Dresden & Leipzig

April 23, 2008 A lazy day in Brussels, chatting, catching up on email and moving down to the Bristol Hotel for one night, before having a wonderful Greek dinner with Manos and Mary at a local ouzerie.

April 24, 2008 Up at 4:30 a.m. an ungodly hour but our train was at 7:00 a.m. and it was one we didn’t dare miss. The Gare Midi is quite an eerie place that early in the morning. There are plenty of early workers de-training for their jobs in the city but there are plenty of odd vagrants and less than healthy looking folk. We gladly boarded our first class car on the DBahn train where we were greeted with typical German efficiency: a detailed train schedule printed with arrival and departure times that did not vary one iota the entire day; a gentleman offering us coffee; and a variety of papers – all in German or French. We settled in, caught up on some sleep, and off we went to Frankfurt where we changed trains to Dresden. I must admit that the worst part is the hauling of luggage – no matter how efficiently we packed, it’s still a pain to hoist it up onto the car, find a place to store it, and then repeat the process at the other end. While there were plenty of helpful folk, I want to travel like Daddy and have someone else do all this luggage-maintenance. Of course, because hauling of luggage is so painful, we suddenly learned that our train which was supposed to go directly to Dresden would drop us in Leipzig where we had to move to another portion of the train, and while we were then supposed to go through New Dresden, we’d go directly on to Dresden Hauptbahnhof. I would normally not be surprised by changes, but this is German efficiency – so the only excuse I could find was the presence of security folk all over the platform and two armed security folk on our car as we re-boarded….could all these changes have been to catch or confuse someone? We’ll never know, but that at least added some romance and excitement to an otherwise painful exercise in luggage moving. As we hauled our luggage out of the Dresden Hauptbahnhof into a sunny and warm plaza, what should greet us but a wonderful outdoor vendor selling spargel. If anything was going to remind me of mother, it would be that. Her idea of heaven was fresh, new white asparagus with béchamel sauce. The 8 foot, plastic portrayal of the two white asparagus were downright pornographic and the actual food sold in a variety of thicknesses was equally interesting. It was that funny little vendor which told me that I was finally in the hometowns of the family. I am really here in a town of which I’ve heard all my life, amidst things which I feel I should recognize. I keep having to remember that this is over 70 years later, and in any town things change, but here there was war, the GDR, and finally reunification which had an even greater affect on the landscape. I would look out from the train window as we headed east staring at fields that farmers had plowed, where cows grazed, where flowering trees were in bloom, and I was looking for…. I don’t know what …. A bunker, a gun tower, a Russian sign….it was just countryside, very European, but otherwise quite like Belgium or France. Somehow because I’m coming with heightened ideas and expectations I think that I should find this reflected in the landscape. Everything I’m looking at is being looked at in two ways: what would it have looked like then…and what am I seeing now. A taxi took us to our hotel in the old town. The Taschenbergpalais hotel is amazing. It is brand new, built on the site of its predecessor with only a marble staircase and some bits and pieces from the old. Totally renovated at many ($175) millions of dollars it is, according to the guide books one of the prides of the newly reunified Dresden. It is truly a palace and our room when we first saw it left us breathless. As Bob commented “ it is bigger than most people’s apartments in New York City”. We have a huge salon probably bigger than our livingroom at home with couch, two upholstered chairs, writing desk with WIFI connection and a large faux Japanese bureau in which is housed a stereo from Grundig with a variety of CD’s to listen to, a TV, and the requisite mini-bar; an entry way with its own powder room and coat closet, a huuuge bedroom with its own separate sitting room w/couch lamp; chair, and of course the huge marble bathroom and dressing room with his and her closets, shelves, drawers, etc.. The ceilings are over 20 feet tall, and the ‘salon’ and ‘sun’ rooms have arched windows at least 15 feet high. After the bellman had left our things we just laughed out loud. Now THIS was what it meant to travel like the boys in 1927. I took pictures galore because we figure that we’ll never stay in a room like this ever again. We’d been sitting so long on the trains that we simply left all of our luggage as it was and went out to explore old Dresden. Having been bombed to the ground during WW II, and having been ignored by the GDR, it is amazing to see what has been accomplished in the last 15 years of reunification. The center which has amazingly few cars has beautiful cobbled streets of Belgian brick which makes for challenging walking but allows the sound of horse driven wagons to ‘clip-clop’ in a wonderfully romantic way . Each of the restored buildings still has the patina of blackened stone which could be fire, and could simply be dirt. It is obvious that the GDR could have cared two hoots for these wonderful treasures. On top of many buildings there are some beautifully restored sparkling gold objects – a statue, a golden ball, a simple cupola – which looks brilliant in the sun. To go from the somber gray and rain of Belgium to the early days of summer in Dresden in this “Florence by the Elbe” makes us ambitious to walk – the goal being our first German beer. We walked towards the river and across the Augustus Bridge to a beer garden on the opposite side where young students, young parents and all manner of children and dogs were enjoying this warm sunny day. We happily sat drinking our Radeberger pilsner from a large glass watching the world go by and reminding ourselves that we were in eastern Germany a place we didn’t imagine we’d ever see. I keep wondering which of these older folk lived through the GDR and what they think of the changes and which of these young people came from the west to try a new life. In any case there will be plenty of employment for all as the old, dull grey square buildings of the GDR are quietly renovated or destroyed, and the original beauty of Dresden returns. This town will require a good deal of time to explore it all, take all the boat rides, visit the Meissen factory and wander through all the buildings. Obviously a return trip will be in our future. Me, who never wanted to see Germany at all am slowly realizing that all the people whom we see were born after the war and can’t be blamed for what went before. Unlike the 60’s when I still felt unsure, I sense now a different Germany and am willing to explore further. Too tired, and not terribly hungry, we decided to eat at one of the restaurants in the hotel where we had a lovely simple meal and retired to our suite to get ready for a very busy day tomorrow.

