My Mother, Part IV: Thyra Dohrenburg

       My mother was an extremely  principled woman, stern, when necessary and at the same time  fun-loving. She was very organized in everything she did. OnMonday mornings  she planned the menu for the week. One day a week was meatless. On Friday we ate fish. Not because we were Catholics but because the fishing boats came in with fresh fish. On Sundays we had roast as was the custom, with the left –overs served in some form or other during the week. She was very conscious about were she bought produce. She never bought  anything because it was cheaper somewhere but because it was better. On the other hand she was very frugal. When she traveled she stayed in small  hotels in order to save money. Whatever money she earned she put into a savings account where it was safe until one day she took a closer look and realized that she had accumulated  a goodly amount and thus decided she could afford to buy a piece of property. So she went to Denmark and ended up buying a two hundred year old cottage  surrounded by thirty acres of land.

         Here she spent the last fifteen years of her life, tending her garden, making  jams and jellies from the berries she had grown and entertaining  her guests during the summer. And, of course, sitting at the typewriter working on the latest translation.She was a sought after lector because she was able to translate straight from the page without having first to type a ew pages. So, if the publisher wanted to hear a bit more she just turned the page and continued to read in German, no hesitations no stumbling. As perfect as she was in eithr language she had absolutely no talent for dialegs. Though she was a true Berliner she was never able to speak with a Berlin accent.Neithr was she ever able to speak Platt-Deutsch, the language  spoken along the shores of Northern Germany and somewhat inland. Where-ever she moved she gained the respect of the locals who not only trusted her but came to her with their problems.

After the war, still at the seashore she became the refuge for some who were afraid of what the British might do to them since they were occupiers. I will never forget seing her still with her swollen leg propped up, trying her school- English  on the young officers who had come to tell us we had to evacuate.She, very quickly, was in charge of the situation inspite, or maybe because of her awkward English.Naturally everybody in the neighbourhood came to her for advice  or help such as the boy who stood one day in her room,dusty and tired, telling her who he was. His mother was a schoolfriend of hers in Berlin who had a baby with whom she was going to flee but wanted her son, maybe fourteen years old, as far away from the Russians as possible. So she told him to hitch hike about two hundred miles to St. Peter where he landed, tired but good spirits.She was able to enroll him in a makeshift Highschool, find housing and later connect him with his mother who had made it safely out of harms way.

After sh died of cancer in Denmark it was the locals who looked after me the first week after her death, waiting for my sister and her husband to come back from Italy.Every day someone would come and simply decide, now we will go here, or now we will see some-one else, and give them the message. Nobody wrung their hands,exclaiming   how sorry they were. Everybody very quickly came up with some story they remembered and  soon one had the feeling she was around the door waiting to come in.It certainly helped  me over the carkest time of the year, way uo in the North where it doesn’t get light until around  eight in the morning  and the sun sets around four.

Because of her dread of any kind of a show she stipulated, she wanted no burial ceremony and not even a flower.  So she is buried  in a paupers grave  which sounds dreadful but is simply a massgrave, beautifully tended.

My Mother, Part III: Thyra Dohrenburg

         My mother's family’s background, compared to my father’s was rather humble. At least on  her father’s side. He came from a long line of linen weavers which was a respectable craft  With the introduction of the modern looms  financial  hardship became the norm among the weavers. My mother always told how poor her father’s family was when he was a boy. He walked  barefoot during the warmer months to save the money for shoes.

     

         Usually boys from such a background did not even think of going to the gymnasium ,the school for higher learning which prepared you for the entrance into university. At that time the two persons with “education” in that village were the school teacher and the minister. Since  my grandfather  was an eager and talented student the teacher asked the minister to instruct him in those subjects he need ed in order to enter the gymnasium. The long  and the short of it is that from then on he  moved out of his poverty stricken environment,ending up as a postal official  of some sort. He died when I was three years old so I have no memory of him. But judging from the photo of him and my Danish grandmother  he must have been a very stern parent. Though also quite modern  and above all  very concerned  about broadening the minds of his children.

