Richard Mühsam, a doctor’s friend of Ernst, appeared and told me that a new serum had been found which helped in a number of cases, but it was only to be had in Dresden where it was manufactured and the only person that could get it was Doctor Ulrich Friedeman, the famous bacteriologist, who later was brought to America through the Rockefeller foundation just before W.W.II.|”

Lily went at once and after a lot of inquiries she got hold of this man. He would try to get some serum, although he could not promise it for sure and thus not to tell yet anything to Diana and Alfred. The next day he did arrive with the serum and gave Teddy an injection. Everybody stood around his bed and Teddy’s reaction was a loud cry, otherwise there was no change. A day later Teddy got another injection. A few hours later they found Teddy sitting up in bed being hungry while his two parents were beaming and happy to have their son returned to them.

Patients in 1918 injected with convalescent whole blood, plasma or serum obtained from humans who had recovered from Spanish influenza resulted in a reduced mortality of seriously ill patients by 50%. This discovery is helping researchers still today and probably helped to prevent a pandemic when the avian influenza started in the Far East.

Here I have to tell, that gossip and wrong information always seeps in, when stories are passed on orally. I was told that my father recovered because the ‘new’ medicine aspirin, which was rare, was obtained for my father and he recovered. First of all aspirin already existed for many years and was widely used for rheumatism and secondly he did not get that! I believe aunt Lilly’s memoirs 100%!

This all happened in October: It must have been horrid in Germany without fuel, food, this terrible Spanish Flue and morale very, very low.

Then the German revolution started and the end of the war seemed to be near. All that to be continued in the next blog.

 

Chocolate almond cookies and the Great War in Germany

It is 5 years since my mother died and to remember her, I’ll bake her choclate almond cookies today.  They are my favorites and here is the recipe:

200 gr. unsalted butter,150 gr.icing sugar, 1 egg, 250 gr. flour, 3 heaped sp. cocoa, 80  gr. blanched almonds roughly chopped or slivered almonds.

Beat butter and icing sugar, add egg, mix well. Incorporate flour and cocoa powder into butter mixture. Fold almonds into batter. On lightly floured board roll dough into two sausages and let them rest for one hour in the fridge. Heat the oven to160 C. (320F). Line baking sheet with baking paper. Cut dough into 1 cm thick slices. Bake for 15-20 min. Cool on rack. They can be stored in a tin for 10 days, but I do not believe they will last so long.  

N.B.: They are also very good with chopped walnuts!

