It came up on eBay – a piece of yellowed paper with pencilled German words in the careful handwriting of a child. The letter was written to a radio show host who broadcast Dalcroze exercises and games to children in Germany during the late 1920s and early 1930s.

I felt drawn to it somehow, knowing it was part of a larger story. If only to hold this poignant little piece of history in my hands, I clicked “buy it now.” The letter has led me down several roads out of curiosity and has taught me quite a lot.

Dalcroze on the Radio

I’d known that Eurhythmics teacher Heather Gell once presented radio broadcasts in Australia leading children through “Music and Movement” activities. These 20-minute sessions began in 1938 and aired twice per week. I have an old LP she made titled “There’s Movement in Music.” Most of the pieces are folksongs and simple dances from common repertory, but here is one scratchy bit of her playing “Basic Rhythms” that might reflect what she gave her radio audiences. (Dalcrozians will recognize the essential lineage we have all learned, as well.)

What I didn’t know was that Heather Gell’s program was preceded by a similar radio program in Europe!

Lisbeth Kroll

Lisbeth Kroll (birth name Radok) studied with Emile Jaques-Dalcroze and Suzanne Perrottet at the Dalcroze Institute in Hellerau for three years. She was born in 1890 in Königsberg, which was at that time part of East Prussia. (It is now Kaliningrad, Russia.)

After her studies in Hellerau and her return to Königsberg, she married the music critic, composer, and pianist Erwin Kroll. She taught for some years and then began her weekly radio program, “Rhythmisch-musikalisches Stegreifspiel für Kinder,” roughly translated as “Rhythmic-Musical Impromptu Games for Children.” Her husband provided piano improvisation.

Radio itself was new, and there was nothing else like this music program. Its popularity extended throughout Germany and into Great Britain. Children sent “Aunt Liesbeth” fan mail, suggestions for new games, requests, and answers to questions posed on the program. This letter is one example.

Letter from a Listener

It came from young Erich Lauer, born November 27, 1923. (He is not to be confused with the composer Erich Lauer who was born in 1911.) Young Erich was a 7-year-old in the town of Rastenberg, state of Thuringia, Germany in 1931.

Here is my rough translation.

Dear Aunt Liesbeth Kroll!

The game, stick on(to) the swan,* was nice, we played along with it too, I knew it already, I have such a book of fairy tales. Dear Aunt Liesbeth soon play a beautiful fairy tale again, that was lovely.

Many greetings to you
and all fellow players

a 7 year old student
Erich Lauer

And then…?

This might have been a simple, sweet story that ends there, but it was Germany in the early 1930s. Just two years after Erich wrote his letter, Adolf Hitler came to power as German Chancellor, ending the Weimar Republic and establishing the Nazi Party or Third Reich. So I wondered what had happened to Erich Lauer.

1933: A Turning Point

Erich Lauer turned 10 years old in 1933, the very year the Nazi party required boys that age to register for programs leading into the Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth). He would have undergone investigations and submitted to examinations, including scrutiny for “racial purity.” Then he could have joined the Deutches Jungvolk (German Young People).

At age 13 in 1936, Erich was eligible to join the Hitler Jugend . That was the very year the Nazis banned all other youth groups for Germans (while excluding and persecuting Jewish children). The attractive power of Joseph Goebbel’s propaganda was strong. Images showed healthy young men in uniforms proud of serving their countries and their führer.

There were continual positive messages through songs, stories, speeches, recitations, and celebrations glorifying nationalism and what it meant to be among the group. Group-inclusive vocabulary, dress, and codes of behavior also emphasized the exclusion of the other. Children absorbed the terrible warnings, examples and speeches about what it meant to be on the outside of their group.

Children who missed the Boy Scouts found camaraderie in the Hitler Jugend. They were issued militaristic uniforms; given a sense they belonged to something important; provided a powerful leader. They learned hero-worship of Adolf Hitler. And they learned to shoot guns.

If that weren’t enough persuasion, those who resisted saw harsh punishment to themselves and to their families. Once engaged, they experienced even greater rewards and levels of training toward conformity. Then a new law passed demanding participation. By 1939, about 82% of eligible boys were members of the Hitler Jugend.

The Ending

Ostmarken Rundfunk AG (ORAG), the radio broadcasting company in Königsberg, was important to the Free State of Prussia. In 1933, the Nazi Party took it over and renamed it the Reichs Rundfunk Gesellschaft (Reich Broadcasting Company). It became a source for dissemination of propaganda. Erich Lauder probably heard it.

Rastenberg, Erich Lauer’s small town became the area of Hitler’s “Wolf’s Lair” – a reinforced headquarters situated in a forest about 5 miles away. Its initial construction began in 1941, in connection with Operation Barbarossa – the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.

Lisbeth and Erwin Kroll moved to Berlin after the newspaper Erwin wrote for, the Hartungsche Zeitung, relocated there in 1933. Lisbeth continued to make radio shows after the war ended, but she didn’t like having them tape recorded and edited rather than being live and spontaneous. She died in 1975; Erwin passed away the following year.

Erich Lauer, the older one (not the one who wrote this letter) aligned himself with Hitler in 1930, at the age of 19. He went on to compose music for the Nazi regime, including songs, suites and cantatas for the Hitler Youth to perform in ceremonies. He lived until 1976, and died at the age of 65.

Erich Lauer, the boy who wrote the letter, apparently did follow the path mapped out for German boys like him. He became an SS-Sturmmann, a Nazi paramilitary rank, and fought in unit 3./SS-Flak Abteilung Ost. The Sturmmann units were “shock troops,” expected to lead into attacks and take heavy casualties. (These were called “cannon fodder” in the Vietnam war era.)

Erich was killed on May 17, 1942, when he was 19 years old. He died just south of St. Petersburg, although the date coincides with one of Hitler’s first unsuccessful attempts to seize Stalingrad from the opposite direction.

How different things might have been if it weren’t for radio propaganda, state-sponsored hero worship, and unfathomable brutality. It’s a tragedy for the people he victimized as well as for himself that Erich Lauer ever wanted to join the Nazi party’s SS in the first place. Only a short time before that, all he really wanted was another lovely fairy tale from “Aunt Liesbeth.”

Sources:

Das Ostpreußenblatt, May 23, 1970: Zum 80. Geburtstag von Lisbeth Kroll-Radok

Facing History And Ourselves: Hitler Youth Propaganda.

Heather Gell: There’s Movement in Music. WG. 25/S/5378, Melbourne, Australia

History: How the Hitler Youth Turned a Generation of Kids into Nazis

Michael Kater, Distinguished Research Professor, Department of History York University. The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich. N.p.: Oxford University Press, USA, 1996, p. 139.

*I believe I have found the “Stick on the Swan” story.