       For example, my mother belonged  to a small sewing circle which met once a week in alternating homes. When my grandfather was free from work he would often sit and read to the girls  to introduce  them to some work of German literature. Certainly no pulp fiction  for him or his daughter and her friends.

        At the secretarial  school (the Lette House) in town my mother met with a  quite different group of young women. All  of them were eager to learn a skill with which they could earn their own living, Many of them were jewish. All of them had very independent minds. I remember some of them from my early childhood,when one of them came visiting in Hamburg. There was always an atmosphere of excitement surrounding their visits. One of them I remember particularly vividly, Julia Koppel, on her way to England  to excape Hitler and his henchmen. Of course, there was political talk but also  much laughter. I secretely  wished I could go with her.

        Until Hitler came to power I never knew there were people who were jewish or what that really meant. Most of my parents friends belonged to the class of people Hitler declared jewish, therefore undesirable. Luckily, all of my parent’s friends had the means and opportunities to leave the country. Sad as it was for them, at least all of them survived . albeit  not in Germany.I have to confess that at the age of ten or eleven I felt pangs or jealousy seeing  so many people of our acquaintance pack up and leave. Why couldn’t we go to some other country?. It took a while until I realized how bad the situation was and not only for the people now called Jews.My parents had many artist friends,of whom many all of a sudden were not permitted to persue their profession. Their  work was considered  “entarted” (degenerate). One of them, the sculptor Friedrich Wield, comitted suiced  rather than do the Nazis bidding, whatever  they had in store for him to do instead of working on a sculpture. Once Hitler was in power it seemed he would always be in charge and have a grip on everything. Specially since he started marching into other countries.

          Until about twenty years ago I always thought my parents split up because of the age  difference, after all, my father was 23 years older than my mother. But now I think it was the general upheaval of the times.So my mother, my sister and I moved into town and my mother threw herself full –time into her profession as a translator and lector.

My Mother Part II: Thyra Dohrenburg

            She also was probably a bit better informed about the background of some of the happenings. Such as someone being  ordered to report to the suthorities and never  returning.There  is the story of a wife going  to headquarters inquiring about her husband who had been ordered to report seven days earlier and not yet returned. The guard at the desk barely looked at her.Just consulted a piece of paper in front of him and after a moment said”You can pick up the urn in room so and so.” I don’t know if this story is just a story or really true and just circulated among  people who were anti Hitler. Not everybody read or even was able to read a foreign paper every Sunday. In our case the Copenhagen paper  “Politiken”. At that time Germany had not yet invaded Denmark and the paper arrived every Sunday uncensored at our door. If anybody wishes to know more about the danger of any kind of resistance they should inform themselves about the Geshwister Scholl  Sophie   and Hans and their professor who distributed “anti nazi “ leaflets at their university in Munich, were caught,condemned and subsequently hanged. A documentary of it has been made called “The white Rose” which has been shown in this country but few people seem to have seen it or even know about it.

           Every time we moved some girl from the local  BDM “Bund Deutshcer Mådchen” came and invited us girls to come to their next meeting . I did go to exactly three Hitler Youth meetings in my life, every time being horrified  a how stupid and boring these meetings were. We girls just sat around and the “leader” read from some Nazi propaganda book. We probably also sang some songs. In any case, I complained to my mother at the stupidity of these people who asked would I like her to get me excused?  Sure. By all means.So my mother went to headquarters to plead my case. As she told it,head shaking at the audacity of these people, there sat three girls ,maybe between fifteen and seventeen years of age. The leader in the middle flanked by her two witnesses. My mother calmly explained how she understood that Germany needed the young to be strong and loyal  citizens but she had a problem. Her daughter  was not exactly a very good student and needed all the spare time to work on her home-work plus practicing the piano.She never got flustered, just calmly looked  at these young “leaders” and waited for their response. The upshot always was.go the next higher “leader” until she reached the top and they had to give up and excused me from having to join the Hitler Youth. Other parents tried but often were so disgusted at those young people who lorded it over grown ups that they somehow showed  their contempt and had to leave without success.

