“My mother wanted to get out of unified Germany”

We meet in the café in the home port on Karl-Marx-Straße in Berlin-Neukölln. “Homesick Afterward” premieres here on January 10th. It is a play about the mother of the director Wera Herzberg, who also wrote the book.

“Homesick afterward. “An Untold Story” is the name of your piece. So what is the untold story?

The one that lies underneath. There is so much that is left unsaid, I noticed that while working on the piece. This can hardly be made visible.

Then please tell us what story you are telling.

It is my mother’s story, which I told my brother based on her stories, my memories of our conversations and interviews Wolfgang Herzberg led, tell me. My mother was born in Berlin in 1921, she is in the Schönhauser Allee grew up and in 1939 she is with one Children’s transport to England emigrated.

As a Jewish child?

Exactly. She was 17, just young enough. The uncle paid for it for her. She trained as a nurse, had to break off her training when the war began and then worked in the armaments industry. In Leicester, where the others lived, they had met my father and many Jewish emigrants from Germany. She joined the Communist Party and went back to Germany in 1947, to Berlin-Steglitz, where she was able to stay with friends. And then she got the chance to attend a short course in law. The war in Potsdam and associated with it was the call to move to the Soviet-occupied part of Germany.

Your mother probably remembered her emigration well, right?

They described their emigration to us in great detail. As at the last stop in Germany, the Jewish children were taken off the train, they missed the crossing, and she then made sure they got on the next slow train to Holland. Get out of Germany. And how they were welcomed there so friendly and lovingly.

What happened to your mother’s parents?

The mother is in Auschwitz died, there wasn’t enough money to emigrate. And the father died in 1938, just in time.

Has your mother talked about her feelings?

My mother wasn’t the type for that. It was more the art of how she spoke, the trembling in her voice that made you feel where things were getting difficult. But as a child you don’t want your mother to run away from you, for her to cry. I was always very afraid of that.

Was it natural for your mother to return to Germany?

Not at all. You experienced in England what happened to the Jews in Germany.

Was Israel an option?

No, my mother was from Berlin. But it was difficult for her to live in Germany her entire life. She said that over and over again.

Why did she go back??

My mother joined the Communist Party in 1942 and actually had a mission. But she also believed that she could change something in this Germany. And the recognizable anti-fascism in the eastern part was a good thing for them. In addition, a huge professional field opened up for her there because all Nazi lawyers were fired.

Did your mother study law later?

They should, but by then she already had three children and had divorced my father. She couldn’t handle it. She then worked at a mid-level as a public prosecutor and was also a juvenile prosecutor, but her area of ​​expertise was actually white-collar crime, including thefts and things like that.

Did your mother tell you about her job?

She told a lot, entire cases. I enjoyed that. Especially when it comes to young people. I remember watching a trial where a young girl was on trial for theft. I felt incredibly sorry for her. I slipped into the role of defense.

As a public prosecutor, her mother always played the role of accuser. Did that suit her?

In any case, she never wanted to be a defense attorney, but rather took it as her job to protect the country from white-collar crime. There was still a lot of idealism in the 50s. There was the idea of ​​creating a new Germany.

Was your mother raised as a Jew?

In any case. Her father was very religious and her mother asked in letters to England whether they also went to the temple.

Did she pass on her connection to Judaism to you and your brothers?

A fraction. Sometimes something shone through: Oh, it’s Hanukkah too. But Christmas was celebrated. She wanted to belong. But she would never have said anything against Israel.

But you knew you were Jewish?

That couldn’t be avoided. Simply because the loss of my mother’s mother played a big role for her. It was a terrible pain. Her friends were also mainly Jews who had similar fates. This trauma destroyed our childhood.

Did you identify with your Jewishness, did you feel different?

As a child, not so much. We played a lot on the street, so you had to keep up. Later, as the child of two SED members, I was supposed to take on certain functions, for example in the pioneer organization. But thank God I was always a bit cheeky, so the teachers didn’t have a chance to force me into it. My mother was horrified when we were identified as Jews. I sometimes denied it at school. When we went for a walk together, my mother often said: What are people looking at? We were obviously a conspicuous family.

