Carl Ehmann wrote a memoir of this childhood and youth in Germany:
I never thought that I would ever leave Bamberg as a place for my permanent domicile. It was the centre of life for me. I had my roots there, lived in a nice comfortable house in a very good neighborhood, and the way of life in this community suited me and my good friends.
Bamberg was a city of about 50,000 people. Big enough to have all the amenities: There was one good sized department store: H. & C. Tletz (Jewish owned and operated), quite a number of banks (the bankhouse A.& E. Wassermann, one of our banks we did business with, Jewish owned), many small good retail establishments, 3 high schools, (the Real Schule, the Neue Gymnasium and the Alte Gymnasium) good eating places, a community of about 300 Jewish families, pleasant surroundings.
The city was the centrum for the many small villages surrounding it, a radius of about 20 to 30 miles. Since a great deal of communication was by rail, Bamberg was the starting point of a number of short rail lines, like Ebrach to Schesslitz, Ebermanstadt and the Fraenkische Schweiz (Switzerland of Franconia), etc. There was a good hospital, the courts and many government agencies in town.
When I was born we lived at Luitpold Strasse 21 on the 3rd floor(actually we called it the second floor, because what is called here the first floor was the "par-terre” and our second floor here was called in Bamberg the first floor). My paternal grandfather lived on the ground floor while my maternal grandfather, Herman Hecht, lived on the ground floor in the next house, Luitpoldstrasse 23. Both men had lost their wives early and they were taken care of by their maids. Both these “maids” were Jewish girls, unmarried, who had come from small outlying communities to the ”big city” of Bamberg. Both were well along in years, when I was born my grandfather Herman Ehmann was 79 and my grandfather Hecht 63 and I am quite sure that there was never any liaison between them and their maidens.
The Luitpoldstrasse was the busy thoroughfare leading to the Bahnhof, the railroad station of Bamberg. All houses were built together touching each other, Next to us was the big Goldschmitt property, once the setting for a hops distributing warehouse of the family of that name. The girls had been good friends of my mother, one of them a classmate, but the business was gone and the girls were scattered in other parts of Germany. During the first world war the vast gardens in hack of this particular building were used for the recreation of the patients of the Veterans Hospital into which the catholic meeting hall at the corner of the street had been transformed.
Across the street from our house was the Gangolph Schule, an elementary school. I remember my first grade teacher, Mr. Panzer, an old easy-going man. I presume it was the German sense of authority, one does as one is told by those in charge, that made for the good attendances and to the strict adherence to his words. As far I am concerned I think that all my life I had this feeling that those in charge know what they are doing and that it was only natural to follow. I became a very good team- player and always did I do my best to be loyal to the leader.
For three years I stayed at the same school. Very often I went with my friend Wlesenfelder. He lived at the Joseph Strasse, 2 streets up on the right of the Luitpold Strasse. His father was a cattle dealer and we got along fine. In later years I did not see much of him, he went to the Real Schule, I left for the Neue Gymnasium,
I don't remember too much of the young boys I associated with while going to grammar school, but I think that I lost track of them at the age of nine. One of the boys was Pauli, whose father owned a restaurant at the Untere Koenigstrasse and I am sure there must have been quite a group of other friends.
There were no girls in school. They went to the Maedchein (girls) school, at the other side of the complex and we did not have any chance to meet. Even the school- yards were separated. All the education, even High School, was non-coeducational. At the Gymnasium we had no girls in our classes, but a year later that rule was broken and I remember Hedwig Kohn, the redhead, who entered the class after me. Still the girls for a long time were a minority, just 2 or 3 a year. Hedwig is now Dr. Striesow in London.
During the summer vacation I went usually to Prichsenstadt, the little village in Unterfranken where the Strauss family had their old ancestral home. It was a real farmer’s house. To the street, the main street, all the houses were row houses, attached to each other, but in the rear they led to a tremendous dung heap which was surrounded by service buildings and a barn.
Leopold Strauss had married a sister of my father. They had 2 children, a son Paul and a daughter Gisela. The son Paul, a very promising young man who had gone to the University to become a lawyer, was killed in the opening months of the first world war In 1914. He was a lieutenant in the German army and was in the front lines at an assault. His parents never got over the loss, I have his picture in my mind, an intelligent trusting face surrounded by laurels. It was in every one of their rooms.
Paul had a sister, Gisela, she never got married. Luckily she got out of Germany before Hitler, An old friend of hers in St, Louis took her in and was very good to her. Many summers she spent her vacation with us here and Hinde was very good to her, she made her feel wanted and at home with us.
My uncle Leopold Strauss was a whizz at figures, he could multiply and divide in his head almost as quickly as you could mention any number. Unfortunately this was one of his most prominent adjectives. Otherwise, In business, he never amounted too much. His brother Herman, who had married another Ehmann daughter, my aunt Lina, on the other hand was very successful, he built his hops business into one of the leading firms in Nuernberg and occupied a mansion in that town. His brother Leopold worked for him as buyer and I know how my aunt Ernestine, Leopold’s wife scrimped and saved to keep things going. She hated to ask her brother-in-law, but very often she had no choice. My father often discreetly contributed also.
During my summer vacations I never had any inkling ^ of their financial plight. They had land which was worked by others, but the crops were the responsibility of the Strausses. My uncle always had schemes in his mind, always told of the grain and the hay he would harvest, but there was never much monetary gain. My aunt in turn did a lot of preserving, we went out into the woods, to Imbach, to collect wild strawberries, or to pick blueberries and raspberries. Or we went to a neighbor to get milk and other farm products.
