Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler’s Germany (10 page)

Those Jews who remained in Germany relieved their frustration with gallows humor:

Another early legislative low point was the “Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Matrimony,” which prohibited gentile-Jewish marriages and extramarital sexual relationships. Violations of this law were liable to draconian punishments. According to a somewhat clumsy pun at the time, there was no need to worry about “race shame” (the Nazi term for intermarriage) any more. The reason, according to the joke, was that rich Jews had all moved abroad, leaving only the poor ones behind, and there was no shame in poverty.

AROUND THE SAME time that the German judiciary decided to intrude into all citizens’ sex lives, Jewish Germans were subjected to a never-ending battery of other prohibitions. They were no longer allowed to employ “Aryan” servants, drive cars, fly German flags, or send their children to school. Jewish joke-tellers trained a tragicomic eye on many of these senseless restrictions:

Some sectors of the German population may have felt for their Jewish countrymen, and a few may have gotten involved on their behalf. But the vast majority of people watched the daily harassments in silence, and some joined in wherever possible.

The following anecdote makes it clear just how much Jewish Germans had to endure in the run-up to World War II:

Seldom did Germans lift a finger to defend their Jewish fellow citizens. On the contrary, many were eager to take over jobs vacated by Jews who were fired or forced to emigrate. On September 30, 1933, for example, when thousands of Jewish attorneys lost their right to practice, their “Aryan” colleagues were only too glad to inherit their clients and cases.

One joke from the time reflected this situation, playing on the dual meaning of the word
Klage:
“complaint” and “lawsuit.” One man asks another, “How are you doing,” and the response is: “Like a Jewish lawyer: no complaints.”

The rigor with which Jews were persecuted increased with each passing year. Jews were banned from using park benches, visiting cinemas, and even keeping house pets. Many Jews now recognized the turn things were taking and fled into exile. The property they left behind was auctioned off to grateful Aryans at bargain-basement prices and without any compensation paid to the owners. Germans, always hungry for a good deal, thronged to such auctions.

The Jews who remained in Germany, however, risked losing not only their belongings, but also their lives. Yet many of them continued to make light of their increasingly precarious position:

But life was hardly a walk in the park for Jewish émigrés, either, since they were seldom welcomed with open arms abroad. During the first great Jewish-German exodus, many intellectual Jews went to Austria, but despite the common language, few managed to establish themselves in the smaller, alpine nation. Austrian unemployment in the 1930s reached catastrophic levels. According to some estimates more than half a million people were out of work, and those in search of day labor could be found waiting on every street corner. The Austrian government, led by the anti-Nazi but fascist Engelbert Dollfuss, completely failed in its attempts to bring the economy under control. Jewish-German cabaret artists and comedians had it even harder than other émigré job-seekers, since Austria already had an established Jewish cabaret scene, led by Fritz Grünbaum, Karl Farkas, and Jura Soyfer. Those newcomers lucky enough to get an engagement often played to empty houses.

In short, many of these early refugees were forcing their way
into a country that was already in desolate shape. Dollfuss was assassinated in 1934, and his successor, Kurt Schuschnigg, was spineless and unpopular. With the support of the German government, Austrian Nazis constantly tried to pour oil on these social flames, staging a series of garish propaganda events and engaging in an ever increasing number of anti-Semitic outrages. The situation was poisonous, but nonetheless, Austria remained the chosen destination for most Jewish-German émigrés of the early 1930s.

The popular character actor Kurt Gerron was one of those who sought refuge on the banks of the Danube. He moved there in 1934, six years after playing the street singer in “Mack the Knife” at the triumphant world premier of Brecht’s
Threepenny Opera
in Berlin. He had also acted alongside Marlene Dietrich in the film
The Blue Angel
and begun a successful career as a director of cinema comedies. Then, suddenly, he was on the outside looking in. On April 1, 1933, the day of the boycott, the production director had come on the set where Gerron was making a film and announced, “Those who don’t have pure Aryan blood must leave the studio immediately.” Magda Schneider, who played the female lead in the film, later recalled that the hulking Gerron went terribly pale and left the set with hunched shoulders.
None of the other participants made any effort to defend him.

