Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City (86 page)
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Authors: Peter Demetz
BOOK: Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City
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The new customs require that one remove one’s shoes before entering an apartment and leave them in the hall or in a niche (in the prefabricated houses, even outside the door), and Prague bedroom slippers get their historical due. This rule also applies at our old flat, kept in wonderful order, as though forty years of history out there meant nothing, by my stepmother, an amiable and vigorously sensible lady, a former dancer whom my widowed father married. When I entered, it was literally as if I had just come back from a quick errand in the city (that is, before I looked at myself in the hall mirror). Even the ashtray made of violet glass that I suddenly remembered was still on the desk. I fell asleep on the same sofa as in the past, and in an envelope I found faded family photos that were very familiar to me: of Father, Mother, my aunts and uncles, of vacations in Marienbad or in Silesian Karlsbrunn, and of me wearing the velvet suit with a white collar that my mother had made herself.
My father first caught sight of my mother at eight in the morning on a fine April day in 1913 or 1914, at the corner of Št
pánská and Wenceslas Square, and he was “hooked right away.” On the next day he waited at the same corner, and she again showed up punctually, for she was a seamstress and had to hurry to work. Later the two strolled along the Vltava, and it turned out that they both came from immigrant families. He, Hans (his artistic name; his real name was Franz), came from a poor Ladin peasant family in the South Tyrol (ethnically related to the Swiss Romansh: I wonder in what language they conversed) that could no longer survive on the farm and therefore had migrated north, first to Linz, then to the Prague Týn, where my grandfather hoped to earn a living by selling wooden toys carved in the Groedner Valley; when metal toys appeared on the market he went bankrupt. She, Anna, came from a Jewish family in Pod
brady, a small town in central Bohemia, where her father was a textile merchant, but they had not wanted to stay there because their Czech fellow citizens displayed a certain tendency to demolish Jewish shops on the main square. In both Ladin and Jewish families old notions lived on unchanged. When the wedding carriage stopped in front of my father’s house (I can picture the Czech coachman stopping the horses with a mighty
Prrr)
, my paternal grandfather asked the bridegroom, “Do you really want to marry that Jewish sow?” and my mother’s family shrugged their shoulders at the goyish cavalier, whose South Tyrolean mother was said to carry a rosary in her belt and speak Ladin while cooking. It sounded like old Provençal.
pánská and Wenceslas Square, and he was “hooked right away.” On the next day he waited at the same corner, and she again showed up punctually, for she was a seamstress and had to hurry to work. Later the two strolled along the Vltava, and it turned out that they both came from immigrant families. He, Hans (his artistic name; his real name was Franz), came from a poor Ladin peasant family in the South Tyrol (ethnically related to the Swiss Romansh: I wonder in what language they conversed) that could no longer survive on the farm and therefore had migrated north, first to Linz, then to the Prague Týn, where my grandfather hoped to earn a living by selling wooden toys carved in the Groedner Valley; when metal toys appeared on the market he went bankrupt. She, Anna, came from a Jewish family in Podbrady, a small town in central Bohemia, where her father was a textile merchant, but they had not wanted to stay there because their Czech fellow citizens displayed a certain tendency to demolish Jewish shops on the main square. In both Ladin and Jewish families old notions lived on unchanged. When the wedding carriage stopped in front of my father’s house (I can picture the Czech coachman stopping the horses with a mightyPrrr)
, my paternal grandfather asked the bridegroom, “Do you really want to marry that Jewish sow?” and my mother’s family shrugged their shoulders at the goyish cavalier, whose South Tyrolean mother was said to carry a rosary in her belt and speak Ladin while cooking. It sounded like old Provençal.
Like so many young people, my father had his heart set on becoming a Prague poet and dramaturge, and he studied the Berlin avant-garde periodicals. On Sundays the young betrothed would take the paddle steamer to Zbraslav—an obligatory excursion that Franz Werfel described in his early poem “Moldaufahrt im Vorfrühling” (“Voyage on the Moldau in Early Spring”):
“Oh Tanzlokale am Ufer, oh Brüder, oh Dampfer, Fährhaus, Erd- und Himmelsgeleit”
(O dance halls at the shore, o steamer, ferry house, escort of earth and heaven!). They strolled through the sparse woods and fortified themselves with beer and coffee at a garden restaurant, where they listened to a K.u.K. (imperial and royal) band. On Monday my father would write his weekly love poem for Mama, which would appear in the
Prager Tagblatt
the following Sunday. At first these verses were a bit neoromantic (“Tonight, Madonna, when the first stars …”), but later they displayed expressionist boldness (“In the distance the organ tones of a toilet”). Thanks to German literary scholarship, they are all neatly preserved in the files of a research institute for Prague German literature in Wuppertal in the west of Germany.
