THE BLUE ANGEL

She wandered the streets for her first few months back in a daze, hardly able to take in the enormous changes she saw all about, torn by a desire to help the poor who heartbreakingly lined fashionable streets like Kurfurstendamm and all the other main thoroughfares leading off from the Brandenburg Gate. But slowly she got caught up in the mad excitement of these strange crowds of emigres mingled with the many German poor. She noted grimly the pitiless treatment that befell the war wounded. Men with no legs, no arms, no eyes, haunted the streets selling matchboxes, offering shoe shines, plaintively playing their music from accordions and violins. She felt enormously priviliged when her mother bought her a violin for 2,500 marks - a fabulous sum in those days, it would have bought a cheap house in the Berlin suburbs. It was her mother's compensation for taking her away from her professorial lover and Weimar where she had come to appreciate the great achievements of its poets and musicians. But all was not well between Wilhelmine and Maria.

In Maria's early days her mother had a pet name for her, 'Pauli', because she had wanted a boy to follow on from her elder sister, Elisabeth, who was training to be a teacher. Wilhelmine was determined that the career she had plumped her heart on for her younger daughter, as a violinist, should allow no distractions and Maria was enrolled in Berlin's top high school for music where she was made to practise Bach hour after hour. As often happens to girls growing out of their teens she began to wonder where this training was going to lead, where her happiness was to be found. She started to row with her mother, neglect the practice of music for the reading of Germany's great poets, especially Rilke who entranced her with the magic of his words. She dreamt of being able to spellbind people with speech as he did with his writing. She wondered what her long dead father would have advised her to do when these moods of black despair came upon her and she could see no end to the sterile playing of the violin at a school she had begun to hate. After the magic of Weimar, the traditional Prussian school with its emphasis on endless repetition and technique seemed designed to kill all the youthful joie de vivre she wished to express. She mourned the sudden parting from her revered music teacher and nothing her mother could say convinced Maria that Wilhelmine had acted in her best interests. The dark clouds in her mind grew ever larger, she wandered the streets in an agony of despair as she saw the world she believed in visibly crumbling. There were no fine carriages on the streets gently perambulating along as in her girlhood. In their place, huge automobiles plied up and down the wide thoroughfares, with their owners displaying the sudden wealth they had acquired in the cacophony that was business in the city. She knew, even in her innocence, that many of these people were war profiteers who had grown fat on the troops' misery. They showed no thought at all for the wretches begging in the gutters and doorways, but ostentatiously swept past with only concern for themselves. She envied their magnificent display at the same time as she could see the evident corruption black money brought into their hearts. Money itself was rapidly losing any value. The price of any scraps of food, when they could be found on the market stalls, multiplied week by week till a week's wages bought merely a few potatoes and greens, the only certainty being that by the next week the prices would have doubled again. Her mother tried to shield her from the grim reality, but she began to change into a cynical worldly wise 19-year-old who accepted the new dispensation with its new laws of survival, she was just a face in the crowd that pushed and jostled, forsook all manners and grabbed for what it could.

After the long hours of violin practice Maria took to visiting the pavement cafes all along Kurfurstendamm in the afternoons and wondering at the foibles of the passing parade of humanity. There was a new mood of desperate gaiety which cafe society adopted to laugh off the chaos they could sense all around. There was new money where once there had been old certainties. Those who had cash were tough businessmen, totally ruthless in obtaining what they wanted. She began to experiment with her clothes. Long feather boas were the last word in fashion, a statement that you were part of sophisticated cafe society, unshocked by any of the sights you saw on the Berlin streets. There were people murdered in front of the crowds, usually in angry fights where jeering people surrounded the combatants. The police appeared to be powerless to stop the descent into mayhem.

