POSTSCRIPT ADDED ON MAY 18, 2021 IN RED AT THE BOTTOM
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
—Edmund Burke—
“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”
—Edmund Burke—
Note: This post is about a non-Jewish instrument maker named Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne, the first husband of Renate Bruck, daughter of my famed ancestor, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck. Matthias’ courage during the era of the National Socialists rightfully entitles him to be called a “silent hero.” Silent heroes are Jewish men and women who resisted National Socialist persecution, and those who helped them to do so.
Related Posts:
POST 68: DR. JULIUS BRUCK AND HIS INFLUENCE ON MODERN ENDOSCOPY
POST 68, POSTSCRIPT: DR. JULIUS BRUCK, ENGINEER OF MODERN ENDOSCOPY-TRACKING SOME OF HIS DESCENDANTS
POST 99: THE ASTONISHING DISCOVERY OF SOME OF DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK’S PERSONAL EFFECTS
POST 100: DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK, DENTIST TO GERMANY’S LAST IMPERIAL FAMILY
There is a lot of “connective tissue” to this Blog post, so to speak. I draw upon information collected mostly in the last few months that occasioned incremental discoveries about Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne, who I will henceforth refer to as “Matthias Mehne.” He was Renate Bruck’s (1926-2013) first husband; she was the sole surviving daughter of my famed ancestor, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937), and his wife, Johanna Bruck née Gräbsch (1884-1963). (Figure 1) As a result of my recent findings, I am compelled to revise Blog Post 68 to rectify conclusions I came to springing from incomplete information or erroneous inferences.
Given the gradational way by which I typically learn about various of my ancestors, it is often impossible for me to recall what I learned when. Nevertheless, I will try in the case of Matthias Mehne.
Ironically, I initially became aware of Renate Bruck’s first husband about two years ago upon obtaining a copy of her marriage certificate to her second husband, Henry Ernest Graham. Renate married Henry on the 18th of October 1948 in Willesden, Middlesex, England, and their marriage certificate identified both of their previous spouses. At the time, I misread Renate’s first husband’s name simply as “Eugen Walter Mehne,” failing to clearly see his first name was “Matthias.” (Figure 2) As readers will see, this was a grave oversight.
Knowing that Renate Bruck had been born in 1926 in Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] and that she was already on her second marriage at 22 years of age, I assumed she had met and gotten married to Matthias Mehne in Breslau at a young age. In retrospect, given the disruptions wrought by WWII and Renate’s status as half-Jewish, this is not necessarily a given and in fact appears not to have been the case.
In Breslau address books I found a “Eugen Mehne” listed between 1908 and 1934 (Figures 3a-b), and a “Eugen Walter Mehne” for 1935, 1936, and 1939; I assumed they were the same person. I also found a birth certificate for an “Albert Eugen Mehne” (Figures 4a-b) but since he was born in 1883 and would have been 43 years Renate’s elder, I ruled him out as her husband. Given the trend to incorporate father’s forenames into their son’s name, I falsely concluded that Eugen Mehne was the son of Albert Eugen Mehne, and Renate’s first husband. This made sense at the time since I could not find information on a Eugen Walter Mehne, i.e., Matthias Mehne, or so I thought.
I would eventually learn that Eugen and Albert Eugen were the same person. This should have been obvious to me from the start given I found a 1907 marriage certificate for Albert Eugen Mehne (Figures 5a-c), meaning the Breslau address book listings for Eugen Mehne from 1908 until at least the mid-1930’s would have been those for the father born in 1883. Regardless, I did not initially make the connection. As mentioned above, Breslau address books for 1935 (Figure 6a), 1936 (Figure 6b), and 1939 (Figure 6c) list a “Eugene Walter Mehne” who, I thought was the father Eugen Mehne, but now realize was the son Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne. This was in fact the first documentation I found on the son, although I did not realize it at the time. None of the Breslau address books list both the father and son in the same directory; what to make of this is unclear. I forgive readers for being as confused as I was. Let us move on.
