OUR 50th HIGH SCHOOL REUNION IN BERLIN

BY UTE HERBIG-KABOOLIAN

     After a strenuous flight – the seats are not made for people with long legs, who aren’t exactly skinny, either - Stella and her husband, Dr. Peter Witte, picked us up at the airport Berlin-Tegel in the early morning hours of June 14, 2000.

     “How was your flight?
     “Terrible!  We sat like sardines in a can.  Richard walked around in the aisle and after I enjoyed the roominess of the invalid toilet, I used it several times for the sole purpose of stretching out my legs.  But the food was excellent.  Richard knows the “food preparer” and he ordered something special for us, a seafood platter with the best Nova Scotia Lox and a delicious sugar free hazelnut pudding for me.  He even came on board our plane and told the stewardess to take good care of us. Richard introduced him to me so that I could also thank him.
      Stella said, “You probably had what they get in first class.” That was absolutely possible, for from what we could see, the other passengers had different food.  We dropped Richard off at his hotel, and passing by our Gertraudenschule, now Alfred Wegner Oberschule in Berlin-Dahlem, drove through old familiar tree-lined streets to Christa and her husband Peter, where I relaxed the rest of the day.

     The next day, Thursday, June 15, from 6:00 to 11:00 o’clock PM was our reunion in “Paulsborn”, a beautiful restaurant at the shore of the Grunewald Lake where Christa had made reservations for us all.  Dr. Silvia Rohde-Giese who lives nearby came to Christa, who drove us in her car.  During the car ride Silvia said, “Ute, I had no idea that your mother was Armenian till Christa told me.”  Silvia spent the Nazi years in Turkey with her parents because her mother was Jewish.  After the war her family returned to Berlin where Silvia’s father became Dean of the Free University.  Silvia was put into our class though she had never attended a school but in Turkey had been privately tutored with the son of Berlin’s mayor, Ernst Reuter, who with his family had spent those same years in Turkey also.  These private lessons must have been really something for Silvia was way ahead of us in math and the sciences.
     “Isn’t it weird that we found protection with a people who murdered your mother’s people?” Silvia said.  That was true.  Christa had given me a thick hard-covered Armenian book, entitled, ‘Armeni syn die menschen genant…’ which book had been published in February 2000 on the occasion of a culture exhibit at the State Library of Berlin with the same title as the exhibit. Pastor Brockes took my mother, Aghavni Demirdjian, and her sister Mariam out of an orphanage in Bebeck near Constantinople, and brought them to Pastor Lohmann in Frankfurt/Germany.  Would I find his name in this book?  I leafed through it several times and just when I resigned myself to not finding it found it on page …31!  Wow!  Ever since my spontaneous out of body journey in the fall of 1983, numbers have a strange attraction for me, especially the number 31 since I was born in ’31.  From Pastor Lohmann my mother went to Pastor Julius Bartsch in Rohrberg in the Altmark, and was raised by him and his wife, Minna.  In 1912 she moved with them to Berlin, where they lived at 31 Senefelder Strasse.  My mother married my German father, Albert Herbig, in 1929 and gave birth to me in Berlin/Germany in the year 1931.
     Before dinner we were served champagne in the foyer, a gift to all of us from Christa.  When Eva Landeck-Kessler discovered me she actually screamed.  She had no idea that I was coming, and that she would be seeing me after all those many years.  But then I was to be the big surprise.  One by one, women came and shook my hand and looked at me expectantly.  The faces I knew, but the names?  Some of us had not seen each other in fifty years!  “I know your face.  Just tell me your name, please.”   “No way, don’t worry, it’ll come to you.”  And that’s how it was.  The older the evening, the younger we got.  The time mask vanished, and the old familiar features shone through.  We found ourselves in a big room, sat around a gigantic table, were allowed to close the door and talk to our heart’s content, loud and animated as all those years ago.  “Remember?”  “Of course!  How can I forget?  …And do you still remember, …” That’s how it went.  Stella had procured our written graduation papers.  After 50 years we were given back our German and English essays, math and Latin assignments with the usual remarks of our teachers.  They, however, already elderly at our time, are not with us any longer.  But I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they didn’t smile down on us benignly from their heavenly abodes. An obliging waiter made a beautiful group picture of all of us.  Had we not flown in for this special occasion from all corners of the globe?  The fabulous looking Susi Speer-Maier from South Africa, Marion Lueddeckens-Koch, whose World War II letters to her father have just been published, Irene Bracklow-Hoentsch, who made sure that no water flows into our garage in New Jersey since she happened to be visiting me at the time our driveway was being cemented, and Ute Deutsch-Gut, painter, who had several exhibitions of her works, from Switzerland, Christel Callam-Fleury, who laid a parcel of good Neuhaus chocolate on everyone’s plate, from Belgium, the glowing Dr. Baerbel Beck-Deutschmann from Austria, and Diethild Neumann-Price, who also visited me in Queens, and I, both of us  from the United States.  Lilo Buetow-Boehm, who, after an exceedingly long talk with me at the U-Bahn one day years ago became my friend though we had had no previous contact with each other since she, as well as Ulla Rammelt-Kuellmar, were in the mathematical branch of our grade, those two and my good old friend Eva-Maria Landeck-Kessler came from Germany.  Another old friend of mine, Marianne Schroeder from Hamburg, was unfortunately not able to come.  Then there were, of course, the local Berliners of whom Andrea Zwick and Dorle Welssow-Duewel, because of health reasons, could not attend.

