Broken Lives Read online

  GRANDPARENTS’ INFLUENCE

  In contrast to distant ancestors, grandparents were a living memory; their partly strict, partly loving authority overshadowed many a childhood. Due to the generational difference in age, they commanded respect for their life experience and achievement, whether in managing a farm, running a store, or pursuing a profession. Though a few continued to work in spite of declining strength, most grandparents were retired, now having time for hobbies such as cultivating a garden, keeping bees, or just smoking a pipe. For Christmas, Edith Schöffski’s grandfather carved “a pretty doll house with furniture, oven and outhouse,” while her grandmother “sewed linen and everything else for the tiny beds and of course also baked spice cake [Lebkuchen].”22 Another grandfather told funny stories about his own exploits as a youth and led the children in silly games. While their parents resented the harsh discipline these same men and women had inflicted on them, the grandchildren usually remembered Opa or Oma fondly once a disease such as tuberculosis took them away.

  3. Wilhelmine grandmothers. Source: Benno Schöffski, “Meine Familiengeschichte.”

  In their eyes, the grandparents’ lives were strictly divided along gendered lines, with grandfather the head and grandmother the soul of the family. The former ruled his flock with paternalistic authority, making all the important decisions, controlling finances, and meting out strict discipline. Grandfather was responsible for his family’s material well-being, putting the daily bread on the table and providing a bit of ease beyond. In the countryside, it was the farmer who controlled the servants and the animals, deciding when and where to plow. In the cities, the master lorded over his business, keeping apprentices and clerks in line. The family head was also in charge of relations with the outside world, safeguarding his family’s reputation and participating in public tasks. Even if he was only a goldsmith, Hans Queiser’s grandfather, a “taciturn man,” radiated respectability in his dark Sunday suit.23

  By contrast, grandmothers were remembered as being in charge of the household and of relationships within large families. Because most dishes had to be cooked from scratch, feeding numerous people each day was an onerous task. Similarly, providing clothing was complicated, for much of what was worn needed to be cut and sewn by hand. Middle-class families employed maids to help with cleaning and child-rearing, but servants had to be supervised. Older women also kept an eye on their daughters and daughters-in-law to make sure that they were behaving appropriately, lest scandal taint the family honor. Grandmothers were also often more religious than their spouses and insisted on taking their grandchildren to church. If grandfathers were authoritarian, their wives had little choice but to knuckle under, seeking to get their way by gentle persuasion rather than bluster. But even if an Oma was “a gruff person,” a granddaughter might often “love her more than anyone.” Photos like that of the Schöffski matrons (image 3) often represent them as formidable personalities, nevertheless smiling and kindly.24

  For the children, grandparents were a welcome resource who allowed them to escape parental control and routine duties, especially during visits and vacations. If the family had moved to town to engage in factory work, they could return to the farm in the country during holidays, where the children could play with animals and learn the agricultural chores. When grandfather was a craftsman, his grandchildren could come and watch his skill, anticipating a later trade. Or, if he had established his own store, the young could start serving customers and begin to learn the secrets of furs or colonial goods. When grandparents were truly wealthy, their children’s offspring could sample upper-class life by staying in a villa or riding in a car. Horst Grothus recalled liking to “saunter through the factory, look at the machines, and watch the workers.”25 Similarly, girls could get a taste of fashion and elegance from visits to urban relatives.

