Blood and Honor: A Mother's Heritage, A Daughter's Revenge

By Dianne Post

War hysteria, spying, and blackmail smack up against the courage, ambition and pride of three generations of mid-western women for a fast paced tale of action, honor and family.

Grete, a newspaper publisher in 1918, faces the violent, anti-German sentiment of World War I and, with lessons for today, publishes her paper in German in spite of an English-only law.

Her daughter, Trude, reaches adulthood in World War II during increasing revelations of Hitler's atrocities in Europe. She rejects all things German and engages in counter espionage for the U.S. but entangles herself.

Her daughter, Darian, becomes an investigative reporter and uncovers the rat line and the presence of Nazi war criminals in the U.S., but also learns a secret.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781939614285

Book preview

978-1-9396-1428-5

Grete

Chapter 1

Everywhere there was beer. Deep, rich, brown beer. Beer you could smell long before you lifted it off the table. Beer that smacked into your mouth waking up the most jaded taste buds. Beer that settled into your stomach with a thud and then rippled out its warming rays. Good beer. German beer.

The plump, juicy sausages sizzled in huge cast-iron skillets, the tangy smell of sauerkraut drifted through the crowd, and hot German potato salad sent gusts of steam like little geysers into the pale-blue sky. Grete’s hand-stenciled sign, Die Deutsche Zeitung, (The German News) filled a white sheet in red and blue four-foot letters that flapped in the stifling breeze against the old two-story, red-brick building. Hilda, Grete’s mother, scurried after her just as she had as a child. We need more deviled eggs, dear. The ice in the tubs is getting low. Grete ignored the urgings until her mother did the task herself. Deviled eggs be damned. Open house at the newspaper called for celebration and celebrate she would regardless of the talk of war. Here’s a coupon for the first edition – a free trial. Once you read it, you’ll never stop. Grete swooped from person to person handing out coupons to everyone who was old enough to read.

All the Germans from the East Side had gathered as much to eat the food and drink the beer as to offer congratulations on the paper. Even some of the fighting Irish from the West side showed up for the free beer. Grete walked up to the leader when he arrived and invited him to a prominent spot at a conspicuous table. Her smile hid their mutual antagonism, but it was the Fourth of July 1917, and Grete hoped they could all celebrate the independence of their adopted country together without ethnic tension and the looming threat from war.

As Herr Braun struck up his accordion, Heinz intercepted Grete with her bundles of coupons and waltzed her away on the uneven plank road, the longest in the state. From there, Grete could survey the area and check on the guests. She glanced at her parents now seated in the shade of the canopy. I hope they are satisfied. They never believed Heinz could do it. We showed them. Several men grouped in a recessed doorway in an effort to stay out of the afternoon sun. As Grete circled on Heinz’ arm past the laughing, noisy crowd, she whirled past snatches of conversation. But the Kaiser has a right to defend the country. Wilson promised not to go to war. My family still lives in the Ruhr. Germans have to defend themselves against the Russians. At the mention of the war, a frown flashed across Grete’s face before she pasted a smile on again.

On one side of the doorway, children pushed and shoved to get a glimpse of the new printing press framed by the window. Grete noticed her daughter, four-year-old Trude, balanced on the ledge pointing out this machine and that, babbling as if she understood how they worked. On the other side of the doorway, five of Grete’s friends had gathered in front of the window that extended from ceiling to wainscoting and fanned themselves with the free newspaper while they peered in at the desk with its rows of pigeonholes and the new fangled telephone. Precisely at five, Grete would open the doors to give the tour and point out the stencil on that window, Heinz and Grete Kirche, Editors and Publishers.

In front on Market Street, people gathered three rows deep around the several kegs of beer. Wooden horses sealed off the street, and the party spread from one end of the block around the corner. On Second Street, even more people, mostly children and women, clustered around the food trying to stay close to the pungent sausages but away from the heat of the old potbellied stove Grete and Heinz had dragged out and fired up for the occasion.

Heinz waltzed her over to the group of ladies at the window as the music changed to a German march. As if on cue, the men, especially the young ones, put down their beers and stomped in rhythm, four abreast, around the center clearing.

