Mummy's Memoirs - Part 10 - Diphtheria and Hitler

In school I seemed to have no trouble. Everything went smoothly, I was happy.

One day we were told our school was to be redecorated. We would have to attend the boys school!

We were marched in long crocodile lines to the boys school. Some of the girls cried. I was frightened too. Boys! I’d rather do anything that have anything to do with boys.

But it was not too bad. We had our own classroom. We only saw the boys when we went in or out.

While we ere at the boys school I became ill. Could not drink the milk still so Mother would give me a medicine bottle filled with cocoa in the morning from our breakfast cocoa. At school I was allowed to place it on the radiators, so that by break time it was nice and hot.

I got my hot cocoa that morning but I could not drink it. I felt awful. Felt sick and tired. I started crying.

A teacher took me home.

I was put in bed and the doctor called. I had diphtheria. He gave me an injection and left the phial the medicine had been in for me to play with. I could not play with it, I was too ill.

I could not eat anything, my throat was too painful.

I was ill quite a long time.

Gise came to visit me to bring back my cocoa bottle.

Gise got diphtheria too.

After a while I got better. I was good at reading by then. I read my school books from cover to cover.

The flat was fumigated after I got up. I felt very important. All that fuss over me!

***

In school we had a big gymnasium, and in the evening I joined a club for athletics.

I loved it, I could do anything - we would do all sorts of contortions on the bars. To music we would drill.

After a time We became aware of the Hitler jungen.

They had a club. We had to pay a schilling a year. Theirs was free with refreshments, lemonade and sausage rolls. Also they were supplied with a uniform, brown shirt, black tie - caps - socks - all for nothing. They would be taken to Summer camp during the holidays. All for nothing.

The boys had all joined. They strutted around the yard in their uniform. We would make fun of tem. If we were caught by them they would punch us.

We hated the Hitler jungen, they were a lot of show offs, Hitler, Hitler, that’s all people talked about.

On the wireless it was the same. Everyone became aware something was going on.

***

Mother and father took me to Vienna to stay with a girl and her mother. This girl had stayed with us for three nights. She was an artist in the theatre. She was of Czechoslovakian origin and when she came to Berndorff with the Czech troupe to play in our theatre the Czech community put them up. My Mother being so friendly with the Czechs also wanted to have someone.

In Vienna it was lovely. We went to the Prater. The Zoo - it was in a beautiful park, the gardens laid out with flowering bushes.

[My goodness, Mum had a wonderful memory, this is what I found on the internet when I looked up Prater, Vienna.

Many people regard the Vienna Prater as just another fun-fair. But it´s much more than that: it´s a Viennese institution, like the coffee houses or the Heuriger (wine taverns). Its landmark, and one of Vienna´s too, is the 65 metre high Giant Ferris Wheel. It towers over the 200 booths in the Prater, the ghost train, go-karts and grotto railways, the merry-go-rounds and fruit-machine halls, throwing and shooting galleries.

The Prater has something to offer for the whole family: take a ride with the children on the fairy-tale railway, the children´s dodgems and the scenic railway. Plummet down the extra-long slides, laugh yourselves crooked, bent, fat or thin in the hall of mirrors, savour the romantic nostalgia of an old merry-go-round or the great variety on offer from the Prater caterers: from pickled gherkins to boiled beef.

The wonders of the heavens await you in the Planetarium. And in the Prater Museum you can re-live the greatest moments of this fun-fair. Incidentally: each booth in the Vienna Prater is an independent enterprise - which is why you don´t have to pay an admission charge to enter the Prater, and also why the various attractions in the Prater don´t have uniform opening times.

Opening times for most of the attractions in the Prater are from the beginning of March to the end of October - from morning to midnight. Some attractions (ghost trains and grotto railways, dodgems, cafes and restaurants) are open throughout the year. The Giant Ferris Wheel is open from February to November and around New Year´s. ]

Mother was mostly impressed about the layout of the table. First would be a large dinner plate and a soup plate on that. Soup would be served first, and the dinner plate was already warm to serve the dinner on. She copied that style for years.

In Vienna it was decided that I must have a new hat.

We went into this salon. I was shown quite a collection. Then I saw this beret with black spots on it.

It was the latest style, I looked so good. Then I realised the large polka dots were black. I could not possible wear black. Everyone would think I was a Hitler jungen. So they found one with brown spots. No! That was the Hitler jungen colour for their shirts. I made quite a fuss. I would found a green spotted one in the end.

But the young girl when she got out was very serious. She told me I should be very careful to let anyone know my opinions now. Those assistants could be Hitler jungen themselves and might report me and my whole family. People were taken to concentration camps. I didn’t care. I was loyal and true. I would rather die than wear a hat with Hitler’s colours. They did not seem very impressed with me. I don’t know even now to whom I was loyal. I think it must have been the club. They could keep their sausage rolls!

I didn’t know anything about Hitler, the people didn’t seem to like him and were frightened what would happen if he invaded Austria.

We knew no fears and at that time there was no mention that anything would happen to them.

But there was a stir, everyone listened to the wireless intently. Szubnik was killed and it seemed a great calamity. Who Szubnik was I did not know, but something dreadful was going to happen. [I can’t find anything when search for this name]

But life went on. We often went to the theatre. Richard Tauber was the great star of that time. Everyone was singing his songs. I think we went to see him in an operetta.

".......what is astonishing about Richard Tauber's art is exactly that it is by no means based on an outstanding, sumptuous natural vocal talent, but rather on the somnambulant sovereign usage of these vocal means,on a highly sensitive musicality, a hypnotic power of expression, and an infinitely inventive performance vision.........

........Richard Tauber was the greatest Mozart tenor of his time. Of his Don Ottavio on March 5th 1924 the critic of "Die Zeit" wrote "Tauber's performance reached its climax in Don Giovanni. It had never happened before that Don Ottavio, a figure who usually remains in the background, was received with such a storm of applause and that Don Giovanni himself should have been overshadowed." Of the same performance in "Die Deutsche Allgemeiner Zeitung":"He is the polished fine musician who not only knows his part, but the whole score,and creates from the complete ....... He sings the two arias incomparably; how he gives by the power of his cantilena at the end of the G major aria a soaring poised line to that baroque, octave leaping melody; how he fills the coloratura of the B flat major aria with dramatic life is quite unprecedented.".......
James Dennis, 1979]

***

A Russian troupe was on and we went to see them. I was fascinated by their dancing. The high leaps, and most of all I liked the dance where a dancer would crouch down and fling his legs out. I practised this dance for hours, holding myself between two chairs.

Soon I was able to do it without the chairs, I would do it anywhere - in the street, shops, in the street. Soon I became famous for my Russian dance. When I would go to the shop for my Mother I would be asked to perform. I would be given a handful of sweets, round chocolates with rum filled centres. Soon all the shops knew of my dancing and I was never short of sweets.

Hugs to all.

Terry