Hermann's tragic death in Marienbad—what we know and don't know

Hermann's tragic death in Marienbad—what we know and don't know

• Aug 12, 2021
• 1 Comment

A few interesting points about the recent Marienbad posting. The way I remember Helga telling the story of Hermann's fatal trip to Marienbad, he made the trip to fool the Gestapo official who kept track of his doings that he was going about his usual routine--which included annual visits to Marienbad--and not planning to flee Germany that very year with Elly and Helga as he in fact was doing.

I remembered Helga telling the story as though he went to Marienbad alone that year and not with Elly, but she must have said in our last interview a few months before she died in April 2005 that Elly went with him on that fatal last trip. We don't know whether Hermann died in Marienbad or whether they brought him back to a hospital in Berlin in a vain attempt to save him. Given the ever-growing intensity of anti-Semitism in Germany, he might have decided he would get better medical treatment in still democratic Czechoslovakia in early 1938.

As we know, Hermann was the family patriarch who took care of all aspects of both business and family life. So how Elly somehow managed to pull it together and get herself and Helga out of Germany even after the betrayal and theft by the junior partner--feels like something of a miracle and leaves me in awe of her courage, strength and resourcefulness at a terrible moment.