It was a primitive building they lived in, the toilet was over the dung heap and there was not much of a bathroom. It was their ancestral home, not different from any of the other farmhouses in the village. At both ends of this main street was a big tower, uniting both sides and a road run right through the bottom of the tower. I presume that in old times this was a way of protecting the village.
I don't know why I was usually the only nephew who spent the summer in Prichsenstadt. I presume that most of my cousins either went with their parents or were not as satisfied and happy with the way of life in Prichsenstadt as I was. I really enjoyed walking through the fields, seeing the grain being threshed, the high grass cut for hay, the apples being harvested... It is amazing what a clear colorful picture I have in my mind of that rustic place,
Actually my accomplishments in school were always almost perfect. I always got As or as we called it "Einsers”, that means the figure One. I think I don't remember having not been at the top of the class.
I knew that I was good, though I never said so myself. The teachers or the other kids in class usually spoke up and said so. It gave me a certain sense of uncertainty, because subconsciously I was afraid to lose my status and might not be doing as well in the future. I think my decision to quit school at age of 15 and after reaching the Einjaehrige ( the time one had to serve in the army was cut to one year when one had reached 6 years in a high school) and that I was happy to leave school with its endless tests behind.
This is going ahead with my story a little too fast, now at 9 I am just entering the Neue Gymnasium. It was about 1/2 mile from our house and there were no school busses to take us. We just walked. Of course walking was no hardship. We had no cars then and the Ehmann family never owned a car. I made my Fuehrerschein (Drivers License) later on, but I had never any practice using it.
The 6 years at the Gymnasium were hard work, but I always liked it. The main feature was that education was based on studying the old Latin and Greek cultures and for the first four years we were trying to master Latin and for the last 3 years the ancient Greek. Our professors stayed with us for one year and I remember one in particular, Professor Zinner, a tired old man. We were in class reading Latin authors, like Ovid and he would be sleeping, only waking up from time to time and voicing his approval or disapproval.
We had many tests. The easy ones were translating from Latin into German, but it was much more difficult to translate German into Latin. Since Latin is a dead language, the rules are fixed and not open to discussion. There was never any chance for opinions, there was just one way to make the translation. I presume that I and many good Germans were very happy that there was a higher authority who had made those strict rules how the language has to function.
The languages took up most of our time, but we learned also Mathematic, Algebra, Naturkunde (natural sciences) and we could study French and English. I took 3 years of French and one year of English.
Bamberg is a predominantly catholic city and the gentile boys had an hour of religious instruction several days a week, while we, the Jewish boys had very little Jewish education. I myself and a few other boys took some extra courses with our rabbi, a very learned man. We read the torah and it was very inspiring. The rabbi, Dr. Eckstein, came from Hungary to Bamberg and he was during the long years of his rabbinate a very embattled figure. I liked him and I enjoyed his courses though one could not get personally warm with him. I never talked with him about anything of a private nature.
The rabbi had one daughter, Helene, who also worked for the Jewish community. She never got married. Of course neither her looks nor her attitudes were very good, she was always aloof. In later years her father retired and his successor was Rabbi Katten a more outgoing and democratic man.
Though Dr. Eckstein was not born in Germany (Hungary was part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, ruled by the Emperor from Vienna), he was over-patriotic and could not do enough to show his feelings. Of course, we all had this in common. We felt as Germans or maybe as German Jews with the understanding that everything German concerned us as much as any non-Jew. The first World War was our war, we, the Germans did not do anything to provoke it, only the perfide English, the slimy French and the rude Russians had brought it on. The Germans were only defending their homeland that was threatened by the hateful foreigners, who did not like to see the good Germans get things done through their hard work and diligent perseverance.
Still, the Jews stuck pretty well together. Everybody had to serve in the army, but luckily both my father and his brother were too old. At 45 one belonged to the "Landsturm” and when one did not have any military training in one's youth one did not have to serve, especially when some little ailments at this "later” age made one a not-so-perfect specimen.
In Bamberg the upper-class Jews had their own society, the Ressource, which owned a beautiful big building next to our house in the Hainstrasse. It was a sign of distinction to belong to it. My father, my uncle and the other members of the family belonged. I was born into it and did not have to wait for admission, but if anyone wanted to join one had to face a very strict jury and finally a ballot. Every member had one vote and it was done with black and white balls. If one black ball appeared after the balloting, the new applicant could not be admitted. You can see it was quite an exclusive club.
There were many social functions at the Ressource. My father's brothers went there every day after the Mittagessen (midday meal) and played cards. My father did not play cards so he never went. The young people did not play cards either, only the householders, the older folks.
We went to the dances, which I found usually quite boring. Since only a minority of the Jews belonged to the Resource another organization came into being, the Juedische Jugend-verein (Jewish youth organization). In spite of the word "Youth" in its title it catered to everybody and many of its functions were geared to the population of all ages. It was a very active group and I became involved also. We had many prominent speakers, organized dances and all kinds of get-togethers.
The younger generation had 2 active groups to choose from: The "Kameraden” (comrades) and the "Blau-Weiss (Blue-white). I belonged to the first group which in its national organization was strongly pro-German. It loosely followed the line of the National C.V. (Centralverein deutscher Staatsbuerger Juedischen Glaubens - central organization of German citizens of the Jewish faith), an organization that was very outspoken against Hitler’s rising star and leaned to the centrum or to the left of it politically. The Blau-Weiss on the other side was a Zionist organization and at that time it would not have come to my mind that Israel would come really into being and would be such an important factor in Jewish life.
I remember that after the first world war and in the twenties young men from Israel, natives, came to Germany to recruit the young. They were strong dedicated men, but I personally, and the members of our group were not convinced that their opinions and way of life would prevail.
