Letter 31

14 May - 1933 – 7.40 am Stettin

I must take advantage of a stationary train. I don’t believe I shall ever visit the Heeses again – at any rate as Miss Hopkinson. Still, yesterday was lovely. We went in a small steamer up the Oder into the Papenwasser and there, after a two hours float through the once world-famous shipping centre and through the flat blue green and yellow country north of the town, we disembarked at an enchanting little Pommeranian village called Ziegenort. An ancient church with a curious bulbous spire and the congregation singing a ponderous German Chorale – dirty little timbered houses with elaborately painted doors – but the patterns had seen more brilliant days – and huge old pear trees just beginning to spill their blossom on to the passer by. We walked for miles through the rain and the sand and then stopped at a pub in the heart of a pine and beech wood. Afterwards the sun struggled out and lit up the young beech leaves and the blueberry carpets will it looked as though a light were shining under green water. Trees are vain, as I said before! If a jade green beech tree wasn’t posing in front of row of sombre pines, then a solitary fir tree had left the ranks and chosen as background a wall of reddish oak leaves – and everywhere the blueberries and little ferns coming up.

Did I tell you my friend Werner has had to express sympathy with the Nazi government. His livelihood and his Mama’s depends on it. I’d be damned if I would – if there were only myself to consider! I take every opportunity of hissing at it. But I’ll be discreet on Wednesday – if I get in to the Kroll Oper.

It is terribly depressing. My only hope is the amazing number of people who’s sympathies are only Nazi because it is more convenient, or because they daren’t be otherwise. I am quite sure that as things are they have no desire to fight. All they want now is a tremendous army, the most perfect in the world. Then, God help them, when they have achieved that I suppose they will begin to look around and invent opponents.

No luck! My efforts to spend a lazy birthday have collapsed. I dashed off to Kroll Oper and landed amongst a swarm of Nazis. Ignoring them, I marched up to a door that said Main Entrance to the Reichstag and rattled the handle peremptorily. It resisted. I turned graciously to a group of Nazis and enquired whether I could get in. They replied, civilly enough, in the negative. I thanked them even more graciously and went and asked a friendly policeman if it was still possible to get a ticket. “Ah!” says he, “if the Opera were twice the size and you a person of influence I still doubt whether you would get a ticket.” And here he apologized for implying that I was a person of no influence and we both laughed. I looked influential, I can tell you – carrying my shabby little bag and most of the buttons off my coat. But I had a hat on for a change and I had cleaned my shoes – also I gave him my really best 50 horsepower dazzler. We parted mutually impressed with each other’s qualities, and I returned and ate a prosaic lunch in the Kunstschule.

What do you think I have decided? (or rather John my only first cousin on my Father’s side has decided for me). I am going to fly to Munchen! That is to say if there is a place free on the plane. Goodbye for the moment. My next instalment will either be prosaically here in Berlin just before I catch the eight o’clock train – or it will be breathlessly and excitedly in Munchen.