Did your mother want or should you ever return to Judaism?

My mother was strictly anti-religious. And I can’t do anything with religion either. But it was always a loss. I was ashamed when I didn’t understand anything in the synagogue.

Did you go to synagogue with your mother?

We once persuaded her. At first they didn’t want to, but then we were together in the synagogue on Rykestrasse where she went as a child. As soon as we entered the stairs, the memories came: We played war corner here, my mother sat up there, my father down there. And that she always found this separation stupid. She could sing along to the songs and knew when people got up and sat down again.

When was that?

Mid to late 90s.

Even after the fall of communism. How did your mother experience this time?

That was a big shock. That everything she stood for completely dissolves. She had noticed that the country was going downhill, that people were leaving, including her children’s friends. They even wanted to go to England. They wanted to get out of unified Germany and saw it as a danger.

Has that changed over time?

My mother then traveled a lot, including with me. We were in England, in Provence, in St. Petersburg. My brother gave her books about the Soviet Union, Isaac Babel, Solzhenitsyn and so on. The disappointment was great. There is also the disappointment of one’s own delusion, so that many things were not known or knew too little, not to have been recognized. What happened in the camps in the Soviet Union, how many people died there.

So the disappointment was not just about the collapse, but also about how they allowed themselves to be deceived?

On both. Gorbachev There was another glimmer of hope and then that too crumbled. Then the sale, the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The whole idea that underlies it.

What exactly was the idea for your mother?

I think it’s all about social justice. That there aren’t that big of a difference. That no one is discriminated against because of their origin. That there is no interpretation. The idea of ​​communal ownership, national ownership. That was such a great hope! That you can change the world and eradicate fascism from the minds of millions of people. That was an illusion. And she saw it that way too. She was actually also a critical person and she was the mother of three children who had a different political opinion. We talked about it a lot. She dealt with it.

Did your mother complain?

Yes! Also because she wasn’t looking. That maybe she looked away too. Because she went shopping, she experienced our schools, she was horrified by what we didn’t know and how one-sided and wooden our education was. She was close. She has witnessed the consolidation of the apparatus, the working according to the rules: it’s up to you to judge it this way and that. – That got stronger and stronger. She took the first opportunity to retire. As a victim of the Nazi regime, she was able to do this at the age of 55. You could have continued to work as a public prosecutor. She then worked as a translator for the Peace Council in Helsinki and had colleagues from Canada and Cuba. She enjoyed it so much and was suddenly a relaxed, happy person.

Your mother probably had a special relationship with the English language. Was it important to her that you also learn English?

That was important to her, but she then sent me to the Gray Monastery, where I learned Greek and Latin. The director had said to her: Comrade Herzberg, we need children of officials to learn Latin and Greek with the doctor’s and pastor’s children. Luckily, she was able to break it down. I met the most wonderful people there, with whom I am still friends today. I barely learned English; my mother was so good at it that I didn’t even dare to speak it.

Why did you want to tell your mother’s story on stage?

Our mother’s story is occupied by my brothers. The older one, Wolfgang Herzberg, published a book, “Jewish & Left”; and my younger brother André also wrote about our mother and had completely different memories of her: much harder, stricter, secretive, not being there for him. And I’m the middle piece and have a partly different view of them. I also wanted to contribute something. Our mother has had an incredibly strong influence on us. She was very spirited, very determined, she swept through our lives vehemently.

“Homesick for it” – does this title refer?

It goes back to a text by Mascha Kaléko about exile: “Only the ‘woe’ remained. The ‘home’ is gone.” – That’s it. My mother’s home and childhood were also gone. She was sold and returned to a destroyed country where she never felt at home again.

Homesick afterward in the home port, Karl-Marx-Str. 141 in Berlin-Neukölln. Premieres January 10th, again on January 11th, 21st and 22nd. Tickets in the Berliner Zeitung ticket shop.

---

Recommendations from the BLZ ticket shop: