These glorious hats have
IT WAS June and very hot all over Europe, at least 30 degrees that day, last summer in Munich. And we were late. Our meeting had been arranged for 2pm at the depot of the town’s City Museum. The depot, not the museum itself. I had read that in the email, printed off the address and then totally forgotten the depot bit. So my husband Michael, our researcher Beate and I sat in the waiting area of the actual museum wondering why no one was expecting us.
After about ten minutes, we worked out why no one had come to find us. A light bulb went off in my mind: oh how on earth could I have forgotten that, how embarrassing, how dreadful, silly me. Because one thing about my parents was that they were never late, they had real German punctuality, you could set your watch by them.
Off we dashed to get a taxi to the depot. It was not easy and then we had at least a 20-minute ride. Beate did her best to hide her own dislike of being less than punctual. We arrived 40 minutes late for a two hour meeting and were shown straight in to meet about five staff members in white coats, all waiting for us. They were all extremely welcoming; but did they have the same ideas about punctuality as my parents? Oh, how mortifying.
Then the curator of textiles, in white gloves, showed us a spread of beautiful, wide, white cardboard boxes. Inside, about 100 hats were each stored carefully in a nest of acid-free paper. Most were straw, summer hats with silk ribbons. And I just could not stop trying them on. My flustered embarrassment faded away and I felt strangely happy. As I put one hat down, like an addict I had to pick up another. Often, I laughed at myself in the mirror. (And sometimes I admired myself, too) My husband just sat and waited, as any husband would while his wife tries on hats.
The hats were all colours: red, blue, beige, yellow, grey, navy, black, with ribbons and trimmings sadly faded and frayed. There was one rare winter hat — a big black furry one. A navy straw hat with a huge, wide brim as if for Ascot. A tiny little hat like a cottage loaf, trimmed with brown velvet, which perched on top of your head. Hats worn tilted sideways, hats worn tipped forward and hats worn straight. Hats with draped chiffon, blue flowers, pink flowers, cream flowers, all designed with the most elegant tones. The curator explained how the silk had worn away, even touching the ribbons might displace some silk fibres on to your fingers.
I was so absorbed that I didn’t stop to think how the hats had got there. But I did have a vague thought about the fashionable women of Munich, in search of a hat for a special occasion, who would visit Hüte Rothschild and try on the these hats, in the shaky times before the Second World War when things could still be normal.
That shop was my grandfather’s. These hats were his stock. And that’s why I was trying them on. A few months earlier, I’d received an amazing email from the City Museum in Munich enquiring if I was the descendant of Heinrich Rothschild, former owner of the Rothschild hat shop. Somehow they had found my email address, probably because I have been researching my family tree.
They informed me that they were preparing an exhibition on the history of the museum under the Nazis, to show how far the museum and its staff were involved in the Nazi policy of aryanising Jewish businesses, persecuting Jewish owners and confiscating their goods during the years from 1933 to 1945. They wanted to include the story of the hat shop located near the museum. They had known for some time that they possessed 91 hats from that shop.
From my mother, I have a sense of how our family, who had lived in Germany for hundreds of years, was torn asunder when the Nazis came to power. Contact would have been difficult while they were building new lives.
My great-grandparents, Heinrich and Minna Rothschild, had four children: Otto — my grandfather — Lilli, Josef and Adele. Three had children of their own, and most of the descendants of those who escaped Germany live in the US.
My mother came to London on her own at the age of 16. Her parents, who finally got to New York in February 1941, later received restitution for the theft of the business. The only souvenir that I have from the shop was bought from eBay — four “reklamermarken” or poster stamps. These are collectibles; many businesses had them, to stick on bags and other items for advertising. They show elegant hats with long feathers. I also remember an elderly cousin talking about “going to Onkel Heinrich for a new hat for Yom Tov”. I certainly never thought I’d see those hats for myself.
Heinrich must have been quite a character and well-known. His hat shop would have been the goto place in Munich for your new hat. He is actually mentioned in a novel, Erfolg (Success) by Lion Feuchtwanger, in which, chillingly, an antisemite insists that