Over the wires of a great and hard-boiled news service last week came the lead "BERLIN RAN RIOT WITH ROMANCE TODAY."
At dawn that day in a misty Berlin prison courtyard two cringing figures in suits of coarse sacking were led out, their hands chained behind their backs. Headsman August Gröber, 67 and spry for his age, advanced in impeccable full dress exuding Eau de Cologne. An artist, as are all great executioners, Gröber keeps his blade on ice until the last second, figures that blood has a tendency to congeal on an iced blade and hence will not spout on his boiled shirt. Swish-clump! Swish-clump!—two heads rolled in the sand. One of them, declared Nazis with more exuberance than exactitude, was "the head of the first Jew ever decapitated in German history." Otherwise insignificant, Jew Solly Epstein and equally inconsequent Gentile Hans Zeigler were sentenced to death for the Nazi crime of "watching" outside the flat of Horst Wessel during the brawl on Jan. 14, 1930 in which that Nazi martyr was shot by a Communist. The fact that
Martyr Wessel earned his living as a pimp is glossed over in Germany since he wrote the words of the national Nazi anthem.
Next shot of Berlin romance after the Dark Age beheading last week came when Nazi No. 2 was awakened with a brass band serenade, for it was his wedding morn. As every German knows, Nazi No. 1 eschews pomp, never wears anything more pretentious than a corporal's uniform, eats no meat, never smokes, drinks nothing stronger than beer. Contrariwise No. 2 Nazi Hermann Wilhelm Göring crowds every waking moment with pomp and circumstance, changes from gorgeous to still more gorgeous uniforms half a dozen times a day, stuffs his fat but mighty-muscled frame with much raw meat, tosses off champagne with gusto and indulges his every whim, from keeping a fond lioness at home to forcing the League of German maidens to make pilgrimages to the shrine of his late first wife who was a Swedish Baroness.
Nazi Göring is Premier of Prussia, German Air Minister, Master of the Hunt, Chief Forester, General of Aviation and dread Chief of the Secret Political Police. It was he who ordered shot during the Blood Purge (TIME, July 9) the only man for whom Adolf Hitler had acted as best man since his rise to power, Berlin Storm Troop Leader Karl Ernst. Last week the Realmleader was going to be best man for Göring.
Aryan Emmy. Dawn mists and rain soon cleared to "Nazi weather," as Germans are taught to call every fine day. On this beautiful morning, by the Realm-leader's order, a fine Berlin street, the Sonnemannstrasse, was deprived of its name.
Sonnemannstrasse was named long years ago for the Jewish founder of the Frankfurter Zeitung. Last week General Göring was about to marry Actress Emmy Sonnemann. Whatever she is, she does not look Jewish. During the War she clerked in a Hamburg candy shop. Göring then was a national hero, one of Imperial Germany's greatest fighting aces, finally Commander of the late, great Baron Manfred von Richthofen's daredevil escadrille. Three years ago Emmy was introduced to Hermann by Adolf.