A Language Lesson

As the train arrived at Heidelberg Station, Sam McClure smiled to remember the first time he’d arrived here. In 1906, he’d just turned 16 and was preparing to spend his high school junior year with a family in Germany. He’d traveled by himself across the Atlantic on the H.M.S. Heimat for Hamburg, sent a telegram to Heidelberg to alert them of his arrival, and taken the train to his sponsoring family. His textbook-fluent German had been more than useful from the time he boarded the German liner in New York Harbor.

The Mittelstein family had been waiting: Dr. Aaron Mittelstein, chemistry professor at the university; his wife Ada; and their three children, Wolfgang, 18, Paul, 16, and Annaliese, 13. Wolfie was preparing to leave for university in Berlin. Paul, known as Mitti for being the middle child, was almost exactly Sam’s age and would share the same classes in Gymnasium, the German school he would attend. Annaliese would be attending Gymnasium with them.

Sam hadn’t known then what the Mittelsteins thought, but for him it had been love at first sight. That love, and what would become his deep friendship with Mitti, sustained him through a huge bout of homesickness and a steep cultural learning curve. He’d come to love this family so deeply that he returned four years later and stayed with them for a year abroad at the university.

Now, 32 years later in November 1938, he sat in their parlor, or what was left of it, trying to persuade the Mittelsteins not only to leave their home and country, but to leave immediately. 

And he was trying to remember the word the professor had given him all those years before.

Three days earlier, Kristallnacht had visited the Mittelstein home. The two-story house on a quiet, residential street had been ransacked, almost all furniture damaged, clothes ripped, mattresses slashed, and anything containing glass broken. The now-retired professor had been struck by a policeman’s baton; his head was still bandaged. Ada had been screamed at and spat upon but left physically unharmed.

The shock had been how many of their neighbors, people they’d known for decades, took part.

Mitti sported a black eye. Now a doctor, he’d been tending a beaten man in the street when the mob caught him, hitting and kicking him unconscious. Sam suspected he had broken ribs.

Sam could hardly believe this was Heidelberg. In 1925, he’d brought his wife, Emily, and their three boys here to meet what he called his “German family.” Mitti, Gerda, and their boys had visited them in Brookhaven two years later.

What was that word? At the end of his first month in 1906, almost overwhelmed by the culture and a few bullies at school, Sam had said he didn’t have the Mut, or courage, to continue his stay. Dr. Mittelstein had said it wasn’t about Mut.

Mitti’s wife, Gerda, sat at the edge of one of the slashed stuffed chairs, their two boys on the floor by her. She was not Jewish but a “full Aryan” as the Nazis defined it. She’d been left alone by the mobs, who’d been more than encouraged by the authorities to seek revenge on Germany’s Jews for the murder of the German ambassador in Paris. And seek revenge they had, across the breadth and depth of both Germany and Austria. The pogrom had been particularly brutal in Baden, Heidelberg’s state.

“How are you here, little Sammy?” Professor Mittelstein asked, using the name he’d always called Sam. “You are always welcome in our home, but I’m afraid our ability to accommodate you is limited at the moment.”

“A friend in the U.S. State Department had asked me to visit Germany and provide a businessman’s assessment of what was happening here,” Sam said. That wasn’t exactly true, but there was no time to try to explain to the Mittelsteins what being a “part-time representative” of the State Department meant. “Spy” wouldn’t be inaccurate.

“I was in Berlin, Dr. Mittelstein, when this happened. I caught a train as soon as I could for Heidelberg.” Also not precisely true. It’d been rumored for some time that the German government, specifically Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, was looking for an excuse to bypass the growing legal restrictions on Jews and attack them directly. Sam had just reached Berlin when the German ambassador’s murder November 9 provided that excuse. The result was Kristallnacht, the “night of broken glass.”

Sam had accepted his part-time assignment, knowing the dangers if the Germans discovered what he was up to. In return, he’d asked for a favor from the State Department—six visas. 

“As much as I love being with the family, I intend to stay the night at the hotel near the train station. But I want to talk with you, Professor, about something you might consider.”

“You want us to leave Heidelberg,” the professor said, “like you helped Wolfie and Annaliese.”

“I want you to leave Germany,” Sam said. “What just happened will only get worse. Hitler wants all Jews gone from the country, and he’ll do whatever it takes to achieve that.”

“And you know this,” Mitti said, “how?”