Defeat weighed hard upon the proud Berliners, no one believed in anything, except getting through the day and losing oneself in drink or drugs or quick flirtations. Maria noted how girls her own age flaunted themselves in shorter and shorter skirts, wide open blouses, facing strangers with a leer on their lips and a sparkle in their eye. Suddenly, you could speak to whoever you wanted, no introductions were necessary and she quickly caught on to the new code. One day in the spring she was walking past the Cafe Nationale where girls of easy repute were well known to be available. Some even sat at the tables with bare breasts as they shamelessly exposed their assets. But with the low wages now virtually worthless, the people had to fall back on other more personal assets. She passed a pale faced young man in the crowd and smiled, he stopped and soon they were in ecstatic communication. She found herself suggesting they go to his flat nearby and pass the afternoon in each other's company. There was an aura about his pale skin and clear eyes she found irresistibly attractive. He became the first lover of her own age, and she found he welcomed her taking the lead in their mutual discovery of the joys of the flesh. Little did she realise that the pallor of his skin which so attracted her and matched her own fair skin was a sign of a fatal disease that was wasting him away. Before her eyes over the few weeks of spring they were together he gradually weakened until one day she found him dead from what the doctors diagnosed as dysentry. Death was very much present in this new Berlin, if not from influenza or starvation, then the gangs promised and delivered a violent end to life as they each sought to control the streets as a prelude to political power.

By the summertime, the small amount of money Maria's mother gave her each week was no longer enough to even purchase coffee and applecake in the fashionable cafts. She was forced to search out any type of work to help buy the fabulous new fashions she saw being flaunted all around her by young women who always appeared to have a rich businessman to accompany them. She found work in a glove factory, then needed more money still so that in the evenings she also worked in a hat shop, when even this was not enough to produce a living wage she worked in a news kiosk early in the mornings as well. The hustle and bustle of the streets became her life from morning till night. It was strangely thrilling for a girl who had had such a sheltered upbringing. But it was also exhausting.

Maria noticed they always seemed to need musicians in the cabaret clubs that were opening up all over Berlin, as well as the picture palaces that were even more popular. Motion pictures were soon as fashionable an entertainment as the animated conversations of cafe society. But Berlin's cabaret clubs held the greatest attraction for her, they were very risque places, certainly not the kind that her mother would ever have dreamt she would dare frequent. But an increasing boldness was upon her as she realised it was up to her whether she sank or swam in the increasing madness all around. She played in the pits in an orchestra accompanying the films. Her legs caught the eye of the conductor who introduced her to a club where topless dancers came on as a break between the political satire and the popular songs. It was really a continuation of the old music halls, but now people liked their entertainment to be more intimate in some darkened cellar. She was taken on to play violin in several of the clubs and found a way to mix in the kind of circles previously forbidden to someone of her class and background. But a part of her sought the limelight rather than the dark pits where the musicians were placed. She had not too long a time to wait before she found herself providing the entertainment rather than accompanying it.

Maria had another brief taste of love in the cabaret club. A devastatingly handsome businessman, some 15 years older than herself who was possessed of the wit and sophistication that Berliners have always valued in their companions. It was her naivete that led her to presume she had no competitors for his affections. After a whirlwind romance in which he bedded her and taught her, even encouraging her to sit astride him in cafes so that they could take their pleasure wherever it pleased them, she discovered she was not his only girlfriend. He confessed - though he saw little wrong with it - that he had a wife, and several other girlfriends as well.

'We are friends, that is all, what more do you want?' he asked her.

She told him she could not share him with other young girls, his staying with his wife she could understand, but if a man was to have her, he must be devoted to her, under her spell, that was always her aim, even if I she were far away in place and time. She wanted to hold a special place in his heart, leave her inner essence as an image in his brain.

Almost on the rebound from this second romance, she met a girl who she could admire and learn from. A young girl like herself discovering the new post-war Berlin. Her name was Gerda Huba, an aspiring writer who had a job as a librarian. She immediately proposed that Maria move in with her and share the tiny two rooms she occupied in the poor Wilmersdorf part of town. Maria's mother took the news in a resigned fashion, she knew her younger daughter was spending more and more time in the cafes, less and less at home with her music, but realised she was approaching 20 and no longer the sweet innocent of even a year before.

It was Gerda who opened Maria's eyes to the realities of the new post-war Berlin. She was better read than Maria, despised women who allowed themselves to be dictated to by men and argued that the war and its aftermath had changed everything. Their reponsibility was to themselves, there was no higher power ordaining their roles, the ruling class (and she included Maria's parents in this category) had lost their power and sway over the people. They and their strict codes of behaviour were consigned to the dustbin of history. Gerda was an idealistic socialist excited by the great movements of liberation springing up all over Europe. There was talk of revolution on the streets of Berlin, and Paris, London, Glasgow, Munich, Milan... the whole continent was in ferment in 1921, most obviously in Russia where a bitter battle raged between the Red and White armies after the assassination of the Czar and his family. Germany's own Kaiser lived in ignominy in Holland and the old imperial aristocratic families were being reduced by the ever spiralling inflation into genteel poverty.