This is where things stood until January of this year when I received two riveting emails following one upon the other. The first came from a Dr. Kate Kennedy, who is a writer and broadcaster, and the Associate Director for Oxford’s Centre for Life-Writing (Figure 7), after she stumbled upon Post 68 where I initially mentioned Albert Eugen Mehne. Kate proceeded to tell me a fascinating story. She is currently writing a book about a series of journeys she has taken across the globe following the trail of instruments that have a particular story to tell. One instrument Kate is researching is a missing cello that belonged to an Anita Lasker-Wallfisch that was taken from her before she was sent to Auschwitz when she lived in Breslau. Ms. Lasker-Wallfisch, born in 1925, survived the Holocaust, and is still alive as of this writing. According to Dr. Kennedy, the instrument maker Walter Matthias Mehne rescued the cello after Anita was arrested and may have given it to a judge to keep it safe for the duration of the war, although Anita is unsure of this. Regardless, to this day, the cello remains missing, and Dr. Kennedy is on a quest to track it down.
Setting aside my own confusion as to the Mehne names, Kate correctly presumed that Matthias Mehne was the son of Albert Eugen Mehne, as it was a father/son luthier business. She also told me they inhabited a shop on the corner of Tauentzien Platz in Breslau in the center of town with red violin-shaped signs inside their store, and that they refused to display a picture of Hitler, a most courageous act in the era of the National Socialists. I will return to the subject of the Mehne and Lasker-Wallfisch families below, but first I want to mention the second email I received in January.
This correspondence came from Dr. Tilo Wahl, the incredible findings of which have been the subject of my two previous posts, Posts 99 and 100. Buried within the album of photographs and documents once belonging to my esteemed ancestor, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck, was a photograph (Figure 8) and article (Figures 9a-c) about Renate Bruck’s first husband, whom she did not identify by name. Still, the undated German newspaper article which I painstakingly retyped into my go-to online translator, DeepL, confirmed that he went by the name “Matthias Mehne” and at the time the article was written lived in the Berlin borough of Wilmersdorf; comparing his picture taken in Berlin in 1947-1948 with Renate to the one in the news article, it is clear it is the same person. Only at this moment did I reexamine Renate’s 1948 marriage certificate and realize that her first husband’s complete name had been “Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne” (see Figure 2) and that he went by the name “Matthias Mehne”; it became obvious then that Albert Eugen Mehne had to have been his father.
Having found virtually no other information on Matthias Mehne, I turned to my German friend, Peter Hanke, the “Wizard of Wolfsburg,” for help. (Figure 10) Peter did not disappoint. He found that Matthias’s father relocated to Gelsenkirchen, Germany in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, approximately 500 miles directly west of Wrocław, Poland, probably before or after WWII; Eugen Mehne is listed in a 1955 Gelsenkirchen Address Book. (Figure 11) I would later learn Albert Eugen Mehne died in Gelsenkirchen in 1963. As for Matthias Mehne, Peter discovered that he was born in 1908, had supposedly died in 1960, and was also known as “M.E.W. Mehne.” Knowing Matthias had once lived in Berlin, I did an Internet search trying to confirm his death but came up empty.
Aware of the connection between the Mehne and Lasker families from before the war, I shifted my attention to researching Anita Lasker. Not surprisingly, given Anita’s incredible journey as a world-renowned cellist and Holocaust survivor, I uncovered a biography she wrote in 2000 entitled “Inherit the Truth” in which she acknowledged Walter Matthias Mehne’s courage on Kristallnacht, November 9-10, 1938. Quoting:
“. . .My father [Alfons Lasker] escaped arrest on that notorious Kristallnacht (night of the shattered glass), as it became known, on 9th November thanks to the courage of a great friend of ours, Walter Matthias Mehne, a violin-maker in Breslau. He was not a Jew, and he deliberately ignored the fact that the streets were crawling with members of the Gestapo looking for Jews. He climbed the stairs to our flat, took my father with him, and drove him around the town in his car for the rest of the day. He could easily have been stopped and found himself in an embarrassing and highly dangerous position. The courage of a man like Mehne is all the more noteworthy since he was a well-known figure in Breslau. His premises—it was a ‘father and son’ business—were situated on the first floor of a building on the Tauentzien Platz, right in the centre of town. It was at once recognizable from its red violin-shaped signs which hung in the windows. It was much more a meeting point for musicians than a mere shop, and a great many of those musicians were committed Nazis. Notwithstanding this, the Mehnes were steadfast in their refusal to hang up a picture of Hitler inside, although that was expected of every good citizen.
