Es behaves strangely with this book. From this it can be learned that in the fall of 1945 a large number of journalists from all over the world gathered at Faber-Castell Palace in order to be reasonably comfortably accommodated during the Nuremberg trials. The city itself lay in ruins, the palace of justice, where the court convened by the victorious allied states held its sessions, had escaped the bombardment, but for such an illustrious band of reporters – Erika Mann, John Dos Passos, Martha Gellhorn, Willy Brandt , Rebecca West, Peter de Mendelssohn, to name just the most famous lodging guests today – there was no suitable accommodation in the neighborhood.
So the responsible American occupation authorities requisitioned the historical private castle of a family of pencil magnates in the vicinity of Nuremberg. But although the crème of international journalism met for years – the Nuremberg trials lasted until 1949 – there are hardly any photos of life there. As we know from the correspondence or memories of those involved, the press camp from Schloss Faber-Castell various jealousies, intrigues and also love affairs. The book tells of all this in words, only rarely in pictures.
The private is seldom political here
One of the exceptions is the photo of some of the castle residents printed above, which was taken in the Nuremberg courthouse on October 1, 1946, immediately after the verdict in the main war criminals trial. It shows Wes Gallagher, the American war reporter, sprinting away from his fellow competitors from the courtroom, because whoever got to the few available telephones and telexes first was able to send his report first and secured the scoop for his medium. The picture was taken by a photojournalist from AP, the news agency Gallagher worked for, and it’s more of a publicity shot than a period document. But the book doesn’t say that.
The cover of Uwe Neumahr’s book
:
Image: Publisher
As for its author Uwe Neumahr, media history is at a disadvantage compared to anecdotal literary history. This does not have to be a disadvantage, as one could see a year ago in Uwe Wittstock’s study “February 33”, which tells of the living conditions of German writers under the then newly established NS regime over a period of one month, whereby the private often turns out to be political proves. This is completely different with Neumahr, whose book is published by the same publisher and, as a description of the time after the end of Nazi rule, could be something of a chronological counterpart to Wittstock’s work. Personal affairs and whims dominate his descriptions, and little is known about their significance for post-war society. Not to mention that this worldwide hodgepodge of egocentrics was good for a history of mentality.
Which does not mean that the book is not read with pleasure or even without interest. Neumahr has – more as publications than from archives – collected a wealth of historical gossip, which sometimes also touches on deeper levels of politics and psychology. For example, in the case of the trial interpreter Wolfgang Hildesheimer, who was also housed in Faber-Castell Castle and, as a descendant of a Hamburg rabbi family who had survived the Shoah in Palestine, had to translate precisely in the so-called task force trial, i.e. the trial against the leading SS henchmen.
Neumahr draws a sensitive portrait of the young man, who at the time had no ambitions as a writer, but saw himself as a visual artist. Hildesheimer’s verdict on life in the castle was correspondingly aesthetically determined, which he described as “a terrible old thing”, “terribly tasteless, a mixture of art nouveau and rococo”. Similar characterizations of their domicile (“German Terrorism”) by other inmates would be suitable to enable an analysis of the perception of post-war Germany by the mostly foreign observers using the example of the castle. But Neumahr has also refrained from doing so, although he hints at this possibility.
Less hectic: the interior of the Faber-Castell Palace as it is today
:
Image: Maurice Weiss /Ostkreuz/Agency
German trial reporters had no right of residence in Faber-Castell Castle, regardless of whether they had been partisans of National Socialism, like Wilhelm Emanuel Süskind, or its enemies. The burnt poet and inner exile Erich Kästner was allowed to visit press camp come, but had to find quarters elsewhere. Markus Wolf, who later became East Germany’s head of espionage, therefore pretended to be Russian and got away with it. Willy Brandt correctly arrived as a Norwegian citizen, Erika Mann as an American. However, she caused discord in the castle; less because of her accredited life partner, the American journalist Betty Knox, than because Erika Mann protested against the living conditions in the “women’s house” where Knox and she were housed – a villa in the castle park, whose supply situation Mann complained about.
A strength of Neumahr’s book lies in the disproportionate consideration of female journalists. Precisely because there were so few of them, their circumstances are more interesting and say a lot about the virile atmosphere of a time still marked by war. However, Neumahr does not give an outlook on the later post-war period. As a result, his book avoids the judgment as to whether Faber-Castell Castle was the scene of a conclusion or a new beginning.
Uwe Neumahr: “The Castle of the Writers”. Nuremberg ’46 – meeting at the abyss. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2023. 304 p., ill., hardcover, €26.