Evening star., 1946-11-03
possession

nections, his war service, whether
he had friends in the SIS, and so on.
The fact that he knew little about
the Nazi organization apparently
made his captors suspicious, for he
was hit three times with a black
jack in that first interview and once
was knocked down.
-Four days, then, he was kept In
a locked room with q half dozen
other local Nazis. He was questioned
again by the Russians on Saturday,
this sime without brutality. Then
he was released and allowed to 60
home to his wife, who had had no
inkling as to his whereabouts.
This Wife of His
Is a Handsome Woman
This wife Of his is a handsome
woman: If she were rich, she would
be regal; If her mouth were without
the slow, sad smile which SO often
is on it. she might be called severe.
Movie-goers can best picture her as
a lot like the actress Ann Revere.
She is 38. Her hair, between light
brown and Indifferent blond, is piled
high on her head. Although not
especially big, she Is obviously
strong. Well along in the eighth
month of pregnancy, she does not
hesitate to carry Max up the stairs
or to lug a pail of coal for the stove.
When Kurt found her at the
Reichspost, Marianne's job was that
of welfare worker. 1t involved ad-
vising personnel on problems which
we're bothering them - anything
from financial worries to tangled
love lives. To learn it, she had
topped off her high school educa-
ton with a years course in house
hold management and several
months of night classes in welfare
technique. She had worked for
almost 10 years in private industry,
but she found that to get the Job at
the Reichspost she had to join the
Nad party. This she did, in 1912.
Kurt was one of the young men
with whose welfare she was pro-
fessionally concerned. He brought
her a problem one day. He said he
was in love with woman but hadn't
the nerve to tell her SO.
II can't do it for you," said Mari
anne. "I am a welfare worker, yes,
but this is not my affair"
"It is your affair."" he said. "You
are the woman"
Shortly after that they were mar
ried.
The background of both Theurers
is lower middle-class, solidly re-
spectacle. Both their fathers were
Berliners and civil service employees
his, incidentally, worked all his
life at the Reichspost until he was
retired on a pension = few years
ago. Kurt is a Protestant, had close
church ties in his youth and still
attends services occasionally. Mari
anne is Catholic but has little in
terest in organized religion. They
are agreed that Max can decide for
himself when the time comes what
he wants to do about the church, If
anything.
These people did not come from
the economic bottom drawer. They
are not in it now. They were not
and are not slum dwellers. They are
the sort of couple which, in WASH
ington, might have owned a car in
cooperation with the Morris Plan
Bank, lived modestly in rooms OF
Sixteenth street or upper Connecti-
cut avenue and made a weekly pill
grimage to the neighborhood movie.
They are the kind Of people, eco
nomically speaking, who make up
the core of the population Of every
city.
Kurt's job at the Reichspost paid
260 marks a month. With Mari
anne's earnings-another 180 marks
they were well able to take the
apartment they still have, to live
comfortably and even to save some
money. Marianne quit working just
before Max was born, but Kurt got
a 20-mark raise in honor of his
fatherhood and there was still plenty
of money to go around, although the
savings did not, of course, mount
up 80 fast as they had before.
That was the situation when the
war ended-untu Kurt made his