Love in a Time of Hate by Florian Illies

Author:Florian Illies [Illies, Florian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-09-19T00:00:00+00:00

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Seven, Lotte Lenya writes to Kurt Weill, is her lucky number. The fact that she still can’t win at roulette in Monte Carlo does nothing to dislodge this belief. No, she interprets Weill’s buying a house for her at Wissmannstrasse 7 as a good omen, and what is more, in 1933 they have been married seven years. She is full of cheer as she writes to him from the Mediterranean, where she and her lover, Otto Pasetti, are busy gambling away Weill’s money at the casino table.

Meanwhile, at Wissmannstrasse 7 in Kleinmachnow near Berlin, where he lives alone, Weill receives a different kind of mail. “We don’t want Jews like you around here,” the letters read, along with many other things that he is too polite to report to Lenya. When SA thugs stop a performance of his new play, Silver Lake, in Magdeburg, Weill draws the inevitable conclusions. He spends the night in hotels in Berlin or with his friends Caspar and Erika Neher. Now that Caspar has come out as gay, his wife sees to the abandoned Weill—in every respect. On March 22, the three of them leave Berlin by car, making for the French border. To avoid raising suspicions, Weill has to leave everything behind, including his beloved sheepdog, Harras.

The house is sold later that year, and Pasetti fritters away all the proceeds at casinos in Monte Carlo and Nice. Having been unable to sell the house himself because he is Jewish, Weill signed over power of attorney to Otto.

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