     In all these years, no one had heard anything of Dorle Bein, who was also in our class. One day after my departure from Berlin or a few days after the general consensus that we had no idea where she might be, Silvia met a woman at some meeting who told her that she had a friend who also went to the Gertraudenschule.  “What’s her name?”  “Dorle Bein.”  After 50 years we now have contact with her again. This would truly have to be one of those remarkable synchronicities that I so dearly love. 

     Some of us had visited each other in the past:  Christa, Stella and Ruth, Marion and Irene, Eva’s husband, Diethild from California, had all been visiting me in Queens or New Jersey, even some of their children, for also the second generation had become friends.  Mothers became godmothers for their friends’ children, for our class had an especially close rapport with each other.  Whenever some of the out-of-towners came back to visit Berlin Christa and Stella drummed together the Berliners and had a class get-together at each other’s homes.  Heide Kroll-Hartig invited the class several years running to her mill in the Schwarzwald.  We now admired the photos taken on those occasions in more than one album.

     Ruth Preller-Gutdeutsch pressed a pamphlet of the “Theater im Greenhouse”, which belongs to her and her husband, into my hand.  In July and August the theater will present Donald Margulies’ “Collected Stories”, which in New York opened with great success, Margulies having received the Pulitzer for it; it will be the first German rendition of the piece.  Leading actresses will be our Ruth Preller-Gutdeutsch and Bettina Weber.  Too bad I won’t be in Berlin at that time to see it, I thought. Ute Deutsch-Gut told me that she wrote a 92 page long report on her journey to China, Tibet and Hongkong, which she took in the year of 1992.  She would send it to me.  I liked the numbers already. 

     Here came the waiter with our excellent food, which we had ordered a la carte, and which we enjoyed tremendously.

     Our school was in walking distance of the Botanical Garden where our biology teachers taught us about plants and our art teachers taught us to draw.  Now Stella Witte announced that the following evening we could attend a jazz concert in our old familiar Botanical Garden.  Who was interested?  Except for those who had to leave Berlin the next day, all raised their hands.

     On Friday, June 16, Richard came to Christa and all three of us then went to my parents’ house at 163 Hochsitzweg in Berlin-Zehlendorf.  I had sold the house to a Mr. Kranich, and he was nice enough to show us around.  Only the little handy window between kitchen and living room was still the same.  Everything else had been remodeled, but to my liking.  Our veranda with the grape arbor had disappeared.  Instead, Herr Kranich had broken through and made one big bright room.  The garden was also different, though quite beautiful with a tall, slender arbor through which you entered; but when I approached my old familiar Wirtschaftsweg, or utility path behind the garden, where I daily played, the tears of recognition would not stop.  Here everything was the same.  I turned right and walked to the end of it, a dead-end, where my beloved weeping willow stood.  Alas, now there was only a green wilderness.  My weeping willow was gone.  It now lives on only in my ballad, TheWillowy Weaver, which was published in the Rundbrief, a German zine in existence since 1927, and in my memory.