Among the Kameraden we had weekly Heimabende (meetings in the evening in homes) and we were concerned with the dally political problems as well as with folks singing (my friend Kurt Klestadt was very musical) and all kinds of cultural endeavors. I was always busy preparing a "referat", a resume of a certain subject that seemed interesting.
On weekends we went "auf fahrt" (on excursions) into the beautiful neighborhood of Bamberg and all over Germany, often meeting groups from other towns like Nuremberg, Fuerth or Coburg. We stayed overnight in haylofts, sleeping in blankets while the farmers owning the farms did not mind and did not even charge for the privilege.
Girls were often with us and today I cannot understand how we boys kept away from them, there was absolutely never any sex involved. We always slept in different sections, far away from each other. The big yearly event was the "Bundestag" when the groups from all over Germany came together. We usually used it for a long "fahrt" of some weeks.
One of our friends, Walter Morgenroth, usually went to a Jugendheim at the North Sea, but everybody else had never attended a summer camp.
I was only 10 years old when the first World War ended. I remember that during the war we often had "Opfertage" (days of giving to good causes) and I was involved very heartily many times. I collected for all kinds of good causes. I had a little collection box, a little tin can and gave away cards or little tokens to anybody who dropped a coin into my box.
As good patriots we tried to conserve as much as possible. We had no electricity in our apartment as yet and at nine in the evening the gas supply was shut off and everybody had to light a candle and go to bed. We had to preserve everything. No coffee, only chicory. No imported tea, only brews made from all kinds of dried leaves. Very little meat. Of course we had ration stamps and could only buy a very limited amount of eggs, butter, meat, fish etc., but we really did not mind, we were happy to help the "Vaterland".
At that time Bavaria was an independent state in the German Reich. We had our King Ludwig the Third and we were very proud of him. The Kaiser Wilhelm the Second was up in Prussia, in Berlin and we actually did not owe any allegiance to him. We did not like the Prussians which we regarded as very conceited people.
All that changed in November 1918. I remember that on the way to school we had to cross the river Regnitz and that the bridge was guarded either by soldiers or men with red arm- bands. The Revolution had come and all the former German potentates were driven into exile. For a while Bamberg was the capital city of Bavaria and the diet met here. Everything was under strict surveillance, but personally it did not make so much difference to anyone of our group.
In the bigger cities quite a few Jews were involved in the Revolution, one of the early prime ministers, Eisner, was a Jew and this fact was properly brought before the people again and again. Even though all of Germany kept on to the republican, democratic style of government, many people resented that Jewish people were involved, both here and in the Russian Revolution. For so many people it became a Jewish conspiracy and this notion was exploited by the right wing organizers. During the struggle of the Weimar Republic and the ups and downs of the different parties on the political scene it was brought out again and again that the Jews were Bolsheviks and Communists responsible for every misfortune that anyone possible experienced. The seeds were laid for Hitler’s rise to power 15 years hence.
For the time being we in Bamberg were busy tearing off anti- Semitic slogans that were attached everywhere, printed by the Deutsche Schutz und Trustbund (German security organization)
Another organization I was quite active in was the Historische Verein ( Historical Society). This was a non- sectarian society interested in the history of Bamberg. The group I belonged to had probably just one or two more Jewish members, most of them were catholic. We mostly met at the home of the leader, a Mr. Pfau at the Kaulberg home of his. It was very Interesting, we took field trips to different churches to decypher inscriptions, read old manuscripts and books. Of course, most of Bamberg's history is dependent on the powerful catholic church. It was in the 11th and 12th century that the massive Bamberger Dom (the main cathedral of Bamberg) was built. Evidently even at that time the population was almost 100% catholic. The Bishops of Bamberg were powerful regents In their domain, they even had jurisdiction over a piece of land in Austria, a small strip of land at the Adriatic sea.
During the middle ages these Bamberg bishops and arch-bishops later on were strict rulers in their domain. I don’t know and I think we never bothered to inquire how they stood on Jews or even on Protestants. Up to my time there was only one protestant (Lutheran) church in Bamberg.
In time this preoccupation with the church history and the buildings of the catholic hierarchy became tedious and I stayed away from the further meetings of the Historische Verein. I also got busier with my Kameraden Group. By the way, Bamberg was a self-ruling bisdom until the beginning of the 19th century, I think 1800, when the kingdom of Bavaria took over all the little separate political entities, the Reichsstadat Nuremberg, the different parts of Bavaria led by counts and dukes etc. etc.
I just read up on it. Bamberg was a powerful ecclesiastic state from 1007 to 1802. In the 15th century the bishops of Bamberg were raised to a princely rank.
Naturally all this knowledge of the Bamberg history made me proud to live there. Another non-sectarian affiliation was with the "SchwimmVerein" (swimming club). For a long time, after coming home from work, I took my bicycle and drove out to Bughof of the village of Bug, where the Ludwigs Donau Main Canal enters the river Regnitz and where the Schwimm Verein met, to swim. By the way the Canal used to be a very important waterway. It connected the watershed of the Donau (emptying into the Black Sea) and the Rhine (emptying into the North Sea). It crossed the whole of Bavaria. There were many locks where the ships were lowered or raised to the different levels of the topography. One of these locks was there in Bughof where our Schwimm Verein met.
When we went there after work we usually took along our own belegte Brote” (sandwiches) for our evening meal
Even though in later years I did not go much to the Schwimmverein any more I stayed as a member until after 1933 it was "gleichgeschaltet" by Hitler and Jews could no longer be members.
My years in high school, from 1917 to 1923 were good and carefree years for me. I read and studied and belonged to the youth group. When it came to make the decision on what to do to prepare myself for the future, there was no doubt that I would continue the business of my father. And in order to prepare myself for it, I would have to go into a “kaufmaennische Lehre”, a preparation for the business life ahead of me.