Remember my mother when you eat them! 

~~~

The Great War: every war is horrible and atrocious but the First World War was a trench war, all soldiers from many countries lived through Horror: Digging trenches, living for months in mud, dirt, cold, snow and sunshine. They were gassed with the terrible mustard and other lethal gasses. They lost limbs and lives. The war turned into a slow grind of attrition with entrenched armies locked in an apparently endless stalemate.

At home everybody was knitting socks or balaclava hats.

During the fighting in the west and the east the people of Germany were mostly in support of the war.  The belief was widespread that even though the war was forced upon the German people, it was for the “Greater Germany” that it could become.  When the war started turning against Germany, there was still the general belief that at least they should gain something for their effort.  The German people were mostly willing to have peace, but without giving up land, or preferable to gain more.

First lieutenant Alfred Strauss and Diana Strauss

Alfred Strauss as a loyal German was soon in uniform like all the rest of the males in the Schwabacher and Strauss’ families. In the beginning he was at home, because he was needed for his business, the EVA, which built and loaned railway carriages to the government.

I have here copies of letters from the autumn of 1914. One is a reply to the request of Alfred to get an appointment as an officer of the ”Landwehr 2.Kraftfahrtruppen” (motor vehicle unit), which was recommended by General Lieutenant Messing. His appointment as Oberleutenant (First lieutenant) was approved on the 14.10.’14.

Another paper is a pass to allow Oberleutenant Strauss to travel to Vienna and back.

During the winter of 1914, the German people began eating K-Bread (Kriegsbrot – war bread). This type of bread replaced wheat with potatoes as the main ingredient. The best food was sent to the front lines to ensure the soldiers had enough energy to fight. This meant that the civilian population had to do without.

I have here next to me Erika’s memoirs and I will quote from it. When the war started she was just 12 years old, my father, Teddy, 9. Maba 5 and Tinka barely 1 ½ years old.

Erika writes: “I remember the morning of August 4^th, when England declared war on Germany and Granny Hettie Schwabacher; she was British born, burst into tears. Also we were thinking of our many English relations”.

Lily Oberwarth plunged into her social work, that I have mentioned before, but repeat it here: “My life was pretty hectic during those first months of the war. Every morning after I had seen Diana off to school, I left for my office. Ulrich, my four year old son was well looked after by the English Nanny, Miss Olive. During the first month I used to ride my bicycle (!) as all transportation was in a muddle, later when winter set in I took the train, which took ¾ hour every way. I came home for lunch to give the children their dinner, returning afterwards to the office. Hundreds of applicants came daily with their woes and demands. When the emperor’s promise of a speedy end of the war did not materialize, we decided to open the office only in the morning as all of us were volunteers.”

All through the war under appalling circumstances: no food, no heat, no husbands, women kept things going and our aunt Lilly was in the middle of it: working closely with Gertrud Bäumer and Josephine Levy-Rathenau. When the war ended those three went to the Berlin town Hall where they were given placards announcing, that their offices were under the protection of the town and the next day they reopened them.

Lily’s husband Ernst Oberwarth enrolled in the very beginning of the war and as a physician (he was actually a pediatrician) checked recruits in Berlin. Very soon his unit moved to Belgium and he was in the middle of the worst battles during this war in Ypres and Dixmude after the defeat of the Germans in Marne in Sept. 1914. The First Battle of Ypres (there were three) was one of the most significant.  It foreshadowed how the fighting on the Western Front would play out as the war progressed.  Atrociously high casualty figures from each participating army combined with fighting and living in trenches would soon come to dominate the stalemate that was the Western Front. Lily describes a scene, after the Belgians decided to open the sluices near Nieuport and Ostend: “The adjutant of Ernst visited me and described how he had to wake the doctors as the floods were rising and they would have otherwise drowned. They were lying fully clothed on one bed and their iron crosses, which Ernst received quite at the beginning when rewards were still of value, gleamed in his torch.”

Erika about 12 years old

Erika writes:”Gradually life became darker, harder and grayer. Food became scarce and was tightly rationed. There probably was a black market, but our families were “of course” too patriotic to make use of that. Father did send food from Belgium. The staple food at all meals was beets. How we hated that. Beets in soup, beets as vegetable, beets baked into bread , yes even cookies made of beet!” …..Here I want to interrupt Erika. I think she means turnips, instead of beets, or perhaps it was both. I have a memory of our family. We children had to eat everything that was served and we were not allowed to refuse. We had to finish what was on our plates. There was one exception for our father, Teddy. He hated beets and did not have to eat them if my mother had put them on the menu…….Erika continues:” Everything was distributed: you could not even buy a dishcloth or a mop without a special permit. Gold was collected (coins and jewelry) and we children were given this task in school. The class which collected the most got a special citation. We wore little pins engraved: “gold I gave for iron” and if our parents would have allowed it, we would also have worn the pin:” may God punish England”. Boys of course played at being soldiers and on the playground we dug trenches”.

Hindenburg's wooden statue

During the war, there were wooden statues of Hindenburg built all over Germany, onto which people nailed money and cheques for war bonds. It was a measure of Hindenburg’s public appeal that when the Government launched an all-out program of industrial mobilisation in 1916, the program was named the Hindenburg Program.

Erika writes:”In the center of Berlin there was a huge wooden statue of General Hindenburg, the hero of the war as he had been the victor of the East, keeping the Russians out. You could buy iron, silver or “gold” nails to hammer into this statue. It was to support the war.”

As the war dragged on, Germany turned to science to produce foodstuffs for the people. Several food items in use today were developed during the war. One of the biggest was the production of margarine (an edible oil product) to replace butter. Artificial honey, coffee made of chicory, puddings and many other items were developed to replace items sent to the front. People were encouraged to cook “Eintopf “(one pot meal), to save fuel and ingredients.

Captain Alfred Strauss

Even with all the attempts to manufacture food from almost nothing, by 1916 serious food shortages were appearing all over Germany. It was at that time that one of the worst winters in European history hit the country. The winter of 1916 became known as the “turnip winter.” A premature frost destroyed the potato harvest that year which had become a major source of food for the people. Instead the turnip, which did not suffer from the frost, became the main source of food for the country.

Science was turned to all areas of production. Artificial silk, clothes and army sandbags were manufactured from wood pulp. Synthetic rubber was developed as were a number of other products using science to replace items Germany was unable to grow or mine.

By 1917 Alfred was promoted to Hauptmann (Captain). If you compare the shoulder flaps in both photos, you can see in the last more pips then in the first! By now besides traveling extensively, he was for a while billeted in Valencienne in France, just over the border from Belgium and not far from Dunkirk.

Captain Alfred Strauss (to the right) with aide in Valencienne, France. Look at the building, it is totally ruined. No roof, no windows, just a skeleton.

There still exists a certificate from 21 June 1917 from the Armee-oberkomando to: “Commander of the motor vehicle unit 2, Captain Strauss should supervise the area of the no.2 Army. He is entitled to arrest all vehicles and the officers responsible, besides generals. They should be stopped and checked. Passes should show the purpose and the destination of the journey”. Signed with lots of stamps.

I will continue the war years in the next blog.

More British Schwabachers, the Great War and a gold star.

This has to be celebrated. WordPress, my blogging site, has been having a countdown and keeps telling me after I post a blog, that at my 45^th blog I deserve a gold star. Well the last blog was the forty fifth! Hurrah. Imagine 45 blogs with an average of three pages each. It is a book!

