Gay Men, Lesbians and Death in Venice

 

I have planned in detail and yet still the characters take over. Yet they do so in order to make the plot work. They seem to be working with me on this.

So, the enigmatic Adelhard Braun is gay and this will explain his disappearance twice – once when he tries conversion therapy, which he rejects, and once when he is finally arrested by the Nazis.

He has a festive housekeeper, Frau Sliwnsky. Verene Sliwinsky. She is a lesbian as is Tilda Laski. But I will not say too much more. There could be too many spoilers.

It is forcing me to examine what it was like for gay people in the Nazi regime and indeed before then. This story really starts in 1909 when the Gabriela of the title is still a young child and finding life with her mother and sister difficult.

Lesbians were actually quite open about their relationships in the 1920s. There were several magazines published for them e.g Die Freundin, Frauenliebe. Women joined in societies. These were dismantled when Hitler came to power in 1933,

There is a sense that lesbians were tolerated slightly more than gay men yet here is also evidence of harsher treatment by the time we get to the 1940s.

Paragraph 175 of the anti sodomy act, established in 1871, was extended in 1935 to mean that even looking at a man with sexual intent, became a crime in 1935. However, it could not apply to lesbians… because lesbians don’t practise sodomy.

Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice becomes important in this new story. Adelhard Braun gifts a copy of it to Gabriela’s father. There are strong connections between this and her birth though she doesn’t know it.    

The early part of the story evolves round Gabriela being puzzled by all of this. Part of her resolution is at last understanding.       

 

All about Sauerkraut

I am a planner. I have Gabriela (working title only) planned through thirty stages. I’ve completed work on four and a half. Each stage is divided into six scenes, which contain a mini story arc and I then plan at least three things in each stage. It’s at this finer point that the surprises come in.

Like the Sauerkraut.

And so I found myself researching Sauerkraut.

I didn’t like it when I first tried it but then my half-Ukranian friend showed me how her mother prepared it: fry an onion and a firm apple in a little olive oil, add the Sauerkraut and some cumin seeds and serve with a hot Bratwurst.  Delicious.

Gabriela is the arts-loving daughter of a very practical mother and her sister Edith is just like her mother.  The three spend a morning making pickles and Sauerkraut. The two girls squabble and the family heirloom Sauerkraut crock gets broken.

My research showed me that Sauerkraut it extremely easy to make. It’s really a matter of shredding the cabbage finely, massaging in salt and keeping it in an airtight container. You can add peppercorns and caraway seeds if you wish or even a little grated carrot. You need to keep an eye of the fermentation. Occasionally it will spoil. It can be frozen once it’s reached the right stage of fermentation for your taste.

Of course Gabriela and her family wouldn’t have had a freezer; the year was 1906. They may have had a nice cool cellar. I expect though they would have eaten the Sauerkraut quite quickly. And they’d have grown the cabbages themselves.

I can see the special Sauerkraut crock in my mind’s eye.  It is highly glazed blue. It wouldn’t have had a firm seal like a Kilner jar would. It would be partly sealed by using some of the outer leaves on the cabbage.

Starting Schellberg 7

 

Yes, I shall be starting this soon. I’ve already made quite a plan and even written a couple of draft chapters. But there was something missing. In one of those eureka moments that come when you’re way from your desk and doing something completely different I realised what it was. I don’t want to say too much as I don’t want to create any spoilers. However, I will say that someone I had thought of as a minor character will take on a bigger role and will bring cohesion to the whole story.

Some of the features in the whole book include:

Distaste of Hitler and the Nazi regime

The Swing Youth

The speakeasy

An Italian father

A girl with a lot of creativity

A home opened to artists

A fiancé lost in the Great War.

The White Rose movement

Communication with the Allies

German resistance

A relationship with a niece

Helping said niece with the return of her war-damaged fiancé.  

Theatre, theatre and theatre

Espionage

The Speakeasy

 

There will be an underground space in the book. It will be created by Gabriela and used by her niece. We will have already met Anika in The House on Schellberg Street and we see her again along with her aunt in The Class Letter.  

It will be in the basement of a popular club, but behind a special door that only the performers and their audience know about.

The stage will be easily dismantled and all equipment quickly hidden.

The performers will be directed by Gabriela and her friends. The actors will mainly be Anika and some of her class mates.

That it is literally underground and hidden will add to the atmosphere. 

It will indeed have the atmosphere of a speakeasy. There will be a fug of cigarette smoke. Visitorswill consume beer, wine and champagne. Perhspa they will enjoy the odd Schnapps.  

The actors will be more Brecht that Stanivlaski. Their movements will be exaggerated. Sketches will include song and dance. There will be that alienation technique. The shows will also resemble a cabaret

I’m actually going to have to spend some time writing some of the sketches. This will be quite difficult but it can also be a lot of fun.            

Drama as a tool for resistance

 

This will feature prominently in my final Schellberg book and there has already been a hint of it in The Class Letter.

Drama actually remained important to the Nazis and we may be astounded that Anika’s drama academy remained open throughout World War II. Of course there would be difficulties with young men going off to war to fight and the young women having to fit their work experience and war work around studying.

The Nazis of course allowed some forms of the theatre and banned others. Of course they used theatres for propaganda. World War II was not just a military war. It was also a cultural war. Theatre remained important and indeed several theatres were renovated at this time. German language theatre even sprang up in occupied countries.

Cleary the drama academies were kept going to provide a work force for these theatres and also the thriving film industry.

Shakespeare was one of the few foreign playwrights allowed. Naturally Goethe and Schiller plays were performed. Brecht’s were not, as one might guess. Brecht left Germany in fear for his life.

In an earlier post I spoke about Swing Youth.  Anika and her friends supported by Tante Gisela will build on this and take drama underground into a type of Speakeasy setting.

We’re definitely in the realm of fiction now. And yet. Could something of this nature actually have happened?  I’ll definitely be exploring ‘what if’.  

Also, Gisela will have several encounters with a mysterious figure who offers her several pathways into resistance.

More about the Swing Youth

 

The first “Swing Cliques” appeared in Hamburg in 1935-1936.

The movement itself started in properly 1939. It became particularly popular in Vienna, but also in big towns in Germany. For some time it was the answer to the edict that all young people must join a youth movement. They chose this one!  

The people who joined this group were also known as Schlurfs. They met to dance to swing music and they expressed their resistance to the Nazi regime through their behaviour and the way they dressed.

They weren’t all that rigidly organised and just met casually.  May this kept them safe for a while. Their main motivation was their love of American jazz music, the exact music that Hitler claimed was decadent.

Jazz wasn’t forbidden at first. The government recognised that people needed music to boost morale. Even so, as early as 1935 the upholders of the master race recognised that this music was presented by black people and the Nazis even perceived Jewishness in it. The musician Benny Goodman, the Pied Piper of New York, had to be suppressed; Goodman was Jewish.

Gradually jazz performers were forced to leave the country. Perhaps this made the music seem even more exotic to these youngsters.  

Many of the newsreels showed anti-American propaganda but young people would flock to the cinemas to see the newsreels where they might catch a glimpse Americans of their generation doing the lindy hop.

There was a dress code: boys would wear long over-sized checked sports jackets and shoes with crepe soles. They had collar-length hair. They carried an umbrella whether it was needed or not. They smoked pipes and they liked to wear Union jack pins. They often called their groups clubs and added other names that would provoke the Nazi authorities e.g. The Churchill Club. A further act off rebellion was that they often used Jewish words.

The girls too had longer hair which they wore loose instead of  in the plaits favoured by the Nazi regime. They also wore coloured nail polish and lipstick.  

Were the Swingers political? There is some debate about this. They didn’t try to sabotage Nazi efforts. They just wanted to have a good time and resented the discipline imposed by the authorities. They mainly came from middle class families. They said they weren’t against the Nazis but that the Nazis were against them. They weren’t entirely passive though; they would fight Hitler Youth groups on the streets. And in their own way they resisted indoctrination.

They had a loud life style. They would greet each with “Swing Heil” instead of “Sieg Heil”.  They were daring. One venue altered the word “Swing Verboten” – Swing forbidden” to Swing Erboten “Swing Offered” They drank heavily. They were just after a good time. They would speak English and dress and behave like dandies.

This life-style was criminalised by 1940 and there were raids on music events.  This is going to feature in my final Schellberg novel. But they still manage to meet in secret. They met in private homes and often in cellars beneath bars and other businesses.   

Around seventy young swingers were rounded up in Hamburg and deported to concentration camps.   

Their life style may seem a little frivolous.  Yet the rebellion was nevertheless deep. The young people had seen their parents lose face as they struggled with the hyperinflation and then the depression. This jazz-infused life was part of a dream of freedom.  

   

Protests against the Nazi regime

 

The church opposed the regime as early as 1937 when the Pope's message 'With Burning Concern' attacked Hitler as 'a mad prophet with repulsive arrogance' and was read in every Catholic Church.

The Catholic Archbishop of Munster, von Galen, led a successful campaign to end euthanasia of mentally-disabled people

A protestant pastor Dietrich Bonhöffer, was linked to the bomb plot.

The main youth opposition group was the Edelweiss Pirates, based in the Rhineland. They reacted to the discipline of the Hitler Youth by daubing anti-Nazi slogans and singing pre-1933 folk songs. The White Rose group was formed by students at Munich University in 1943. They published anti-Nazi leaflets and marched through the city in protest at Nazi policies.

During the war, ‘Swing Youth’ and ‘Jazz Youth’ groups were formed. These were young people who rejected Nazi values, drank alcohol and danced to jazz. Jazz of course was labelled ‘degenerate’ by the Nazis.  

Perhaps the most widespread and persistent opposition to the Nazi regime came from ordinary German workers, often helped by communists, who posted anti-Nazi posters and graffiti, or organised strikes. In Dortmund the vast majority of men imprisoned in the city’s jail were industrial workers. Workers went on strike over high food prices in 1935 and during the Berlin Olympics in 1936.

The most well-known demonstration is probably the Rosenstrasse protest in Berlin between 27 February and 6 March 1943. It was initiated by wives and non-Jewish relations of Jews and Mischlinge. Many of their Jewish husbands were incarcerated in Rosenstrasse and were threatened with deportation. .     

For days the women shouted ”Give us our husbands back.”