There was always quite a difference between an "Arbeiter" (worker) and an "Angestellter” (office worker). The Arbeiter was more or 'less looked at with disdain, while the kaufmaennische Angestellte, the office worker was possibly on the way up to be an independent business man. Maybe in the bigger cities a college degree was an important achievement, but for us a medical doctor or a lawyer was only a profession which had no more financial goals or was even less remunerative than the existence of a businessman. With the exception of Paul Strauss who was killed in the first World War, I don't think that any offspring of the Ehmann or Hecht family went to college, although almost all of them would have had the means to send their sons to college.
When I was in my sixth year at the Gymnasium, Germany was racked by the most serious depression and inflation. The German mark was dwindling in value every day and people who had invested their money in savings banks, bonds and other fixed securities saw their valuable assets go up in smoke, practically nothing was left. No doubt, these economical facts helped a great deal in my decision to leave school, with all the excellent marks I had received.
Our house at Hainstrasse 5 was a 2 family dwelling. In the floor upstairs lived the owner of a very prosperous shoe factory, Gebrueder Neuburger. I and scores of others applied to become Lehrlinge (learners) in that place. On account of my excellent references (which really had nothing to do with knowing Mr. Philipp Neuburger), I was accepted and started working there. My very good friend Walter Morgenroth was turned down, he stayed 3 more years at the Gymnasium and later on went to College.
The first job consisted of working in every part of the offices in the shoe factory. I still remember Mr. Stamp who was in charge of all the cheap labor, I mean the Lehrlinge, and Mr. Speyer the very temperamental department head of all the different division of the factory.
My day at the factory started at 7 o'clock in the morning. At 11.30 we could go home for a midday meal and then started again at 1.30 to work until 5.30. This schedule was good for the first 5 days of the week and on Saturday we worked only half a day, until 11.30.
Even the "Lehrlinge" (learners) had to punch in in the morning. We did work in every department, work that would have to be done by salaried people, but since we stayed only a few month in every department we started out with the princely salary of 30 marks a month, at that time about 7-1/2 dollars a month, but of course we were raised a few marks very often.
I did find the work interesting and I know I did a good job in every department I worked. When I talked above about my salary, it meant the basic value of the pay. At that time there was a tremendous inflation in Germany. The mark was so devalued that in the end we received billions of marks for one prewar mark. It worked that way that marks were compared with the American dollar and every day it was announced how many marks were necessary to buy one American dollar. It lost so much in value that one billion marks (elne mllliarde mark) were necessary to buy one American dollar. Every day at noon the new conversion value of the mark was announced and on Thursday, the payday (we received our monthly salary in weekly installments) we were let out one half hour earlier, at 11 A.M. so that we could either buy things or at least go to the bank before the new official course was announced. It was a tough time.
Business was good. Gebr. Neuburger manufactures canvas shoes, mainly in white. We produced 1200 to 1500 pairs a day and had a big backlog of orders. Certain big companies ordered thousands of pair at one time. Most of the machinery came from the United States. The United Shoe Machinery Co. had a German affiliate, the D.V.S.G., Deutsche Vereinigte Schuhmaschinen Gesellschaft (German United Shoemachinery Co.) and almost all our beautiful new machines came from the U.S.
After about 3 years with the factory in Bamberg, I had seen the whole procedure and worked in every department. There was no sense staying much longer, so I acquired a job in Breslau, Silesia with the Dorndorf Shoe Co., another firm with the highest standing in the trade. The name Dom- dorf on a shoe was a hallmark of superb quality.
My boss, Mr. Neuburger, gave me a very good recommendation to Mr. Dorndorf. He was Jewish, but some of his children intermarried. I was hired and moved to Breslau, quite a distance from Bamberg.
Today Breslau is Wroclaw and it is located in the Eastern zone, dominated by the Polish and Russian regimes. Originally, or better, when I was there, it was part of Prussia. It was close to the then polish and Czechoslovakian frontier.
In Breslau I joined again the Kameraden. I was the leader of my youth group and was very busy with all my duties. Every weekend we spent somewhere in the country, keeping away from the frontiers. We stayed always on German grounds. The province was known as Silesia (Schlesien) and I got to know it very well. The mountains, the mining towns, the places with heavy iron and steel industry, and some of the biggest agrarian estates in the eastern part of Germany.
Of all the boys in my group, today I am only friendly with Wolf Stein, who lives now in Utica, We visited with him there and he came to see us this past summer on his way back from a Maine vacation. I don't really know what happened to the Brauns and the other boys of my youth group.
I stayed in Breslau for about a year. The job was alright, I made a living, but it was supposed to be only a training before I could join my father in the hops business in Bamberg. So I left and returned home.
We did business with breweries in Holland and to some extent in Belgium. We had representatives in Maastricht in southern Holland and in Bruxelles, Belgium. My father went to see them once in a while, but it seemed of advantage to know the language when traveling in a foreign country. Therefore we decided that I should go to Paris for a few months to learn French.
It would have been very hard to take a job there and receive a work permit, so we advertised In a Berlin paper to find somebody who would be interested to take In a "Volontaer", a worker without pay who wants to learn the language and see something of the French business life. The best offer seemed to have come from a Mr. Borchers, an originally German Jew, who represented now a German concern in Paris.
Mr. Borchers was an interesting man, a bachelor, who lived with his girlfriend and often had a hard time to appear in the office before 10 or 11 in the morning. He left most of the work to his secretary, an older, also Jewish woman. I enlisted in the ”Alliance Francaise”, a French school attended mostly by foreigners and it did not take long for me to read and write and speak French. There was an interesting student body, mostly from Russia and the Balkan States, but, miraculously I did not get romantically involved in any way. After all I had come from the small town of Bamberg, was very much Indoctrinated against loose women and I stuck very well to my work, both at school and at the office.