~~~

 

Here we have the family tree of Eduard Schwabacher, the oldest brother of Adolf. See blog: https://relativelyrelatives.wordpress.com/2011/08/28/weddings/

Ernst Schwabacher as an Einjährig-Freiwilliger

The third child of Eduard and Bertha, Ernst Schwabacher, was born in 1878. He did his Abitur (final exam in school in Würzburg) and then volunteered as an Einjährige in the German army.

Einjährig-Freiwilliger is a status in which it was possible for young educated men, in Germany (after High school or during university studies) to do their military service. The Einjähriger could choose in which branch of the service he would volunteer and then had to equip, clothe, and maintain himself at his own expense. After one year he was eligible for promotion to reserve officer. This system of one-year service was introduced in 1867 and lapsed in 1919. As it was very costly to supply uniforms and gear, only sons of wealthy families could afford this kind of military service.

Ernst in this photograph is wearing the dress uniform of an Einjärige. The family was still living in Würzburg , because his picture comes from the Würzburg Atelier Lutz. After he finished his year, he applied for promotion as a reserve officer and was refused. Jews could not be officers in the German army.

The Jews in Germany had experienced a period of ostensible equality from 1848 until the rise of Nazi Germany. By the end of the 19th century, what had emerged was a mutually beneficial relationship between the Germans and the Jews. They had merged elements of German and Jewish culture into a unique new one. However, equality and actual practice did not coincide. There was hardly any chance of a Jew becoming a judge or getting an officers appointment in the army, political appointments were rare. Only if the Jewish candidate renounced his faith and converted to Christianity he could enter these professions.

This was also the reason why Adolf Schwabacher advised his daughters and his son in laws to convert. He believed that that would make any Jew equal to a German. How wrong he was!

His son William Schwabacher served during his studies at University as an Einjärige and by that time he had converted to Protestantism. He applied several times for promotion as an officer and did finally pass the exam. He served on the Russian front during the war. See blog: https://relativelyrelatives.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/william-schwabacher-and-a-sweet-potato/

Ernst was so disappointed and disillusioned not to be able to make a career as an officer in the army, that in 1899 he left Germany and went first to France before he settled in London. There he started to work at the Stock exchange and became a stockbroker. Did he get help from his uncle Michel Schwabacher? I don’t know. In 1906 he became a British citizen and changed his first name by deed poll from the German sounding Ernst to Ernest, because there was another with exactly the same name at the stock exchange. When war broke out he volunteered and joined the Middlesex Light Infantry. He was already 35 years old. In the photo he has only one stripe which means that he was a lance corporal and he probably never fought in the trenches. He most likely was a quartermaster and dealt with supplies. At least he did not physically fight against the Germans, which was a good thing, because his younger brother Richard (1879-1932) was still living in Germany and of course enlisted in the German army.

 So there you have it: In our family not only cousins, but also brothers fought at both sides in the Great War.

Richard, in Germany, was married to Beatrice and they had two children: Diana and John. After the war Richard came to England and changed his name to Shaw. In 1932 he died and even though his brother Ernest had hardly any contact with him he mourned him deeply.