They also refused to hang out a swastika on the various ‘flag days.’ It all made them instantly suspect. But they would not yield an inch. They disapproved of what was happening and were not afraid to show it. Both father and son conducted themselves in a manner which can only be called exemplary. They were some Germans—sadly not enough of them—whose behavior was beyond reproach.
At that particular moment I was not at home but in Berlin, where I had been sent to study the cello. . .”
To some, Matthias Mehne’s actions on Kristallnacht may seem like a “little” gesture in the context of Edmund Burke’s quote cited at the outset of this post, but if other Germans had acted as heroically as Matthias Mehne acted who knows how many more Jews would have been saved from the Holocaust. Unquestionably, Matthias Mehne was a “silent hero” during the Nazi era.
In acknowledging Matthias Mehne’s courage, I was reminded of a visit my wife and I made to the “Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism.” The museum opened in 2015 as a place to learn about the crimes of the Nazi era and how Hitler’s party rose to power. It is built on the site of the Brown House, which was the Nazi’s Munich headquarters. In any case, there are many memorable pictures on display there, including one I will not forget. It shows an enormous crowd of people at a speech being delivered by Hitler all giving the Nazi or Sieg Heil salute except for one bold individual standing in this sea of ardent fascist supporters with his arms down. Bravery can be a lonely odyssey.
In researching this post. I stumbled upon an article from “The Observer,” dated the 9th of November 2013, marking the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht. Entitled “Cellist’s tribute to the ‘unsung hero’ who saved his grandfather on Kristallnacht,” the article documents a friendship that remarkably continues today between the Mehne and Lasker-Wallfisch families. In 2013, the retired cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch joined her renowned cellist son, Raphael Wallfisch, in Austria to play an assortment of music that was regarded as taboo by the Nazis, ranging from Felix Mendelssohn to Erich Korngold; the selection of Vienna, Austria as the site of the concert was no accident because, as Anita said, “. . .Austria has been slower than Germany to come to terms with its part in the Nazi atrocities.” Incredibly, the program coordinator for the concert event was Bettina Mehne (Figure 12), Matthias Mehne’s daughter by his second marriage!
In the 2013 news article, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch acknowledged wanting the concert event to be a tribute to the “unsung hero” [Matthias Mehne] who protected her father on Kristallnacht. She is quoted: “Mehne did not flinch. He was very nice, a family friend, and was totally against the establishment. He didn’t even have a picture of Hitler in his lovely shop–a meeting place in Breslau—which everyone was supposed to have. His reaction that night was all the more remarkable because he was so well known in town.” As for Bettina Mehne, she grew up hearing the story of how her father had protected Anita’s father, Alfons Lasker, on Kristallnacht.
Thinking Bettina Mehne might have some prominence, I learned she is associated with an entity known as “Keynote Artist Management,” and found her email on their website. Hoping I might reach her and learn more about her father’s first wife, I sent her a note. Fortunately, my email caught Bettina’s attention and she graciously responded the following morning. She recognized Renate Bruck’s name and mentioned that Matthias had spoken highly of her. Bettina told me her father passed away in 1991, not in 1960 as I had been led to believe.
