The Weimar Triangle (15 page)

T
EMPO
, T
EMPO
, T
EMPO

The Parkhotel on the Wiesenhüttenstrasse just north of the River Main, not far from the Hauptbahnhof, was smaller than the Frankfurter Hof but high society preferred it for events like the reception the Bethmann Bank gave to honour the two Frankfurt collectors who had made the exhibition such a success. Their Beethoven autographs were among the most memorable sights at the exhibition. Bethmann’s had been a famous bank in Frankfurt long before the Rothschilds came along and made a splash.

Hermann and Hanni were invited to the reception, but Hermann had to defend a client in court, so Hanni asked me to accompany her. I hesitated but told myself, as I had before on similar occasions, that if she was not concerned about her reputation, why should I be? Mine could only be enhanced by my association with her. So I accepted. Incidentally, while she lived with me in my apartment on the Feldbergstrasse, she continued to organize her Saturday
déjeuners
with her customary zest. She was now conducting negotiations with the American consul to make sure that Thomas Alva Edison and Jimmy Walker, the mayor of New York, and his wife would not slip through her fingers next month. Hanni’s approach to her Saturdays resembled those of the two collectors the Bethmann Bank was honouring. A little Beethoven scherzo was considerably nicer to have than ten big Johann Nepomuk Hummel symphonies. [Hummel never wrote a symphony.]

The dominating personality at the reception was Hildegard von Toussaint, the widow of a scion of one of the great Huguenot families that came to Frankfurt in the eighteenth century. She herself was a descendant of the Textors, Goethe’s mother’s family, and of the composer Telemann. Hanni had known her for years and liked her even though their styles differed considerably. In her younger, slimmer years Hildegard had been a great beauty. Now she was impressive rather than beautiful, though her sparkling dark brown eyes were still memorable. She was famous for her witty provocations, which often triggered lively exchanges. This was one of such occasions.

Hildegard wore a long dark blue gown that made no concessions to current fashions and a splendid double-stringed pearl necklace. She spoke in delightful Frankfurt dialect. Among the elite, speaking “pure” German was not considered a social asset. Only
parvenus
and academics spoke pure German.

Waiters in white jackets served champagne. It so happened that many guests were visitors from Berlin, some of them representing the recording industry. At first, guests were conducting separate conversations in groups while standing up, but soon one conversation prevailed and people gradually sat down.

The discussion began with universal raptures over the original autograph of Bach’s Chaconne, written in his own hand.

“I simply cannot understand,” Hildegard announced, “why anybody would want to record the piece again. Adolf Busch’s interpretation cannot be surpassed. It is perfection. So my advice to you”
—
she singled out the representative of Deutsche Ultraphon AG Berlin, a bald man with horn-rimmed glasses
—
“don’t bother!”

“Hear, hear,” a pale young woman said obsequiously.

“I don’t like his playing at all,” a tall man with hollow cheeks contradicted boldly. “Busch’s style is icy cold. He doesn’t use any vibrato at all.”

“If you like fifth-rate vulgar, sentimental kitsch with lots of juicy vibrato,” Hildegard snapped haughtily, “that’s your business. We have to have standards, or we might as well”
—
she waved her bejewelled right hand in the air for effect
—
“all move to Berlin.”

The Berlin contingent was suitably amused.

“Let me explain.” Hildegard was enjoying herself. “There are two Germanies. There is the Germany of Bach and there is the Germany of Berlin. There
—
I need hardly tell you, it’s
your
city
—
anything goes. No standards. Cultural anarchy. A hectic pace. Chaos. Tempo, tempo, tempo, that’s all that matters. That and Berlin impudence. It has become the New Babylon. Today, in the schools, I understand they boast that any girl who is a virgin at sixteen is a disgrace. As for the boys
—
I shudder. Whenever I travel there, usually under compulsion, I cannot wait to get back to Frankfurt where the ancient virtues are still held in high esteem. Even though they were gravely endangered in 1866 when Prussia marched in and put an end to our ancient status as a Free City. As some of you may not know, there was a battle on the Hauptwache. One of our brave soldiers was killed. The mayor threw himself out of the window.”

“But ever since,” the Berliner with the horn-rimmed glasses observed, “we Prussians generously allowed you to continue playing the chaconne without vibrato.”

This reply was greeted with laughter and applause.