April 25, 2008 Of course, because we wanted a perfect day, we awoke to a rainy day. Damn. Off to Leipzig on the train -just under an hour. A trip which both Walter and Herbert did often in their youth. We was all set to explore Leipzig in the sunshine - but rain would have to do. Our first appointment was at the Simon Dubnow Institute on Goldschmidtstrasse which is associated with the Leipzig University. We met in the library with the head librarian, Grit Scheffer and with Dirk Sadowski. While our appointment had been with Dr. Kirchoff he was unavailable. We learned a lot about the institute which began in the 90’s once the GDR had passed and the study of Judaism was allowed. The institute is very focused on academic topics with many academics writing treatises of the place of Jews in Germany. It was not just Leipzig on which they focus, but the whole of Europe. It wasn’t obvious how the diaries which I was giving them as a gift would fit into their collection, but they saw it as a wonderful reference book if one wanted to understand how the young bourgeois of the 20’s and 30’s were able to move about. There seemed to be one scholar focused purely on passports and the ability of Jews to move about the world and he wished we had those original passports of two Jewish boys, but we didn't. We took a tour of the building which was primarily offices for scholars and a few displays of exhibits or books which they had created. We enjoyed the visit, were given some lovely materials to carry home, but sensed that this was just a wee bit too scholarly for our purposes. The best gift was a telephone directory of 1928 showing only Jewish residents, stores, and businesses of Leipzig. (I wondered why even then Jews were separted out from others). But in these directories I could find all the names and addresses of many relatives and friends - including my grand-parents who died during the war. The next visit was to be at the Stadtgeschichtliches Museum – the Museum of City History. Mrs. Christine Becker from the museum came over to the Dubnow to pick us up and guide us to our next appointment. She was a lively, amusing and delightful woman who pointed out sites along the way. We were right across from the original building of C.F. Peters music publishing(long time friends of the family); on Neumarkt, we took a picture of the Bankhaus Meyer where daddy and his father had their offices… which is fully intact but obviously is being used for other purposes; we wandered through the Mädler Arcade, past the famous statue of Faust whose foot, having been rubbed by passerbys to pure shiny brass, provides people a bit of luck. We wandered through the grounds of the university past the walls from the Middle Ages which have been restored and which now surround an outdoor coffee bar; I kept thinking, “here daddy and mother walked; here mother went shopping; here they had coffee”… eerie and moving. The museum itself was absolutely lovely, located in the old town hall with its high ceilings, and majestic rooms. The center of the entry hall had an entire diorama of Leipzig (3-dimensional model) made of paper and created in the mid-1800’s. The fact that this even existed after the devastation of war was impressive. The walls of the entry hall were lined with paintings of the Burghermeisters of Leipzig, each looking more serious and pompous than the next. We continued into the next hall where a dignified, gray haired gentleman sat quietly waiting for us at the opposite end of this magnificent room filled with glass cases holding silver and gold, a huge kachelofen. This was Dr. Volker Rodekamp, the director of the museum. And the next 90 minutes were pure magic. The four of us sat and talked about the role of the Jews in Leipzig and how it began with the trade fairs where they would come from eastern Europe to show their wares, but where, in the 1700’s they were still not allowed to own property. (Which allowed me to understand why in our family stambaum the residences were always outside of Leipzig). How they slowly gained access to that opportunity and became key to the business and culture of the city. We learned how many of the artworks were preserved because there was enough time before the Allied bombings reached this far east to move the most important objects out of the heart of Leipzig, We learned of the objects which were lost during the war including the blueprints of the original huge sculpture – the Monument of the Battle of the Nations. How recently an American claimed he had these blueprints and wanted over $200,000 to return them. Instead the government provided Mr. Rodekamp with enough money to stay in contact with the man while the FBI worked to locate him to ensure the materials would be returned. It never came to pass, and Rodekamp was skeptical how a simple American soldier could take what would have been huge volumes of paper without being noticed. We talked a great deal about the economy of Leipzig where unemployment is especially high and many people are on unemployment – worse than many other parts of the eastern zone. He told a wonderful story about a goblet that goes back to 1600’s which had been given to Saxony by the Swedes. When the King of Sweden came to visit Kaiser Wilhelm in 1908 the goblet was once more presented and they both signed and dated the