The Woman in the Photograph Read online

  I saw from his email that Matthias worked at the University of Leipzig. I wrote back immediately and told him I wanted to know about Leipzig during the period my family lived there, the twenties and early thirties, and about the neighborhood where my mother grew up, the Musikviertel. I gave him my father’s name as well.

  Matthias turned out to be a font of information about Leipzig. He sent me articles about its history, as well as descriptions of the current city. He also looked up my father’s records at the university.

  Today I did some searches in the university archive, because you wrote that your father, Jakob Fez Feniger, studied law at the University of Leipzig. Yes he did and I found him. His inscription was 1928.

  Matthias included an attachment with my father’s registration form. I noticed that I didn’t have the same drive I felt to explore my mother’s life; perhaps the emotional connection to my father was interrupted by his early death, while my mother’s influence on me remained strong and enduring. Matthias recommended two books: “These books have pictures of the Musikviertel where your family lived in Leipzig,” he said. To my amazement, a Berkeley librarian was able to order one of these books, Das Leipziger Musikviertel,[14] from a special library collection in New Jersey, for a $20 fee.

  Map of the Music Quarter in Leipzig ~ 32 Grassistrasse

  When it was in my hands—an 8½" by 11" paperback, the text in German and photos on every page—I couldn’t wait to open it. I just stepped to the side of the next person in line and scanned through the pages, devouring impressions of the city that had once been no more than an empty grave in my mind.

  The title page had a colored aerial photo of the Music Quarter in its prewar glory. I saw an imposing Romanesque building with columns and a dome, red tiled roofs, block after block of rectangles in perfect rows, manicured landscape, a circular fountain with paths leading in four directions, two black-and-white pictures of Grassistrasse around 1910, five-story buildings of brick and cement with stone facades interrupted only by the endless repetition of window, dormers with steep roofs, cobblestone streets with trolley tracks, sparse trees with bare branches. I wondered if the street would have seemed friendlier in spring.

  I returned home, ignored my growling stomach and the phone messages, and sat at the kitchen table hunched over my book. Using my Pons German-English dictionary, I tried to translate an article entitled “Meine Geliebte Ecke,” (My Beloved Corner). I only got through the first paragraph. It said:

  I grew up in the Musikviertel. We withstood the fire-storm [Feuersturm] in the basement of Beethovenstrasse 23, when in February 1945 an air raid befell us [zusammenstürzte]. What a wonder that the lights did not go out.

  But eventually the lights did go out. The fortresslike buildings that appeared so impenetrable were destroyed. Page 162 had photos from the end of the war—Haydnstrasse in 1945, the solid structures bombed and burned beyond recognition, broken walls and cavities where there once were windows, a world uninhabitable by human beings. Outside Beethovenstrasse 23, women in loose pants with scarves over their hair bent over to collect bricks and organize them into rows. They reminded me of a photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson entitled “Dessau, Germany, 1945,” an image of a woman collapsed over a pile of bricks, her face cupped in her hands. I was touched by the pathos of her posture, and aware of how much sympathy I felt for the German Frau, as devastated as the building that once stood on that site.

  Later I studied a map of the Musikviertel dated 1920, the year Max bought the property. Six streets ran north to south, six east to west, bordered by Johannapark at the north end. I noticed blurred numbers in little squares, and all of a sudden it clicked that they were the addresses. I ran my index finger along Grassistrasse. The block between Mozart and Haydn went from 14 to 26. My finger crossed Haydn. The next block, from Haydn to Schumann had only four addresses. I counted 28, 30…32! In the center of the block on the left as I looked toward the Gewandhaus was 32 Grassistrasse. I had arrived at my mother’s door.

  I felt a quivering in my stomach as I trod on forbidden territory. I had to close the book and collect my thoughts. I heard the ticking of the clock; a car door slammed, the refrigerator hummed. Then I saw them, young Alice and Erika walking home from school on a cold day in November. Against the backdrop of unyielding stone, they seemed innocent and vulnerable. I saw the cobblestone street outside their home, and the impact of Nelly’s fall seemed so much harder.

