The first apartment I remember was on Teplitzer Strasse in Grunewald, where we moved to in 1924. Actually I only remember bits and pieces: It was a large building and there was a bakery shop downstairs called Wagner, (“Baeckerei und Konditorei”), operated by a baker who had a daughter my age, Lottchen Friedrich, and she was the first playmate I remember. We started first grade together (called 8th grade in Germany in those days). The apartment block surrounded a paved courtyard was where we learned to ride bikes, a relatively safe place, and where there was also a space for “Teppichklopfen”, beating carpets, This was the time before vacuum cleaners, and people rolled up their orientals (which most everyone had - no wall-to-wall carpeting, all hardwood floors “Parquet”), lugged them downstairs, hung them on the frames provided and beat them with bamboo carpet beaters until no more dust came out.
I don’t remember the rooms, or rather I am likely to confuse them with other places we lived in, but I always had to share a room with Lila (pronounce “Leela) until I was a student. (More about her later). For some reason I clearly remember an enormous lamp over a round living room table in one of the early apartments, which. gave a cozy light in the long winter evenings (Berlin is located pretty far North and in the winter it would start getting dark by the time I got home from school) In the next apartment, another sublet, we stayed only about a year. That one was a smaller building and there was some greenery around it. Then one day my father showed me an empty meadow near the Rathaus (Town hall) Schmargendorf and told me that we would live there next year! Foreigners were finally being allowed to rent unfurnished apartments in newly constructed buildings, and you rented them right off the blueprint!
This was an apartment complex, built in a semicircle, around an inner courtyard, There were shops on the ground floor all around, the structure was 4 floors high (no elevators), Each apartment had a “loggia” in front (a loggia is more like a sun room, open only on one side) facing the street and a kitchen balcony in back facing the inner courtyard. The courtyard had a patch of green with some trees in the middle and an asphalt road around it, providing access to the back of the shops for deliveries. Closing the semicircle was a fence with private housing behind it. I particularly remember that there was a tree with the most delicious large black sour cherries, which hung over sufficiently so we could harvest quite a few.
I never went to a preschool or Kindergarten, one became eligible for first grade if one’s sixth birthday fell after September 1 of the previous school year The school year started at Easter . Other than the Zuckertuete tragedy I don’t remember the first school day, but I recall that before school started, when we were admitted, the headmaster asked a few questions; I was told that my question was to tell the number of legs of a beetle, and I flunked by saying eight! We always walked to school, and in the beginning Lila always walked with me and picked me up. One ritzy classmate was brought in and collected by the chauffeur! My father never owned a car.
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But let’s get back to Berlin, 1924. As I mentioned before I believe, we moved frequently from one furnished apartment to another until we settle in the brand new apartment building, on the second floor. Below us was a doctor who occupied both apartment (one for his practice) but i cannot remember who was opposite us? Above us was a lady with a nearly grown-up daughter,, and a very small brown dog with a shrieky bark, a miniature schnauzer, I believe. The daughter, Monica, was in her senior year in High School when I was in the equivalent of fifth grade, and I sometimes walked with her. The trouble was she was usually late and then walked awfully fast! There are class photos of me in Elementary School, after the first four grades we moved on to the Lyzeum (High School for girls) ....
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Life in Berlin was pleasant I was told, beautiful surroundings (forests, river, lakes, heather), a lot of cultural activities. But then Hitler became Chancellor on January 30, 1933. President Hindenburg (a gaga retired General) appointed him under pressure; Hindenburg was rumored to sign any piece of paper that was laid before him. The last free elections took place in 1932 and I remember them well,: some 40-odd parties were feuding for the majority, I collected election propaganda, mainly flyers, from all of them, a substantial collection, but my father got scared and burned every piece of it after Hitler came to power. How all that came to pass is better told in history books than by me. But I remember the “Brown Shirts” marching through the streets, singing patriotic songs, “SA marschiert, mit ruhig festem Schritt” was the beginning of their battle hymn (“SA marches with a quiet, steady pace”). The SS, black uniforms, were the elite and not so much in evidence. The children were soon organized into the “Hitler Jugend”, the term “Aryan” was coined; if you had only ONE non-Aryan grandparent you might be tolerated. All mixed marriages were in a lot of trouble (and there were many of them); some divorced. Our neighborhood was very affluent (generally most people were much better to do than my father) and large numbers of them emigrated in the first year. Often at extremely short notice, and many , many friendships were broken up. My best friend, Eva David and her brother Theo (see above) were sent to a boarding school in Switzerland almost immediately. I spent that summer in Solothurn at Aunt Franka and Onkel Tramer’s and there were plans underfoot to make me stay with them and go to school there, but I didn’t like the idea and I won out, largely because my father was an incurable optimist. He did not believe that Hitler’s “Thousand Year Reich” would last more than a few months and that we could wait it out, particularly since as Polish citizens we were still relatively safe.
