Karla's Berlin Diary of 1995 Continued
January 10, 1995
At the archive, the archivist awaits me with exciting news.
“Rolf called,” she says, her eyes sparkling.
“Who called?” I ask. Neither the first nor last name is familiar.
The archivist, who I now meet for the first time since I started my research in the archive, explains to me that Rolf is my brother-in-law, my sister H's husband. Ah, H is my youngest sister who lives in Berlin. The two will call me again at the archive tomorrow, I am told. I feel a sense of nervous anticipation, especially, since I do not know what we will say to one another. In 1994, after I finally found the whereabouts of my sisters, half-sisters to be precise, I wrote them. All answered except H. I took it to be a clear indication that she was not enthusiastic about meeting me after 48 years of separate existences.
I repress my anxiety and throw myself into reading Sutterlin.
January 11, 1995
About 9:00 a.m. Rolf called. He told me that he is my brother-in-law. He works at the consistory of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church for Berlin-Brandenburg; hence it was easy for him to get the phone number for the archive. The purpose of his call, he explained, is to prepare me for H's call in about an hour’s time. Rolf's voice is low, clear, and solid and his conversation is filled with humor. It seemed as if we had known one another all of our lives.
And then H called. We talked for about 25 minutes. She spoke slowly as if she weighed every sentence. She told me that my letter to the four sisters struck like a bolt of thunder. Her first response was, leave me out of it. Why open something that was closed for forty-eight years? But, now I'm here, and well, she simply has to meet me. – There was, however, her intense dislike of my mother who abandoned her, as a small child, at the orphanage.
In a letter before coming to Berlin, my sister L had prepared me for H's view. Each of us had constructed H’s past in her own way. According to L, my mother, their step-mother, did not abandon H. Rather, the eldest sister S and the next eldest U, supported by the Lutheran Headmistress were determined that mother would not get H. The three insisted, therefore, that H remain in the orphanage and the deaconesses obliged. H and L had very different opinions as to what happened then, in the hunger year of 1947.
As for me, I simply did not know which view was right. My mother would not talk about these sisters, except to say once, when I pressed, that H was taken to live in Berlin with a maternal aunt who was the sister of her biological mother.
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| My mother and our father 1940 |
This then was the third version of what happened to H. But H said that she continued to live in the orphanage for another seven years; only then was she transferred to Berlin, not to live with an aunt, however, but to live in yet another orphanage.
January 12, 1995
At the archive I read Sutterlin script. This old German script is hard to read. I have taken to writing in it, in order to help me read missionary letters. It is important to recognize confidently the distinctive letters of the Sutterlin script in order to then recognize the idiosyncratic handwriting of different missionaries. While the reading is hard and slow, I had several breakthroughs already. First, I now know why Carl E. Fichardt, one of the Transvaal missionaries left the mission so early. I had assumed that it had to do with his business interests, since he started a business through which his whole family became prosperous and prominent. In fact, he left the mission - had to leave it - because he was caught in a homosexual "assault." He sexually assaulted a missionary belonging to the Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft. It happened not long after his arrival in South Africa, after an evening, as he told it, of good food and too much wine.
I was also thrilled to know that Fritz Reuter, the prominent missionary who founded Medingen in South Africa, was well informed about German and European politics through the Buchhandlung (bookshop) in Berlin. He was well over eighty years old when he discussed W. Stapel's "Christliche Kirchen und der Hitler Staat" (Christian Churches and the Hitler state). Stapel was a newspaperman and a prominent spokesman for the völkische Bewegung, the racist-nationalistic movement that furthered National Socialism. The Berlin Mission Society disagreed with Stapel. One of the strong opponents of National Socialism was the mission inspector W. Braun who wrote "Heidenmission und Nationalsozialismus" (Pagan Mission and National Socialism).
Even at his great age, and despite his Prussian patriotism, or perhaps because of it, Reuter cogently discussed Braun’s book, which view he upheld. Reuter was a Wilhelmine German and an admirer of Bismarck. He had no time, however, for Hitler's idea of Gleichschaltung – bringing every one into line with National Socialist ideology. Nazi synchronization, in effect creating totalitarianism, was a thoroughly anti-Christian idea and the foundation of Reuter’s and the mission directorate’s eventual opposition to National Socialism. To some scholars, it was not much of an opposition and it came late, but it was fundamental. The Berlin Mission Society became part of the Bekennende Kirche (Confessional Church).
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Ah, but the simple are simple; such a one am I. Back at the apartment, I fantasized about a reunion of the family, that is, of all those still alive. I count 14 adults and lots of children and grandchildren. I rent a hall in which we have our reunion dinner. On the wall opposite one end of the table I have blown-up photos of the dead: father in the center, next to him his first wife who died of cancer at the tender age of thirty-six, and next to her their only son, my half-brother. On the opposite side of the table - it is as if a camera turns to it - I have a blown-up photo of a concentration camp.
And, so my fantasy, as the person who instigated this search for family and re-union, I lift up my glass in a toast, to the survivors of all the dead whose photos I see on the walls beyond each end of the table. I look up to the ceiling and there is a picture of the risen Christ - simple, plain, earthy. And the room is filled with joy, and the table with its flowers, food, and china looks beautiful, and the faces of the children shine with love and mischief. And now I know that God is good! Ah, but it is only a daydream.
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| Their mother and our father 1920s |
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