Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [183]
The Berliners were certain that the few gestures of the West were in the nature of face-saving. They remained cool to each other.
Repercussions of the election continued to be felt throughout all facets of the society. At the university a rumble grew and grew.
Heidi Fritag and Matthias Schindler shared the common heritage of having parents murdered by the Nazis.
Heidi was half Jewish, her father once a professor at the university. Except for the “taint” in her ancestry, the intense girl was a physical personification of Hitler’s Aryan dream; tall, full-busted, blond. When her father was taken away, Heidi and her mother lived in seclusion in that low caste of being daughter and wife of a Jew.
Matthias Schindler’s story was one of pure horror. His father had been a Democratic Party leader in Brandenburg. He was sent to Dachau early in the regime as a political undesirable; his mother died shortly thereafter. Matthias was placed in a series of work camps for children of political prisoners and Jews. The end of the war found him having survived a dozen camps and working as a slave laborer of the Krupp Industries and the death of his father confirmed.
The university had a tradition sweeping back a century and a half with such honored names as Humboldt and Niebuhr and the Brothers Grimm. War had ravaged many of the main buildings on the Unter Den Linden.
Heinrich Hirsch re-established the university in the Russian Sector, appointed a Communist rector, filled the faculty with hand-picked teachers, texts, and curriculum to convert it into a school of Marxism.
All the new students were carefully screened. Both Heidi Fritag and Matthias Schindler were clean of Nazi taint and thought to be pro-Russian.
The returning professors and many of the students did not fit neatly into Hirsch’s vision of the institution. They began to complain to the Americans for a liberalization of studies.
In the autumn of 1945 American policy had been to cooperate with the Russians at any price. Neal Hazzard brought up the question of the university at the Kommandatura, taking the view that it should be under four-power control.
Trepovitch made one of his unmovable stands. Hazzard let the matter die. The Russian position was that the university was physically in the Russian Sector and of no interest to the West.
During 1946 Hirsch consolidated his grip. Every political, historical, and philosophical study was derived from a base of Lenin and Marx. All student clubs were under domination of young Communists on the campus. Likewise, the faculty organization was run by Communist professors.
Both the students and faculty came under heavy pressure to join Communist activities. Often students were threatened with being expelled if they did not attend special lectures, join demonstrations, donate time to the Action Squads.
After the Berlin Assembly election of the fall of 1946, a number of Communists were taken out of the educational system in the Magistrat. A ground swell started among the students and non-Communist teachers for reforms.
Heinrich Hirsch used the textbook tactics dictated by Lenin. In the light of the elections and the temper of the moment he made a temporary retreat by granting a number of small but unimportant concessions.
The stirrings grew. Heidi Fritag and Matthias Schindler emerged as the opposition leaders on a crest of unrest. The two personally petitioned Colonel Hazzard for an American license to form a Democratic Students’ Club on the campus and publish a weekly newspaper. Even though the school was in the Russian Sector, it would be keeping within the contention that the university was rightly under four-power control.
Hazzard warned the youngsters that they would be in danger and out of reach of American help, but they were adamant.
RIAS and the American newspaper announced the granting of the club license followed by an appeal from Heidi Fritag urging the students to join. What happened caught