One of my mentors in Paris was my mother's cousin Gretl Hermann. She had a job in Paris and spoke a perfect French. She had some kind of a liaison with. a German man, Friedjoff Kuehn, hut in the long run nothing came of it, though I am sure that she slept with him???
I was friendly with her, met her friends, without being spoiled by them. Most of them came from foreign countries, some from Germany. I saw a lot of French plays, I think in the 7 or 8 months I lived in Paris in l927/l928 I went more than 30 times to see French plays. Some musicals, some revues, some plays, some operas. Paris like New York was a very fertile ground for theatrical productions and I found them very interesting.
Paris is an old city and here and in its immediate surroundings there was so much to see. From the river Seine to the Arch de Triomphe, the Champs Elysees, the many many museums, to Versailles, St. Germaine-en-Laye and the petit Trianon, etc. etc. I had to be on the go all the time. In addition I went to lectures at the Club Faubourg, a society that discussed several nights a week the political problems of the day and enlisted in some courses at the Sorbonne. I don’t know today how I managed all the activities, but I certainly did. I ate all my meals out and I remember especially a little restaurant in a cellar run by Russian refugees which was always delightful.
For a few weeks I took a trip to Lyons, Grenoble and along the Rhone Valley to the Cote d ‘Azure, the Mediterranean, to Cannes, Nice, Antibes and Marseilles. And several weekends I went to different places along the North Sea and the Bretagne.
It was sad when I had to leave, but I went home for a little while and shortly afterwards I left again, this time for Frankfurt on the Main, where the Levis had a leather goods factory. My mother's sister Adelheld was married to Herman Levi in Frankfurt. They had 5 children. Albert, the oldest, who worked in their factory, but had many outside Interests and quite a few girlfriends. He remained a bachelor and was in the end caught by the Nazis and deported. He was a brilliant man. He always kidded us, that we were backward, provincial people from Bamberg, that we were not on the up and up with the doings of the world. He tried to set examples for me and get me out of the rut with my small town ideas. He meant very well, but I am afraid he was not successful. I did not change my way of life, I remained a country yokel, I had ,no great ideas, no spectacular plans for the future. Unfortunately, his life ended before he was 40
.
The second son is Michael. He lives in Israel, he celebrated in 1976 his 80th birthday. He is very smart in business, he had been a partner in the leather goods factory in Offenbach near Frankfurt and then went on to Amsterdam to start a leather goods factory there. It too was prosperous, in addition he bought real estate in Holland and I think that he had been able to transfer quite a lot of his assets from Holland to Israel. He has quite a lot of children, one lives in Monsey near New York, another one in the Chicago area and the rest in Israel.
All the Levis were very orthodox Jews. When I had my Bar Mitzvah my uncle Herman Levi from Frankfurt attended. Even though in our synagogue the men were sitting downstairs and the women upstairs, there was a mixed choir. Anytime in the service, when the choir started to sing, Herman Levi dashed out of the sanctuary, he did not want to hear a mixed choir (men and women) perform.
Even today all the Levis are very orthodox. When Michael was visiting his son in Monsey I could have come to visit over the weekend. I would have driven to New York on a Saturday, but Michael would not want me to drive on a Sabbath on account of him. They are all strictly kosher.
There is a third son, Jacob, born in 1905, he lives in Israel. I don't know what kind of a living he ever made, they considered him kind of a schlemiehl, but he is certainly a very strictly observant Jew.
The 2 daughters passed away. One lived in England, she was married to a wine merchant from Aschaffenburg, strictly orthodox. I am in touch with one of her children, they had four: Sophie, Hannah, Herman and Emil. The second daughter Bessie, married to a pious man from Berlin had no children.
When I was in Frankfurt I went daily to their factory and spent a lot of time at their hospitable home. In addition I enjoyed the rich Jewish life there, it was a big city with all kinds of cultural activities and a very opulent Jewish life. Of course my activities there too centered around the very orthodox temple, but it was satisfying.
After my return from Frankfurt again some time in Bamberg. Life there was so different; almost every evening in summer time we went to the ”Keller”. Those Kellers were restaurants on top of one of the seven hills which comprised the city of Bamberg. Here the breweries had deep cellars where the beer was brought for aging. In addition they had usually some large spots cleared for a drinking place. One could sit here in the open, under the trees, with a beautiful view over the city, and partake in a glass of beer, or maybe 2 or 3 glasses. These glasses were actually earthen steins containing one full liter of the divine brew. We brought our own food and bought only the beer. Some people, like my aunt Hedwig were more extravagant. She bought some delicatessen, which actually consisted usually of one type of "wurst” (sausages) but of course we and almost all of our friends would never think of buying anything but beer.
It was a very leisurely life. One always found some other Jewish families and we could sit and schmooze together. There were quite a few of the Kellers one could choose from, but at different times there were always favorites where one returned to night after night when the summer time was warm enough to sit outdoors. There were very few rainy days and no humidity in Bamberg.
In addition to the Kellers at the mountainside, one could go to Bug, a little village at the end of the Hain (a park) where one had to use a small ferry to cross the river Regnitz. The ferry was operated by a man with a long pole, he always made the crossing very easily with his boat that contained maybe 20 to 25 people. Here, right across from the ferry was also a restaurant where one could go in the afternoon for a cup of coffee and sit with it for hours. Sometime we were of a mood to buy even a slice of cake or "Torte" (fancy cake??) with the coffee. Or one came in the evening and brought his own food.
