SEARCHING FOR THE BLUE ANGEL
Under the Brandenburg Gate I walk in pursuit of The Blue Angel. Yes, the seedy nightclub where over sixty years ago Jannings and Dietrich played their famous parts. Already I have searched for it throughout what was once called West Berlin–along the stylish Ku’damm, whose outrageously priced shops flaunt a naughty elegance; in the bars and sex shops of the Kreuzberg, including the world renowned Erotika Museum; along Fasanenstrasse, the street that contains Berlin’s finest art galleries, as well as the Kathe Kollwitz museum, and the Judische Geimeindehaus (Community Center) into whose stark facade the cupola and two slender pillars from the synagogue that stood on that spot until Kristallnacht have been cleverly incorporated.
Perhaps I am not searching for a place at all, perhaps I am searching for the voice of my late mother. Berlin, of all places. But for some reason–I’m not certain if she ever saw the movie– my mother often sang in English her version of Marlene Dietrich singing “Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss” (“Falling in Love Again”) in the movie’s most famous scene. Marlene in her top-hat, kicking up her heels so not an inch of her shapely legs would be lost. Mother tossing her head back, a dreamy yet coquettish expression on her face, her body swaying in a vaguely sensual manner in front of an art-deco mirror in our foyer. The mirror was edged with wheat sheaves.
Or I am searching for the dead Marlene Dietrich?
Or for my occasional German lover, Joachim, who first lured me to Berlin, but has now returned to his home in Aachen or Heidelberg or Nuremberg, wherever.
Or for a real blue angel, aloft above the city, blue wings beating gently, a sapphire halo around her light blue hair.
In recent years I’ve replaced purple with blue as my favorite color, I don’t know why. Perhaps because blue is deeper– a less flashy, though also less magical color.
The blue angel is NOT Unter den Linden. Nor in the Pergamon Museum though I momentarily imagined one woven into one of its oriental carpets. Joachim disagreed; he said it was a Valkyrie, and he should know. Nor anywhere in the Prenzlauer district, once the elegant old Jewish ghetto, now the new Jewish ghetto populated mainly by refugees from the former Soviet Union.
Hungry, I enter a kosher cafe on Oranienburgstrasse, not far from the restored main synagogue of Berlin. On the door sign there is a small blue Star of David though at the moment, to be honest, it is my hunger that entices me into the place not the color blue, nor even the strangeness of finding a kosher restaurant in Berlin.
Josef von Sternberg, the director of The Blue Angel, is sitting at the next table. A little runt of a man with sunken cherry pit eyes, a sour expression. I must not bombard him with too many direct questions. If I remain cool and subtle perhaps he can help me find the Blue Angel. He is eating what appear to be blintzes. When I ask him if they are good, he answers in a New York accent glazed, like a stale frosted cake, with the harsh legacy of the childhood he had spent in the slums of Vienna.
“Is it true you didn’t want Marlene Dietrich to play Lola? That you really wanted Garbo or Lucie Mannheim–but she was too cultured too play a mere tart— or the latest rage of the Berlin stage, Trude Hesterberg? That you thought Marlene was a common tramp and had no acting ability? That she was too German for your Viennese tastes? That you quickly seduced her in a most cruel and rapacious manner and insisted upon doing so repeatedly throughout the filming of Der Blaue Engel? That you were jealous of von Stroheim? That the von in your name was only an affectation, partly to disguise your Jewishness? That Emil Jannings often fell asleep on the set? That you insisted upon radically changing Heinrich Mann’s novel, the original inspiration for the movie? That it had political overtones dangerous in Germany even in 1930? So you returned to America before the film even opened in Berlin?”
