When he was twenty-seven he made enough money as an employee, had his bride come over, and married her, after being engaged to her for seven years. Around age thirty he started his own business, the firm Propp & Winsber in Königsberg with a sawmill by the Memel River near Tilsit. In 1898 he filed for bankruptcy; he had raked up about 1.5 million Mark in debt; the settlement was made on a 30% basis. His self-confidence had hereby been broken and he saw it as beneath himself to be an agent. So he tried going back to being a businessman and in 1908 had to make another settlement over his debts on a 30% basis. In 1903 he had gotten sick at heart and kidneys; he died in 1908.
He was buried on April 19th, 1908. It was Easter Sunday. His casket was followed by a line of people the end of which was almost impossible to see. Even many years later, people’s voices would become warm and their eyes would become wet when they (often complete strangers) talked to me about him. My father was a naturally friendly, often funny man. I never saw him read a book, but he always had a joke ready. He was of middle height, skinny, always well dressed and handsome.
My mother, your grandma, was born in Tauroggen in 1860. She met my father at a wedding; they were both still kids and waited for one another for years. My mother belonged to a renowned family, who owned a tannery. Her brothers were staunchly opposed to her marrying my father, who owned nothing and came from a working-class family.
They had four children, two brothers and a sister of mine. My mother was neither funny nor beautiful nor friendly. She saved every penny she could, didn’t need anything for herself and only lived for her husband and her children. In times when my father was unable to fulfill his obligations and had plenty of creditors, she would shame herself to death and withdraw herself with the kids to remote parks or to popular excursion places far away from town. She never wore jewelry and kept all the gifts that my father gave her in a drawer, so she could pay for school and rent in bad times.
She died at age fifty-nine; her casket was followed only by a handful of people.
I recall a strange conversation I once had with her. A few weeks before she died unexpectedly I asked her about my father. She said, “If God gave me the chance to get my Max back, but I had to give Him my four children instead, I would not hesitate for a second but say to Him: ‘Give me my Max back.’” At that time, my father had already been dead for eleven years.
My parents’ house was unadorned – not warm, not cold. Father had trouble making enough money for us all; Mom had trouble dressing and feeding her kids and keeping the house clean.
That household was full of duties: school during the day and then homework, then food, drink, and sleep; once in a while a book from the school library. Very rarely theatre, high up in the gallery – exactly three times while my parents were alive. I wore my older brothers’ used clothes and went to school with their old books; only my shoes were new, because my feet were too big. The food was simple; one orange got cut into six pieces, one for each of the six mouths. Fruit soups that we had gotten for lunch showed up again at dinnertime, with more water in them. I once received from my dad as a present a rubber head of the Italian King Hubert and an ink ball with holes for a pen, a pencil and a knife, and another time three Mark, when I was in Cranz. The presents I got from Mom were a knife for my ninth birthday—I can still clearly see the color of the enamel— and also a small bar of chocolate on each of my birthdays. My father never sent me a letter or a postcard when he was traveling; my mother sent me a few with receipts and exhortations.
I can’t remember us ever talking about politics, books, or business.
The house was very clean. Lene, my sister, at age fifteen once told a joke she had heard in school that was rather spicy. I still remember how everybody at the table laid down their cutlery in horror and Lene sprang up crying and left the room. We siblings did not have intimate relationships with each other or our parents. Each of us went his or her own way, however, we didn’t miss the warmth. This was the way of life of those days, and warmth was seen as un-German, as effeminate. I can’t remember Dad or Mom ever kissing me; Mom didn’t do so even when I went to war. “Do your duty!” she said to us boys, and didn’t even accompany us to the train station.
This all, however, was on the exterior more than anything else. Inwardly, Mom and Dad lived wonderfully with one another, even though no tenderness was ever shown in front of the kids, and their children were the center of their lives.
Nonetheless, life was dull, cold, punctuated by duties, and monotonous; there were no flowers, no fairy tales, no music, or fantasy, or tenderness. It wasn’t a Jewish home, either. Our life was that of a typical German middle-class family – unadorned, unexciting, but well ordered.