A “Vogelsdorff Family Tree” I found on ancestry claims Renate and Matthias Mehne got married in 1945; Vogelsdorff was Renate’s paternal grandmother’s surname so the source is credible. (Figure 13) Since Renate married her second husband in 1948, her marriage to Matthias Mehne would not have lasted long, a fact Bettina confirmed. According to Bettina, Renate and Matthias were engaged before the war. The German news article about Matthias states he was a prisoner of war in England. Bettina promised to ask her mother, still living, whether she might know more about her father’s first marriage and get back to me.
Given that Dr. Walter Bruck played the cello, it is likely he was acquainted with the Mehnes’ music store and would have met his daughter’s future first husband before he died in 1937. We may never know.
A potential future source of information about Renate’s life is her own diary that Dr. Walter Bruck’s twin granddaughters, Francesca and Michele Newman (Figure 14), incredibly just discovered and are sending me. Once translated, this should make for a fascinating read; I have recently learned from Renate’s lifelong friend Countess Ina Schaesberg (Figure 15) that Renate and her mother spent the entire war in Germany, not in England as I had initially surmised, in a building that survived Allied bombing. Since Renate was apparently engaged to Matthias Mehne before the war, the possibility exists that Renate and her mother lived with the Mehne family in Berlin during the war. Stay tuned!
In conclusion, I will simply say the fact that Renate Bruck’s first husband was alternately known as “Eugen Walter Mehne,” “Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne,” “M.E.W. Mehne,” and “Matthias Mehne” complicated my investigations.
REFERENCES
“Junger Meister des Geigenbaues.” Nacht-Despeche, 1950.
Lasker-Wallfisch, Anita. Inherit the Truth: A Memoir of Survival and the Holocaust. Thomas Dunn Books, 2000.
Thorpe, Vanessa. “Cellist’s tribute to the ‘unsung hero’ who saved his grandfather on Kristallnacht.” The Guardian, 2013 November 9.
POSTSCRIPT
Almost immediately after publishing this post, I was rewarded with some new information.
I sent the link of my post to Ms. Bettina Mehne. The timing was fortuitous because she had just spoken with her mother in Berlin about Renate and Matthias. Sadly, while her mother could not add anything new, she reminded Bettina of two silver trinkets Matthias Mehne had received from Dr. Walter Bruck, along with a small silver goblet bearing Renate’s name, dated 1927. These items are now in Bettina’s possession, but it is her intention to give them to Renate’s twin daughters. I think this is very touching.
This indirectly answers another question I had, namely, whether Matthias ever met Dr. Walter Bruck. Walter died in 1937 when Renate was only 11 years old, clearly before Renate and Matthias became engaged. Possibly the trinkets were given to Matthias during professional dealings he had with Walter, or Matthias acquired the items from Renate after they got married. Regardless, it is remarkable that after all these years, these personal items will wind up with Walter’s descendants. I think this would make him happy.
Bettina also told me that none of her father’s family lived in Berlin during the war, so clearly Renate and her mother Johanna did not live with them at the time. It was only after the war when Renate and Matthias were married that all three briefly lived together.
My Blog post about Matthias Mehne caught the attention of Dr. Regina Stein (Figure 16), a provenance researcher (mostly for museums) in Berlin. Regina is currently doing a lot of research in Berlin address books. Voluntarily and generously, she searched through them for the violin maker Matthias Mehne, and put together two pages of address information for him for the years 1943-1990. Among the listings Regina found is one for Renate Mehne in a 1949 Berlin address book, shown living in the Wilmersdorf borough of Berlin at the same address as her husband. (Figures 17a-b) The 1949 address book listings must reflect the prior year’s residence because by late 1948 Renate was already married to her second husband and living in England.
As to the newspaper article about Matthias Mehne, Dr. Stein told me it comes from the “Nacht-Despeche,” an illustrated evening newspaper in Berlin that appeared from 1950 onwards. Regina thinks the article may have been published in 1950, but “after lockdown” will confirm this by consulting microfilm.
I cannot emphasize strongly enough how helpful and generous people whom I have never personally met have been in furthering my ancestral investigations. I am enormously grateful for their contributions and assistance.