Helene (1877-1940) stayed single all her life and died in England. She came to this country before the Second World War

Two of his sisters were married and lived in Germany. Cäcille married George Michels. They had three children: Walter the eldest (1900-1983), Liselottte (1907-?) and Heinz who died when only three years old. George died in 1915, probably from an illness, because he was already49 years old, when the war started. The Michels had a textile factory and a shop in Unter den Linden in Berlin (like Liberty in London), which went bankrupt in 1930.

Walter refused to leave Germany, while his mother was seriously ill. Cäcille died in January 1938 of cancer. Only then Walter left Germany and came to England.

In the summer of 1939 just before the Second World War broke out he had to go for business to Holland. His uncle Ernest (the stockbroker) acted as his guarantor and he returned to England to join up. He was in the British Army in the second WW in the Pioneer Corps, engaged on daft duties like painting piles of black coal white to make the place look smart for inspections by visiting generals!  The pioneer corps was largely filled by former German refugees who were highly qualified doctors and lawyers wasting their talents doing silly unskilled jobs. Walter had a Doctorate Law degree from Heidelberg before he came to UK. In England he studied and then worked as a photographer after the war. He made beautiful portraits.

Julius Baum

Ernest’s youngest sister Hedwig (1881-1915) married Julius Baum, a doctor. They lived in Germany, and of course Julius served in the German army. Their son Hans (1911-1977) was brought up by Cäcille Michels together with her children after his mother died in 1915.

Hans had to leave Germany in the thirties, because his mother was Jewish. Ernest helped him financially to set up a business (early Plastics) which was bought out much later by ICI. He married Li Reiff (1897-1983) and although she was 14 years older than he and a divorcee, it was a very happy marriage and she outlived him for another 6 years. During the second WW he was interned on the Isle of Man, but his wife Li got him out because his plastics firm made buttons for army uniforms.

When Ernest received his discharge papers after the Great War he returned to the stock market. Richard Strauss (not family of us and not the composer) was a good friend of Ernest in the stock market. He introduced his niece Hertha Moos to Ernest.

When Hertha was a small infant, her mother Nellie Moos left Germany in 1900 to live with her brother Richard after her husband was sent to the United States by the Strauss family and promptly married his landlady in New York. Richard Strauss became the guardian of this little girl Hertha after the divorce in 1906.

In 1923 Ernest married Hertha Moos. There was a 21 year difference between them but it was a happy marriage and both lived a full and long life. She became a well known pathologist and worked all her life. They had a son: Edward Norman Schwabacher (1925-2002).   He was named after his grandfather Eduard.

All Eduard Schwabacher’s children moved to England. Ernest must have been a very loyal brother and uncle to sponsor them all and take them out of Germany.  Norman Schwabacher changed his name to Sinclair by deed poll in 1953.And alas that was the last true Schwabacher in Britain, instead there are many Shaws and of course Sinclairs, In South America there are quite a few family members that stick faithfully to their last name and my dear cousin Kai is the only European Schwabacher left.

The great War and the British Schwabachers

Yesterday there was an article in the paper that fascinated me. The headline said: “Exercise is good for your waistline: “when your hand writes, your weight recedes”.Some serious research was done in the United States, claiming that losing weight is as simple as doing a 15-minute writing exercise! In a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 45 women were divided into two groups: women who wrote about their most important values, like close relationships, music, or religion, lost more weight over the next few months than women who did not have that experience.

Wow, I should be as thin as a beanstalk by now. I am writing much longer than 15 minutes a day and what I write about is very dear and important to me! But my weight stays the same if not rising. What kind of research is that?

~~~

While the Schwabachers and the Strausses and all the Germans went to war, also the English started to be prepared. On the 2^nd of August the French invaded Germany, on 3^rd of August Germany responded by declaring war on France and on the 4^th the Germans invaded Belgium to reach France by the shortest way, which prompted the British to declare war on Germany as they had a treaty with Belgium to protect them in case of war with Germany. Our English family joined like everybody else.

 Michel Schwabacher was the second of the four Schwabacher brothers and one year older then Adolf. Michel made his career as a stockbroker in London and lived there with his second wife Ida. He had 6 children with his first wife and another daughter with his second wife.

 See blog:  https://relativelyrelatives.wordpress.com/2011/08/05/london-stock-exchange-berlin-borse-and-family/

When war was declared the four sons of Michel signed up. Herman the oldest was already 33 years old. He had I think a very daring love life at the turn of the century. He first had a relationship with Rose Hanna Hall. Their child Sydney Jack Shaw (1896-1955) was brought up by a couple in Marizon, Cornwall. The 1901 census suggests that it was Edward, an agricultural labourer and Elizabeth John who took Sydney in foster care.

 From around 1912 he lived together with Nancy Barnett. They had three children: Claire Schwabacher Barnett (1912-2004) and the twins Zeta and Sonia Shaw Barnett(1917-?).

 

Hermann Schwabacher with two unknnown women

On the 21st of August 1914 Herman announced in the “London Gazette” that he had relinquished the name “Schwabacher in favour of Shaw by Deed Poll on the 18th of August. When he enlisted he took care of Nancy by a settlement in his will and he gave all his children his last name.

medal 1914

In October 1915 he entered the war and was a commissioned lieutenant in the Royal Marines attached to the Royal Engineers 248th Field Company/ royal engineers. He died of wounds on 26/04/1917 at the battle of  Gavrelle in France and is buried at Aubigny Communal Cemetery Extension in France.

 The battle of Gavrelle – 28th -29th April 1917 RND, 248th Field Company, RE (Army), France.

Ernest, Max, and Frederick probably went together with Herman to the London Gazette to put their own announcements in the paper to declare that they had relinquished the name Schwabacher in favour of Shaw by Deed Poll on the 18th of August. This is interesting, because lots of English Shaws are family and living probably all over Britain. Alas we lost all contact with them.

Ernest Shaw was two years younger than Hermann. He married Nathalie H.N.Weil in 1912. They did not have children. I do not know much about him. He died early in the war in 1915 probably fighting in Belgium or France.

Max Schwabacher

Max Schwabacher (1882-1916) was  married to Amy Regina Pulitzer  in 1912 and they had two children. Geoffrey and John Michael

After leaving Harrow he studied mining engineering at the University of Freiberg, near Dresden He passed with high honours and took up a post in Mexico. After a few years he suffered from vertigo when going any distance below earth, and was advised by the doctors not to go down a mine again. He returned to England and joined the Stock Exchange, becoming a member in 1910 as a partner of the firm of Sternberg Bros.

In September 1914 he entered the Old Boys Corps and took a commission in January 1915 in the Royal Fusiliers, going to the Front in May 1916. He was killed in actions on 15 September at the age of thirty-four.

Not long before his death he had been recommended for honours for saving the lives of wounded men in No Man’s Land.

The Officer Commanding the battalion to which he was attached wrote to his own Colonel: “I wish to bring to your notice the gallantry of Lieutenant Shaw . . . who was observed fighting very bravely leading his men before he was killed. Will you please assure his relatives that this officer died in a very gallant manner?”

The Captain of his company wrote to his widow: “I deeply regret to inform you that your husband, Lieutenant Shaw, was killed in action on the 15th inst. under circumstances of the greatest bravery, and while nobly doing his duty. . . . It is difficult as yet to gather all the facts of the case, but so far as I understand, he, being with another officer and a handful of men, captured four German field guns, a most daring and splendid thing to do, and it was after this admirable piece of bravery that he was hit. But this is only one of the many plucky things he did. He was beloved and admired by all the men and his loss is regretted by everybody who came in contact with him.” This information I got from the website http://www.roll-of-honour.com/London/StockExchange.html with thanks.

Frederick Adolph Shaw 1886-1915 married Elsie Nauheim. They had two daughters: Patricia and Claire. That is alas all I know about him. Besides that he died in 1915.

It is really sad that all 4 brothers died for their country. Even though their father was an immigrant from Germany they were truly English. It must have been very hard on the poor wives that stayed behind with small children. In all the biographies that are on my desk the authors write that the German and English cousins were close and often stayed with each other either in England or back in Berlin. What was going through their heads, when they were fighting against their cousins?

Next blog will be about more family on the British side.

Anti-Semetism and grapes

August 2011

Anti-Semitism and grapes.

It is midsummer, hazy days and very hot and humid. Our grapes are ripening on the vine. Every night the bats are having a feast and during the day the bulbuls flutter around. They both leave an incredible mess on the tiles. This “Isabella” grape is absolutely delicious and comes originally from Georgia, Russia. I got a cutting from a new Georgian immigrant whose garden is literary one big grapevine. Even though there are always a few green ones in the ripe bunch, we picked a bowl full today; otherwise the bats win the race. We will offer these wonderful tasting grapes on tonight when the whole clan comes for supper.