Gerda attracted Maria with the dangerous thoughts she dared to utter. In Maria she claimed to see an example of the fallen ruling class. Maria laughed at this conceit, reflecting on the privations of the war years. The two young women shared the meagre rooms, and the even more meagre meals. They were inseparable as they gathered confirmation all around them of the rightness of their new revolutionary philosophy.

They walked along the crowded streets and thoroughfares arm in arm, Maria head over heels in love with Gerda's mind, besotted with her view of the world, her all devouring logic, her marvellous encyclopaedic knowledge which contrasted so much with her very sheltered background. On the street corners they laughed and giggled at the women openly solicting business dressed in outrageous ringmaster uniforms, shiny black boots, fishnet stockinged legs, riding whips nonchalently held in the cleft of their arms. The burlesque women sought men who would pay handsomely to be humiliated and did a roaring trade among the ever more blatant passers-by who, with no work to distract them, sought temporary relief in novelty while they still had some money to their name. The women affected a masculine commanding appearance, especially the many apparently respectable housewives who travelled into the town from the suburbs to desperately try and eke out their housekeeping money. The two young women spent much of their free time in the cafeterias and clubs, where homosexuals openly displayed their affections as they sat, chattered, laughed and observed the foibles of humanity through the day. There were men fawning at prospective clients over fluttering fans, their eyes darkly made up even in the middle of the day. The two friends went to clubs where naked girls danced with their patrons in mocking tea dances - all pretence that the assignations were for anything other than quick relief from the doomed economy outside the doors was dropped.

Maria fell under this fatalistic spell. If she saw a man across the table who she liked, a quick wink, a girlish giggle, and an invitation to go to his flat (or hers) ended the pleasantries of the afternoon in a frenzied burst of lovemaking. Clothes and inhibitions were shed daily and nightly all over Berlin, the pace of the Jazz Age had begun to assert itself and Berlin was where it found its first expression. The city claimed with some justification to be 'the fastest in the world.' Some of the cabaret clubs openly allowed their guests to try drugs like cocaine and marijuana, opium and heroin, although Maria avoided these indulgences. She looked into the eyes of the drugged people and saw they were trying to blot out the reality all around them, whereas she found it all strangely exciting and alluring, with the hint of danger added to the mix. A dark current had entered Berliners' lives, and it fed them an energy and an appetite for further thrills. The cabarets lasted long into the night, Gerda and she would return at dawn to their rooms ready, after a few hours sleep, to throw ourselves into the social whirl once more. Maria hardly saw her mother, who presumed she was regularly attending music school, although her daughter had become a very infrequent visitor to the lessons which were so removed from the reality of life in cafe society.

The need for money and independence led Maria to take her courage in both hands one day at a club where she played in the orchestra. She suggested to the owner she join the chorus girls he had just begun auditioning. He asked her to show him her legs which she quite brazenly did, hoisting her skirts up above the waist so that he was dazzled by her underwear. He asked her to give a few high kicks which again flashed the frilly underwear before his wondering eyes. That was enough, she was in, a member of the man's 'Thielscher Girls', 12 in number. Over the autumn and winter of 1921 to 1922 they visited Hamburg and Cologne as well as clubs around Berlin.There were other things beside violin playing, she realised, that could help a young woman progress in the world of entertainment. The chorus line proved her most regular source of income.

The excursion into the cabaret was all that a girl who had just turned 20 could wish for. She already knew the theatre was what she was intended for, not the concert hall. On the stage she came alive, revelled in the attention the kicking chorus line generated with flowers raining upon them as they roused the audience to cheers of delight at their increasingly daring routines. They wore top hats and tight body hugging costumes, decked out in feathers around their waists, with white silk stockings completing the revealing outfits. The girls in the troupe were all like her, surviving from day to day. They were often invited to parties where drink flowed and food was all about. After the rigours of the day when buying the next meal could cost a week's earnings it was an enchanted world. Those who still had money were quite happy to finance the parties as long as everyone had a good time. It was usually dawn by the time she made her way back to the two shabby rooms, often with several of the girls in the chorus line joining her since they had nowhere to go.

