“That sweet woman now displays swastika flags in every window. She’s become so fervently Nazi that whenever I see her, I just smile, wave, and hurry on my way.”
“Eventually the Frau Schmidts of the world will recognize Hitler for the blustering clown he is and he’ll fall out of favor,” said Arvid. “The National Socialists will diminish to the fringe party it used to be, and progressive factions will work together to make policies that will finally get Germany out of this financial mess.”
Mildred wanted to believe him, but as the days grew longer and warmer, more swastika flags cropped up in their neighborhood like prickly weeds among the spring flowers. In central Berlin, Mildred encountered the swastika as well as strutting Brownshirts and photos of Adolf Hitler glowering from every newsstand, but the university remained a refuge from the madness of politics, an oasis of sanity where reason and art and science still reigned.
In May, as she was preparing for final exams and working extra hours to help her students with their term papers, Mildred learned that Friedrich Schönemann, one of her former professors from Giessen, had joined their faculty. According to chatter she overheard in the halls, he had recently returned from an extended leave in the United States and had been appointed director of the American section of the English Department. Mildred meant to stop by to congratulate him and renew their acquaintance, but before she found the time, she received a summons to his office.
He greeted her formally, meeting her at the door and showing her to a chair in front of his desk. “Frau Harnack-Fish,” he mused, returning to his own more imposing seat and studying her over his steepled fingers. “When I took over as director here, I was surprised to see your name on the faculty list.”
“Perhaps you left on your American tour before I transferred from Giessen,” she suggested, a bit taken aback by his cool, distant tone. Had he forgotten their many long talks about literature and society at his favoriteBierpalastnot so many years before? “Did you learn more about Americans and our culture during your trip? I still agree with your assertion that studying our literature is a wonderful way to learn about us, but travel teaches lessons one won’t find in any book.”
He gave her a thin smile and rested his hands on the desk. When he leaned forward, a pin on his lapel caught the light; her heart sank when she saw the swastika. “Frau Harnack, you are perhaps aware that the university is suffering financial difficulties, like so many other institutions these days.”
“Yes, of course. These are challenging times.”
“Then you will understand why we cannot renew your appointment for the next term. Many excellent German men with qualifications equal or surpassing your own are out of work. I cannot justify appointing a woman, and an American, instead of someone more deserving.”
“I’m an American, teaching American literature,” she said, stunned. “I have a unique perspective that not even the best of my German male colleagues can provide.”
“Tell me, Frau Harnack,” Schönemann said, leafing through some papers on his desktop. “Do you still encourage your students to study Marxism as ‘a practical solution to the evils of the present,’ as you wrote a few months ago?”
Mildred hesitated. “I do.”
“How unfortunate. Perhaps the department tolerated such deviant pedagogy under previous directors, but no longer.” Abruptly he rose, but although she understood the interview was over, she remained seated, numb. “Keep that in mind as you continue your studies. Although you are dismissed from the faculty, you have not been expelled from the university.”
“Herr Schönemann, I would ask you to reconsider. Please look over my file. You’ll find that my teaching evaluations have been excellent and I’ve received several commendations—”
“Then I trust you will continue to fill your days with productive work.” He gestured to the door. “Since it would be difficult to find a replacement instructor so close to the end of the school year, you may finish out the term. Good day, Frau Harnack.”
She nodded and left before he changed his mind and expelled her from the graduate school too.
Later, when she told her Modern American Literature class she would not be teaching in the fall, the students’ voices rose so loudly in outrage and indignation that she feared professors from nearby classrooms would complain. In the days that followed, her student Sara Weitz circulated a petition demanding that she be reinstated. Sara and her friends collected more than one hundred signatures, but although the students’ loyalty heartened Mildred, their efforts failed.
On the last day of the term, after she proctored her last final exam, a group of students appeared at her office as she was cleaning out her desk. “We all wish you the very best,” Sara said as she presented Mildred with a beautiful bouquet of flowers.
“Schönemann is making a terrible mistake,” declared another student, Paul Thomas, an army veteran who had lost an arm in the Great War.
“I agree,” said Mildred lightly, forcing a smile, “but please don’t take out your anger on your new teacher.”
Sara, Paul, and a dozen other students insisted upon escorting her home all the way to Zehlendorf, carrying her boxes of books and files. Frau Schmidt glared suspiciously from her front window as Mildred ushered the boisterous group of young people into her flat, but Mildred merely smiled, tugged on the brim of her hat in a chipper salute, and shut the door.
Inside, she set out bread, cheese, and slices of smoked sausages, and she passed around a bottle of schnapps. Later Arvid arrived with groceries, interrupting a heated debate about the relative merits of socialism versus communism. He eagerly joined in the conversation while Mildred set out more food for their guests until it felt like a proper party.
They stayed up until midnight discussing politics and literature, and some of the more imaginative students wove elaborate schemes for how they might get Mildred her job back. It was not until the last half hour that the mood turned melancholy.
“You’ll still see me on campus,” Mildred reminded them as they said their goodbyes. “We can form our own study group. Herr Schönemann can dismiss me from the faculty, but no one can prevent us from gathering on our own to discuss whatever we like.”
“Not yet, anyway,” muttered Paul.
“Not ever,” said Mildred firmly, but although her students nodded, their expressions were clouded over with anger and doubt.
The loss of Mildred’s income meant that she and Arvid could no longer afford their home in thePapageiensiedlung. As much as Mildred regretted leaving the woodland retreat where she and Arvid had been so happy, she would not miss the suspicious glares of their National Socialist neighbors. After a brief search and a recommendation from a friend in ARPLAN, they sublet three rooms in a flat on the fifth floor of Hasenheide 61, about a kilometer north of the Tempelhof airfield near St. Johannes-Basilica and the Volkspark Hasenheide. Their building was on the northwest edge of Neukölln, a working-class neighborhood popular with Communists.
“If I have to choose between living among Browns or Reds, I’ll choose Reds every time,” said Arvid after they signed the lease.
They moved out of their old flat quietly under the cover of night and left no forwarding address, reminding Mildred uncomfortably of her childhood in Milwaukee and the many times her father, unemployed and months behind on the rent, had moved the family from one home to another to flee a disgruntled landlord.
As she and Arvid unpacked and settled in, Mildred resolved to focus on everything she loved about the new place and not dwell upon what she missed about the old. The rooms were beautifully decorated in appealing modern colors—warm yellows, dove tans, soft blues and greens—and the cupola in the front room offered plenty of sunshine, cooling breezes, and lovely views of the broad tree-lined avenues below. Mildred had a small, sunny room of her own for her desk, her bookshelves, and her favorite lamp, and although neither she nor Arvid said so aloud, someday it would make a perfect nursery, should the need arise. Arvid set up his own desk in the front room, near two tall vases where Mildred arranged bouquets of lavender cosmos. Throughout the day, but especially early in the morning, sweet, enticing aromas wafted into the flat from the patisserie on the ground floor.