Sam could see his friend was in physical pain from the beating. 

“Jews are already being sent to detention camps here in Germany,” Sam said. “The Jewish national newspapers have been closed. Schoolchildren with Jewish blood are being expelled. You cannot vote or hold office. The government has levied a huge fine on all Jews for the ambassador’s murder, which amounts to confiscation.”

“It’s true, Papa,” Gerda said. “The school informed me Friday that Pauli and Aaron are no longer enrolled. My brother with the police said all Jewish children are being expelled from German schools, and he could do nothing.” 

“Professor,” Sam said, “Wolfie and his family are doing well in New York. So are Annaliese and her family.” Wolfie had been dismissed from the German Foreign Office in 1934, and, helped by Sam, obtained residency visas for the United States in 1935. Annaliese had done the same in 1936, again helped by Sam. It took significant contacts and influence to obtain U.S. residency visas for Jews, no matter what the circumstances. And as persecution rose in Europe, the United States was further tightening restrictions. 

“I said before, Sam,” Professor Mittelstein said, “I am hopeful we’ve seen the worst of it. And I cannot think of leaving. My parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents are buried here. I’ve lived here my entire life. We married here, and our children were born here. We’re Heidelbergers, and I can’t imagine living anywhere else. But if Mitti and Gerda believe they should leave, they should do so.”

“He won’t leave, Sam,” Mitti said. “And I can’t leave them by themselves. Perhaps Gerda could take the boys—”

His wife cut him off. “We’re not leaving without you, Mitti.”

“Sam,” Professor Mittelstein said, “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I am 73 and Ada is 72. I simply do not have the courage to leave and start a new life in America.” 

“It’s not about Mut, Professor,” Sam said. He paused, his memory triggered. 

“Do you remember our conversation on courage? I was all of 16, homesick, and believing I’d never last the school year here. I didn’t think I was brave enough. And you told me it wasn’t about courage, that courage was something bound by time, a fleeting thing that could come and go,” he said. “You used another word.”

“Standhaftigkeit,” Mitti said. “I remember.”

“That was it,” Sam said. “Standhaftigkeit meant steadfastness. And there was another word with it.”

“Belastbarkeit,” Professor Mittelstein said. It meant resilience.

“Yes,” Sam said. “You said Standhaftigkeit was about strength of character, steadfastness, and endurance. It was a quality that lasted, while courage was more momentary and could always fail. I was only a boy, but I understood what you meant. Professor, you and Mama Mittelstein have the Standhaftigkeit and Belastbarkeit to make a new life in America.”

The professor glanced at his wife. Ada was smiling and nodding.

“Well,” he finally said, “how would we go?”

“Tomorrow morning,” Sam said, “I’ll come with the American consul in two cars and the official travel documents. You’ll be under American protection. Each of you are allowed only two suitcases. Make sure you have your important papers—marriage license, birth certificates, registration papers, and your passports. Once we cross into France, we’ll likely rest a night in a hotel and then take the train to Paris. We’ll find a hotel there, and we’ll have a doctor see to Mitti’s injuries. Once he’s cleared to travel, we’ll go to Cherbourg for the boat to America. You can stay with Wolfie and Annaliese in New York, or I can take you to my home in Brookhaven, in Mississippi.”

No one spoke. The professor looked at his wife, then at Mitti, Gerda, and the boys.

“Standhaftigkeit, you say?” he said to the man he considered his American son.

“Yes,” Sam said. “And resilience, to make your new life in America.”

“Steadfastness it is, then.” The professor smiled. “And resilience.”

The featured image, “Autumn at Cheekwood,” is courtesy of Amelia Friedline and is used with her kind permission for Cultivating.

Glynn Young

Glynn Young wrote his first story when he was 10 – a really bad mystery having something to do with a door behind a grandfather clock and a secret cave. At 14, he discovered Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, but he secretly wanted to write James Bond stories. At 21, he became a Christian, and the verse he was given, Philippians 1:6, became the theme of his life.

He received a B.A. in Journalism from LSU and a Masters in Liberal Arts from Washington University in St. Louis. He spent his professional career in corporate public relations, and mostly executive speechwriting. Since 2011, he’s published five novels in the Dancing Priest series and the nonfiction book Poetry at Work. Since 2009, he’s been an editor for Tweetspeak Poetry, writing a weekly column. He and his wife Janet live in suburban St. Louis.

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