  The contrast between paternal and maternal grandparents also provided children with interesting choices. One of Gisela Grothus’s grandfathers was a well-known Protestant theologian who had been the educator of the Grand-Duke of Baden. (She describes his wife merely as “a petite lady.”) Gisela’s mother’s parents lived in Berlin because the husband was a military surgeon and personal physician to Wilhelm I. This formidable Opa “liked to take me along on his walks; but mainly I remember that he sat at his desk and wrote, sometimes with a quill; what exactly I can’t recall.” His wife tried to please her granddaughter by offering sweets and applesauce with raisins “which did not taste especially good.” But she “had toys prepared for me. Especially my ‘doll Christa’ as big as a one-year-old child with which … I loved to play.” Such pleasant memories offered contrasting role models and created an intergenerational bond and a sense of family pride.26

  A typical upper-middle-class family such as the Eycks blended commercial prosperity with academic training and professional pursuits. Grandfather Joseph was a broker at the Berlin stock exchange, who managed a brewery in Berlin but had to economize in order to maintain a representative lifestyle. The grandmother, Helene, who left a journal, sacrificed her own talents for the sake of her family, writing with trenchant insight about the upbringing of her six children. Trained at the Gymnasium, the sons became a lawyer, a liberal politician, and a businessman; the daughters married an architect, another lawyer, and a distinguished doctor. They were brought up in the neohumanist spirit of the classics, considering themselves as part of the educated middle class, the Bildungsbürgertum. Although the family was only loosely observant, the rise of anti-Semitic agitation in the 1880s made them conscious of their Jewish heritage.27

  For working-class families like the Härtels, life was more of a struggle just to make ends meet. Getting enough food to eat was a daily chore, especially when there were numerous hungry children needing an increased share. Older boys were therefore often sent away to learn a trade and girls to become servants. There was also much domestic violence when men, especially after drinking too much, asserted their authority by beating their wives and children. This mindset also extended to employers and employees: when one young man tipped over his hay wagon, “the estate overseer simply whipped him then and there,” charging that he had loaded incorrectly. As a result, the mistreated youth left for the Ruhr and went to work in a coal mine. Grandfather Schirmer, a lowly concierge in a high school, was such a rigid disciplinarian that his rebellious son became a sailor and a Communist.28 The authoritarian effort to maintain order exacted a high price.

  During the last decades of the Wilhelmine Empire, the older generation encountered more resistance from their progeny, who no longer automatically followed their will. Often generational conflicts revolved around the choice of an occupation, as when Gerhard Baucke’s father rejected paternal advice and became a baker rather than a priest. Gertrud Koch’s parents insisted on marrying in spite of the fact that the groom was merely a widowed boilersmith with two children, whereas his bride was a middle-class pharmacist. “When my mother fell in love with my father,” she recalled, “the world could have come to an end—it would have been no less terrible for my grandmother.” Although “a great, heavyset man with white hair and a white moustache,” the proletarian father was fifteen years his wife’s senior and a Communist to boot. Even before the outbreak of the First World War, patriarchal authority had started to erode, so that their offspring tried to be more loving and supportive to their own children.29

  Because most grandparents of the Weimar cohort were born during unification in the 1860s, they bequeathed a nationalism that identified itself unquestionably with the newly created Reich. During their youth, these disparate speakers of German gradually overcame their many regional, religious, and class differences and blended into common citizens of a larger community. In part, this reconfiguration of identities was the result of common coinage and legal codes, supported by maps in school textbooks and male military service. The gradual shift of loyalties was also partly a product of ceremonial visits by the Kaiser and the celebration of holidays such as Sedantag, marki
ng the victory over France in 1870. The Second Empire also propagated the Prussian standard in administration and education as a blueprint for the entire country.30 Having grown up with the Bismarckian Reich, many of these grandparents were therefore proud of its growing power and international respect.

  In spite of much poverty during rapid industrialization, the Kaiserreich was later remembered as an era of prosperity and stability in which lives were predictable. The rural hierarchy of noble estate owner, independent farmer, and landless laborer was replicated in the city by business owner, craftsman, and industrial worker. These authoritarian structures were somewhat mitigated by an elite paternalism which felt responsible for its inferiors by providing housing and holiday presents. Though industrialization exploited human labor, increasing sectors of the middle class experienced a sense of progress marked by gradual advancement beyond basic necessities. Moreover, technological discoveries, such as the development of cars by inventors such as Gottfried Daimler, reinforced the feeling that things were getting better.31 The grandparents’ chief legacy was therefore a German nationalism coupled with optimism about the future.