~~~

The 19^th century in Germany was a period of turmoil. The industrial revolution; the draining of the workforce from the rural areas and the growing poverty in overpopulated slums in the cities: the German-Franco war and the unification of Germany afterwards; the emancipation of the Jews; leaving their Jewish quarters and settling in the big cities, dominating many professions and businesses, were issues that people had to get used to and live with.

By the second half of this century hatred of Jews was not only based on religious differences: the Jews as Christ killers. They were seen as an alien race being successful and prosperous. The “wandering Jew” was rootless and did not belong here. They were vilified in the newspapers. Caricatures became vicious and nasty. They were disliked and feared, they were doing too well. They were blamed for the stock market crash of 1873 and every disaster that followed.

The German Journalist Wilhelm Mahr   in the late 1870ies was trying to find a better expression then “Juden Hass”, hatred for Jews, and came up with antisemitismus, which caught on. His writings became very popular, and at the same time he founded the “League of Anti-Semites” (“Antisemiten-Liga”), the first German organization committed specifically to combating the alleged threat to Germany and German culture posed by the Jews and their influence, and advocating their forced removal from the country.

Anti-Semitism was by the 1880 worldwide. Every country wrote viperous articles in anti-Semitic newspapers. England (*1.) and France were foremost accusing the Jews for becoming too wealthy and influential. (The big banking firms of Rothschild were in Paris and London). Anti-Semitism blossomed. Then in 1894 Captain Alfred Dreyfus was accused of spying for the Germans and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island in French Guiana. “The Affair” might have ended then but for the determined intervention of the novelist Émile Zola, who published his denunciation (“J’accuse!”). The affair is followed all over the world. Dreyfus was pardoned by President Emile Loubet in 1899 and released from prison. Only on July 12, 1906, Dreyfus was officially exonerated by a military commission.

Front page cover of the newspaper L’Aurore for Thursday 13 January 1898, with the letter J’Accuse…! written by Émile Zola about the Dreyfus affair. The headline reads “I accuse! Letter to the President of the Republic”.

Theodor Herzl, a Jewish journalist from Vienna who covered the trial, concluded that assimilation is no protection against anti-Semitism and that even a person as well integrated as an officer on the French general staff is not safe from the hatred. He came to believe that Jews will remain strangers in their countries of residence and need a country of their own. His book “The Jewish State: A Modern Solution to the Jewish Question” was published in 1896 and lead to the founding of the Zionist Organization one year later.

Well, our family certainly thought that nothing could harm them. They were Germans and loved their country. Here in front of me I have two biographies. One is by my dear great aunt Lily (1877-1966), the oldest daughter of Adolph Schwabacher and the other by her brother William (1881-1935). They both tell about their youth, but here the similarity stops.

Tante Lily wrote her memoirs with great gentleness and humor. She amazes one with wonderful stories of richness and of love for all what is around her, of life in the nineteenth century. She describes her ancestors and her family with humor and her father with admiration. She describes how he came from a good Jewish orthodox family but as an independent young man very soon emancipated himself and was “a free thinker all his life.” She describes a happy youth in a rich surrounding with nannies governesses. She left Germany as a widow in 1935 and settled in London.

William’s story is very different. He tells about more ancestors then Lilly does and he even reaches as far as the 17^th century. He mentions that most of them were wine cultivators and merchants, but there is nowhere a word about Judaism, let alone about his own Jewish family. He loves V.I.P.’s and the amount of famous people that wandered through his pages is immense. He admired both emperors and served as an officer in the army during the First World War.  He was a fervent Prussian until 1932. Then he became very bitter about Hitler. He predicted a Second World War and also the fall of the third Reich. In 1935 he decided to renounce his German citizenship. It must have been a very difficult decision. You might remember that his father was a Swiss citizen and he and all his children had dual citizen ship. (*2.)

Although nobody in our family talked about our Jewish background and many did not even know about it, there still is an oral history about the family that I cannot totally disregard. Family stories, told from mother to child or aunt to niece: small vignettes that illustrates a hidden past. Small things that keep cropping up:  (a) on an autumn day my grandmother (Adolph Schwabacher’s daughter) gives us lunch; I must have been around 10. While peeling an apple and dipping it in the honey pot, she tells us that every September they ate apple with honey when she was a child. I never questioned that remark until I moved to Israel and learned about Judaism and the tradition of sweetening the New Jewish year with apple and honey. (b)Tante Lilly, always eager to learn more, sat with William while he was taught Hebrew at home by a tutor. (c) They all are buried in Jewish graveyards and Adolph built himself a family tomb in the new Weissensee cemetery and buried two of his children, his brother there and his mother in-law, Kate Leverson, there. Later he was also laid to rest in this tomb. Were they mourning according to Jewish tradition? (d) Adolph and Hester still married under the chuppah. Did his daughters marry according to Jewish law? I cannot find any evidence. (e.) Adolph’s sons and grandsons are circumcised. (h) All their friends were Jewish.