goblet which they drank from. Recently, when the current king of Sweden came to visit, the museum once more presented this goblet to the king so that he may drink a toast from it, but he was unable to since all his food and drink are first given to a taster to ensure that nothing is poisoned. The King’s wife had no problem tasting from the goblet, and her name will be dutifully inscribed. And of course, we talked about the Leipzig of my family. Both Frau Becker and Herr Rodekamp had done a very touching thing – they had found in their archives pictures of the Meyer bank and had copied them and framed them for us. They told us that if we left all the addresses behind they would look into their archives and find as many of the photographs as they could to complete the collection. And Frau Becker who was very quiet through the interview promised to walk with us to as many places as she had time before she too had to return to the office. They both listened as I spoke of the goal of my trip, the reason for the book and my feelings which my parents had carried about the importance of Leipzig in their lives. It was true that for all the years mother spent in America, it was Leipzig where she left her heart. It was here that life was perfect, she was surrounded by family and she lived in the manner which she loved and which she missed for the rest of her life. In reading her memoires (very short but very sweet) it is clear that Leipzig was home and from 1937 to her death things were fine, but not the same. It would have been so wonderful to have been able to have her with us as we walked the streets and talked with various people. She would have filled in the gaps, known who lived or worked in all the buildings….but….it wasn’t to be.

Bob and I both walked away impressed with the both the warmth of our welcome, the care they had taken in preparation, and the time which everyone took to talk with us. I will never know exactly what Hertha Forrai told them over the phone, but it opened doors for us and made the entire day in Leipzig magical. After we left the museum, Frau Becker started the process of locating buildings important to the family. The first was the Romanushaus where my grandfather Breslauer (mother's father) had his banking business. It is totally restored and looks just as the early photographs which mother had. Then we went to a less cheerful site – Jacobstrasse – which is where my great grandmother, Hedwig Platky was taken when, as a Jew, she was ousted from her home. It seems that in Leipzig, rather than creating a Jewish quarter as they did in some towns, they rather set up Jewish houses where people lived 8-10 to a small apartment. It was from here that she was deported to a extermination camp. The building stands still, renovated, but there. Frau Becker explained that many of the houses after the war were rebuilt and their numbering was changed, so that while I had very specific addresses for all my family homes, I was not to assume that a building that was number 6 in 1930 would be number 6 in 2008. After a few more pictures together, she returned to the office and Bob and I continued our quest to find the homes of the family. Since Herr Dimter (a gentleman from Leipzig and a friend of Jutta Scott's brother) had taken many photographs already, my goal was simply to walk the streets and get a sense of the neighborhood. I wanted to see how close it would have been for my mother to leave her home and walk to her grandparent’s home a few blocks away or to cross the street and visit her future husband's home. While the area has changed considerably, it is still a quiet green neighborhood spotted with magnificent homes amidst modern GDR built garbage. A block from the heavily guarded American Consulate, the Music Conservatory continues to thrive. Many of the streets carry the names of famous composers, and I could imagine what a lovely neighborhood it would have been. Of all the addresses we could find, only my mother’s grandparent’s home still exists, and stands alone beside empty plots where other grand homes must have been. We aren’t even sure it is exactly the same house. It carried the same number, but knowing that renumbering had occurred, and seeing an open lot next door with a wrought iron fence around it we could imagine that that was the spot as well. Where my mother's childhood home had stood on Robert Schumann Strasse there was an open lot with a small poster announcing the arrival of a new building. Herr Dimter did a fine job so that between his photographs, and mine of the neighborhood, I think I have truly located the roots of the family. My next trip back will be to enjoy the town of Leipzig as a tourist, rather than as a person searching for family roots. And we will have to return because after all our house hunting and meetings there was no time to see anything else. We were foot weary after walking 6-8 miles on jagged sidewalks, emotionally weary and brain weary from all that we had absorbed. So we plodded back to the train station and caught a 17:51 ICE train back to Dresden. What a day. But if only we had had mother, or daddy, or Walter as guides. I have helped to close the circle, and I’m glad I could leave copies of the diaries in each down, but now there is so much more to explore and to understand about these two cities.