WEBVTT
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Unidentified Speaker: Theme. One, two, three, four.
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Beth Strasser: Okay. Can you tell me your name? Ludwig Baum: Yeah. My name
is Ludwig Baum. Strasser: And your age? Baum: My age is 63. Close to 64. In
[??] I'm 64. Strasser: Ah, so your birthday is March 19--. Baum: 1912. Born
in Berlin before the First World War. Strasser: And what part of Berlin?
Baum: Well, I would say--
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Baum: It is now the Western section of Berlin. Berlin is now partitioned
into about two thirds is Western and one third is the Eastern part. I was
born in part I lived in afterwards. Western section of Berlin.
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Strasser: And the maiden name of your mother?
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Baum: My mother's name was Cohen. Strasser: And her first name? Baum:
Margaret. Strasser: And do you know the maiden name of your grandmother?
Baum: I never met--
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Baum: My grandmother. You mean my maternal grandmother? [Strasser: Yeah
your maternal] I have two grandmothers. Strasser: Your maternal. Baum: I
was very fortunate to have two grandmothers. My maternal grandmother's
maiden name is Hinzelman.
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Strasser: Could you spell that?
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Baum: H I N Z E L M A N.
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Strasser: And your ethnic origin or identity?
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Baum: Well, if you call it ethnic, uh, racial, then I would say German,
Jewish, if you can call it ethnic, because, uh, as far as I could go back.
My family has lived in the heart, which has been Germany up to 1945,
anyhow, since the 18th century-- middle of the, middle of the 18th century.
Roughly since Frederick the Great. You know who worked from 1746 to 1786.
And Prussia and his rule expanded from about. Well let's say it expanded to
about 200 or 300%the original size. And going back to the late 18th
century. My family has lived within the boundaries of Prussia. Which later
became a part of Germany.
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Strasser: So I'll give it a check [audio cuts]. Okay, and what languages
do you speak or understand?
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Baum: Well, the only languages I really speak, I would say is English, but
you can call it speaking English and German. And understand French. And I
have a partial knowledge of, uh, Italian and Spanish as far as reading is
concerned. I don't understand too much, but knowing Latin, having learned
Latin for four years in school and Latin being the base of Italian and
Spanish, I have a certain knowledge of-- Book knowledge, let's say, of
Italian and Spanish. As far as Latin is concerned, I don't even think I
could translate much anymore today. But I had a pretty good when we left
school, I would say I was able to read just about any classical Latin book
that was written. And in fact, when I passed my, uh, oral examinations for
Doctor of Law, I had to read and interpret the old, uh, Roman law. A
chapter of Roman law, which I at that time could do. Today I probably
wouldn't even understand anymore what I'm reading. But, uh, after four
years of Latin, became pretty well read Latin. But not me speaking Latin
but can read it pretty well.
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Strasser: And your occupation?
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Baum: Well, since being in this country, I've been in the electrical
business. Let's say in the last 15, 20 years, I have been in the electrical
contracting business.
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Strasser: And before that?
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Baum: Before coming to this country or before the conracting business, I
was in electrical supply business. Since 1941, I have been electrical
supply and electrical contractor. Strasser: And when did you come in this
country? Baum: That's it. I didn't come here till 1940-- the middle of
1940.
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Strasser: Okay. Then in Berlin?
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Baum: Berlin. After I stopped, the war, stopped in my law studies and was
working in a button factory. I was employed in a button factory for four
years from 1934 to 1938. Strasser: Doing what? Baum: What? Strasser: What
were you doing there? Baum: Well, I would say I was-- it was a small
factory. So when I say I was managing the factory, you know, it sounds
great, but it was really a small factory with about ten, 12 people and
after a short time as smallest management of the factory.
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Strasser: And your religion? Baum: My religion was Jewish. Strasser:
Orthodox? Conservative? Or--
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Baum: Well, I would say non-practicing Jewish. Strasser: All the way
along? Baum: Uh, well, no, I was, uh, what do you call a bar mitzvah. And,
uh, after the-- by 14th or 15th year, I stopped practicing it and I more or
less stopped believing in it and I never went back to it. And the events
since then have if anything qualified me in this belief.
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Strasser: How do you mean?
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Baum: Well, after what happened in Germany and what happened with Hitler,
you know, I couldn't see much sense in the Jewish religion anymore because
the Jewish religion practices that there is no compensation, there is no
hereafter. You know that whatever you experience in good or and bad things
you do right here while you're on Earth, you know. Strasser: There is no
heaven or hell? Baum: And the Jewish religion does not believe in an
hereafter, you see, and the Catholic religion, you go through a lot of
suffering, knowing very well, or at least believing that the more you
suffer here, the better you will up in the hereafter. The Jewish religion
does not have any hereafter. It just don't believe in anything, you know?
So I figured, you know, that this is it. You know, this is a chosen people.
And I don't know if this is actually such a blessing to believe, to belong
to that kind of a chosen people. And, uh, I could never see why this Jewish
God would save some people in this religion, because other people who were
just as deserving of being saved as the others were. So it just didn't make
sense to me anymore. And, uh, that has been my belief ever since.
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Strasser: This is when you were about 14, 15? Baum: Right. Strasser: And
how did your parents raise you? Conservatively or Orthodox?
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Baum: No, I was in the liberal schools where I lived, which was partially
due to being more or less assimilated in the German phase. And in Germany
religion did not play a large role in most families except in the smallest
places in rural areas, especially in Catholic regions. Except in those or
those regions, I would say 85 or 90% of the people never went to church.
There wasn't such a thing as going to church on Sunday like still half of
the population here does. You know, this is going down here too. But still
more than half the population still goes to church on Sunday. Now, the only
people who went to church in Berlin were old people who had nothing better
to do. And it's Catholics. But being in a Protestant country, that meant
that most of the churches were practically empty. The only time people went
to church was when there was a child being baptized or when there was a
wedding or maybe a funeral. But otherwise, very few people ever sat in
interior of the church. Another thing is that, especially in Berlin, half
of the Berlin population, or more than half of the Berlin population
belonged to the Socialist or Communist parties.
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Baum: And in every election under Hitler, they had the majority in the
parliament in Berlin and the city parliament. And these people, most of
these people were actually not even members of the church anymore. They had
their own what they call via words. Instead of being confirmed, they had
their own kind of confirmation outside the church. And that, of course,
contributed with half of the population, does not believe in religion, even
if they may not formally have left the church. You know, they also
contributed so any-- in Berlin, there was just no religious atmosphere. Of
course, people had Christmas, but Christmas, like as here, more or less as
90%, the matter of giving gifts and celebrating and maybe 10% religion. And
that was all there was just was not that kind of religious life in Berlin
was different than Bavaria and other Catholic regions. But in the northern
part, and especially in the larger cities, people were not really did not
really lead any kind of religious life.
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Strasser: How long have you lived in Pittsburgh?
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Baum: Since June 1940, which would be almost 36 years.
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Strasser: So can you tell me about the birthplace of your parents?
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Baum: My father was born in what at that time was West Prussia, the
province of West Prussia, which was roughly 200 miles, meaning not quite
positive, 150 miles east of Berlin. And my mother was born in Berlin.
Strasser: And the name of the province where your father was from?
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Baum: Forsteneu. Which is a very small place. F O R S T E N E U. It's a
village, which I don't think has more than 5, 600 inhabitants. And my
mother was born in Berlin in 1883, when Berlin had about a million, maybe a
little over a million inhabitants.
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Strasser: And when you first came to America, was your initial intention
to stay? Or were you planning to return?
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Baum: No, I never had any-- being very conservative, I never had any idea
of leaving America.
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Strasser: What neighborhood did you first move into in Pittsburgh?
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Baum: I moved to Homestead first, which is actually a suburb of
Pittsburgh. In the Pittsburgh area.
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Baum: So I would say it's practically, for all practical purposes,
Pittsburgh. But since Pittsburgh consists of roughly 190 or almost 200
small communities, there is no such thing as Pittsburgh. But actually in
Greater Pittsburgh. And we never left. We always moved within one and a
half or two miles of Homestead. I would say we are. We are one and a half
mile from Homestead.
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Strasser: And why did you go to Homestead?
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Baum: Went to Homestead because when we came here, the Jewish
organizations, which more or less had responsibility for us, you know,
tried to settle us in a place where we would have some kind of contact with
the local community. And the local community in Homestead expressed a
desire to have somebody, some of those so-called refugees in Homestead that
they could take care of until they were on their own feet. And we lived in
Homestead for a little bit over one year, which probably have lived there
longer. But then the war broke out and the steel mill, the United States
steel company took over. The part of Homestead where we lived in the house
were torn down and had about 20, 25 blocks of Homestead were raised to make
room for factory-- for steel factory buildings. So that's when we left
Homestead.
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Strasser: And what about your father's occupation and his history.
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Baum: My father worked all his life in the textile industry. He was an
apprentice in the retail-- textile retailers and clothing store. And later
on in 1902, he joined the large wholesale textile house in Berlin and
stayed with them until 1936. So in other words, from about 18-- from his
seventh-- 15th, 15th year on up to his 58th year, he was in textile
business, which was only interrupted by two years of active service from
1900 to 1902 in the Prussian Army, and then from 1914 to 18 again in the
Army. During the war. But otherwise he was always in the same textile
business. Strasser: In Berlin? Baum: In Berlin, yeah.
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Strasser: What made him leave his little village?
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Baum: Well, there was no-- really no place to work in this little village.