All he would talk about was Marlene’s try-out for the part. Her amazing legs, the object of his lubricious gaze when he watched her acting a minor part in Twei Kravaten, especially when a wind machine hoisted her loose skirt up above her waist. The way she sidled up to the piano at her audition, wearing a tight sequined dress and first sang a song popular with the Berlin demi-monde, a line of which went, “Why get upset when an affair comes to an end. . .?” How he ordered her to sit on the piano after rolling down a stocking. How she sang in her gutteral, yet subtle voice a few lines from a Broadway musical, “You’re the Cream in my Coffee. . .” followed by another silly American song, with words like “Mammy’s little baby loves shortnin’, shortnin’/ Mammy’s little baby loves shortnin’ bread. . .” : to the utter bafflement of Friedrich Hollander, pianist and composer of the songs later used in The Blue Angel).
My mother used to sing that song, too–when I was very young. Sang in a voice far more melodious than Sternberg’s nasal, almost parodic whine. I thank von Sternberg for the rendition, then leave without finishing my overly sweet blintzes, which are nearly drowned mit schlag.
A shabby old man wearing spectacles so thick they obscure his eyes offers to show me a secret place under the Tiergarten. It was discovered by workmen breaking ground for the Berlin Holocaust Memorial, which may or may not be built. No, he assures me. He is not talking about Goebbel’s bunker, itself recently excavated by workmen engaged in the same project. What he wishes to show me is Marlene’s dressing room, the very one she used when filming “The Blue Angel.” But he cautions me to keep the place a secret because many people in Germany, especially Berliners, have still not forgiven Marlene (“that blond hussy”) for not only abandoning the fatherland but supporting the Allies. Indeed, when Dietrich visited Berlin in 1960, she was booed as a traitor and to this day debate continues about whether she deserves to have a street named for her. Much like the ongoing debate about the Holocaust Memorial–occasionally arousing a more overt fury than anyone would chance to express about the latter these days.
At first the residue of smoke and perfume makes me wheeze. Mind if I empty the ashtrays? The man is gone, I realize. Just like Joachim, who has left Berlin, left me alone in Berlin, to return to his home in Mannheim. Or is he from Stuttgart? How could he possibly realize what it means for a Jew of my generation to visit Berlin? Of course, I took him up on his invitation without a moment’s hesitation so I’ve only myself to blame. If blame is at all relevant. I empty nine ashtrays, each overflowing with lipstick-stained cigarette butts, empty them into a what appears to be a hatbox. Odd combination of order and nonchalance, a Prussian sterility and a quasi-Parisian lushness; two dozen identical pairs of sequined gold shoes with ice-pick heels lined along the right wall; likewise, dozens of lipsticks, all lined up on a dressing table as if they were soldiers… All of them bright red, like Revlon’s Cherries in the Snow or Fire and Ice, both daringly high fashion when I was in my teens. Ah yes, there’s the hat itself, the silk-lined top hat Marlene–or should I say Lola?–wore in my favorite scene. Without hesitation I place it on my head, look at myself in the heart-shaped mirror.
Ich bin die fesche Lola!!!! Suddenly I realize I am in an abandoned lavatory, perhaps once used as part of a bomb shelter during the War. What I took for Marlene’s silk-lined top hat was a black trash basket filled with lipstick-smeared bits of rough paper, even a few rags covered with woman- blood that had turned black and crusty. The shoes lined against the wall? Not the least bit rakish or elegant; more like the scuffed children’s shoes I had seen exhibited at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.
Why did my mother love that song so much? Marlene’s best known song from the movie: “ Falling in love again/ I never wanted to/ Caan’t help it. . .” Spicing it with a very slight German accent, swaying in front of the art-deco mirror in the Brooklyn bedroom, its wheat-edged border. If only I myself could fall in love these days! Just one more time and I’d be glad to call it quits. That’s a promise.
I am afraid to ask directions to any of Berlin’s Jewish sights, or should I say sites…Afraid of what? So what if they curse me, what else could anyone possibly do now that it’s 1998?