Around the turn of the century both Lilly and Diana married. Their father advised his sons in law to get baptized so that life might be easier for them without the stigma of being a Jew. Adolph himself never converted. Many that chose this way of life and served in the First World War, behaved and acted as faithful German citizens believing that Judaism had nothing to do with them. Alas after 1933 Hitler decreed that it had everything to do with their lives!

Even after the holocaust anti-Semitism did not die and still exists worldwide.

(“1.”) see blog: https://relativelyrelatives.wordpress.com/2011/08/05/london-stock-exchange-berlin-borse-and-family/

(*2.) See the blog: https://relativelyrelatives.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/apricot-jam-and-geheimsekretar/

Mobilisation: the Great War

There has been quite a lot of rain these last months. Our fields, woods and gardens thrive. First of all every surface is washed clean and freed of layers of summer dust; it all sparkles and the dried up brown and yellow surfaces have a light green sheen over them. One can see the dark green leaves of the wild cyclamens pushing through the earth. On the Carmel Mountain under the pine trees there are lots of mushrooms. Everybody leaves town on sunny Saturdays and go mushroom hunting. The Russians, some are here in Israel already more than 20 years and are well integrated but they stick to their ambitions and their traditions. Mushroom hunting is one of them. The only specie of the Boletus (porcini) that grows in Israel is edible, but far inferior to the European kind. Nevertheless the woods swarm with people carrying plastic bags shouting in Hebrew or Russian when they find one. We used to make thick soups with them or just fry them up and eat them with toast, claiming that those watery things are delicious. But now we leave it for other people to find and prefer the dried porcini or just plain mushrooms from the super market.

~~~

The period 1900-1914 was a time of increasing tension between the great powers; Austro-Hungarian determination to impose its will upon the Balkans; a German desire for greater power and international influence, which sparked a naval arms race with Britain, who responded by building new and greater warships; the Dreadnought. A French desire for revenge against Germany following disastrous defeat in 1871; Russia’s anxiety to restore some semblance of national prestige after almost a decade of civil strife ( especially Bloody Sunday in 1905, the suppressed revolution) 

The Austrians, taking advantage of a revolution in Turkey, annexed Bosnia.   This was a deliberate blow at the neighbouring state of Serbia which had been hoping to acquire Bosnia since it contained about 3 million Serbs among its population.

The assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Pricip, a member of the Black Hand (a Serbian military secret society intend to unite all territories with a significant Serbian population annexed by the Austria-Hungarian empire) led to a remarkable sequence of events that started the ‘Great War’.

•Austria-Hungary, unsatisfied with Serbia’s response to her ultimatum declared war on Serbia on 28 July 1914.

•Russia, bound by treaty to Serbia, announced mobilisation of its vast army in her defence, a slow process that would take around six weeks to complete.

•Germany, allied to Austria-Hungary by treaty, viewed the Russian mobilisation as an act of war against Austria-Hungary, and after scant warning declared war on Russia on 1 August.

•France, bound by treaty to Russia, found itself at war against Germany and, by extension, on Austria-Hungary following a German declaration on 3 August.  Germany was swift in invading neutral Belgium so as to reach Paris by the shortest possible route.

•Britain, allied to France by a more loosely worded treaty which placed a “moral obligation” upon her to defend France, declared war against Germany on 4 August.  Her reason for entering the conflict lay in another direction: she was obligated to defend neutral Belgium by the terms of a 75-year old treaty.  With Germany’s invasion of Belgium on 4 August, and the Belgian King’s appeal to Britain for assistance, Britain committed herself to Belgium’s defence later that day.  Like France, she was by extension also at war with Austria-Hungary.

•With Britain’s entry into the war, her colonies and dominions abroad variously offered military and financial assistance, and included Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and the Union of South Africa.

•United States President Woodrow Wilson declared a U.S. policy of absolute neutrality, an official stance that would last until 1917 when Germany’s policy of unrestricted submarine warfare – which seriously threatened America’s commercial shipping (which was in any event almost entirely directed towards the Allies led by Britain and France) – forced the U.S. to finally enter the war on 6 April 1917.

•Japan, honouring a military agreement with Britain, declared war on Germany on 23 August 1914.  Two days later Austria-Hungary responded by declaring war on Japan.