It was mostly small farms and maybe 1 or 2 small stores. And there was no
place to get any kind of, uh. Professional or-- I shouldn't say
professional. Any kind of occupational experience. So, uh, when he left
there, he went to a little bit larger city, that [??] which is in Pullman,
which is a northern province of Prussia, not too far, maybe a hundred miles
away. And he stayed there actually only for 3 or 4 years. Then he went to
the army. And when he came back from the army, he went to Berlin because in
the meantime, his parents had moved to Berlin. And so after leaving the
Army in 1902, he went to Berlin and joined this one firm, which was one of
the, if not the largest textile suppliers in Berlin. And he stayed there
till 1936, with the exception of the war years.
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Strasser: What did your grandfather do that he moved to Germany.
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Baum: My grandfather had a-- well, I would say a combination tavern. The
village tavern, I would say, was a little bit of a farm in addition to it.
Like everybody in those small places had with some chickens and so on. I
wouldn't say he was a farmer, that would be exaggerated, but he had a small
piece of land. And in addition to that, he had a village saloon. Of course
saloon does not here has a little bit of a bad name, that word saloon, you
know. But yeah, it was really a place where people got together in the
evenings, had a beer, and that was more or less the gathering point of the
village population. That's why my other grandfather, my maternal side, had
a farm, a big farm. He had what they used to call in Germany a Goot [ph]
now. It's very hard to translate. I would say. It's like saying a, uh, what
do you call it? A large farm. I would say, you know, a ranch is
exaggerated. But anyhow, was one of the larger farms and he had this till
he had this together with his father till he moved to Berlin later on, too.
So on my maternal grandfather's side, he really had the farm. And on the
paternal grandfather side, he had a combination, uh, village inn and little
farm.
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Strasser: And he gave that up to Berlin.
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Baum: Well, he gave it up when he was in his, I would say close to 70 when
he reached retirement age.
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Strasser: And then what did he take up in Berlin? Baum: Nothing anymore.
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Baum: He was retired then. When he moved, he was born in 18, about 1838,
the late 1830s, and he moved to Berlin about 1902. So he was about 65 years
old when he moved to Berlin. And he lived there from 1902 to 1918. He died
right during the revolution when the shooting was going on in Berlin. And
in fact, I know we visited him when he was sick and he got right into all
the shooting that was taking place during the revolution, but didn't bother
was very interesting to me as a child.
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Strasser: Yes.
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Baum: Maybe less interesting to my parents but as a child it was very
interesting. Strasser: The revolution though. I don't know what happened?--
Baum: Well in 1918 the armies had to more or less retreat. They just
couldn't keep the fronts up anymore. You know, they were still in France.
They were still in Belgium. But it became hopeless because the allies,
especially once the Americans came over, became so overwhelming and the
German armies just could not go on anymore. And the Hindenburg, the famous
field marshal who was the commander in chief. Well, the commander in chief
officially was the Kaiser, of course. But then anyhow, Wildenberg, who was
really commander, asked the Kaiser to get the government to get an
armistice at all costs because he could not guarantee that his lines would
hold up for another month or so. You know, so then of course, there was
usual conflict. You know, some of the older army officers, some of the
professional army people, could not see that, you know, they couldn't see
that all that would suddenly collapsed. You know, the tradition that the
Prussian Army, which had been great since Frederick the Great, and said
that they would suddenly collapse like this after 150 years and it came to
and some of the troops became rebellious. They started to tear off the
shoulder pieces of the officers.
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Baum: The German officers had certain shoulder pieces, epaulettes, they
called them in French and which made them distinguished from the ordinary
common soldier. They started to tear them off and that it came to the you
know, whenever a country is being defeated, it's always-- usually anyhow
the some kind of upheaval. Everybody accused the other one. And the old
German officers never really conceded that Germany was defeated. They
talked about the Deutsche the stab in the back. You know, they said that
the reds, the communists and so on, they stabbed in the back, the soldiers.
Without them, they would have stood up another ten years. They would have
won in the end, you know. And so that was usually the disagreement on whose
fault it was. And it came to some kind of little fights between the loyal
troops who were still loyal to the Kaiser and the other troops who were
rebelling against it. And there was a lot of shooting going on. Actually,
it was not too much blood. I don't know. Well, maybe if there was a
thousand victims or was it in these days that was about it. But still, it
was a little bit of a tense situation. There was a so-called revolution of
November 1980. That was the end of the Kaiser.
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Strasser: Did your mother work outside of the home? Baum: Never.
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Baum: My mother never worked outside the home.
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Strasser: Oh. Did you ever have boarders in the house? Baum: No. No.
Strasser: Did you have anyone living with you besides your--
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Baum: Never had anybody living with us. No. We had a maid. A live in maid
as was the custom with I would say, not only wealthy, but most upper middle
class people. They all had maids, lice in maids and they stayed in the
house. Each apartment, even in the not too pretentious apartment building.
