Schramberg 1938

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Germany 1937, the Goering stories

Germany 1937

Schramberg 1938

Germany 1938

Germany and Prague 1938

Germany 1939

Schramberg 1938

When one wishes to join anybody already sitting at a cafe table on the Continent, there are certain formalities to be observed. In Vienna it used to be very complicated, but at Schramberg in the Black Forest, when an English friend and I were looking for a seat among the tables on the terrace of a cafe, I adopted the minimum of protocol necessary. Two ladies and a girl of about twelve years of age were my victims. I raised my hat, a very slight bow, grabbed the back of an empty chair and one of the ladies nodded and we sat down. My friend, whose German was almost non-existant, insisted in giving our order to the waiter and his efforts although successful caused polite smiles from the ladies. A portion of coffee each and a pastry for me were duly delivered and it is necessary to add at this point that a portion of coffee, as opposed to a cup, consists of a cup and saucer, a can of coffee, a tiny jug of cream and a glass of ice cold water.

Looking around me, I decided that the ladies were pretty, well educated, very well dressed and from the shopping baskets standing on the ground, that they were on their way home. From their conversation I gathered that one was the wife of a lawyer and the mother of the girl was the daughter of a judge. They in turn could logically have deduced that they had been joined by two respectable foreign tourists, who spoke no German.

Having finished his coffee, my friend opened a bag of delicious plums which he had just bought in the marketplace and for which he had been drooling ever since. In fact, he did not want any coffee, but simply somewhere to sit and eat his plums. He ate about six, putting the stones in his coffee cup saucer, as politely as one can carry out such a necessary action. I remember my friend putting his hand down to pick up the glass of water and my eyes turned to the young girl's face. Her face froze in horror and she shreaked and grabbed at her mother's arm. Without a moment's hesitation the mother leant across the table and knocked the glass from my friend's hand and lips. It smashed on the gravel five yards away. The silence that ensued was noticeable but probably very short, broken by my asking in impeccable colloquial German what was going on. Her daughter had noticed that my friend was going to drink water after eating some plums and everyone knew that was fatal.

Ever since that day I have asked every medical man I have met, professionally or socially, for an explanation of that lady's action and have received answers varying from an incredible smirk to plain "Rubbish", at the most a mumbled alchemical diagnosis of colic.

Yet, if you take the trouble to go to one of those shops in Soho which sell foreign newspapers and buy a copy of the Schwarzwalder Nachrichten or any local newspaper covering the area between Freudenstadt and Freiburg and it is dated the last fortnight of August or the first fortnight of September, you will find a little snippet of news which runs something like this:-

"Heinrich ........, aged six, died yesterday in the hospital here from drinking water after eating stone fruit."