Blue Angel Read Free Page B

pampered child. At four, she could read the fairy tales provided by her English nanny, who also taught her to write, add and speak simple French sentences.
    Maria’s quickness established a polite rivalry with her sister Elisabeth who, perhaps because her appearance and manner were not quite so charming and attractive, claimed less attention; in any case, the older daughter fancied dolls, outdoor games and walks with her father, while Maria preferred her mother’s company, sitting contentedly while Wilhelmina played piano, sang madrigals, read aloud from a book of poems and taught her daughter to make apricot jam and buttermilk soup. By school age, the sisters seemed almost to have come from different families, and in fact their mature lives never intersected. Elisabeth Dietrich became a teacher, married and lived quietly in Berlin until her death in 1977. Few of Elisabeth’s friends ever knew of her famous sister.
    I N 1904, THE D IETRICHS MOVED TO A LARGER apartment not far away, at 48-49 Colonnenstrasse, near a wide thoroughfare. Later, Maria remembered the almost constant sounds of horses’ hoofs and men marching, of military pageants, police and cavalry parades and troops of schoolboys in strict formations. Even casual strollers observed exact protocols of formal politeness: uniformed gentlemen saluted ladies; children yielded to their elders in conversation, on sidewalks and in streetcars; and decent women never appeared in public without hats, gloves and a male escort. Everywhere public life appeared regimented, manners prescribed, the forms of dress and address precisely specified.
    Just so at home, where life was characterized by duty and discipline. Louis Dietrich’s professional commitment to law and order had its counterpart in Wilhelmina’s elaborate system of the household chores assigned to Elisabeth and Maria, with concomitant rewards (a Sunday outing) and punishments (a meal forfeited). Maria’s father expected his children’s clothes to be as presentable as his uniform, their shoes spotless, their High German clearly enunciated and grammatically correct, and their deportment flawless. Social propriety and proper deportment had the sanctions often connected with religious observance.
    Wilhelmina’s zeal for household virtues was the perfect corollary. Economy was primary: every Friday, for example, the girls accompanied their mother and governess to the hay, straw and wood market for calm but persistent negotiations of wholesale prices. Invariably disappointed with the maid’s and cook’s performance of their duties, Wilhelmina rescrubbed, waxed and restained the intricate parquet floors of the parlor. Often she hastily remade the sauce for dinner, teaching Maria that the proper execution of such tasks produced the immediate rewards of satisfaction—and of having pleased the girls’ father, always a dominant consideration in every matter at home. Making Papa comfortable, gratifying him and deferring to his superior status as a man were in fact official household responsibilities.
    Germanic precision and masculine supremacy was thus part ofevery detail, and Wilhelmina’s rules for honoring these were indisputable. “Sie selbst glich einem guten General,” Maria wrote later: “She herself was like a benevolent general,” and most of all the commanding officer outlawed idleness. “Tu etwas!” Wilhelmina said if she saw her daughters unoccupied—“Do something!” Performing things correctly was the demand of every day, Wilhelmina reminded, quoting Goethe. One had to approach life conscious of its various requirements, which included a careful concealment of emotion. “My whole upbringing [forced me] to mask my feelings,” Marlene Dietrich wrote later.
The last slap I had from my mother was because of that. I was having dancing lessons and had to dance with everyone in the room, including a young man I did not like. I made a long face. Mother saw it and slapped me as soon as we were alone.