Another place was the Hain Cafe. Again in the afternoon all the Jewish housewives would come here to sit for hours over a cup of coffee under the glorious wonderful trees. Or one went up to the terrace of the Michaelsberg. There is a beautiful church and an old convent. It is no longer used as such. It was an old age home for the destitute and a brewery was on the premises. It is walled on all sides and contains also a very well kept botanical garden. And at the slope facing the city there is a beautiful terrace with a terrific view and here is a cafe where we often brought our evening meal to consume it with a glass of beer. Actually it is always beer, never any hard liquor. I do not know that in our house we ever used hard liquor. It was beer, wine and liqueur and for very special occasions, champagne.
Naturally everybody walked to all these places. A one to three mile walk was nothing even to the older people. We even walked to Kunigundenruhe in the Hauptsmoorwald ( Kunegunds rest in the forest), a restaurant about 4 to 5 miles away, but of course that would already be a Sunday excursion.
Even though I had a bicycle and I might have used it for going to work or around town, we always rather walked, than rode. Walking was the thing to do. All these activities made my stay in Bamberg very pleasant. I still had no specific girlfriend and sex with anyone I knew just never came to mind. I might have preferred Martha Sternberg at that time, but I carefully restrained myself. We just went to social gatherings together. That honestly was all.
Soon I was to leave Bamberg again. This time to go to Amsterdam in order to learn the Dutch language. Of course all those trips required quite a lot of preparations. I had to take enough clothes and supplies for 6 to 8 months and had to make reservations by train. Often a visa was necessary to go to another country.
I finally left for Amsterdam knowing that the Levi family lived there. Michael with his wife Alice and their children. They had already gotten a room for me with a Jewish family who had come here from Poland. The children were born in the Netherlands and they spoke Dutch without the trace of an accent.
It was not hard for me to get on with the language and in order to do it right I took private lessons also. Soon I was very proficient and could read, write and speak Dutch quite fluently. Even the Levi family, whom I visited very often, spoke usually nothing but Dutch at home. They were naturally very orthodox and I often accompanied them to the services in the old Portuguese Synagogue, the largest in Amsterdam. Naturally all of the congregants were not Dutch, but it was founded hundreds of years ago by Portuguese Jews. I do remember the services, they were so impressive and colorful, it was a joy being a Jew there.
Later on I used my time to see some of our customers. There were small breweries in every village and naturally malt and hops were the most important ingredients they had to buy. They had lots of competition from the big breweries in the city, from Amstel and Heinekens, but they managed to survive. Some of them enlarged too and grew bigger. In later years I suppose they could not compete with the giants of the industry anymore and I am sure that almost all of them are out of business now.
In order to further my language studies I also went often to Michaels factory at the Kloveniersburgwall. It was in an old building near one of the "grachten" (canals) which run in concentric half circles in the old city of Amsterdam. Amsterdam was an old seafaring city and at one time most of the traffic was seaborne. By boat from England, Germany, the northern countries etc. either on the ocean or on the navigable rivers.
The cultural life in Amsterdam was very fertile too. I saw many plays which naturally enhanced my language knowledge also. When I thought I could speak Dutch like a Hollander and a little Flemish, which is actually only a Dutch dialect, like a Belgian, I returned again to Bamberg, for a short stay.
After some months I was off again, this time to Berlin to work for the first and only time of my life at a brewery, the Bergschlossbrauerei, in Neukoelln, a Berlin, suburb.
As everywhere I went, or better almost everywhere, I had somebody around to help me get acquainted to the new surroundings. Here it was my uncle Joseph Hecht, a brother of my mother. As much as his sisters always tried to get him married, they were unsuccessful. He remained a bachelor all his life.
Uncle Joseph was a good man, but also very meticulous and set in his ways. In this case I consider this a very good attribute, because I think in his private life he always tried to help others and always did the right thing morally. He lived for a long time at the same address in a room which was always neat and well kept. All his life he was a representative for a large rubber ware company in Cologne and the biggest department stores and buying combines had their headquarters in Berlin and they were his customers.
Of course the way he got into it was as a helper to his uncle Joseph Hermann, the brother-in-law of my grandfather. Joseph Hermann, who probably had also a share in the factory became a very rich man and when he retired Uncle Joseph remained on the job as the representative of the rubber company He ate at the same place all through the years and had a very set way of life.
I have no complaints against him, we got along very well. I worked in all facets of the brewery and their malt factory. The brewery itself was only a branch of Lowwen-Boehmisch, a big outfit which was a customer of my uncle Sigmund. He was friendly with the Braumeister (Brew master) and the purchasing agent and, like in most cases he had to show his gratitude by monetary contributions to their standard of living. Among the big companies this was the established way of life and the only method to receive their business over the years. Naturally one had to be competitive as far as quality and price was concerned.
I had a room in Neukoelln. not far from the brewery and I got friendly with a little girl from the neighborhood. But I never did anything which would have done me or her harm or might have forced me into marriage. Actually, I was not even expected to be intimate in any way before marriage.
Berlin was the center of German cultural life with the best theaters and most important composers, playwrights, film producers etc. in the country and to some extent I participated in a few cultural happenings. Mostly, however, I spent much of my free time with Uncle Joseph. Or I went sightseeing in the interesting surroundings, along the rivers Spree and Havel. I saw a lot.
Then I was back in Bamberg and I spent most of the succeeding years at home.