Twitching her head like a chicken pecking for bugs, Marie, Herr Meyer’s wife, frowned. I don’t like this marching. You know how it gets them wound up.

Frau Schmidt, the good minister’s wife, round as a Cross Bun, jiggled as she laughed. You worry too much. Let them have fun. She rolled her eyes behind Marie’s back at their own Cassandra.

The men marched past, voices melodious in song, like a bunch of schoolboys out on a holiday. If it stayed fun. But this is 1917. Surely you read the papers. Grete’s papers. Marie waved her makeshift fan in Grete’s face. "You know what’s going on in Germany, and it’s too easy to get carried away with Das Vaterland (The Fatherland). This is not Germany; it’s America."

But Marie, we have a right to be proud of our heritage even if we choose to live here. It’s not impossible to love your country and your heritage at the same time.

Something bad will happen. She pointed and shook her bony finger, Mark my words.

You’re just superstitious, that’s all. I’m going to try that beer. Olga shuffled away and others followed leaving Grete and Marie alone.

I’d like to have one day when we aren’t talking about war. Can you give me that? On the day of my grand opening? Two years we’ve been struggling in our damp and cold basement. Can you give me one day to brag about our new office and the best German newspaper in Watertown, Wisconsin.

All right. I’ll not mention it again, but--

Grete put her hand up. No but. The march changed to a polka. Let’s go dance. The women, including Grete and Marie, flooded onto the temporary dance floor. Grete saw by the set of Marie's jaw that the earlier conversation had stung her. Marie, people just don’t want to hear that scary talk all the time.

Nobody wants to face up to it. But that won’t stop it from coming. No good can come of this marching. You know our parents fled to America after the failure of the Revolution in 1848. They came for freedom and opportunity not to fight. We have enough problems with the Irish and the English. This will just anger them more.

I don’t want to fight either. I’d like to raise my daughter in the same peace that I was raised in. Grete glanced around. The Irish from the West side left after the marching started. It’s just as well the Irish left. They always want to fight. But the English. Do you know what they did?

Marie shook her head.

"I wanted to have this open house on Sunday. I figured more folks could come that way.

But no. Grete straightened up and became taller as if she had climbed on a soapbox. I couldn’t have it on Sunday because Sunday had to be quiet. Like the English. Sokla daminscke bubliska kluck I say to that. The English aren’t quiet. They’re dead. They don’t like our singing and dancing because it might disturb their prayers. Well, I think God meant for us to have fun. Didn’t he say rejoice?"

"What does it mean Sokla daminscke bubliska kluck? "

Grete shrugged. I don’t know. I learned it from my granddad. When he was swearing. The women laughed.

So why did you have it on Thursday instead of Saturday?

Grete grabbed Marie's shoulders and shook her a little. Aha! That’s the sweetness of it, don’t you see? I'll get them, I said, she pointed a finger at Marie’s chest, as high as she could reach. I’ll get all the people here on July Fourth, and their little celebration in Concordia Island will be bare.

Surveying the scene around her, Grete guessed a goodly portion of Watertown’s citizens had joined her celebration. The staggering expense would take months to pay, but friends helped with homemade beer and contributions of sausages, potato salad and bread. Though her parents never approved of her husband or her career, grudgingly, they donated a sizeable amount. Even so, Grete, normally so frugal that she could make a penny squeak as her father always said, dreaded looking at the books the next day. But for the opening of the newspaper, the proudest moment of her life and the height of her achievement, she would spare no expense.

Do you have fireworks too?

Not quite, but if Trude doesn’t get her filthy self away from that food and down off that table there will be.

Marie turned her head to follow Grete’s gaze. Trude had just about reached her goal, a plate of gingerbread cookies. Her little blonde head whipped around at the sound of her mother’s voice, but her chubby little fingers kept moving on their mission to grab a handful of cookies.

Get off that table, now, Grete stomped, arms akimbo, toward Trude. Stuffing one cookie into her mouth and with her hands full, Trude leaped off the other side of the table just as her mother’s short, powerful arm swept in for a smack on the butt. Trude scurried off to join a group of children as Grete, faking anger, threatened a chase. You know I taught her the alphabet by letting her play with the linotype letters, and already she can speak English and German.