     We said goodbye and went around the corner to my old friend Ingelore Rosski-Schmidt.  Her house was unchanged and was exactly like that of my parents, so Richard could see it in its original form.  Our settlement has now been placed under preservation, which prohibits owners to make changes that would mar its outer appearance.

     Ingelore and I know each other the longest.  During the evacuation of Berlin we were first together in the Sudetengau and then in Marienbad.  After admiring the garden Christa excused herself and went home.  Helmut and Ingelore, who had also visited me in New Jersey, and had taken lots of photographs, presented me with a photo album of prewar Berlin with the words, “There’s a surprise in it for you too.”  I had no idea what they were talking about, but all of a sudden, after noble monuments and long vanished historic sites of a Berlin now banished to the mists of time, smuggled in towards the end of the album, and camouflaged by Berlin postcards on both front and back covers, so I couldn’t possibly guess at the surprise within, I found photos they had taken of us in New York, some of which I had never seen!  How very thoughtful.

     Ingelore and Helmut made us a wonderful lunch; rosefish with boiled potatoes and a hearty salad, afterwards coffee and for me, sugar free cookies.  Richard took the subway to his hotel and Helmut, Ingelore and I got into their car, passed by our house once more for me to say goodbye, and after also giving me a glimpse of our ‘Rodelbahn’, or sleigh meadow, they dropped me off at Christa’s. 

     A short nap, and then it was off to the Botanical Garden with the wheelchair, which Stella had rented for me.  Christa pushed me and I could hear her heavy breathing for, before long, it went uphill, and I am definitely no string bean.  All of a sudden, there came a nice blond lady, employed by the Botanical Garden to take care of cases like mine, as she assured us.  She took over for Christa, pushed the wheelchair and led us to the concert, told us also she would pick us up as soon as it was over.  Except for one, the musicians were all from the Berlin Philharmonic, played in an open tent and we listeners sat outside.  Since it was windy and quite cool some of us decided to go inside to warm ourselves.  Astonished, we heard the music better inside than out and thought to ourselves that this was great, that we could have it both ways now: see the beautiful plants and hear the music on top of it.  We went into the warmest room.  I took photos of the Victoria Regia, the gorgeous water rose, which blooms one day and night only, and bloomed for us.   The magnificent flan-form-like floating leaves can weigh up to175 lbs and can support a child of 80 lbs.

     The following day, Saturday, June 17, my birthday, Stella invited us all for brunch at her house.  Anneliese Conradi-Schmidt and I were born on the same day, and Anneliese had sacrificed her night to bake me the most delectable chocolate cake, which we had for dessert.  She wanted me to take the whole cake form with an adorable center inset consisting of a glass candleholder filled with water in which flower petals floated.  I only accepted the inset.  Both form and candle inset had been in her family for years. We two birthday “children” received identical envelopes with a drawing made by Anneliese herself containing the signatures of all of us at the restaurant (I wondered who the card was for that I was signing), and the beautiful photograph of all of us that the waiter had taken two days before. We received lots of flowers.  Christa had already given me a bouquet of beautiful yellow roses before breakfast, Lilo Buetow-Boehm handed me German flower greetings, small blue cornflowers in midst baby’s-breath in a beautiful vase of white china.  Silvia gave me a Japanese fan although she had no idea that in 1983 the fan took on a special meaning for me.  Stella and Peter presented me with a book about Berlin with illustrations of sights to see.  I opened it at random and what should my eyes behold?  The room of the Botanical Garden – it was the only room they showed - and the picture of the Victoria Regia!  How is that for synchronicity?

     Stella had arranged everything so well and we enjoyed her many culinary masterpieces, the best lox, several wonderful salads and cold cuts in all varieties.  My son Richard came later too and found our class reunion amazing.  He couldn’t get over it.  “This was the highlight of my whole trip,” he told me later, “to see all of you together like this, after all these years.”