Each apartment had what they called a room for the maid, which was usually
a pretty small half room. It was more or less like a large walk in closet,
but that was provided in each apartment. And we always had, as long as we
remember, we always had a maid.
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Strasser: Did your grandparents live with you? Or an uncle or an aunt? Did
any of your relatives? Baum: Nobody lived with us.
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Baum: No. Nobody lived with us.
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Strasser: How many brothers and sisters did you have? Baum: None.
Strasser: None? Baum: No.
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Baum: Never had a brother or sister.
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Strasser: And no one living with you?
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Baum: No. A lot of people do ask me quite often if I didn't have a twin
because you couldn't imagine that one by himself was that stupid? But I
never had a twin, never had a brother or sister, you know.
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Strasser: And how many children do you have?
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Baum: Two children. Two boys. Strasser: How old are they now? Baum: 32 and
26.
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Strasser: Uh, can you tell me about your education?
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Baum: Well, I went to school in 1918, March 18th, when I was six years
old, in what you would consider here first grade and went through the
school. It was a combination grade and high school, went to the same school
till I was 18. We had 12 grades in the same school from 1 to 12, and it was
a little bit moderated form of what we call the gymnasium. In other words,
it was not the real classical gymnasium which was teaching Greek and Latin.
We didn't have any Greek anymore, but we did have Latin. And I had six
years of. Six years of English wouldn't believe it, but we had I had six
years of English, I had nine years of French and four years of Latin. Now
nine years of French, mainly because at that time French was still the
European language. You know, your French has been the diplomatic language
ever since I remember. The most diplomats were talking French, and all the
educated. People in Europe were speaking French.
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Baum: The courts, for instance, in Russia, the official language was
Russian, of course, but everybody spoke French. And in Prussia, the most
famous king of Prussia, Frederick the Great, could hardly talk German. He
talked French and his friendship with Voltaire. And so, of course, proved
that that, you know, that he was really, as far as culture is concerned,
was much more French than German. And even in the this century, yet most
wealthy families who could afford it had a French governess because this
was the language of the educated people, the French. So we had nine years
of French and then six years of English and four years of Latin. Looking
backwards, I think it was a wrong thing. I think you should start with
Latin because all the Roman languages are based on Latin and it's much
easier to learn French if you know Latin, I think, than the other way
around. So-- and I never regretted to have learned Latin, although I don't
use it exactly. But it gives you a very good background of a lot of words.
And in addition to that, the Romans, the old Romans had a lot of sayings
which I still cherish and which nobody has ever had been able to repeat in
such a short and precise form. So I was never sorry about having learned
Latin, although I didn't use it in English at that point. And French was
nine years, of course, at a very, very good knowledge of French. Our system
in Germany, at least in Prussia, was pretty good. Anybody, any teacher who
taught foreign languages had to study in this particular country whose
language he was teaching for a minimum of six months, which gave him a much
better knowledge of the language of the country than the Bookman.
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Baum: So if I see some of the teachers who teach German here, you know,
it's sort of I wouldn't say pitiful, but it's almost unbelievable how their
German pronunciation isn't-- how they may know all the German, all the
grammar and everything, but how hard the time they have to talk and
understand German. So we had I think we had a better, much better education
as far as language is concerned. Of course, on the other hand, you have to
realize that these higher schools in Germany were only I would say that
only about 15, maybe 20% of the student body went into the schools. 70 or
80% of them only went to grade schools and stopped school when they were 15
years old. So it was much easier because there was a fewer-- many fewer,
smaller number of children who took up languages than here, where most
everybody goes to high school and going to high school automatically mean
that it did mean anyhow to pick up 1 or 2 languages. But the knowledge,
acquired here in language, cannot be compared with the knowledge that we
acquired in Germany. Now, I, I think I have a pretty good knowledge of
English as far as spelling or grammar is concerned. I can out spell both my
children, in spite of their master degree and their doctor of law degree. I
can out spell and I can look over any of their letters and so always find
some kind of a mistake in it. The same with grammar, you know. So I think
we got a very good education as far as languags are concerned.
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Strasser: So after 1930, then you went to university.
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Baum: 1930, I went to the University of Berlin and took up law. See, we
don't have the college education first and then the law school. But we go
right into law school. And, uh, with the exception of one semester, which I
spent in Heidelberg, I had six semesters of law and the University of
Berlin, the law school.
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Baum: And then after Hitler came, I could not continue. I went to the
University of Basel in Switzerland, where I had two more semesters, which I
needed in order to get my doctor degree.
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Strasser: You could do that? Go to another country to study in law.
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Baum: Yes, you could do that. You can still do that because the Swiss law
is actually still based on the old Roman law. And we learned--