  PARENTAL IMPACT

  The impact of parents upon their children’s lives was even stronger than that of older relatives, since the rise of affective parenting made childrearing their responsibility. With the reduction in the number of offspring, caring for the remaining children became a more intense task.32 The autobiographies of the 1920s cohort show how parents’ legacy of physical health and emotional stability could favor or impede the lives of their progeny. Similarly, the socioeconomic position of the parents would determine a life of arduous toil or of comfortable leisure for their children. The religious affiliation that marked one as a Protestant, Catholic, or Jew placed one into a majority or minority, subject to approval or discrimination. Moreover, regional residence in the north or south made an enormous difference for identity; boundaries moved as a result of wars, forcing people to relocate. The parents’ ideological outlook and political engagement largely governed the responses of their offspring. Portraits like that of the Köchy family hint at how strongly such influences shaped the lives of the children (image 4).

  4. Weimar family. Source: Ruth Bulwin, Spätes Echo.

  In a still-patriarchal world, the role of the father was crucial. He was the authority figure to be obeyed and example to be emulated. Many writers, including Horst Grothus, complain “my father did not pay much attention to me” due to pressures of work or the insistence on discipline.33 Another father was simply “a gambler and bon-vivant” who neglected his son.34 But a working-class girl, Erika Taubhorn, remembered her father as “a terrific person” who was able to do anything he set his mind to. In her proletarian world, he was “the chief person” and “he also always played with me.”35 When a prominent man such as Fritz Klein’s journalist father died prematurely, the impact upon the children was near-catastrophic, for their material security was threatened and a new caregiver had to be found among relatives or friends such as the family of reform pedagogue Heinrich Deiters in Berlin. Only rarely did a widow remarry. Even then, new stepfathers were seldom as supportive to prior children as the original fathers.36

  The mother was, nonetheless, remembered as the emotional center of the family, since the rearing of children was her primary prerogative. Due to the large number of births, this was arduous work, even if not all her children survived. Most writers remember their mothers as loving, teaching values and manners by example rather than force. For fortunate households, this effort resulted in “unconditional cohesion within the family [and] in ostensibly complete harmony.”37 But some mothers were rather more “ambivalent.” Society women were more interested in their shopping, looks, and entertainments than in taking care of bawling infants, leaving the latter to nannies or unmarried aunts to whom children such as Werner Angress became rather attached.38 In still-rare cases of divorce and remarriage, mothers often “were more concerned about their new husband than their under-age children.” This left their brood with strong emotional ambivalence.39

  One of the key influences on children’s life chances was the social class of their parents. Among the landed elite, fathers often behaved like an “uncrowned king of the village,” ruling by tradition and force of personality. One such estate owner, Wilhelm Lehmann, was “a picture of a man, tall and imposing, full of force and power” who drove his carriage standing up, “cracking his whip energetically” and scaring men and animals. His brothers feared and admired him, and “he was the best client of all village pubs.” Servant girls hid from him because “he exercised the jus primae noctis” on virgins. But even scions of the landed gentry had to be trained in classics at the Gymnasium and study law before they could enter some form of public or military service.40 These domineering men needed civilizing by a strong-willed spouse from an appropriate elite family. Such a privileged background engendered a lifelong sense of entitlement.

  The urban upper middle class had a similar sense of ease due to its prosperous lifestyle. If the father was a successful banker like Angress senior, he worked hard “in full accord with traditional Prussian virtues, the most important of which were honor and a sense of duty.” As a result, his family was “quite well off materially; we lived in a comfortable home, wore good clothes, went on trips with our parents, and had a servant girl and a cook who took care of our daily needs.” Free of annoying chores, the mother could be a socialite, insisting “on being well dressed and having her hair nicely done” and going on expensive shopping sprees. Her task was to run a hospitable home, often entertaining business associates or relatives during the holidays, and adding a touch of culture and style through her own accomplishments.41 Growing up in the Grossbürgertum class instilled a conviction that merit would be rewarded.