Yet I’m afraid. I must rely on my crumpled map, my severely compromised reading vision. Even though every Jewish site is guarded by special police. . .there are no swastikas visible now in Berlin. If only I could find the blue angel–
So much graffiti on the crumbling buildings: I must be in what’s still called East Berlin. You’d think they’d have cleaned up the place by now. Yet on my way to visit the restored Neue Synagogue, once the largest and most opulent synagogue in Germany, I also pass a few chic art studios and boutiques selling exotic outfits of the sort one finds in the shop windows of New York’s Tribeca or well off the Champs-Elysees. Gold-domed, somewhat Byzantine looking, the Synagogue has indeed been skillfully restored or should I say rebuilt, or more accurate still, built as if it were the l9th century and German Jewry was in full flower. Wealthy, accomplished families; their doctors, writers, businessmen, scholars buried under the extravagantly carved stones in what remains of Berlin’s old Jewish cemetery, Der Judische Friedhof. Scarcely a tile remains from the original building. An exhibit of documents attesting to Jewish involvement on the side of Germany in the First World War makes me sad. No, I am not going to find the blue angel here. Even if she is, as I sometimes suspect, the angel of death.
Yes, I’m aware I’m using lower case letters. The blue angel, not The Blue Angel. As if the movie set were secondary to its music and whatever angels could possibly mean to a middle-aged Jewish woman. If only I could meet Rainer Maria Rilke! “Wer, wenn ich shriee, horte mich denn aus der Engel/ Ordnungen. . .?” (Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’ hierarchies. . .”) In the same poem, the first of the Duino Elegies, doesn’t he also claim that “Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich”? (Every Angel is terrifying). So perhaps I am taking my mission too lightly, concealing its true intent with a slap-dash semi-surrealistic humor, insisting my wish is to find the tawdry nightclub where Marlene sang her famous song and the hapless Professor Unrath (German for crap) went mad, when really what I wish to find is my late mother. . .not that she was in any way angelic when alive. How horrified she would be if she knew I was visiting Berlin, Nazi Berlin in her eyes, no matter how many years had passed since the War. Joachim would also upset her: my occasional German lover, a man I have met but four or five times but whom I elevate to a very special place in my inner hierarchy–of people, not angels.
Why did my mother love that song so much? Despite her insistence that my father was the only man she ever loved, why did she pose in front of that mirror, swaying her body, thrusting forward her ample bosom, ,dancing slowly while she sang in English, “Falling in love again. . .”
A faraway dreamy expression on her face. With special gusto she would sing the line, “Men cluster round me like moths around a flame.. .” Was she perhaps chiding me–never a magnet for men, except for a few losers and the bastard I married so I could escape from my mother’s constant put-downs, only to discover he was a clone for my mother, if anything capable of far more jealousy and downright evil than she could ever fathom? For semi-mad as she was, especially in her later years, my mother, I firmly believe, was never a deliberately cruel person. What appeared to be cruelty was really only an expression of her desperation, her disappointment in herself, how she let her enormous load of fears crush her artistic and literary talents and force her into such complete dependence on my father she never had her own key to the door of their house. And, of course, she was jealous of my achievements, minor though they were and are, despite my failure to inherit her beauty.
Now that I know I must soon leave Berlin, I find myself wandering mapless through all sections of the city: Grunewald, Kreuzberg, Schoenberg, back and forth along the chic Kurfurstendamm. Though the place makes me uneasy, I keep entering the gleaming Kanstler Cafe, the first place in the city to post a sign JUDEN VERBOTEN. Once its cellar was the site of secret Nazi meetings and the place is still visited by the fur-wrapped widows of the S.S. They gather each afternoon, I am told, to drink coffee and eat plum tarts swirled with thick whipped cream. I even take a quick tour of the castle in Charlottenburg, hoping there might be the representation of an angel somewhere in its intricate decor. No luck. And I visit the fashionable, once Jewish-owned department store, KaDeWe, walking slowly past its displays of richly decorated cakes, vintage wines, designer dresses, delicate Rosenthal china as well as Lalique figurines that cost more than my plane ticket. When Joachim first introduced me to this store, he bought himself a fancy men’s cologne, asking first for my approval of its fragrance. What do I know about men’s fragrances? Of course, I nodded my hearty approval. Is he wearing that cologne now back home in Dresden or Leipzig or Frankfurt, wherever he might at this moment be making love to some young blonde woman? Capricious though he might be, I enjoy his occasional company, especially how his mellow voice sings that song. . . in German, of course. “Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss. . .”