“Oh Tanzlokale am Ufer, oh Brüder, oh Dampfer, Fährhaus, Erd- und Himmelsgeleit”
(O dance halls at the shore, o steamer, ferry house, escort of earth and heaven!). They strolled through the sparse woods and fortified themselves with beer and coffee at a garden restaurant, where they listened to a K.u.K. (imperial and royal) band. On Monday my father would write his weekly love poem for Mama, which would appear in the
Prager Tagblatt
the following Sunday. At first these verses were a bit neoromantic (“Tonight, Madonna, when the first stars …”), but later they displayed expressionist boldness (“In the distance the organ tones of a toilet”). Thanks to German literary scholarship, they are all neatly preserved in the files of a research institute for Prague German literature in Wuppertal in the west of Germany.
The situation was not simple for these young people, for they were moving across invisible boundaries. The goyim spoke German, and Jews from small towns in Bohemia spoke Czech (though my Czech-Jewish grandmother lulled me to sleep by singing Heine’s romance about the two grenadiers in German). There were other conflicts as well, for in both groups the older people, who valued business matters, were in conflict with the younger people, who defended pure intellect against their materialistic fathers. That was the case with the Kafkas and with the glove manufacturer Werfel, but they were not the only ones. Using terms from a satire by Karl Kraus, on one side there was
tachles,
the resourceful business mentality, and on the other
shmontses,
the creative values, though the tachles faction frequently dismissed these in the cultural section of the newspaper as
shmontsetten
(trifles). Oh, well, even the most important writers sometimes began with
shmontsetten
(for example, Franz Kafka in
Bohemia)
, although fifty years later my father was still unable to comprehend that “Frankie” Kafka was a great writer, like Goethe or Dante.
tachles,
the resourceful business mentality, and on the other
shmontses,
the creative values, though the tachles faction frequently dismissed these in the cultural section of the newspaper as
shmontsetten
(trifles). Oh, well, even the most important writers sometimes began with
shmontsetten
(for example, Franz Kafka in
Bohemia)
, although fifty years later my father was still unable to comprehend that “Frankie” Kafka was a great writer, like Goethe or Dante.
I did not learn for some time what it meant to be a half-Jew, halfgoy making his way between languages and nations, but at the age of fourteen or fifteen I certainly realized that my life was tied to T. G. Masaryk’s republic and its liberal principles. Even later, when I was a prisoner of the Gestapo, did forced labor in a camp for half-Jews, and studied at the Charles University of Prague, I saw no reason to change my views. During my childhood in the late 1920s, all that was indistinct and remote.
I grew up on St. Peter’s Square, with a view of the old church, and I remember visiting old shops with long fishing poles in a corner, for the Vltava was nearby. My mother liked to take me, unfortunately in the aforementioned velvet suit, to the Stadtpark (now destroyed by a new superhighway, despite Franz Werfel’s poetry and Hermann Grab’s beautiful prose), or to Žofín Island, from which one had a view of a “swimming school” (a Prague specialty: public baths on rafts), or, in winter, to the bumpy improvised skating rink below the National Theater. In the afternoon lady friends would visit my mother. They clinked the teacups with the little silver spoons that were part of the Pod
brady dowry, and speculated on the maiden name of one society lady or another. Only when the conversation turned to my aunts or uncles was I sent out of the room to read something educational (Egon Erwin Kisch).