  I thought of Alice’s past as a play made up of scenes and characters. I had a growing sense of that life from the Musikviertel book, but not quite enough to get the full flavor. I wanted concrete details: street car routes, parks, museums, theaters, restaurants. I had used Baedeker guides when I traveled in Italy, and I wondered if there was one for Leipzig in my mother’s day.

  My excitement was contagious, and Terri went online again. She sent queries to book dealers all over the world. Skillful and persistent, she followed every lead she found in the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers and eventually got an email from Bernard J. Shapero Rare Books, in London. Ilka Rauch wrote that the edition of interest would be Northern Germany, Excluding the Rhineland, Leipzig, 1925. The book collector explained that Baedeker guides were printed in Leipzig, and this was the last English edition, the only one published between the wars. The challenge was to track down a copy.

  In the meantime, Mom’s city was coming to life on its own. Matthias sent me a map of Leipzig printed in 1938. I unfolded it on my dining room table. This view painted a city nestled on the Weisse Elster and Pleisse rivers, with blue canals that meandered through many neighborhoods alongside broad green parks and meadows.

  I looked up Grassistrasse in the index of streets, squares and bridges, and found it in FG5. Now I could position the Musikviertel in relation to the rest of the city, a triangular section near a large expanse of green that included König Albert Park. Alice and Erika could easily have walked down Haydn Street or Mozart Street to play in the park. Was this the green, fragrant sanctuary she remembered the evening she rested in my home in Berkeley and talked about her childhood? Very likely it was, or perhaps Johanna Park just to the north.

  On my birthday in 2004, Terri presented me with a small package covered with customs stamps. I looked at her in disbelief and paused to assess its size and weight. I wanted to stretch my anticipation and savor the significance of the moment. I opened the package, then carefully slid the tissue paper off a small volume, four inches by five inches, with a red leather cover and gold letters: Baedeker’s Northern Germany. I ran my fingers over the recessed letters on the cover and turned the yellowed pages to feel their texture. The paper was thin and delicate, the print small. It had a heading for each city, with 165 folded maps interspersed.

  But I wasn’t interested in all the northern German cities. I skipped to the place marker, two very soft ribbons, faded red and faded blue, resting on page 213. The heading at the top of the page was “Leipzig.”

  This was the world where Alice grew up, the backdrop of her childhood, her youth, her coming of age. She walked to the Neues Theater, chiefly for opera, Central Theater for operettas, or with her parents to the Kristall-Palast, a variety theatre. Under Concerts it noted the Gewandhaus, every Thursday evening in winter, tickets nearly all taken by subscribers according to the guide, rehearsal Thursday morning at 10:30…Thomaskirche, motets sung by the Boys’ Choir every Fri. at 6 p.m., every Sat. at 1:30. And then Art Exhibitions…Museums (many of these)…Zoological Gardens…the Palmengarten, with a restaurant and concert hall.

  The train station had a sandstone façade 325 yards long, “about three football fields,” Michael volunteered, and it was a hub for trains from Berlin, Breslau, Posen, Dessau, Halle, Dresden, Chemnitz, Frankfurt, and beyond. One could board a tram with a red ring on the number plate to go from the main railway station to Augustusplatz. I wondered if swans still lived in the popular square as Dr. Schmerl had described. I read about churches, hotels, restaurants, government buildings,
parks, and monuments. I found a city bustling with commerce, culture, and recreation, endless venues for Alice and Erika to visit with the cousins, aunts, and uncles in the reunion photograph from 1927, to socialize with their school friends, and to rendezvous with their boyfriends.

  Leipzig must have opened itself to their young and eager hearts and welcomed them to explore, only to close its doors to them with Juden Verboten signs. Their dreams were crushed like the brick buildings turned to rubble, in a city that by 1945 was devoid of its Jewish population.

  When Tom and I had first embarked on a restitution claim for the Leipzig property, we talked about “taking the whole family to Leipzig if anything ever comes of this.” By the time the settlement arrived, we both had other priorities and the thought was forgotten.

