Chapter 4 - You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone: The Biography of Nico

The Päffgens returned to a Berlin that was a dystopian wasteland, the once vibrant city now described as a Geisterstadt – a ‘ghost town’. As the target of continuous fighting throughout the duration of the war, more than 70,000 tons of bombs had been dropped on the capital alone. What had once been one of the largest and most modern cities in Europe was now unrecognizable. Every street was filled with rubble and debris, a landscape of crumbled buildings. About a third of the city had been levelled. 600,000 apartments had been destroyed, and only 2.8 million of the original population of 4.5 million occupied the city, most of them the wives, mothers and children of deceased soldiers. The estimated total number of corpses caused by the air raids alone and left to rot on the streets ranged from 20,000 to 50,000.

The suicide of Adolf Hitler on 30 April 1945 secured the Allies’ victory over Nazi Germany, making daily existence even more peril­ous, the streets filled with refugees and Russian soldiers. Though often historicized now as a moment of rebuilding and camaraderie, diaries from the period reveal a much darker reality for families like the Päffgens.5 New records are still being found, uncovering the violent sexual assaults committed in Germany by the Allied forces – American, British and French, as well as Russian – both during and after the war. In one set of notes that have resurfaced, an anonym­ous female journalist recounts how she and almost every woman she knew were repeatedly raped by the Russian servicemen flooding into the city. Her first assault is shocking, as she recalls being dragged from the basement she and her neighbours had been using as an air-raid shelter. After screaming for help, she realized she was entirely on her own, as her familiars had already barricaded the door behind her. However, she writes, ‘better a Russky on top than a Yank over­head’ – rape by the Russians deemed preferable to being blown apart by the American bombs. Such increased savagery was also inter­linked with the ever-growing problem of starvation. Food was given first to the Russian troops. All other German residents were placed on a five-tier ration-card system, with the highest tier reserved for intellectuals and artists; rubble women and Schwerarbeiter (man­ual workers) received the second-tier card, which was more valu­able to them than the 12 Reichsmarks they received for cleaning up a thousand bricks; the lowest card, nicknamed the Friedhofskarte (cemetery ticket), was issued to housewives and the elderly. During this period, the average Berliner was around 6 to 9 kg (13 to 20 lb) underweight. Women between the ages of fifteen and fifty-five were ordered to get tested for sexually transmitted diseases, with one sur­vivor recalling, ‘You needed the medical certificate to get the food stamps, and I remember that all the doctors doing these certificates had waiting rooms full of women.’

Nico always claimed that, at the age of thirteen, she was raped by a black American sergeant, who was charged, court-martialled and hanged; however, no record of the case has been found in the US Army archives. Recent research, as well as newly uncovered personal documents from the period, both support Nico’s assertion and pro­vide a clear rationale for the lack of formal reports. At the time, in East Germany a lingering social stigma hung over anyone viewed to be criticizing the Soviet and American heroes who had defeated fascism. Such ideas were frowned upon and considered sacrilegious, leading few to report such crimes, and even fewer who would listen to any condemnation of the foreign saviours. This makes it prob­able that Nico was indeed a victim of this ghastly attack and likely knew or heard about others suffering similar assaults.

*

Upon returning to the German capital, Helma miraculously found her one and a half rooms in the neighbourhood of Schöneberg intact. Unlike most of Berlin, Schöneberg was governed by the Americans, who ran the best black market in the city. Candy bars, cigarettes and fruit juices were delicacies, with prices for certain items equivalent to an entire month’s wages for many workers. Nico’s memory of the time consisted of her first immersions into a foreign language: ‘I think the first English word I learned was “Hershey”. Later I went to New York and I was shocked to see so many Hershey bars in rows, like they were nothing.’6

The realities of post-war Germany were grim for the Päffgens. Helma remembered Grete and her daughter living in Nürnburger Strasse, in an apartment similar to her own. Though they were lucky to have any accommodation, the building was cold, leaky and mis­erable, with rain often falling through the roof directly into the flat. For Grete, work was hard to find. Though she qualified for the full allotment of ration cards, food and supplies were tight in the Päffgen household. After procuring a sewing machine from the local black market, Grete began working as a seamstress, utilizing the apart­ment as her studio. Often spending fifteen-hour days toiling away on limited nourishment, the young mother made a name for her­self in the city and began taking on commissions from more afflu­ent neighbours. Christa was the beneficiary of her mother’s talents, always turned out in impeccable clothing, which was often cobbled together from leftover scraps and old attire. Her wardrobe provided the young girl with some much-needed confidence, her appearance already being treated as an attribute of value, a currency to be used to best advantage. What Nico remembered from the period, how­ever, was being painfully underweight and eternally hungry, as food production and distribution had been greatly impacted across the Continent by the years of fighting.

The nearby Berlin Opera House turned into a refuge for the girl. Music became an important part of life, as school did not offer any reprieve from her harsh daily existence. As an adult, Nico recalled her time at the Wilmersdorf-Schöneberg school as being a cheer­less experience, saying, ‘In these schools nothing is suppressed. A cruel method of education: one is classified, and every child should stand on the same level. You cannot be different. Some children are peculiar. I was a very sad child – now I’m much happier – but they thought I was stubborn. I cannot explain it, it’s all so far back.’

Helma described her niece similarly, saying, ‘Christa was a very strange girl. From childhood. She once had a certain pride. She walked very upright. And she was either shy or conceited. Or both.’ In her diary, Nico agreed with her aunt’s assessment, admitting that she had to ‘overcome mental hang-ups such as painful shyness, in my case’.

The girl’s first ambitions to leave Germany began to show fairly early, with Christa seeing a career as a prima ballerina as her ticket out of the country. Helma remembers, ‘At the age of twelve, she said, “Mother, I would like to go to ballet, I would like to dance.” And my sister said, “But you make great demands, my child. That costs a lot of money. How am I supposed to earn that?” But my sis­ter thought, “Maybe something will come of my daughter, maybe she has a talent,” and sent her to Tatjana Gsovsky, a great ballet dancer in Berlin.’7

After a close inspection of young Christa, Gsovsky gave the devasting news to the anxious Päffgens: Christa was far too old to achieve her dream of being a prima ballerina. Gsovsky admonished Grete for not starting the girl on lessons sooner, as there was no hope of attaining such greatness unless the child had begun at the age of five. Grete blanched; survival had been the priority during the war, and extraneous activities like ballet had not been consid­ered. But neither Päffgen was deterred, and Grete paid for a series of classes. Though on the back foot because of her late start, Christa tried very hard, often coming home sweaty after her sessions. She showed natural talent, yet attaining the top spot was an impos­sible idea without years of formative training. Once she realized she would never achieve her goal, Christa stopped attending. ‘Christa wanted to move on to something she could conquer and excel at,’ said Helma. ‘I have set myself the goal of always making the most of something. And if that’s not possible, then I just quit,’ the girl told her aunt.

Gsovsky’s devasting verdict left Christa seeking another way out of Germany. Her prima ballerina dream in shreds, she decided to exploit her burgeoning asset of striking good looks to attain finan­cial mobility and freedom.