I grew up on St. Peter’s Square, with a view of the old church, and I remember visiting old shops with long fishing poles in a corner, for the Vltava was nearby. My mother liked to take me, unfortunately in the aforementioned velvet suit, to the Stadtpark (now destroyed by a new superhighway, despite Franz Werfel’s poetry and Hermann Grab’s beautiful prose), or to Žofín Island, from which one had a view of a “swimming school” (a Prague specialty: public baths on rafts), or, in winter, to the bumpy improvised skating rink below the National Theater. In the afternoon lady friends would visit my mother. They clinked the teacups with the little silver spoons that were part of the Pod
brady dowry, and speculated on the maiden name of one society lady or another. Only when the conversation turned to my aunts or uncles was I sent out of the room to read something educational (Egon Erwin Kisch).Ah, yes, the aunts and uncles! My father’s sister, Aunt Fritta, was the problem child of the family. No sooner had she memorized the monologues from Schiller’s
Maid of Orleans
than she made off for the theaters of Frankfurt and Berlin, where she played leading roles; one of her partners was the star actor Heinrich George (of all people, for he turned to the Nazis later). Her first husband was the expressionist dramatist Paul Komfeld, who later perished in the Lodz ghetto. Her visits to Prague caused great excitement, but my mama refused to stroll on the boulevard Na P
íkopech with her because Tante Fritta, like Marlene Dietrich, wore pants. I liked her very much; she always paid me a handful of copper coins for an hour of golden silence, for she was
etepetete
(persnickety), as my father put it, and could not abide my Prague German with its Slavic consonants. Twenty years later, after an exile in Oxford, she told me that my German had still not improved all that much.
Maid of Orleans
than she made off for the theaters of Frankfurt and Berlin, where she played leading roles; one of her partners was the star actor Heinrich George (of all people, for he turned to the Nazis later). Her first husband was the expressionist dramatist Paul Komfeld, who later perished in the Lodz ghetto. Her visits to Prague caused great excitement, but my mama refused to stroll on the boulevard Na P
íkopech with her because Tante Fritta, like Marlene Dietrich, wore pants. I liked her very much; she always paid me a handful of copper coins for an hour of golden silence, for she wasetepetete
(persnickety), as my father put it, and could not abide my Prague German with its Slavic consonants. Twenty years later, after an exile in Oxford, she told me that my German had still not improved all that much.
The ladies might also have gossiped about my uncle Karl (the Christian side and yet a member of the
shmontses
faction), but unfortunately he was
unter allem Niveau
(absolutely substandard). Karl, a graphic artist and draftsman, had a small studio not far from the Hrad
any; family moralists disapproved of his taste in women, which tended toward the plebeian and the buxom (Café Št
rba). Karl was talented but not clever, for one evening in 1940, when he was drinking coffee in a hotel lobby, he declared to a man at his table that despite all the special communiqués the war was already lost for the Germans. That man was an official of the Gestapo; Uncle Karl was charged with high treason and promptly sentenced to twenty years in prison. At first he was incarcerated in the fortress Terezín, where sadistic
Kapos
tortured political prisoners to death, but then he was lucky enough to be transferred to a prison in Dresden,
where he was rescued by the Allied air raids that destroyed it; he made his way through forests and across rivers to Prague, hid out in his father’s apartment in the Týn, and did not leave the house again until the days of liberation came, in early May 1945. He helped build barricades, but a neighbor recognized him as German, he was removed from his post, and if he had not been saved by the testimony of former fellow prisoners, he would have gone to prison again, this time as a German.
shmontses
faction), but unfortunately he was
unter allem Niveau
(absolutely substandard). Karl, a graphic artist and draftsman, had a small studio not far from the Hrad
any; family moralists disapproved of his taste in women, which tended toward the plebeian and the buxom (Café Štrba). Karl was talented but not clever, for one evening in 1940, when he was drinking coffee in a hotel lobby, he declared to a man at his table that despite all the special communiqués the war was already lost for the Germans. That man was an official of the Gestapo; Uncle Karl was charged with high treason and promptly sentenced to twenty years in prison. At first he was incarcerated in the fortress Terezín, where sadisticKapos
tortured political prisoners to death, but then he was lucky enough to be transferred to a prison in Dresden,
where he was rescued by the Allied air raids that destroyed it; he made his way through forests and across rivers to Prague, hid out in his father’s apartment in the Týn, and did not leave the house again until the days of liberation came, in early May 1945. He helped build barricades, but a neighbor recognized him as German, he was removed from his post, and if he had not been saved by the testimony of former fellow prisoners, he would have gone to prison again, this time as a German.
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