“I have the greatest sympathy for your position,
gnädige Frau.
” Wolfgang Kramer said. He was a rotund rosy-cheeked man, a top manager at Berlin’s KaDeWe, the Kaufhaus des Westens, the huge department store on the Tauentzienstrasse. He had come to Frankfurt to see the Beethoven manuscripts. “Whenever I come to Frankfurt I have a very good time. I always enjoy visiting the
Provinz —
it is enormously refreshing, like breathing in clear mountain air. Life is so simple here. Still, you must surely regret that so many of your best people flock to Berlin because they know it is the centre of the modern world, the source of inexhaustible energies, a magnet to anybody with talent, a city that needs little sleep and is never tired, a worldly-wise, nervous, restless city that lives for the moment and has little confidence in the future, fully aware that the barbarians are knocking at the gates, a city full of geniuses and crooks and cripples and endless talk and a hundred and forty seven newspapers. Or maybe a hundred and forty eight. I understand Paul Hindemith is the latest refugee from Frankfurt to enrich the Berlin scene even further. People from all over the world used to go for excitement to London and Paris. Now they come to Berlin.”

“Chacun à son goût
,” Hildegard replied with a shrug. “Or, as your man Frederick the Great used to say, ‘Every man can go to Heaven in his own way.’ He did not include women. I understand he was not very fond of women. He set the tone. But it would not be fair of me to hold that against you. I do not think he is to blame for the curious behaviour that seems to have become the high fashion in Berlin and that may well be the real reason why so many foreigners flock to it. There they can do things that they are not allowed to do at home.”

“That, of course, is entirely possible,” one of the two Frankfurt collectors who was being honoured said. He was a benignlooking leather manufacturer who managed to delegate his managerial duties to his partners so that he could devote most of his time to his hobby. “But that is not why I enjoy going to Berlin. I go there for the music, the incredible choices one has, the dozens of first-class concerts every night, not just those given by Wilhelm Furtwangler, Bruno Walter, Erich Kleiber and Otto Klemperer
—
they also come here
—
or the three marvellous big opera companies, but also for the smaller companies that do odd new works like the jazzy
Jonny Spielt Auf
by Ernst Krenek. I saw it recently and enjoyed it very much. And then there is Kurt Weill, who studied with Engelbert Humperdinck but writes fairy-tale music very different from
Hänsel und Gretel,
original and very touching. He has composed an amazing opera about an imaginary American city called
Mahagony
that is not really about America but about us and our dreams turned upside down. He is working together with the poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht. You may have heard of him.”

“I have.” Hildegard sighed, fingering her pearls. “We in the
Provinz
do try to keep informed. Sooner or later his plays will be done here. I am in no hurry. I understand he is not very fond of —” she searched for the right word “— some of us.”

“Some of you are exactly the people who promote him,” the collector replied. “It is pure masochism. He castigates you in the name of proletarians who, of course, prefer football to the theatre. The same is true of much of the satire that is offered in the hundreds of cabarets that have sprouted up. Their targets, the people depicted in George Grosz’s caricatures, are not among the regular customers, I assure you. Grosz is a great friend of Walter Mehring, by the way, one of the most inventive satirists in the city. When you come to Berlin, whether voluntarily or under duress, you must not miss Max Reinhardt’s
Schall und Rauch,
Rosa Valetti’s
Café Grössenwahn
and Trude Hesterberg’s
Wilde Bühne
. [Readers may recognize these as the Café Megalomania and the Wild Stage cabaret.] And don’t overlook the
Kabarett der Komiker.
Only few of those who write for those places were born in Berlin
—
most come from the
Provinz.
An exception is Kurt Tucholsky. I am sure you have read some of his books. He is a passionate Berliner, war veteran and uncompromising pacifist, anti-Prussian to the core. So he lives in Paris and sends his biting
chansons
home by mail.”

Hilldegard was unmoved. Before she could say anything Hanni intervened. She had been fidgeting impatiently for some time.

“I’m delighted none of you Berliners has so far mentioned the theatre,” Hanni said with almost unlady-like animation. “because we in Frankfurt have the Neue Theater, which is as exciting as anything you have in Berlin.”

Only the man from the Deutsche Ultraphon had heard of it.