In my head I can hear him harmonizing with my late mother, though each sings in a different language. Come to think of it, wasn’t the movie produced in both German and English? Wunderbar. Wie glucklich! Wie schon! But what about me? I am determined to find the real blue angel, if it means I must walk the streets of Berlin for the rest of my days.
Back to Oranienburgstrasse, heart of the once elegant Jewish neighborhood which now is home to thousands of shabby Jewish refugees from the former Soviet Union. Entering the same kosher restaurant where I met von Sternberg, I start a conversation with a plump, kind-faced woman drinking tea from a thick glass. She is wearing an old, obviously hand-knit sweater. Her English is poor, her German worse than mine, and I’ve forgotten most of what I once knew of Russian. She begins to speak in Yiddish after apologizing that she recalls little of that language, only a few words spoken by her long dead grandparents. I answer in a mixture of tongues that my own knowledge of Yiddish is about the same. Somehow we manage to communicate, some German words, a few Russian words, some Yiddish, a bit of English, even a touch of French. She is from Kiev via Krakow and glad to be in Germany. Of course, America would be better. But it’s nearly impossible to get an American visa these days. Her entire family was killed during the War, either by Hitler or Stalin. Her father and her beautiful mother both gassed in the camps; her beautiful sister frozen to death in the woods outside of Lvov; her brother and cousins killed in Stalin’s army; her husband shot dead in front of her eyes. Somewhere in the world she has a daughter who escaped from Kiev by marrying a French sailor; she has not heard from Anna, her daughter, for twenty years.
I ask her if she knows anything about blue angels. She laughs, asks me why I would be searching for a blue angel when I myself was that very creature? “See? I will make some wings for you,” she says, tearing into strips a large napkin which she insists upon attaching to the back of my coat with safety pins. I suddenly realize everything I’m wearing is blue. After we finish our tea, the woman turns to me and says softly in a combination of tongues, “It is time for you to go. Du muss zuruck nach Amerika gehen. “ After a moment of hesitation, she adds, “And be careful with your –how you say?–hallow. “Halo?” “Yes, my English is so bad. You don’t want to tear your hello. Or make it dirty.” She looks directly at me and says, “I wish only that you would do with me one thing, meine blaue Engel. . Come with me to the old Jewish cemetery, the Judische Friedhof. Many famous Jews are buried there but I am afraid to go alone.”
Of course. We walk to the cemetery despite a thudding rain. The woman points to a gravestone decorated with carved pineapples and flowers, the head of a lion. “Meine Mutter,” she says. Oh? Hadn’t she told me her mother had died in one of the camps? Nothing but ashes. Ashes in some black Polish lake or what might now be a pasture, even a garden. My own mother, too, only ashes now, somewhere off the Gulf Coast of Florida. Certainly the woman’s mother cannot be buried under an elaborately carved stone in Berlin’s old Jewish cemetery.
I say nothing. After we stand silently for several minutes in the now almost solid rain, the woman smiles slightly, says she’s decided that’s where her mother would be– if only so many terrible things had not happened in the world. But now everything was different. Peace, joy, a rebirth of the spirit in this most generous of countries. “Wiedersehen, meine blaue Engel. And don’t forget your halloo. Now you can do whatever angels do. Myself I am too old. I will go back and sip more hot tea from a thick glass. Maybe sometime I will make myself learn again to knit.” She disappears into the rain.
Yes, I will rise slowly above the city, a Jewish blue angel, fly above the Brandenburg Gate, the Neue Synagogue, the Tiergarten, above the banks of the Spree, over the dome of the Charlottenburg Schloss. But I realize my feet are stuck in the cemetery’s thick mud. I can barely walk, let alone fly. In the distance I hear Joachim and my late mother harmonizing, part in English, part in German: “Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss.. . . Caaa’nt help it.”
Is it necessary, I wonder, for angels to fly?