Marlene (6 page)

And there was also Immanuel Kant! His laws were my laws; I knew them by heart!

“So act that the maxim of your will, at the same time, could always hold as the principle of a universal legislation.”

“The principle directly opposed to morality consists in making the principle of individual well-being the dominant principle of the will.”

“The moral law, as such, requires no justification, not only because it proves the possibility of freedom but because it proves that freedom really belongs to those who recognize this law and choose to submit to it.”

Logic is not a feminine trait. Thank God I was bound to Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative and teachings and, during my youth, insisted on thinking like a man and not like a woman. Logic was demanded at every moment. If my conclusions were illogical, I was excluded from the conversation. To this day I've been unable to ignore this strict rule and continue to expect those to whom I am close to share my respect for it.

This education helped me through my whole, often more than eventful life and continues to serve me today. It was the best “capital” resource for my profession. But in my private life, too, decisions were determined by my capacity for logical thinking. This capacity is exclusively to Kant's credit, because in my youth there was no man who could have taught me this.

Logic is the key to an all-inclusive spiritual well-being.

The girls studying music, as I was, were allowed to attend the opera three evenings a week. We were overcome by the magic, the
lights, the
trompe l'oeil
in the auditorium, fascinated by the violins, by all the music.

This period of my youth was wonderful. To be young seemed to be the most natural state of the world for all of us. Little did we know that such happiness would be of brief duration. Even so, I felt it was my duty to enjoy every single moment of it.

My mother came to visit me every three weeks to “straighten up” my room, which needless to say, was always in perfect order, and to wash my hair. Since there was no shower, she would use jugs to rinse the soap out of my hair, until there was no trace of soap left in the water.

It may seem unusual that a mother should travel so far just to wash her daughter's hair. But my mother was very proud of my hair, and she wanted it to stay beautiful. She didn't trust me on this point. That my hair has always remained attractive I surely owe to my mother's help. She would dry it with a hand towel, then have me sit on a chair in the visiting room. My face would be flushed from all the rubbing that was part of this treatment. My hair was in complete disarray and wet, and when we took leave of each other, tears would stream down my face. I wasn't the only one who underwent this treatment. We would all wash ourselves thoroughly in expectation of this day. But that was nothing compared to mothers “scrubbing.”

Thanks to the music I was very happy even when I had spells of homesickness. The other lessons bored or oppressed me. I was poor at mathematics and still am. I was good at history and languages. My memories of those years are, on the whole, happy ones.

Then came the fateful day when my time at the boarding school was over. A decision had to be made as to whether I should or shouldn't continue my studies in Weimar. When my mother arrived, my violin and piano teachers praised my “triumphs,” and she entered me in another girls' school in Weimar. I was to live there so that I could take further music lessons. I led an even more pleasant life than before. I could play as long as I wished or had to. I was freer, and could divide my time as I saw fit.

Naturally, I still went to concerts, to the opera, and to the theater. I frequently visited my favorite haunts, the libraries, and regularly wrote my mother, who always answered punctually.

But soon disaster descended upon me. Out of the blue my mother showed up in Weimar, took me out of the boarding school and back to our home in Berlin. Was she concerned about my new freedom? In any case, she seemed troubled. And she answered my anxious questions evasively.

However, she did leave me time to say good-bye to my friends and teachers. Sadly, I visited Goethe's Garden House for the last time. Since I was used to obedience, I raised no objections. On the way back I was very quiet. In Berlin I had a new violin teacher, Professor Flesch of the Music Academy, who accepted me only after I had played hours on end for him.

Everything was different now. Bach, Bach, Bach, always Bach. I had to practice eight hours a day. My mother and I almost lost our minds.

I was the first to give up. The doctors examined me and explained that the pain I was feeling on my left ring finger was due to a tendon inflammation; my whole hand was placed in a cast. Bach's solo sonatas were responsible for my debility. It was a crushing blow. Now I would never become a violin “soloist” celebrated in the musical world. My mother's disappointment was even greater than mine. The old violin she had bought for me now lay wrapped in a silken cloth in its black case. For my mother it was one more broken dream. As for me, for the first time in a long while I had nothing to do.

I started receiving formal instruction all over again, now at home. I started reading Goethe again to maintain my connection with him. Then, one day I discovered Rainer Maria Rilke—I say “discovered” because in school no teacher had ever spoken about him. From then on I had a new god.

I thought his poetry so beautiful that I learned long verses by heart and loved reciting them aloud.

My mother gradually got over her disappointment, though she still hoped that my hand would heal. She approved of my doing lots of reading because, in her opinion, one should always
be “doing something.” Tirelessly, she would repeat “do something” when she found me daydreaming. Even now I still hear her voice, and I find myself always “doing something.”

Finally, the cast was removed. The swollen hand lay motionless on my lap. I observed it, perplexed. Telephone calls to doctors were made again, but their prognosis was not very encouraging: The hand would always remain susceptible to a recurrence. At this time I greatly missed my father, and I'm sure my mother would have liked a man at her side, a man who would have helped us come to some decision.

Surprising as it may seem, I took my father's place—against my mother's will.

I decided to become an actress because the theater was the only place where one could recite beautiful texts and beautiful verses like those by Rilke, which at one and the same time broke my heart and restored my courage.

So I set the violin aside once and for all and tried to obtain entry into the theater world. Just a try, I explained to my mother.

At that time Max Reinhardt ran a drama school in Berlin. I showed up there for an audition. Naive as usual, I planned to play the part of the girl in Hugo von Hofmannsthal's play
Death and the Fool
after I had been told by someone that Rilke was not a “theater author.”