When she gets to school, she’ll only be speaking English.

I know that, but I’m not going to let her forget her German heritage.

That might be the very thing that gets her in trouble. Marie started to shake her bony finger at Grete but she just swept an arm through the air in dismissal and walked away.

By the time the sun dipped below the trees in the western sky, Grete felt the spirit of Gemüetlichkeit, a password for the town itself, settle over the remnants of the crowd. The town prided itself on being comfortable for the German citizens who had settled halfway between Wisconsin’s two major cites, Madison and Milwaukee. The area reminded them of their native land, and Germans made up half its population.

As the strains of a Hermonn Löns melody slowly drifted through the air, the now welcome sounds of Auf Wiedersehen (goodbye) joined in. The last to leave would be a toss-up between the clergyman and the shoemaker. The clergyman, Herr Geistlicher Schmidt and his wife Olga, always waited until the food disappeared, but the lanky shoemaker, Hans Meyer stood like a parenthesis over the keg of beer. His wife Marie usually caused him to lose the bet by dragging him away. She did so this night, her peaked nose twitching from the strain. Hans felt no strain by this time, but his head would be pounding the next day at the Beals-Pratt Shoe Manufacturing Company making the Goodyear Welt field boots.

Face shiny with sausage grease, Herr Schmidt, with Olga in tow, promenaded up to Grete and Heinz who were folding and carrying tables. A little thank you to the Lord for the day’s bounty?

Grete wanted nothing more than to get the last vestiges of the celebration put away and her daughter, her husband and herself put to bed. But how do you say no to a minister who wants to pray?

Sure, she nodded at Heinz, and he followed her lead putting down a table. After a brief prayer from the minister and a buss on the check by Olga, the Schmidts departed. Heinz and Grete decided to sleep on the foldout couch in the back of the office. Neither wanted to face the twelve-block walk to Fredrick Street, especially carrying a sleeping child. Besides, they could start early in the cool of the morning on the next week’s edition featuring German contributions to the town including the famous Turkey Gehrke. Since the dreaded decision of war with Germany was made, Grete wanted all the townspeople to know how valuable the German-Americans had been to the community.

Chapter 2

A disembodied voice came from behind the printer. He was a great American. The greatest German-American ever ...

That’s the point, Grete interrupted. Exactly. He was a German-American, and he seems to have forgotten that in his later years, and I am not going to put all that glorification in my newspaper.

Heinz put down the plate he was working on, picked up an oily rag and swiped at the ink on his hands. Your paper? I think I might have something to say about it. I believe it is our paper. And it is not a piece of political propaganda, much as you would like it to be. It is journalism.

Grete hooted and waved a handful of U.S. war publications through the cutout window from the office into the plant. How many of these do we get weekly? It’s nothing but political propaganda. Where do you see journalism here?

Those publications do not pretend to be newspapers. We are a newspaper. And journalism tells the news not propaganda. You can write an editorial about Schurz and say what you will, but in the rest of the paper, we will print the news. He tossed the rag into the trash bin overflowing with strips of paper.

Grete pursed her lips, stared at the ceiling and shook her head. Fine. I will write an editorial. And tell how he abandoned the Forty-Eighters. She scratched notes on the pad at her desk.

The Forty-Eighters wanted to concentrate German immigration in Wisconsin and establish a New Germany. He rattled the toolbox as he searched for the right wrench.

And what’s so bad about that? Grete shot back. Milwaukee is considered the German Athens.

You cannot come to a new country and expect to replicate what you had at home. There were people here before us, a culture already, we have to fit in, not recreate the old. Heinz retreated behind the printing press. You know my parents wanted me to carry on the family line and continue farming as if the world wasn’t changing. But to them, I’m a failure because I have not carried on the tradition.

You’re not a failure, you know that. Although, granted, my parents don’t think much of my choices either. My father wanted me to marry an academic like him. Instead, I chose the opposite. He translated German books to English at the University and now I’m putting English news into German.

And now you are stuck with this farmers son.

