Leseprobe

161 The Youth Memoirs of Erika Plaut, née Salzburg ence of Erika’s grandfather, Adolph Salzburg, whose business of trading and importing British-made textiles itself gave rise to a number of inter- national social contacts, as of course did the em- ployment during the 1880s and 1890s of an English governess for his children. Following in this tradi- tion, his son-in-law Max Heine sought to instil his niece (and Adolph Salzburg’s granddaughter) Erika Salzburg with a more cosmopolitan view of the world by arranging for her to spend six months in Paris and London in the late 1920s. Erika makes a typically tongue-in-cheek observation, claiming that Germans on the whole liked to travel abroad to put their foreign language skills into practice and then have something to boast about upon their return—while being raised in a spirit of ‘Deutschland über alles’. Nevertheless, it seems that Erika was able to glean new insights and a broadened outlook during her stint in Paris from 1927 to 1928. Having been exposed to anti-French sentiment from childhood onwards (France was conventionally viewed as Germany’s ‘ancestral’ enemy), she was able to see beyond these preju- dices. Erika contrasted the joie-de-vivre and cheer- fulness she encountered in the French with the sense of duty and earnestness that she considered to be archetypically German characteristics. In later years, following her emigration to the United States, Erika Plaut commented on how she appre- ciated being able to create a synthesis of ‘Euro­ pean background and American living conditions’,10 and the opportunity to combine the qualities and advantages of the ‘Old World’ with those of the ‘New’. As an example of some of the contrasts she observed after her emigration, Erika Plaut noted how German and US schoolgirls put vastly differ- ing levels of value on clothing. She contrasted the relative lack of pressure on German girls (particu- larly in the period immediately before and after the First WorldWar) to constantly buy new clothes and keep up with fashions with the consumerist spirit that prevailed in the United States during the 1940s. The two elder Salzburg sisters, Erika and Thekla, left home at a young age. Erika left home intermit- tently from the age of seventeen to pursue educa- tional and travel opportunities, during which time she spent periods in Leipzig, Dresden, and Paris. Thekla left home definitively at twenty years of age in order to marry and start a family. Born in 1910, their younger sister Lilo got married in 1933, emigrating that same year with her husband Alfred Stein (later Fred Stein). Having emigrated to Paris to escape Nazi persecution, the couple were forced to flee once again following Germany’s invasion of France. In 1941, they left Europe for the United States, where their descendants still live today. Thekla and Dr Adolf Strauss also emigrated in 1933—although, consistent with their Zionist beliefs, the couple headed to Palestine. Their de- scendants still live in Israel today. Erika and her husband Dr Hans Plaut left Germany in 1935 to start a new life in the United States, where their children live with their families today. Dr Frank Plaut, the eldest son of Erika and Dr Hans Plaut, wrote his memoirs in 2003, in which he describes how his father had seen the writing on the wall following the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws on 15 September 1935 and immediately set about organizing his family’s escape from Germany.11 After work one Friday evening, Dr Hans Plaut set off on the first stage of the journey to the United States separately from the rest of his family. The timing of his departure was designed to ensure he and his family would already be at a safe distance by the time his plans were discovered the follow- ing Monday morning, when his radiology practice failed to re-open. He left word for his wife, inform- ing her that she and the couple’s two young sons should set off for Switzerland for a short vacation, and to pack lightly. Only on arriving in Switzer- land did Erika Plaut learn of her husband’s real plan, which was never to return to Germany but instead to travel onwards and set sail on a ship bound for the United States. Notes 1 The villa at Goetheallee 23, Dresden-Blasewitz. 2 Peter Stein’s interview with his mother Lilo Stein (née Salzburg), New York City, 1981 (transcript). 3 E. Plaut: Autobiography, Dayton 1951, in: S. Wenzel: Three Villas, Dresden 2019, p. 175. 4 Ibid., p. 176. 5 Städtisches Mädchengymnasium Dresden-Neustadt, Weintraubenstrasse 3. Report on the Academic Years 1916– 1927, compiled by senior director of studies, Dr H. Krauss. Inaugural speech of 17 April 1925, pp. 29–30. 6 E. Plaut: Autobiography, Dayton 1951, in: S. Wenzel: Three Villas, Dresden 2019, p. 181. 7 Mädchengymnasium, Report 1916–1927, p. 2. 8 E. Plaut: Autobiography, Dayton 1951, in: S. Wenzel: Three Villas, Dresden 2019, p. 188. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid., p. 166. 11 F. Plaut: Some Aspects , 2003, p. 6.