       In those days, any kind of dissent was suspect and you most likely were now observed in secret. Your mail might be opened, telephone tapped into, a neighbour spying on you and certainly the super of your building spying on you or at least having orders to do so.

        Anybody visualizing Nazi-Germany crowds of cheering  young people in uniform lining  a thouroughfare, behind them apartment buildings festooned with swastikas hanging from windows come to mind. And that is, what it was like because it was ordered to look like that. If you did not hang out your flag on designated days, someone reported on you. When we moved into town all the windows in our new apartment faced into the gardens in back. I still see my mother stepping out on the porch exclaiming: “Thank god, now I don’t have to hang out the flag.”

        My mother always seems to have had an independent spirit. Part of her childhood  she lived in Denmark, went to school there and, of course, spoke Danish. When it was time to plan for her future she decided to go to secretarial school instead of learning how to run a household and cook.So  she learned to type, two fingers on either hand and shorthand. After the first World War she landed a job with the delegation which corrected the border between Germany and Denmark.I remember her telling me that she would never respond if any or the “excellencies” called “Miss”. She waited until they had remembered her name.The only person of authority she ever admired as the then Danish King, Kong Christian the 10^th. He was the one who guided his people through the German occupation.Denmark was the country she loved, with which she identified.

        Though we were German we  really grew up in a Danish household. We  thanked our parents for the meal when we rose from the table in Danish, though I have to admit we never bothered to learn much  more. We had a Danish ironing woman,our parents often spoke Danish with each other, though mostly when they didn’t want us to undertand what they were saying. And, of course,there were many Danish visitors ,friends and relatives.Each of my parents went to Copenhagen at least twice a year but not necessarily together. My moher, to meet with authors and my father to do his research  on Danish architecture.

       She had no respect for authority as such. The Nazis, of course, were The Authority at that time and it would have been suicide to proclaim your disdain out loud. So you worked in small ways such as helping a jewish neighbour whose husband had just been picked up in the middle of the night.We barely knew these people since we had just moved into the apartment.But she had heard the commotion and heard the wife cry so se woke me up to come with her to see what we could do. All w could do was commiserate but at least the woman was not quite alone. Luckily he came back two days later and took his wife to his family’s farm where she survived the war un- harmed.

       

My Mother: Thyra Dohrenburg

           It seems that of late there are more than usual discussions in the media about the Holocaust. The “why” and “how” of it and the resurgence of  antisemitism  not only in Germany. At least nowadays it is quite often acknowleged  that by no means all Germans were Nazis or even anti- semitic. But again and again I hear:” the Germans did nothing”: meaning, to prevent the final horror. Which, of course, is true. So I thought I would tell a bit about my mother who certainly was not a Nazi and somehow got herself on the black-list of the Gestapo. For those people who do not know, and there seem to be quite a few, Gestapo (Geheime Staats Polizei) was what the CIA is to Americans. So I shall start with the day our apartment was searched.

            For all intents and purposes it was an ordinary day. My mother, who was a translator of skandinavian languages, worked at her desk, the maid cleaned  and I was doing my homework or pretending to, in my room. Where  my sister was I don’t know. In any case, the doorbell rings and the maid goes to answer. The days of the door to door salesman were long gone, already before Hitler came to power. Having strangers roaming  all over the country had become too dangerous, so most buildings had notices posted: No soliciting. The maid, Ellie, who was a trusted part of the household, opens the door cautiously since nobody was expected and finds a rather ordinary lookimg  chap standing in front of her,smiling somewhat awkwardly and asking to see the lady of the house.Ellie just shut the door into his face and went to tell my mother that there was a strange man outside who did “not belong.”

            My mother calmly went into the hall to meet this stranger. She had a way of looking at someone,straight into your eyes, no smile but also no frown. Just cool and detached. “Yes”? is all she said. The stranger introduced himself  smiling  somewhat ingratiatingly  and said he had just come from Copenhagen and was bringing  greetings from Manya Plivier. Manya was the divorced wife of Theodor Plivier, a communist writer who had left Germany to settle in Moscow.Manya had gone to Copenhagen and my mother had helped her by introducing her to her friends who might help her find work. She was not a friend, just someone my mother knew casually. Not only was there any reason why Manya would send greetings via a total stranger ,she would also know how dangerous that would be. On the other hand, my mother could not deny that she knew Manya.

          

           So she asked the man into the livingroom  and offered him a chair. He sat down and started to hem and haw a bit,shifting uncomfortably on the chair. He had probably not expected my mother to be so calm  But she just let him squirm a bit and then told him quietely that she thought that he was sent by the Gestapo. “Oh no, not at all” he assured her vehemently. To which my mother only replied:” Oh yes, and now I will tell you something else. You have orders to search this apartment.” He again  vehemently denied this and made an attempt to leave but my mother simply declared  that now he was going to do the searching and here,please, was her desk. He had no choice but to get up and follow her into her study adjoining the living room and  look at the papers on her desk which was littered with correspondence. She was an avid letter writer and so were her friends which meant there was much mail  on that desk on that particular morning. So he picked up a piece of paper here and an envelop there but not really seing anything as she stood there calmly watching him and then quickly left.

         

          But my mother was not done with the Gestapo. She went to headquarters in Hamburg and complained that she had been subjected to a search which they denied had been the case. But she persisted and declared that now she was on their list and wished to be taken off it. That, they replied was not possible. So now she knew where she stood. Somehow she later heard that they referred to her as “The road to Denmark”. I am not saying that my mother was any kind of a heroine, acting the way she did. She was simply totally contemptuous of the lot of them but realistic enough to know, that showing her contempt would only worsen the situation.

Greece 1944

In the summer or 1944 I belonged to a small group of students who were sent on tour to give performances for the soldiers. We had a singer, a violinist, one or two pianists,a young dancer and a 15 year old xylophonist, the only male in the group. At first we were supposed to go to Norway but since the German army constantly retreated our destination also constantly changed and we finally ended up being sent to Greece.These four months, in spite of the fact that it was still war time and we did not belong to the people who were exactly welcome since we could be considered as belonging to the occupation forces, have been for many years among the most wonderful time I had ever experienced.

Greece at that time was in dire straights. Not only had the country been overrun by a foreign force, us, the Germans, but it also suffered from hyper-inflation. This meant.for example, that there was no real “normal”trade. You did not just go into a store, put down some money and bought, whatever you wished to buy. You traded, or haggled, or “dealt”. Black market was the order of the day. At least as far as the Greek population was concerned with whom we had no connection. We were housed in a small hotel somewhere down town which,of course, was requisitioned by us, the occupation forces. I have to confess, I was simply not concerned with all the political “ins” and “outs”. I just accepted life as it came.

Yes, we girls had no worries. We were assigned our rooms, in my case, three to a room. A shared bathroom but, for example, not much water. We filled the bathtub whenever there was water and scooped a bit out of it to wash at least our faces. Usually a fine film of dust settled on the water in the tub. On the other hand the view from my bed was extraordinary. My bed stood parallel with a large window which was kept wide open to catch whatever breeze was coming into the room. This was simply pleasant and welcome but what was stunning was the view through the glassless window Out there, in the not too far distance,above the roofs of Athens stood the Acropolis. Just turning my head a bit to the right I was looking straight at this incredible landmark with which I was very familiar ever since I had doodled the columns in History class listening to a very boring lecture given by a very nice but very boring teacher. So I knew to draw the Doric column,the Ionian column and lastly the Korinthian column.I was very familiar with the Parthenon and the Erechtion etc., etc. There they all were, somewhat in the distance but very visible and distinct, with or without moonshine. Simply there. For me to look at while I was slowly drifting off to sleep.

I have to admit that I was very disappointed when I walked around the ruins and saw how crumbly the marble was. It did not look like what I thought I knew what marble should look like. Nice and polished even as a ruin. I thought the view from the Acropolis over the roofs of Athens was much more impressive.But the most magnificent view I experienced one evening when I went to a concert one night with a friend when we were sitting on a rock below the Acropolis but above the Ampitheatre which lies just below.We sat above the tiers of seats in the dark looking through the three arches out onto the Aegian sea which was barely distinguishable but for tiny dots of light here and there created by the night fishermen busy on the water watched over by a thin sickle of the moon way above the sky. A few stars also blinked. Way below, in the pit the Athens Philharmonic played Mozart. To this day this to me was pure magic. During all these years I have heard many concerts,played by great orchestras in wonderful halls many of them conducted by great conductors but never have I had this sense of pure magic as that night barely lit by a small sickle of moon and a few glittering stars blinking over the silent activities of night fishermen plying their trade.

Did I say it was hot in Athens? It was more than hot. No matter how tired we were we woke up early simply because we were getting hot. All around us you could see people rising from their cool night on the roof to get ready for work.

Not only was it hot during the day but much of the country was infested with bed bugs. One night we had performed on the peninsula Attica and were supposed to stay at a small hotel for the night. A few of the girls had contracted a three day malaria which we were told was called papadachi fever.This meant they had to stay in bed. As it turned out, the hotel was totally infested with the bugs which crawled over the beds even when the lights were turned on. I was lucky not to have contracted the fever thus was able to spend the night sitting on the stoop of the hotel all night long thus avoiding being stung by the pesky bugs.Yes, the bugs were a nuisance but to me, sitting on the grass one night on cape Sounion, looking down the slope onto the still and peaceful water and across onto the island of Salamis, trying to imagine the battle which was fought there in 480 BC these bugs were just a minor nuisance..Never mind the bed bugs, never mind the discomfort or black market, this was simply a different world to me.

Slowly I had learned a few words of Greek.I think the first time I was taught a word was when sitting on an open truck which transported our group to next nights performance as well as a refrigerator.At one point the young mechanic, in charge of the refrigerator smiled at me, pointed to a lone tree we were passing, telling me the name. So I repeated the word, it seems to his satisfaction and my delight. I love languages, though I only speak two plus a smattering of a few more. So I had a good time on top of that truck looking out at the landscape around me and learning a few words of Greek.

What I remember most about my stay in Greece is the kindness of ordinary citizens. For some reason I never was subjected to any taunts walking down the street or any kind of harassment such as being spat at with peach stones. I had set out on the tour with the resolve I would not be bothered by pettiness such as pushing for the best seat on the train, I would just accept what was available. Which meant,I did a lot of standing and probably was being considered very aloof. But never by the everyday Greeks.

One night I came back to the hotel after curfew Marshall law had been declared, the streets were blocked with barbed wire and I was late coming back from a jam session at the radio station playing four hand Mozart. The hotel was locked down for the night,the streets deserted.Very, very timidly I pressed the bell button at the only entrance to the hotel, hoping the German head honcho would not hear the bell.After a few minutes the heavy door was opened a crack by one of the concierges. He quickly pulled me inside and up the ten or so steps to his office. He and his colleague were just getting ready to have their meager supper. I wrung my hands in apology for having disturbed their meal and these two men in turn pulled a third chair to their little table motioning me to sit down and share their meal with them. All they had was a bit of bread and one tomato. In front of my eyes they made a great show how they had washed the tomato, turning it this way and that so I could see how clean it was. I ended up sharing the tomato and bread with these two concierges who would have felt very offended had I not eaten with them.

Every so often one of them checked if the German boss was still up so that I could sneak to my room on the top floor. Finally they declared the ascent safe and I made it into our room only to be received with great relief by my room mates since we had gotten orders while I was gone to pack and get ready to leave Athens. I was horrified. I wanted to stay in spite of all the danger, heat and bed bugs. In tears I started packing. After a while the maid with a sweet smile took over and packed my suitcase for me. Never in my life have I had such a beautifully packed suitcase.

We ended up leaving Athens with the last train and were lucky not to be killed on the way home.The journey or trek home took two weeks and how ever difficult and dangerous it was I have always thought of these three months in Greece as an enchanted time enhanced by the kindness of the simple people who so often were condescended to by the German GI. How do you keep your surroundings clean if you have but one cup of water the entire day for all your chores?