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America was a favorite country, but immigration was controlled by a quota system, which was based not on nationality, but country of birth In the Anglo-Saxon countries (France also) birth in the country entitled you to citizenship, not so in Germany, by German law children had the nationality of their parents at the time of their birth, hence I was Polish but not for the American quota system. I remember always resenting my status as a ”foreigner”; I was raised by a German nanny, spoke only German, and my greatest wish was for my parents to change my name to “Ruth” (gee, am I glad they didn’t). 1933 changed all that.
My father did get a job but certainly not one that he would have considered a lifetime career, yet soaps was to be his field from then on until the end. His employers were Jeronin & Tebrich and I believe they also helped him find a place to stay. Housing in Berlin was in very short supply and foreigners were not permitted to rent apartment; they could only sublease. I was born on May 22 in Halensee and my parents moved several times in those early years. From Fehrbelliner St in Halensee to Hi_______ in Tiergarten area (my father’s place of work was on the Prenzlauer Allee in the north of Berlin). It was then decided however that the child needed “fresh air” so they moved to the Grunewald area. First Teplitzer Strasse, then Marienbader Strasse. Those places I dimly remember, particularly the latter even though we only lived there about a year. Finally in 1928 we got our own apartment on Berkaerstrasse 4, Schmargendorf. They literally rented the apartment from the blueprints, before the foundations were laid. It was a block of apartments 2 to 3 stories high forming a corner around three streets, right next to the “Rathaus”. There were shops on the ground floor level, apartments (2.5 and 3.5 rooms, not counting kitchens) above each with a “loggia” on front, balcony from kitchen in back facing a courtyard. When we first moved in there were greenhouses and a nursery opposite , but soon the site was converted to a twice-weekly market.
I am really jumping ahead far too much here and should go back to the early years in Berlin. There was still family in Berlin then: my grandmother, although in failing health, Franka, Julek, and the Samuel and Hanne Lubliner family.... There was also a cousin (all on my mother’s side, she had 71 first cousins!), Krotoschiner in Berlin, with two children, a little older than myself but we got together with them very rarely. They were Germans, like the Lubliners, and would not believe in Hitler’s anti-Semitism. They made no attempt to emigrate and perished.
Who else was there? Vague memories float around there was a Gerhard Wagner (?) a musician, who lived in Egypt for a while and had a sister Herta. There was another cousin, Roman (?) who in the early 30’s had some fishing or fishing boat business in Palestine. Some cousins had gone to the US early in the century but they paid at least one visit to us in Berlin in the early 20’s when they brought me a big doll which I named “Karline”. They also gave me a tiny gold ring with a ruby in it, which my father kept in his desk drawer for years and let me look at it ever so often. How it eventually got lost I cannot recall.
When I was one year old my parents hired Frida Schmidt (?), a 21-year-old nursery maid. She had had training in the “Frobelschule”. She came from a country family in Amalienhof, near Spandau, outside Berlin. She had lost her father early, I think indirectly as a result of WWI, and she had an elder brother and a sister, Marta. This was her second job; she had worked for another Jewish family, Loeb, before. My mother really wasn’t that busy (altho she later claimed having to visit her ailing mother took an awful lot of time and of course the institution of babysitters was as yet unknown), but she was terrified when the first words I spoke were Polish and she got afraid I might not learn German! Servants in those days were still cheap; they room and board and little more than an allowance. “Lila” as I named her and as everyone was to call her henceforth (or Fraulein Frida) – was off one evening a week and every other Sunday afternoon. Practically serfdom to our way of thinking, but those were the usual conditions. She did not even have a room of her own; she shared mine, and in the evening after I went to bed she sat in the kitchen, reading or mending. (We had a large kitchen. The stove had three gas burners on one side and the other half could burn coal or wood!) Apparently we also had a cook for some time but I don’t remember that, but I do remember a cleaning woman. When I was older my parents didn’t they they needed a “Fraulein” anymore but Lila begged to be kept on; she would do all the household work and so it was. She stayed even after I left for England in 1936 and was a companion to my mother until the end (spring of 1936). We even managed to rearrange the apartment and she got the ½ room to herself. But here again, I’ve jumped ahead.
janka2k4:L But in my household we also went easy on deserts
me: Got it
janka2k4: At home .meaning Berlin!!\
janka2k4: At home we hardly ever had desert, mainly on Sundays! Chocolate pudding with whipped cream I remember