sings Albert.
He loves his father’s gaiety.
Aged twelve he likes to hold forth on religion and culture at home.
His father delights in introducing Albert.
‘I have the honour to ask Professor Einstein to address the family on a subject of his choice.’
‘Thank you. Today the subject of my lecture is Ashkenazic or Ashkenazim Jews, with some modest proposals.’
The family applaud.
‘As we all know, we are Ashkenazi Jews. The Ashkenazim came together as a distinct community of Jews in the Holy Roman Empire towards the end of the first millennium. According to Halakha, Shabbat is observed from a few minutes before sunset on Friday evening until the appearance of three stars in the sky on Saturday. The lighting of candles and the recitation of a blessing usher Shabbat in. The evening meal typically begins with our blessing, kiddush, proclaimed over two loaves of challah. Shabbat is closed the following evening with a Havdalah. On Shabbat we are free from the regular labours of life. We contemplate life’s spirituality. We spend time with the family.
‘I now turn to diet. My proposal is that we don’t eat pork. Rather, matzo ball soup and pasta filled with chopped meat floating in broth, or corned beef with fried potato latkes, and slices of noodles mixed with dried fruit, fat and sugar.’
He suddenly falls silent.
‘And?’ says his mother.
‘As we all know, we are Ashkenazi Jews. The Ashkenazim came together as a distinct community of Jews in the Holy Roman Empire towards the end of the first millennium.’
‘Albert?’ says his mother.
‘Please don’t interrupt, Mama.’
‘But you’ve already said that.’
‘It’s the truth.’
‘I cannot take this seriously,’ says his mother.
‘Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.’
‘I think we’ve heard enough,’ she says.
I will never be understood, he tells himself.
‘Algebra,’ says Uncle Jakob, ‘is the calculus of indolence. If you don’t know a certain quantity, you call it x and treat it as if you do know it, then you put down the relationship given, and determine this x later.’
Uncle Jakob shows him the Pythagorean theorem and Albert hurls himself into solving it. It takes him only twenty-one days to reach the correct proof using his intellect and nothing else.
He sees the similarity of triangles by drawing a perpendicular from one vertex of the right-angled triangle onto the hypotenuse and leads to the proof he desperately seeks.
‘There is no exclusively Jewish school in Munich,’ Hermann tells his son. ‘You will enter the Volksschule Petersschule on Blumenstrasse.’
‘A nearby Catholic elementary school,’ says Pauline.
‘Not Jewish?’ says Albert.
‘Catholic,’ says Pauline.
‘Is this good news?’ says Albert.
‘It isn’t bad news,’ says Pauline.
Hermann keeps his own counsel.
Albert buries his head in Struwwelpeter. And memorises it.
Just look at him! there he stands,
With his nasty hair and hands.
See! his nails are never cut;
They are grimed as black as soot;
And the sloven, I declare,
Never once has combed his hair;
Anything to me is sweeter
Than to see Shock-headed Peter.
At first there’s good news.
Pauline writes to her mother: ‘Yesterday Albert got his school marks. He is at the top of his class and got a brilliant record.’ And this is in spite of the ministrations of his teacher who teaches multiplication tables by beating the children whenever they make mistakes. Albert loathes the strict enforcement of obedience and discipline.
Nothing seems to deter him from mocking his conceited fellow pupils and self-opinionated teachers.
Of all his teachers, Albert gets on best with the instructor of religion. The teacher likes Albert. In this department all goes well until the teacher shows the children a large nail. He solemnly announces: ‘This is the nail the Jews used to nail Jesus to the cross.’
The teacher’s demonstration inflames the pupils’ simmering anti-Semitism, which is at once directed straight at Albert.
They call him Honest John, lover of truth and justice. He counters the taunts with a twist of the mouth, a look of sarcasm, and sticks out his quivering lower lip. He learns, like many bullied schoolchildren then and now: the oxygen of schools, like society, is poisoned by power, perverted authority and fear – above all fear. The antidote is silence. Like his father, he learns to keep his own counsel.
The leader of the Jew-baiters spits at Albert.
‘You are ostracised. You will not be talked to. You no longer exist. You are completely invisible and inaudible. Read Heinrich von Treitschke: “Die Juden sind unser Unglück! The Jews are our misfortune! The Jews are no longer necessary. The international Jew, hidden in the masks of different nationalities, is a disintegrating influence; he can be of no further use to the world.” Neither are you. Schmutzige Internationale Jude. Dirty international Jew.’
Albert turns white. His hands shake. He feels the muscles tighten in his chest. Staring at his fellow pupils he sees all of them have turned their backs to him.
He hears himself say: ‘There’s scarcely a country in the world that doesn’t have a Jewish segment in the population. Wherever Jews reside, they’re a minority of the population, and a small minority at that, so they aren’t powerful enough to defend themselves against attack. It’s easy for governments to divert attention from their own mistakes by blaming Jews for this or that political theory, such as communism or socialism. Throughout history, Jews have been accused of all sorts of treachery, such as poisoning water wells or murdering children as religious sacrifices. Much of this can be attributed to jealousy, because, despite the fact that Jewish people have always been thinly populated in various countries, they have always had a disproportionate number of outstanding public figures.’
The chant rises: ‘Müll. Juden sind Perversen! Müll. Juden sind Perversen!’
The other pupils beat their desks. ‘Müll. Juden sind Perversen! Müll. Juden sind Perversen!’
The schoolroom door opens.
‘Was ist hier los?’ [What’s going on here?] the teacher yells above the din.
Albert pushes past him out of the Volksschule Petersschule.
He vows to be decisive. To take strength from the family. He hurries home, his dark felt hat covering his dark hair, walking fast as if in flight, with darting brown eyes and watchful, flickering stare. Singing Struwwelpeter to a tune of his own composition
HERE ARE MY FELLOW PUPILS AT THE LUITPOLDGYMNASIUM
I AM THIRD FROM THE RIGHT IN THE FRONT ROW
The year 1888 sees the founding of the National Geographic Society in the United States and the publication of Conan Doyle’s Valley of Fear in the United Kingdom. In Braunau, 124 kilometres from Munich, Klara Hitler falls