Those years at home were naturally as "busy as ever. Paul Pretzfelder, Kurt Klestadt, Kurt Fleischhaclcer were constant companions, with our girlfriends, The other three finally married the girls from Bamberg: Margot Stemglanz, Milka Weil, Martha Naumann. It seems odd that all the girls died, the men are widowers, none of them so far has ever thought of remarrying. I went out with Martha Sternberg, but I was never intimate with her. She finally married a boy named Kohn from Nuernberg, they came to New York, but I did not have any contact with them ever since.
We got together at the different coffee houses, made some excursions, played cards, attended meetings at the Jugendverein or the Ressource, but soon, in 1933 the ghost of Hitlerism appeared as a real danger on the scene.
Shortly after Hitler came into power, my friend Willy Aron was taken in “protective custody". He was sent away and on his way to the railroad station, he waved his hands at some bystanders and told them that he will return soon. He did return soon, but in a casket. I was chairman of the Jewish burial society. We did not have any undertakers who would take care of all the arrangements. We and the Jewish community was in charge of the caskets, the rabbi, the announcements etc. The burial was on the Jewish cemetery, behind the building housing the hall.
One evening in the summer of 1933 I received a call that the body of Willy Aron was to arrive in the evening and had to be buried immediately. The casket was not supposed to be opened. We arranged everything in a hurry. Our rabbi was present and made the eulogy. He only said, that Willy Aron was a victim of the times (ein Opfer der Zeit).
Subsequently the rabbi was called on the carpet, he was to explain what he meant with his remarks about "ein Opfer der Zeit . . . This gave us all food for thought and we knew that the Jews would have a very tough time. Willy Aron had been a lawyer and had been active in pursuing a matter against a Mr. Zahneisen, a member of the National- Socialist party, who now was the "Gauleiter" (district chief) in Bamberg, he certainly got even with him.
From then on our business started to fall off. Many breweries did not want to do any more business with Jewish firms, but the general opinion among the Jews was still that this was temporary and that the Nazis would "abwirt- schaftent”, would bring the economy down and lose their power. It was not to be so soon.
I continued to travel abroad, to Holland and Belgium. The third Reich needed "Devisen" (foreign exchange; and did not care if the firm which brought it in was Aryan or not. I still had my German passport and I received without much questioning the necessary visa. I could of course just left the country without returning ever, but first of all I would have been a person seeking refuge In a foreign country without permission or the necessary papers and it would have been very difficult. Also the country, in this case Holland or Belgium, could have even sent me back to Germany. And Immigration to the United States without an affidavit and a number on the quota list would have been completely impossible.
In addition life in Bamberg was not unbearable. We were hampered in certain business transactions and many people did not want to buy from Jews any more, but generally our life had not changed much. At that time we could go almost everywhere we wanted, to my knowledge no restaurant had put up a sign "Juden unerwuenscht” (Jews are not welcome), as for instance in Nuremberg quite a few had done.
One more serious point was the sickness of my mother. It was diagnosed as cancer and she and we knew that it would be fatal. At that time there were even fewer medications and treatments which could check the disease. Today there might be help, but at that time there was not. She passed away in 1934 at the age of 56. She was such a wonderful woman. She was the smartest of her sisters, they called her the “family chochem” (family wise one) and she had a heart and feeling. She always had an open house and an open mind. She was very good to me and her passing was a terrific shock for me and my father. We managed afterwards, but we missed her very much. I was 26 at that time.
In 1935, after my mother's death, I decided that the time had come for me to leave also. The only country of interest far enough away from Europe and out of Hitler's reach was the United States. I wrote to my cousin Alfred Hecht In New York to get me an affidavit which I could submit to the U.S. Consulate in Stuttgart. He procured an affidavit from James Rosenberg, a prominent lawyer In New York, very much interested in Jewish affairs and at one time head of the Joint Distribution Committee. In addition he was my mother's first cousin, married to a daughter of Hennie Hermann whose husband was a brother to my grandmother.
The affidavit arrived promptly and after many months of waiting I was finally summoned to Stuttgart to receive my immigration visa to the United States. Many people still did not see why I wanted to. leave, but many others were very jealous about my chance to go to the U.S.
There were quite a few preparations necessary. I intended to take as many of our "Altertuemer" as possible (antiques). We hired a packer who made a number of wooden cases. I could take only very little money, no stocks or bonds. I bought a good camera, as many clothes as I thought I could use for the next few years, and within a few months I was ready to travel. The departure from Bamberg was sad, I did not know if I would ever see my father again and it was very very hard to leave the city with all its memos and familiar places.
Many of my friends were at the station to see me off. The first leg by train and then by boat. The "Aquitania" a Cunard Liner was a beautiful ship and I had a delightful crossing of 7 days. The food was good, the stateroom comfortable. I got together with a number of other young German Jews who were also on their way to a new life in the States.
Actually, for the time being, this is as far as I want to go with my narrative. I want however to give a few more highlights of the family I left back in Germany:
On my father’s side the brother of my father, his partner in the business, Sigmund Ehmann was married to a Bertha Helm, from Wuerzburg. She was a specially dumb and foolish woman. My uncle travelled quite a lot, always without his wife, but every summer they went to a spa in Czechoslovakia, Karlsbad, now Earlo Vivary, where one could drink the medicinal waters and walk along the promenade. One followed the same routine year after year, the same room at the same time in one of their hotels. In winter time one went for a few weeks to Meran, then Austria, but now Italy. My aunt Bertha was a good and very loyal wife, but my uncle could not rely on her judgment or common sense. They had one daughter, Martha, who was more like her mother, Martha was not good looking, but she got a husband, Fritz Schottlaender from Nurenberg who made with my uncle’s help a fairly good living in the pen and pencil business. None of them came out, but their only child, a daughter got into Argentina.
Both my uncle and his wife were deported to Theresienstadt and were never heard about.