A few hours sleep, and the other woman reappeared, the dutiful violin student attending her lessons at the High School, but Maria had joined other lessons for voice production which were also held at the school. She longed to be able to captivate an audience with her voice rather than her music, and just as in the cabaret she came to realise that it is, above all, the personality of a performer which attracts and fascinates. She was determined to find an outlet for the commanding theatrical face she wanted to show the world.

Eventually she told her anxious mother that her wrist muscles were permanently damaged by the constant violin practice, that it was no use pretending she could follow this as a career, and so she had decided to become an actress. Wilhelmine took the news badly. Since Maria's return to Berlin she had feared the changes in her daughter and disapproved of her new friends and lifestyle profoundly. Wilhelmine had hoped Maria would soon grow out of her madcap stage. But the mother's concerns were ignored until she became resigned to Maria's desire to go on the stage, even as she pointed out it was no profession for a young woman of Maria's breeding and background. For mama, the war had changed nothing, she clung to her Prussian ways. But one day she surprised Maria by saying that Uncle Willi, from the family jewellery shop, had offered to help get her a film test.

Maria was ecstatic. The motion picture business was booming all over Berlin, there were many more picture palaces than there were clubs or theatres, but in the snobbery of the Berlin arts world the motion pictures were not considered a serious art form, just a cheap escapist entertainment for the downtrodden masses. However, the great attraction of the new film studios was their ability to pay wages far in excess of anything that could be expected in the theatre. Maria arrived one day in April at the studios to await her film test.

The gate people told her she would have to wait until the day's filming was complete before she could meet Stefan Lorant. Eventually, he came out of the hothouse of the film studio where, because they worked under glass, the atmosphere created by the heat of the lamps was like a tropical greenhouse. He was exhausted by the day's shooting.

'Is it possible you could come back another day?' he asked in a weary way when she introduced herself, bubbling over with enthusiasm and quite prepared to give the performance of her life.

'I feel I am meant to work in films, it is my only wish in life,' she melodramatically told him.

'The heat inside the studio is too much, we have been there all day, it is brutal work, not at all the glamourous life you would imagine,' he replied.

'Why not do your test out here?' she countered, fixing him with a relentless look of seriousness, 'I will not disppoint you. My mother Wilhelmina von Losch said that you would not let down the sister of Willy Felsing.'

This appeal to his duty persuaded the young film director.

'Very well, we will do the test out here,' he conceded.

He sent for a camera and tripod while he scanned about him with an eagle eye.

'You see that fence there?' he said, indicating the edge of the film production company's lot, 'I want you to jump off there and smile at the same time.'

Maria did as she was bid.

'Now grimace. Now shout and fling out your arms.'

A crowd of actors and actresses gathered as he put her through her paces. They enjoyed watching the director manipulate her like a marionette in his hand, as she jumped and returned, jumped and returned more than a dozen times. Finally, he called a halt.

'We will get in touch if we wish to pursue your interest, Fraulein von Losch,' he said.

Turning to his friends gathered around, who had hugely enjoyed the spectacle of the young eager girl obeying his whim like a pet dog she heard him say.

'There's no need to look at the test, I can tell you now, there's nothing there. But those wide cheek bones, those expressionless eyes, that is a haunted look, strange for one so young.'

Maria heard nothing more, but the rejection made her all the more determined.

Her work with the Thielscher girls resulted in offers of modelling for advertisements. Always, her legs had to be displayed while she coquettishly held the manufacturer's wares. There is a photo which still exists of a record she promoted, it is held delicately above her belly, her garter showing on long shapely legs, her gloved hands holding the record in tender adoration while she coyly gazes at the camera. The chemise-like short dress leaves little to be imagined, it is daring even by today's standards. In early 1920s Berlin, it was the last word in sophistication. And sophistication was what every young Berlin girl aspired to portray. A worldly wise knowingness, not shy young blooms but women of the world. Underneath the surface they were just having a good time and found it all highly amusing. Women were allowed to display their attractions and revelled at the opportunity after so many years of grinding dullness and disaster.

Back to the first chapter of The Blue Angel - The Early Years

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Link to Chapter Three - Chapter 3 - from The Blue Angel.

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