Berlin 1936 by Oliver Hilmes

Author:Oliver Hilmes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2018-02-06T05:00:00+00:00

The roof terrace of the cosmopolitan Eden Hotel is one of Berlin’s main attractions in the Olympic summer of 1936. Credit 11

Tuesday, 11 August 1936

REICH WEATHER SERVICE FORECAST FOR BERLIN: Pleasant to cloudy, isolated heat thunderstorms in the evening. Temperatures rising during the day, with winds from the southwest. Highs of 27°C.

REICH AND PRUSSIAN TRANSPORT MINISTRY ANNOUNCEMENT: “149 people were killed and 3,793 people injured in road accidents in the German Reich last week.”

Anyone walking up Kantstrasse from the Memorial Church these days will see one name repeated over and over on advertising pillars, in display cases and on the sides of buildings: Teddy Stauffer. The gentleman in question is one Ernst Heinrich Stauffer, known to his fans as Teddy. Seven years ago he came to Berlin but ended up a nobody, residing in impoverished circumstances and living from hand to mouth. Now, in August 1936, the 27-year-old is a star. Stauffer is neither an athlete nor an actor, nor a fearless Atlantic-crossing pilot like Charles Lindbergh, nor a race driver like Manfred von Brauchitsch in his Mercedes Silver Arrow. He’s not even German. Teddy Stauffer is a bandleader and saxophonist from Switzerland.

Elfriede Scheibel is nine years Teddy’s senior. She’s his boss—a word Teddy doesn’t like to hear, although it’s true. She manages the Delphi Palast on Kantstrasse and has hired Stauffer and his band, the Original Teddies—named after Berlin’s mascot, a bear—for the period from early July to late October. When he enters the Delphi Palast for the first time, Stauffer shrugs his shoulders and says nothing, especially not to Scheibel. But looking around the place, his eyes seem to ask: are you kidding me? Maybe he thinks of the old Berlin joke in which an architect says to the fellow who engaged him: “The frame is finished—what style house would you like?” The builders of the Delphi were fans of Greco-Roman architecture—or more accurately, what was considered Greco-Roman in 1928. There are stylized pillars, meander patterns and putti all over the façade. Up on the roof, four stone lions seem to watch over the premises. The building is set back from Kantstrasse, so there’s a spacious front garden on the corner with Fasanenstrasse, where patrons can enjoy a summer afternoon tea under palm trees and other exotic plants. The Palast proper is a two-story building. On the ground floor are the cloakroom, a café and the kitchens; the upper floor is home to the actual ballroom, with two dance floors and 530 seats. There’s also a gallery with an additional 120 seats and a parquet floor. The interior is a stylistic mishmash of wall paintings, pillars of stucco marble and fake papier mâché accoutrements. The ballroom ceiling is covered with countless tiny lightbulbs that simulate a starry sky. In the Delphi there’s not a hint of the New Objectivity that set the architectural tone in the late 1920s. This will be Teddy’s place of work for the next four months.

By hiring the band for such a long time, Elfriede Scheibel is putting all her eggs in one basket.

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