  When I had spoken to Eve Wechsburg, I learned that she and her daughter had traveled to Leipzig in 1996. The city had invited members of its original Jewish population to return and visit their former homes, stay at a hotel, eat at restaurants, attend the new Gewandhaus, and share their experiences, all as guests of the city.

  Leipzig’s hospitality came too late for my mother and me, but once the idea of going there entered in my mind, the magnetism of Leipzig had me in its grip. I wanted to celebrate my sixtieth birthday by making a pilgrimage to the place where my mother grew up and my grandparents had lived a significant part of their lives. I knew that this journey was no longer just to finish my mother’s story. It had become mine.

  29

  Landing

  As the Lufthansa wide-body airplane made its final descent into Frankfurt International Airport, I had a queasy feeling, more than the physical sensation of losing altitude. I had been squirming in a seat too cramped for my long legs for ten hours, worrying about what it would be like to be on soil with such dark history and whether I would be disappointed when I came to the end of my treasure hunt. My emotions lurched between dread and excitement as the plane taxied down the runway and came to a halt at the terminal.

  “No turning back now,” I said to Michael.

  He lifted his hand and brushed away a few tears from my cheek.

  “It’s going to be fine,” he said. “You’ve waited a long time to do this.”

  The idea of going to Leipzig had been brewing in my mind since Matthias first wrote me two years earlier in 2003. He sent me an electronic greeting card on every important Jewish holiday, and I was surprised to learn that he was neither elderly nor Jewish. In his late thirties, Matthias was born and raised in Leipzig under the Socialist regime, and he was currently a doctoral student and teaching assistant at the University of Leipzig.

  The moment I told Matthias that Michael and I wanted to visit Leipzig, he took the initiative and began to help me. Every few days, a new email from him would arrive.

  Ok, wonderful. You are always welcome in Leipzig. Please write when you book tickets for the plane. Then I will organize a hotel for you. Hotels here in East Germany are not so expensive. I’m happy to meet you soon.

  I could book a hotel in the Musikviertel, around the corner to Grassistrasse. It is a villa of a former Jewish podiatrist, built at the beginning of the twentieth century. Today it is a guesthouse of the university (not a normal hotel) and is located near all objects of interest.

  Is that OK? Otherwise you can stay also in my flat and save your money for other things.

  I have gotten you tickets to the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. This is where your mother and father would have gone to hear concerts. Is Friday night OK?

  I arranged an appointment with the Ephraim Carlebach-Stiftung Leipzig [Ephraim Carlebach Foundation for Jewish history and culture]. Ephraim Carlebach was a famous German rabbinical family in Leipzig. They would be happy if they could meet you and talk to you. And they would be happy if you could bring some copies of your family documents and any photographs of Leipzig.

  The request for photos drew me back to the album my mother made in her youth. This time I noticed several images that hadn’t caught my eye before—shots taken in the living room of 32 Grassistrasse, a picture of Alice and Erika in front of the Altes Rathaus (old town hall), and on the back of the last page of the album, a small photo of a gravesite with fresh flowers.

  I stared at the last image, almost an afterthought, with no caption. I could see why I overlooked it before. All the other pages of the book evoked liveliness and passion—the laughter of schoolgirls, the joy of the ski slopes, the banter of friends and lovers. This photo was silent.

  With a magnifying glass, I read the name L E W I N carved in bold capital letters across the top of the gravestone. It was harder to decipher the next row of letters but I made out Nelly on the left, Dr. Max Lewin on the right, geboren (born), but I couldn’t read the dates of birth and death.

  Again I was reminded of the twists and turns of destiny. By pure chance the photo album was in the first trunk that Uncle Curtis picked up before the family got news of the divorce. Otherwise, the photos would have been lost forever.

  I wrote Matthias about the picture of the grave. He answered immediately: “If they were buried in Leipzig, we may be able to find them.”

  Now it was March 2005 and I was on my way to Leipzig. We could have flown to Leipzig Halle Airport, but I wanted to arrive at the main train station, the Hauptbahnhof, as my mother and father would have done. It might even have been the last place my mother saw in Leipzig when she left forever. I wanted to look out the train window at the surrounding countryside, and to feel in my body the rhythm of movement toward this auspicious destination.