A sister of my father's, Fanny, was married to a wine merchant in Schweinfurt, Ignatz Weil. I often visited them. When I went to Prichsenstadt for my vacation I had to change trains in Schweinfurt and often made a stop at their hospitable home at the Markt (the market place) in the center of the city.
I think the Weils had 5 children, Alfred and Ludwig both partners in the wine business in Schwelnfurt, a town about 35 miles down the Main River from Bamberg. I think they had both one son. Joe, Ludwigs son, lives in New York and we used to see him quite frequently when he came on business to Boston. He is an accountant, His wife’s name is Shirley, They have 2 children, Lenny and Rhoda. Rhoda was married to Seymour Kuperman, but he passed away at the age of 32. They had a little boy named Eric who was just 3 years old when his father died.
Alfred Weil, married to Marie Loew, had a son Paul who is now married in Pittsfield, Illinois. The brother of Marie Loew-Weil was the Rechtsanwalt (lawyer) Loew who did my restitution claim (he did not do a good job, I had to receive a lot more with a good lawyer). The Loews had two daughters; Lotte who was married and later divorced by Bernie Knieger. They had no children. The second daughters name was Annemi. She was a pretty girl. I don’t know what happened to her. She lived in New York. Lotte was a good girl, but somehow a little retarded.
Another daughter, Hermine Weil, was married to a Bernhard Loew, the brother of Marie Loew. They had no children.
I don't recall at the moment what happened to her sister Betty Weil and a younger brother.
Another Ehmann daughter was married to Herman Strauss in Nuernberg, as I mentioned before, a very successful hop merchant. They had a son, Paul, who continueed the business, mainly with the big breweries in Belgium. He was deported. His wife lives in England, as well as his only daugher, Anne Poloway of Gatley, Cheshire, England. Her husband passed away, but she has 2 daughters. Paul Strauss had a sister, Settie, married to a doctor Goldstein. They both passed away at an early age. They had no children.
The daugher Johanna Ehmann, another one of my father's sisters, was married to a Bernhard Buxbaum from Wuerzburg. This is a city further down the Main River, about 25 miles from Schweinfurt. They had a son and 2 daughters. The son was Herman Buxbaum who luckily with his wife came to this country. He passed away here. They had one son, Henry. During the second world war Henry served in the American Army and for his own safety sake he changed his name to Butler. He is married to Olly and lives in Seattle where he has his own very successful firm, dealing in janitors and maintenance supplies as a manufacturer's agent. This summer they both visited Boston, we met them several times and had a very good time with them. Of course the visit to us was incidental, they wanted to see their son, a student at Brandeis. They have another son.
In addition to Hermann Buxbaum there was Carola and Mintz. Carola was married to Ludwig Linz. They lived in Aachen, an old German city near the Dutch and Belgian frontier. On my travels to the low countries I often stayed in Aachen to visit with them. Carola's husband, Ludwig Linz was a successful businessman. He had the distribution of the "Normal Zeit" (normal time), an electric clock, mostly to be mounted in business establishments and on the outside of buildings with an advertising message, a very good and lucrative enterprise. He was a kind of strange man, very uncommunicative to his wife's relatives. He liked to go hunting and it is said that he had a gentile girlfriend. His wife, Carola, never talked about it.
Carola lived as a widow in Aachen. She was very comfortable, owned real estate etc. She was a very charming woman. Hinde and I visited with her twice in Los Angeles and she was so outgoing and friendly. She helped her brother Herman who never made much of a living in this country and also her other sister Mintz Stern and her husband. She has 2 daughters, both married well and they are keeping up the contact with us. They write for the Holidays and send us postcards from their vacations. One of the daughters is married to Rudi Regen, the son of a Nuremberg,Germany banker, the other to Howard Prell. The first one lives in Sherman Oaks, the other one in North Hollywood, California.
Mintz Stern, who met her husband In Aachen through Carola, was along in years (probably in her 30ies) when she got married. Carola too did not marry too young. Herman got married before his sisters did and that was not well received by the older members of the family. A boy should not get married until his sisters are taken care off. When Mintz married Mr. Stern, he was a widower with 2 little daughters. One of them had a speech defect. Now they are both married, one, Liesl, to Edward Shineberg who lives in Rock Springs,Wyoming. His parents had a store there and they keep it going. They are the only Jews in town. No wonder, the older girls married a non-Jew. Her other daughter, a pretty young girl, is still going to school. She visited us last year. Mintz second daughter, the one with the speech defect, married a boy with a similiar defect. They used to live in Chicago but moved now to Los Angeles. They have also 2 children who miraculously are normal,
I think this covers the relatives on my father's side. Now to the brothers and sisters of my mother. I mentioned most of them previously, but I don't think that I went to the family of the Weils. By the way they were no relations to the Weils from Schweinfurt on my father's side, mentioned above.
Sigmund Weil married Rosa Hecht, the youngest of the Hecht sisters. Sigmund was kind of a dapper man, I don't know if he had any affairs at the side, but I know that my aunt Rosa had once a nervous breakdown. She recovered. Sigmund owned a shoe factory together with his brother. His son Lothar worked as a salesman for the firm. He is now married in Scarsdale and is married to Elsbeth Landman from Stockholm, Sweden. She was the cousin of Lothar's best friend, Landmann. Their family had a very big hops business in Fuerth and Sweeden. Lothar took a long time to think over his marriage. Elsbeth's family had a history of mental disorders and she was not a pretty girl, but she had plenty of money and Lothar knew that he would have no financial worries if he married her. I think it turned out quite well, though they have troubles with their adopted daughter Susan. At one time she was here in Boston, living with a man and the Weils had lots of trouble with her. They also have a son Robert.