Erich Remarque: The Black Obelisk

I never saw any of them again. Occasionally I planned to take a trip back, but something always interfered and I thought I had plenty of time. Suddenly there was no more time. Night broke over Germany, I left it, and when I came back it lay in ruins. Georg Kroll was dead. The widow Konersmann had gone on spying and had found out that Georg and Lisa had had an affair; in 1934, ten years later, she revealed this fact to Watzek, who was then Sturmführer in the SA, Watzek had Georg thrown into a concentration camp, despite the fact that he himself had divorced Lisa five years before. A few months later Georg was dead.

Hans Hungermann became Cultural Guardian and Obersturmbannführer in the new party, which he celebrated in glowing verses. For this reason he lost his position as educational director in 1945 and was in difficulties for a time. Since then, however, his pension application has been approved by the State and he is living in comfortable idleness, like countless other party members.

Kurt Bach, the sculptor, was in a concentration camp for seven years and came out an unemployable cripple. Today, ten years after the collapse of the Nazis, he is still fighting for a small pension, like innumerable other victims of the regime. If he is successful he will get an income of seventy marks a month—about one-tenth of what Hungermann receives and also about one-tenth of what the new democratic State has been paying for years to the first chief of the Gestapo—the man who organized the concentration camp in which Kurt Bach was crippled—not to mention, of course, the substantially higher pensions and indemnities paid to generals, war criminals, and prominent former party officials. Heinrich Kroll, who got through this period handsomely, looks upon all this with pride as proof of the incorruptible justice of our beloved fatherland.

Major Wolkenstein had a distinguished career. He joined the party, had a hand in the Jewish decrees, lay low for a few years after the war, and today, along with many other party members, is employed in the Department of Foreign Affairs.

For a long time Bodendiek and Wernicke kept a number of Jews hidden in the insane asylum. They put them in the cells for incurables, shaved their heads, and taught them to behave like madmen. Later Bodendiek was packed off to a small village because he had had the temerity to protest when his bishop accepted the title of Counselor of State from a government that regarded murder as a sacred duty. Wernicke was discharged because he refused to give lethal injections to his patients. Before that he had succeeded in smuggling out his hidden Jews and sending them on their way. He was sent to the front and fell in 1944. Willy fell in 1942, Otto Bambuss in 1945, Karl Brill in 1944. Lisa was killed in an air raid. So was old Frau Kroll.

Eduard Knobloch survived it all; he served the just and the unjust with impartial excellence. His hotel was destroyed, but it has been rebuilt. He did not marry Gerda, and no one knows what has become of her. Nor have I ever heard anything of Geneviève Terhoven.

Weeping Oskar had an interesting career. He went to Russia with the army and for a second time became commandant of a cemetery. In 1945 he was an interpreter with the occupation forces, and, finally, for several months he was burgomaster of Werdenbrück. After that he went back into business, this time with Heinrich Kroll. They founded a new firm and prospered greatly—tombstones at that time were in almost as great demand as bread.

Old Knopf died three months after I left Werdenbrück. He was run over one night by a car. A year later, to everyone’s surprise, his wife married Wilke, the coffinmaker. It has been a happy marriage.

During the war the city of Werdenbrück was so demolished by bombs that hardly a house remained intact. It was a railroad junction and so was bombed repeatedly. A year afterward I was there for a few hours between trains. I looked for the old streets but lost my way in the city I had lived in so long. There was nothing left but ruins, nor could I find any survivors of that earlier time. In a little shop of rough boards near the station I bought some picture post cards with views of the city in the time before the war. That was all that was left. Formerly, if one wanted to remember his youth he went back to the place where he had spent it. One can hardly do that in Germany today. Everything has been destroyed and rebuilt and is strange. Picture post cards have to take its place.

The only buildings that have remained completely undamaged are the insane asylum and the lying-in hospital—principally because they stand some distance outside the city. They were immediately filled to capacity again and are still full. Indeed, they even had to be substantially enlarged.