Not stuck honey, chose.

A lot depends on whether this paper makes it or not.

It will, believe me. But because things change, that doesn’t mean giving up an entire culture. When the British got here, there was someone here too. The British didn’t give up their culture; they just destroyed the Indians.

And do you think that was right? He peered at her over the top of the machine.

Don’t be silly. You know I don’t. But that’s why I say we have the right to keep our culture too. We are supposed to be a good example of melding the newcomers so that everyone is comfortable.

That’s been true so far. I wonder if it will hold now there is war? Heinz stepped out from behind the printer, and the two looked at each other while the cuckoo clock chimed.

The Greatest German American: Carl Schurz headlined the July eleventh paper with a three by five inch picture of him and Margarethe on the front page. Heinz listed Carl’s accomplishments: Lawyer, writer, statesman, as well as his views on Negroes, on Indians and on the foreign-born. A champion of human rights the paper called him, noting that he moved to Watertown in 1854. Over Grete’s objection, a story of Margarete Schurz’ first kindergarten faded to page three.

On page two, Grete asked in her editorial column, why this great man who supported all the downtrodden would not support the other Forty-Eighters - his own countrymen - who simply wanted to bring a little bit of home to this part of the world. The German-Americans had brought their traits – frugal, hardworking, intelligent - to their adopted country and benefited it greatly.

Because of the depressing talk of war, the paper needed some levity. So Grete and Heinz interviewed Turkey Gehrke in his dingy tavern called Turkey’s Roost. Arthur, his real name, was a chubby, friendly, pleasant man who liked baseball, but cold weather gave him severe stomach pains that were relieved only by remaining in bed. So for the previous seven years, he went to bed when the Rock River froze and got up when it thawed. "The one thing I regret is missing the weekly Viehmarkt. I love the sound of all the animals, cows mooing, horses whinnying and the truckloads of pigs squealing."

I love the smell of the homemade breads and coffee, said Heinz as his mouth watered. I wouldn’t miss it.

Grete silently cursed. She was not yet ready for this Saturday’s Viehmarkt. She always took her best fancy work, as did all the ladies, and baked her best cinnamon rolls that were famous throughout the county. She’d be up all night Friday with that, but what to take for her fancy work? She’d had no time to make anything this week.

Honey, do you want something? Heinz’ question snapped her out of her reverie.

No, no. If we’re done here, I’ve got to get back. Lots to do. She gathered her notes while her mind ticked off her undone chores. She had to pick up Trude at her mother’s, then do the shopping, make supper ...

Go ahead. I’ll finish up here.

Grete watched Heinz down the beer in his glass and laughed. Don’t finish it all up or you won’t be able to walk home.

He waved his empty mug flinging drops of beer. Get out of here.

The Milwaukee papers picked up the article, and on the following Friday night motor cars full of city folk streamed into Turkeys Roost to partake of their idyllic view of rural life.

Saturday morning dawned clear and bright. A perfect day for Viehmarkt. Grete bounced out of bed after giving Heinz a quick peck. She loved the crowds and excitement, the noise and smells, the bartering and good-natured joking at this weekly market. And of course, the beer. The children ran in herds from one sweet smelling booth to another.

Soon, the rich smell of baking bread filled the house. When Heinz stumbled out, Grete built up the fire under the bacon and coffee that tried unsuccessfully to compete with the yeast and cinnamon aroma of the bread and the rich scent of simmering syrup for the frosting. Grete watched the rolls raise to the perfect roundness, caught the syrup just before it crystallized and kept a watchful eye on Trude, who couldn’t be trusted alone in the kitchen.

By seven, all was ready, and with arms loaded, she and Heinz, with Trude trailing ventured down the fourteen blocks to Washington Park. Viehmarkt had been held at that location the last several years, and permanent booths had been built as well as a corral for the animals. Truckloads of pigs lined up along Richard Avenue, but the baked goods were displayed far from the animals on the Twelfth Street side of the park. As Grete, Heinz and Trude approached along Western, she could see tight knots of men. As they got closer, loud and angry words reached their ears. Grete shifted her bundles to her right arm and grasped Trude’s hand.