Otto Wallburg, Gerron’s colleague, the Jewish comedian who was known for his blubbering manner of speech, was allowed to stay on in German films because he promptly applied for a “temporary” work permit. There was still no law forbidding Jewish actors from practicing their trade, but protesting against company decisions was fruitless. Those complaints that were filed were summarily rejected. Gerron, recognizing the hopelessness of his situation in the new Nazi empire, decided not to take his former
employer to court, and to leave Germany. “If things turn out okay here,” he remarked to Wallburg, “my name is Moritz.” Responsibility for the film he was directing was handed over to the Nazi loyalist Hans Steinhoff. Steinhoff’s star was to rise in the Third Reich, and he later directed one of the most popular Nazi films,
Hitler Youth Quex
. Gerron, in contrast, stood on the brink of a decade of abysmal suffering that would end in his death.

When he arrived in the overcrowded, politically explosive Austrian capital, Gerron pulled off a rare coup, for an émigré, by immediately landing a job. For Tobis Studios, he directed a romantic comedy entitled
Boards that Mean the World
. It starred Wallburg, who had followed Gerron into exile. But despite a famous cast, the film was a financial flop. Movies made by Jews could not be sold in Germany, and the Austrian market was too small to cover costs. Before long, Viennese studio bosses avoided Gerron and cut off his cash flow.

In the meantime, Gerron’s parents and wife had joined him in Austria, and that made his financial situation even more complicated, so after eighteen months, he decided to move on. Initially he went to The Hague in Holland, a country that took in émigrés with open arms. Jewish performers who chose to stay in Vienna were in for a rude awakening. Before long, Hitler began casting a greedy eye on the country of his birth.

The other Alpine nation, Switzerland, would remain a safe haven for the duration of the Third Reich—for those Jews who managed to get in. Swiss immigration policies were tough, and the country’s relationship with Nazi Germany was ambivalent. The Swiss government never took a clear stand against the inhuman practices of its much larger neighbor. Swiss official attitudes ranged from diplomatic caution to callous indifference when it came to the suffering of would-be émigrés. And against
this background of official silence, the Swiss fascist movement became ever more vocal in its demands for political authority.

Pro-Nazi fascists in Zürich took especial umbrage at the political cabaret house Cornichon, and Walter Lesch, the founder of this cultural institution, became enemy number one for those on the far right. All of the issues on which the Swiss government chose to remain silent were paraded in front of a paying audience night after night in Lesch’s theater. The satire was so cutting that on numerous occasions Germany’s Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop filed official complaints with the Swiss government. But neither those complaints nor the whining of Swiss fascists had any effect. Despite calls for the theater to be censored or closed, Cornichon’s doors remained open.

The theater became a magnet for the German cabaret scene in exile, a venue where performers could heap scorn and ridicule on the Nazis without fear of retribution. Lesch himself ratcheted up the atmosphere with anti-German songs featuring lyrics far more uncompromising than to be found anywhere else in the Alpine countries. In 1938, he composed this song, with rhyming lyrics in the original, about a nation called Nazidonia and its favorite enemy:

Another Zürich cabaret house, Pfeffermühle (“Pepper Mill”) was somewhat more discreet, packaging political criticism in allusion and metaphors. This troupe was formed in 1933 by Klaus and Erika Mann, the children of Thomas Mann. Klaus Mann later described the project as “a literary cabaret with a strong political focus and a playful but deeply serious and impassioned protest against the shame of fascism.” He added: “The texts for most of the numbers—chansons, recitations, sketches—were by Erika, although I wrote some. Erika was the emcee, director, and main organizer. She sang, whipped up enthusiasm, hired the employees, inspired the performers—and
in short she was the heart and soul of the whole theater.”