  Once aboard the modern, comfortable train, exhaustion took over. Michael sat opposite me so I could have a whole seat to myself. I curled my legs up and leaned my head against the cool windowpane. Eyes half closed, I watched the tall buildings of Frankfurt fade into flat agricultural land. Then the land began to swell into green hills, punctuated by the occasional dilapidated Saxon castle in the distance. I dozed off for some unknown time, then was startled awake by an unfamiliar voice.

  “Mani, hello. Mani?”

  I looked up at a young man with sparking blue eyes behind broad glasses. He wore a striped blue-and-white T-shirt and spoke English with a German accent. I jumped up in my seat and put my feet on the floor.

  “Matthias? Is that you?”

  “Yes, Mani. It is Matthias. Hello.”

  30

  Matthias

  Matthias had promised to meet us at the Leipzig Hauptbahnhof, but it turned out that he had taken the same train on his way back from a visit to his friend in Basel. He invited us to the snack car and bought me a hot chocolate and Michael a coffee. We talked until I had to admit that I couldn’t keep my eyes open and needed to return to my seat for a few more hours of rest.

  As the train drew near Leipzig, Matthias came to our seats again to point out the communal farming projects on the land just outside the city.

  “These projects were organized under the GDR, so people from the city could have a place to grow food and the experience of working together. Each family had a small rectangular plot and a shed to keep their equipment.”

  I stared at this remnant of the Communist East Germany. Though it was not the original purpose of my trip, I was curious about the lives of people like Matthias, who were born under Communism and participated in the overturn of the GDR. Now that I met Matthias, I felt I could ask him questions about his own life. He said he would tell me more another day.

  As the scenery became urban again, we passed several dilapidated, abandoned buildings on the outskirts of Leipzig. They were interspersed with modern or renovated commercial buildings currently in use. I was surprised that parts of Leipzig remained in a state of disrepair fifteen years after unification.

  “So, we’re almost there,” Matthias said. “I’ll meet you on the platform when we arrive.”

  As soon as we disembarked from the train, Matthias greeted us and took our first picture: Michael and I posed in front of the train. I am waving with a big grin on my f
ace. I felt completely welcomed and taken care of, though I still wondered why Matthias treated us as though we were long lost family. I felt suspended between jet lag and disbelief, then realized that Matthias was asking me a question.

  “Do you want to walk to Villa Tillmanns or take a streetcar?”

  “I always prefer walking if it’s not too far.”

  This was before I understood that a distance that might be ordinary for many Germans was very far for an American, even one who normally likes to walk! Dragging our rolling suitcases behind us, we followed Matthias across the lanes of streetcars, then along the Martin Luther Ring. This ring of streets that surround the center of the city reflected the site of the original town walls. Our host ran into a storefront and grabbed some traveler’s maps and guide pamphlets, and then continued at a frenetic clip I soon recognized as his normal gait. Michael and I looked at each other and started laughing, two tired travelers running awkwardly after an extremely enthusiastic young man who had a concern for us that I couldn’t explain.

  Matthias led us down Goethestrasse, named for Auerbach’s Keller, the restaurant where Faust supposedly hung out, then gestured toward the left to indicate Augustusplatz, the square I had traced with my finger on the map, where Dr. Schmerl had fed the swans and waited every Saturday to get tickets to the opera. I was sure my mother came there to hear Verdi or Mozart.

  “This is a commemoration for Bamberger’s Department Store,” Matthias called out as he pointed to a plaque mounted on the building on the corner of Grimmaische Street. Matthias helped me translate the words into English:

  IN MEMORY OF THE BAMBERGER FAMILY WHO FORMERLY OCCUPIED THESE BUILDINGS AND THEIR DEPARTMENT STORE BAMBERGER & HERTZ THEIR LIFE WORK THAT THE 9TH OF NOVEMBER 1938 ON KRISTALLNACHT BY THE NATIONAL SOCIALISTS WAS DESTROYED.