This cartoon – ‘A Chain of Friendship’ – appeared in the American newspaper the Brooklyn Eagle in July 1914.   The caption reads: “If Austria attacks Serbia, Russia will fall upon Austria, Germany upon Russia, and France and England upon Germany.”

All these events were very worrying for the Germans. The Strausses and the Schwabachers in midsummer were enjoying their holidays like many other people all over the world when the newspapers and special bulletins announced these disturbing facts.

In Wannsee the Schwabachers were settled for the summer at their house on the lake. Grandchildren, the Oberwarths and guests were there at 0n the 28^th of June enjoying the leisure. The men were sailing, while that Sunday evening Lily took her cousin Ernie, who came for a visit from England, to the station, where they were selling special papers announcing the murder of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo. Ernie was on the way home and reading the newspaper together with Lily, he remarked that he was glad to return to England.

The news caused panic in the Wannsee house. Lily writes in her memoirs: “The men quarrelled as Ernst said that that will mean War and Willie hotly denied it. William always regarded himself as a great politician and would have taken it up as a profession, if he had not been a Jew”.

Three weeks later after Austria issued the ultimatum to Serbia the Schwabachers were again that weekend in Wannsee. It was an eerie strange weekend. The lake itself was empty of any leisure craft or steamer. Everybody stayed in Berlin. Lily’s husband Ernst Oberwarth went the next day and ordered his military equipment. Every man in Germany got each year his orders where he had to present himself on the outbreak of war and all officers including medical men had to be fully equipped. Ernst was a paediatrician.
The war indeed broke out a few days later between Austria and Serbia.  William Schwabacher took his sister and brother in law to the visitor’s gallery in the stock exchange. Lily writes:”Never in my life have  I seen such bedlam of howling and screaming men, Dante’s inferno must have been quite calm in comparison”.

Diana and Alfred Strauss took their two oldest children for a holiday in Austria. Erika, their daughter was 12 at the time and writes in her memoirs: “During the last days of July my parents were constantly discussing if we should return home, nobody knew how politics were developing; besides the situation could not be so grave, as the emperor continued with his annual “Nordlandfahrt” in his yacht to Norway. Finally we packed our bags and left to return home when Austria declared war to Serbia.”

William had to meet his regiment and the whole family brought him to the station from where he rode eastward to the Russian front. See blog: https://relativelyrelatives.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/william-schwabacher-and-a-sweet-potato/ .

On the first of August Ernst and Lily broke off their holiday and returned to Berlin. Ernst took the horses and Lily went by cab with the children and luggage plus loads of vegetables from the garden as everyone was sure to starve in Berlin. She continues to tell:” The house had to be reorganised as everything was shrouded in sheets and reeked of mothballs. That is what one did when one went away for more than a month. Ernst was sitting at the diningtable banging his fist on it, saying that if the Emperor does not declare war, I shall give my demission and take off my uniform. In the evening war was declared and everyone breathed more freely. The enthusiasm was indescribable”.

In these early days the turmoil and muddle was incredible. All men of military age had to leave to their regiments, some never to return. Ernst went to Charlottenburg, where he checked new recruits, who if they were rejected, begged him to give them the required health certificates.

Alfred Strauss in the beginning of the war stayed at home. He was very necessary for his business, the EVA, which build and loaned railway carriages to the government. Later he travelled a lot and I’ll come back to it in the next blog.

The patriotism and the loyalty to the emperor were amazing in the beginning of the war. The emperor had promised that when the leaves fall in the autumn the war will be over, that alas had to happen four times more before this horror period ended. Also amazing is the fact, that the Jews were such ardent Germans. They could not wait to join in the fight for the Vaterland.

A higher percentage of German Jews fought in World War I than that of any other ethnic, religious or political group in Germany; some 12,000 died for their country. The war was a total war and therefore a total disaster. As individuals the Jews were super-patriots in their respective countries, and fought in the armies of all sides, becoming determined to prove that they really “belonged.”

The Schwabacher family was particularly divided as their cousins in England fought for their country. My next blogs will continue about the Great War.