We had to audition before a formidable number of men sitting in chairs for what seemed to me hours on end. Then we were asked to recite an excerpt from Faust, “Gretchen's Prayer.” When my turn came, I was told to kneel. The idea of falling to my knees in such a place was embarrassing to me, and I hesitated—long enough, in fact, for one of the teachers to throw a pillow at my feet. I didn't understand. I looked at him and asked: “Why did you throw the pillow at me?” “So that you can kneel on it,” he answered. This confused me even more, for in my view it was ridiculous to use a pillow for this scene. Nevertheless, I recited my verses and was then told to return the next day.

There were so many girls that I felt I was back in grade school. One of them was named Grete Mosheim, and we shyly exchanged a few words. Grete Mosheim later became a famous
actress. But on that day, in that school, she tried, like all of us, to attract the teachers' attention.

At any rate, the fact that we were allowed to attend the Max Reinhardt Drama School was an encouraging sign for the future.

The school's schedule filled most of our day and in addition, there were exercises that had to be practiced at home. We were warned that we had picked “a dangerous profession,” but we were determined to accept the challenge. Dangerous or not, I was enthusiastic about it. We never regretted our work, we never regretted the long hours spent trying to understand what the teachers were talking about. We learned. Simply setting a goal for yourself is in itself already very important, distant and vague as it might be.

When I came home every day, I would tell my mother what we thought we had achieved, or what we had tried to achieve, and my mother listened to me patiently.

Like other young girls at that time, I knew little about what was going on outside the narrow frame of my little world. Although it might seem strange now, back then we had no interest whatsoever in politics or political events. Our attitude was diametrically opposed to that of most of today's young people.

My generation and, in particular, the young girls I knew, were affected only by the daily happenings in their immediate circle: the household, personal achievement, weddings, and children. Even as we grew older and inflation hit the country, our attitude didn't change. I was aware that prices could fluctuate wildly. But like all the young girls and women of my generation, I simply took note of the fact and didn't worry about it further. With the lightheartedness of youth, we thought all these sweeping changes were transitory and would soon disappear. Our own problems seemed to be far more important, and we weren't in the least inclined to ask ourselves about the reasons for the insecurity that gripped Germany in the twenties. Much later, when I had finally grown up and studied this period, I realized that these events had left no mark whatsoever on me. Today I wonder whether that wasn't a good thing after all.

Max Reinhardt ran four theaters in Berlin. His school was
located in the rooms on the top floor of one of these theaters. We never met our principal, and yet his reputation terrified all of us. He himself no longer taught, but he still picked the teachers who were to work with us.

I can understand why Max Reinhardt, once I became famous, liked to say that he had “discovered” me. But—unfortunately—that's not the case. I had no special talent and I knew it. Everybody knew it. Grete Mosheim and I, as well as all the other students, were content merely to attend classes and to play any of the minor roles offered here and there. Grete Mosheim was the first to stand out among us, leaving us all behind, far behind.

Rudolf Sieber, the assistant to Joe May, who was filming
The Tragedy of Love
in Berlin, had an unusual idea for that time—namely, to have the roles of spectators, pedestrians, etc., played by unknowns rather than by professional actors. He contacted the Max Reinhardt Drama School and asked whether the students would be available to be the face of the crowd. The offer was enthusiastically accepted. So one lovely day, Grete Mosheim and I showed up at the studio.

Rudolf Sieber told us he was looking for “demimonde ladies” of distinction. He decided that my friend Grete Mosheim looked “too serious” for the part. I, however, was told to appear for work the very next day. That's how he thought of me.

I was proud he had chosen me as “a face in the crowd,” proud that I had made it, proud not to have looked too young, too innocent, too … well, too much of everything that I really was.

Grete Mosheim later got the leading role in the play
Old Heidelberg,
a terribly sentimental melodrama in which we had all hoped to get a role. But, unlike me, she was the “fine lady” type. Along with several classmates, I accompanied her to her first rehearsal, shed hot tears, and wished her lots of luck.

We missed her but continued to follow our own paths, which led us here and there. For instance, I played the role of a maid in the first act of one play then by subway or bus I would go to another theater, where in the second act of another play I was a matron, after which I wound up the day as a prostitute in the third act of a third play. Each night was different from the night before.
All of us always went from one place to another and did what was demanded of us. Naturally, we didn't receive any money for all this. Working as extras was part of our training.

Most theaters, compared to those of today, were small, but when I was sent to the Schumann Theater where Max Reinhardt was staging
The Taming of the Shrew,
I was amazed at the enormous size of the interior. It had formerly housed a circus. I was to play the role of the widow in the fifth act. I had only three lines to speak, but this was more than had ever been given to me before. The leading man complained that people in the first row could not hear me. I had to await the final verdict. Elisabeth Bergner was playing the shrew. Austrian by birth, she had later lived in Switzerland and finally settled in Berlin. She had patience with beginners and was able to convince the theater director to take us on in the cast. Naturally, there was no amplifier in this giant hall, so we tried everything “to project ourselves beyond the stage” in the way we had been taught at school: “Hold your nose, bring your voice into your head and say
Ning, Nang, Neun, Neun.
”

Dr. Joseph worked tirelessly with us, without a break. With a rope laid over his shoulders, he literally pulled us through the rehearsal room while we struggled against it, weakly repeating: “
Ning, Nang, Neun, Neun
.” His method worked. We became actresses. My three lines in
The Taming of the Shrew
were:

“Then never trust me, if I be afeard.”

“He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.”

“Lord, let me never have a cause to sigh, till I be brought to such a silly pass.”

In Shakespeare's original text, the widow's role contained more lines. But they were deleted for reasons unknown to me. During the rehearsals, I familiarized myself with the rules of the theater. When my turn came, I spoke my three lines. I never got to see Max Reinhardt. We all hoped to catch just one glimpse of him. But, as always, he made himself scarce.