     Now we could focus on all the things we hadn’t had time for in the restaurant.  Stella had undertaken a study of the history of our high school and some of us formed a circle around the piano to listen to her findings.  Since Stella had sent me a copy of her report to New Jersey, I don’t think I missed anything while chatting with some others sitting around the table.  Again, the time was much too short for Christa, Richard and I had planned to take a boat ride; so around four in the afternoon we said goodbye and took a taxi to lake Wannsee.  Memories came back.  I owned a little two-seater as a student.  From far away we saw the “Strandbad Wannsee”, the bathing strip to which I cycled every summer.  We left the boat, enjoyed dinner at an Italian in and outdoor restaurant – we sat outside - and afterwards took the boat back home.

     On Sunday, June 18, Peter and Stella Witte and Irene Braklow-Hoentsch came to Christa to pick me up for a sightseeing tour.  Stella declared, “Look to your left, you can see … Now, quick, look ahead, there’s the “Funkturm”, radio tower, do you see it?  To your right … now to your left … no, no, I said left,  …” We went everywhere.  “And just look over here:  Buildings are shooting out of the earth like mushrooms.  Here everything’s new!”  All the while, Peter drove stoically through the traffic.  Stella knew exact details, historical background, when built, when rebuilt, “We have many official buildings in duplicate, in the former East as well as in the West.  Here the “Gendarmenmarkt”, the French quarter.”  My favorite, I must say.  “Would you like to see something special, Ute?  First I hesitated.  Then I said, “Do you know the Senefelder Strasse?”  “No, I don’t.  But we can look it up on the map.”  Peter parked the car and Stella and Irene unfolded the large map of Berlin.  “Prenzlauer Berg?” “Yes,” I said, “that’s the district.”  That’s where President Clinton had dinner in a restaurant near the Kollwitzplatz just a few weeks ago, as Stella explained later and pointed left towards the Alsatian restaurant.  But first we drove to the Senefelder Strasse.
     “I’m sure you want to know why I want to go there, hm?"
      “So tell us already."
      “Well, okay.  During high school Heide Kroll showed her mother our class photo and, pointing to me, said, ‘This is Ute Herbig.  Her mother is Armenian.’ On this, Heide’s mother said, ‘Really?  I knew an Armenian girl whose name was Aghavni Demirdjian.  I’ll write it down for you.'  The next day in school Heide handed me the note  with the unpronouncable name.
     ‘Impossible!’ I shouted.  ‘That’s my mother!’ Our two mothers met for coffee and reminisced about their youth.  I always thought that they knew each other from Rohrberg in the Altmark where my grandfather was the pastor of three villages.  But to be sure, since I’m writing my memoirs, I called Heide.  ‘Our mothers knew each other from Rohrberg, right?
     ‘Rohrberg? Never heard of  it.'
     ‘Well, where did your mother grow up then?'
     ‘In the Senefelder Strasse, where my grandfather was principal of the grammar school.'
     ‘Wow!  And my grandparents lived in the Senefelder Strasse, where my grandfather was pastor of a church whose name I can’t remember.'
     ‘I’ll find out for you,’ Heide said. From a parishioner she learnt that that my grandfather, Julius Bartsch, was pastor of the Eliaskirche from 1912 – 1932.  Heide drove to the Senefelder Strasse herself, and for the very first time, saw where her mother had grown up.  She couldn’t get over the fact that her grandfather’s school and my grandfather’s church, standing next to each other, as they did, shared one wall and even a room, or two within.
     At this point we had arrived.  We got out; I took my walker.  Now I was glad that Christa had insisted I take it.  “You never know,” she had said when I protested and said I didn’t need it.  Exactly opposite the church was 31 Senefelder Strasse, the apartment house where my grandparents lived, and where I visited them every weekend with my parents.  I even went into the foyer and took photos of the beautiful old tiles and the staircase.  Peter figured out that my grandfather was the first pastor since the church was built from 1908 till 1910, and granddad became pastor in 1912.  Now the church is to become a children’s museum, and the Struwelpeterschool is to be closed for good because of a lack of children.
     Besides this personal highlight of our sightseeing tour – I accompanied my parents every weekend to the Senefelder Strasse after all – the drive through the Brandenburger Tor was an amazing experience.  No separation between East and West.  We drove right through it as through any other street in Berlin.  Driving through the “Strasse des 17. Juni” (Street of June 17) was another strange event since it reminded me of my birthday in 1953 when, with great anxiety, we waited for my aunt Kaethe to arrive from Berlin-Koepenik, in vain.  It was the day of the revolt in East Berlin.