“Yes,” he said cheerfully. “That’s perfectly true. It’s excellent,”

“You’re clearly a man of judgement,” Hanni smiled. “Unlike the Schauspielhaus, which mainly does the classics, the Neue Theater is pure, unadulterated community theatre. It’s not subsidized by the city. We pay for it. Ninety percent of its productions are brand new. There is an average of thirty-eight new plays a season. The director is the extraordinary Arthur Hellmer. He started off during the war, with expressionist plays by Georg Kaiser, Walter Hasenclever and René Schickele. Some of them great shockers and very left-wing, like Ernst Toller’s plays. We think it is good for us to see these things, and we go.”

“If you are lucky,” Wolfgang Kramer said, “you’ll wake up one morning and think you’re in Berlin.”

From the
Frankfurter Zeitung:

I am having a lemon ice cream in the Café Josty on the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. Later, as I stroll along the Wilhelmstrasse, I pass a serene-looking, well-groomed panhandler sitting on the payment leaning against the Foreign Office. He is wearing an officer’s uniform sporting the Iron Cross First Class and other decorations, and has one leg missing. Should I go back, engage him in conversation, perhaps give him a little money, then write a feuilleton about him? But why should he talk to me? On the other hand, why shouldn’t he? If he is an impostor I would find out soon enough. But I do not think he is. Does he not get a pension? What about the officers’ code? What does he think of President Hindenburg? He certainly does not look like a man who is suffering. Is he doing this just to confuse people like me?

He is not the only Berlin phenomenon that confuses me but right now I am too indolent to pursue any of them. Today I am a
flâneur
. There is no German equivalent for this Parisian expression. Indolence is part of the definition. Making an effort is not. I observe and I meditate. I look at the traffic on the Potsdamer Platz, pushcarts, bicycles, motor cars, twenty-five trams, 2,753 vehicles an hour. Somebody has counted them. So I have read. I am filled with pride. The busiest square in Europe. Piccadilly Circus, the Place de la Concorde, St. Peter’s Piazza, the Red Square
—
none can compete with the 2,753 vehicles passing through the Potsdamer Platz each hour. How many were there in the Kaiser’s time? Alas, nobody counted them. Now we will never know. He had his own motor car. His horn roused millions. Today untold numbers of our fellow-citizens still stand to attention whenever they hear an echo. I should write a skit about this for one of the cabarets. Maybe Tucholsky has already done it. And what about this tall, elegant traffic tower in front of me with its picturesque flashing lights, directing 2,753 vehicles an hour? A very attractive steel structure, I must say, thin legs supporting an impressive head. I understand they already have them in America. We do not mind taking the lead from America as long as we are first in Europe.

Now, who else in Europe has a newspaper kiosk on its busiest piazza exhibiting a periodical put out by the wife of one of its two top military leaders during the war, the other being our head of state? Yes, I am referring to
Frau Doktor
Mathilde Ludendorff, a trained psychiatrist, the wildly anti-Semitic opponent of Christianity, occultism and all eastern religions and high priestess of a new German folk religion. She thinks Germany lost the Battle of the Marne in 1914, and therefore the war, because the commanding officer was a disciple of anthroposophist and Goethe scholar Rudolf Steiner. I looked at a copy before I strolled over. It was on the rack next to the Nazis’
Völkische Beobachter
, which struck me as relatively mild in comparison, and the communists’
Die Rote Fahne
, as energetic and confident as ever. In the lead editorial, on the front page, I noted that they are celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

Only ten years! I was amazed. I would have thought they stormed the Winter Palace fifty years ago,

Only ten years!

Where will we be ten years from now?

M
OSCOW

It was no secret that Walter Benjamin had immersed himself in the study of Marxism and was even considering joining the Communist Party. That is why some of his friends, including Hanni and me, joined those assembled in the seminar room on the second floor of the Café Laumer to hear what he had to say, on the one evening he was in Frankfurt on a short visit, to tell us about the two months he spent in Moscow the previous winter. He was thirty-five years old. I understand one reason he went was that he was having a stormy on-and-off love affair with the beautiful Latvian actress and theatre director Asja Lacis, who was a committed Leninist and recovering from an unknown illness in a sanatorium in Moscow. They had met in Capri in 1924. She had many contacts who no doubt were useful to him. But I had not discussed her with him and did not expect him to talk about her on this occasion. I did know that he had visited Asja in Riga. He had dedicated his new book of aphorisms,
Einbahnstrasse
[
One Way Street
], to her.