  Life in a lower-middle-class family demanded, by contrast, constant efforts to maintain one’s social respectability. Because financial means were limited, every expense had to be carefully considered and little luxuries such as an ice-cream cone or a visit to the movies were rare. Urban apartments were cramped and expensive and such closeness often magnified disputes over scarce money. If a father like Ruth Bulwin’s was a traveling salesman, he was rarely at home and then insisted on peace and quiet. Since he was “an extraordinary tyrant” and ready to inflict a beating at the smallest provocation, everyone had to tiptoe around him and “there was no family life.” Only the grandparents in the country offered a welcome refuge. To improve the family income, Ruth’s mother had to go to work herself, designing fancy hats for society ladies.42 Such a childhood in the Kleinbürgertum was often constrained materially and troubled psychologically.

  Proletarian families like the Härtels had to struggle even more to make ends meet due to their “miserable economic condition.” For the fathers, work consisted of hard physical labor and brought in meager pay, just sufficient to keep the family from starving, while jobs were uncertain, subject to frequent layoffs. Housing was often “a poor cellar apartment” without electricity or a one-room flat without indoor plumbing in the back court of a tenement. Because working-class families tended to be large, space was tight, with parents and children sleeping together in the same room or sharing beds. The mothers would often work as cleaners or in other menial jobs. As a result of poor education and limited sanitation, whole families were often sick from infectious diseases.43 Survival required ingenuity, such as supplementing food with vegetables from a garden plot or rearing rabbits. The children from such families who survived their infant diseases tended to be tough and street-smart.

  Another important cleavage was religious affiliation. The Reformation had split the German lands between Catholics and Protestants. Under Prussian leadership, the latter dominated the new Reich in cultural terms due to their emphasis on biblical learning. The anchor of Protestant influence was the parsonage, a seat of theological learning and social action. Pastor Krapf’s son describes his father as “the kindliest and most unassuming person,” a
nd notes that he carried himself “with such dignity and propriety that flowed from his faith” that his flock stood “in ‘loving awe’ of him.” Not only did his sermons draw on classical languages and biblical criticism, but he was also busy in social tasks such as Bible hour, youth training, and missionary activities. The wife of a parson had her hands full with both her own household and the social obligations of the women’s circle.44 In this setting, children often had difficulty living up to the high expectations.

  By contrast, Catholics felt on the defensive in Imperial Germany because they had lost their protection when the Austrian Habsburgs were defeated by Prussia in 1866. Thereafter they were still strong in some regions, such as the Rhineland and Bavaria, but Bismarck’s Kulturkampf crusade against their ultramontane adherence to the Roman papacy had made it clear that they were no longer in charge. For a Catholic family such as the Raschdorffs in Hesse, religious observance meant, above all, regular attendance at “holy mass” in order to feel spiritually at peace. Church membership also implied enrollment in a parochial school where Catholic values and outlooks would be taught. Moreover, there were separate youth groups, such as the St. Georg scouts, which made sure that the young would not be misled.45 For children, Catholicism provided a cohesive subculture punctuated by colorful rituals on frequent church holidays.

  Among Jewish families, the question of religious identity was even more central, since it constituted a key element of self-definition as well as ascription from the outside. With emancipation, some barriers to social integration had been removed and the adherence to Judaism had weakened somewhat. But the rise of a racial rather than religious anti-Semitism forced each family to decide whether to maintain a separate identity or to try and blend in with their neighbors. Most chose, in Werner Warmbrunn’s words, a classic compromise: “My father wanted very much to be a German citizen of Jewish faith.” That meant actively belonging to a synagogue, observing the High Holidays, and respecting the prohibitions of certain foods such as pork. While some Jewish families were rather strict, others converted and intermarried with Christians.46 Most Jews who joined the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith (CV) hoped that they would eventually be fully accepted as Germans.