     Arrived at Christa’s, we had a wonderful Sunday lunch.  First a tasty asparagus soup with egg and lemon, then roast beef with boiled potatoes and mixed vegetables, and for dessert fresh strawberries.  At four o’clock, Freia Nehring-Luebke came for coffee and presented me with a beautiful book about Berlin.  Christa had baked a scrumptious nut Torte, to be topped with whipped cream, and served cream puffs, besides. Freia and I hadn’t seen each other in all of thirty-six years.  We sat on Christa’s sunny terrace, admired the orange day lilies in the foreground of the large garden, which were standing out against a great expanse of well-kept lawn with a cluster of giant fir trees way towards the back, a breathtaking painting done by nature, and talked of olden times. 

     On June 19, the last day of my stay in Berlin, Christa drove me through the streets of Zehlendorf-Mitte.  We drove through old familiar places, which evoked one memory after another, then to the “Waldfriedhof”, the cemetery where Christa’s mother and my parents are buried.  Christa pushed my wheelchair as far as it was possible, then I walked a little, took a few snapshots of the graves, looked up into the crowns of the old fir trees and breathed in our spicy and invigorating forest 
     “Now we’ll stay home and get to bed early, for we have to get up early tomorrow morning,” Christa said as soon as we got home.  But her daughter Martina came after supper, and we talked and talked.  The time was much too short.  Christa’s other daughter, Monika, is frequently in Manhattan on business and then invariably meets my daughter Diane for lunch.  Our daughters’ New York offices are in walking distance from each other.

     Early in the morning of June 20, 2000, Christa and I met my son Richard at Tegel airport.  Tears came unbidden when I said goodbye to Christa and my Berlin.  Off we flew to Duesseldorf, since there are no direct flights to or from Berlin.  In Duesseldorf we found out that our plane would not leave on time, since it was being repaired.  “Repaired?”  “At 11:00 o’clock there’ll be a test flight and at that time it will be determined if the plane is fit to take off, otherwise you’ll be getting a different plane,” we were told.  So we waited.  Richard disappeared somewhere and came back with a hearty rye bread roll with cheese, which hit the spot.  Before long, another helpful man came to push my wheelchair.  Richard, in the meantime, pushed the cart with our carry-on baggage, and off we went.  On the way, the man told us that we would be driven right to the plane.  A large platform picked us three up and from there we went into a small vehicle, and were driven through the large airport out into the field and right to the plane where the platform was extended to meet the exit of the plane, from which a gentleman stepped out onto it, came inside our small vehicle and said, “May I ask you to be patient just a little while longer?  We are still tanking 15 tons of fuel and as soon as the hose is taken away you will be able to board the plane.  I wish you a very pleasant journey.” He smiled at both Richard and me, turned around and went back inside.  At that moment the steward came out of the plane, joined us and said, “Do you have any idea who that was?”  He bowed in the direction of where the gentleman had disappeared to, uttered a name, which I have forgotten, and said, “Only the most important person of the whole Lufthansa!”  After some time he led us inside.  I pointed to my son’s long legs and said, “Well, here we go again.” On that, the steward said, “I hear there have been quite a few cancellations.  I’ll see what I can do.” 

     True to his word, he came later, after the others were on board – we wheelchair persons were always the first to be let in and the last to be let out – and said to Richard, “Follow me, please.”  I looked up at him and asked, “Me too?”  “Oh, yes, you too.”  He led us to a row with four seats, which we had all to ourselves.  There were no seats in front of us either, since it was the very first row.  “I could fly three times around the world like this!” I said to Richard, who only beamed at me and stretched out his legs.  We ate, saw two new films and before we knew it were back in Newark, New Jersey.  My son Corky picked us up with the car; and then we were home again in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, which with its tree-lined side streets, has and will always remind me of Zehlendorf. 

     No, it was no dream.  The many photos are proof that after 36 long years, I was once again in my dear old Berlin, which in many places is now brand new. 

Ute's Poetry and Musings