Letter 25

23rd April 1933

On the way to Stettin

This is a slow train, but I simply couldn’t get up in time to catch the 8.35. I’m still yawning. Aren’t they absurd? I saw a woman selling Adolf Hitler’s favourite flower for 10pf. Unfortunately I didn’t see what they were. The trees are beginning to show a little green, but there’s never a flower – only Adolf Hitler’s favourite for 10pf.

Later – Stettin

I must tell you something comic. It was Hitler’s birthday on the 20th and here are a few of the presents he received – a riding horse – 70 sofa cushions – 3000 visitors – about a ton of books – enough wine to stock a college cellar (he is a teetotaller), uncountable tobacco cases (he never smokes) and a haystack of telegrams. Oh! Oh! Adolf, I fear you will get spoilt. He was 44 on Thursday was our Adolf – oh yes, I forgot the birthday cake that weighed about 14 stone. I try to avoid political discussions. I’m a bad arguer besides being a domestic pacifist – but occasionally I get landed in for something like the following:

Herr Dombowski (pianist) -They are very critical of us in England now, aren’t they?

Mariana (squirming cleverly out of it) - We are more excited at the moment over this Russian affair.

Herr D. (persisting) - But they are critical of this Jewish business aren’t they?

M. (cornered) -Yes, they are

Herre Heese (truculently) -Well, they’ll have to get used to it. It’s going on as it has begun!

M. -Yes

Which means nothing at all and closes the conversation. There’d be no sense in my attempting to argue. Their opinions are absolutely set.

After the concert.

Well, it might have been worse – only in the first solo run in the 2nd movement of the Handel I gobbled down a couple of beats in silence. I’ll write what I can about Germany. My observations so far are few. From what I observe I should say that England’s attitude is anxiously if rather defiantly observed. People are always asking if England is not rather critical of what is taking place now, and then saying “well, she must put up with it”

Werner told me of a Jewish doctor in Freibourg who had opened a sanatorium at his own expense – buildings and all – during the war, where one could receive care and treatment free of charge. The man was a first class surgeon. Now he has been told to go –“we can manage the sanatorium quite well without you” they told him and he has been turned onto the street. I am very much wondering who will be left on the staff at Hochschule. Werner says too, that he has never met a real musician who was a Nazi. Well, it is Germany’s loss if she chooses to weed out all her greatest artists and brains.