Chapter 1

Summary

The Möhrings lived at 19 Georgenstraße, very close to Friedrichstraße. The landlord, Finance Counselor Schulze, had gambled three hundred taler in the euphoric days following national unification and had made his fortune in two years. Now, whenever he passed his old ministry, he looked up with a smile and said, “Morning, Your Excellency!” Oh lord, His Excellency. When His Excellency was removed from office, the whole world was astounded that Counselor Schulze himself did not fall. Schulze had stood, as he liked to say, “visà- vis de rien,” or at best, vis-à-vis the state presidency of Danzig. He had done better than that, however: Schulze now owned five buildings. The one on Georgenstraße was practically a palace. It had small balconies in front, and Schulze's own balcony was made of gilded iron. What appeared to be missing was a cellar and, of course, cellar apartments. Instead, there were small stores—a vegetable shop, a barber, an optician, and an umbrella shop—at street level, so that the landlord's apartment one floor above had that mixed-level character of so many new Berlin buildings. Was it on a slightly elevated ground floor? Or was it on the second floor? Schulze's calling card read “19 Georgenstraße, Apartment 1,” which everyone accepted except the Möhrings. Depending on the numbering of the landlord's apartment, the Möhrings lived either three flights up or four, a matter which, in addition to the social implications, had a certain practical significance for them.

The Möhrings were just two people, a mother and a daughter. The father, a bookkeeper in a clothing-export business, had been dead for seven years. He died on the Saturday before Palm Sunday, one day before Mathilde's confirmation. The clergyman remarked upon this in a way that still lingered in the memory of both mother and daughter. He reiterated precisely those last words that Herr Möhring had said to his daughter: “Mathilde, stay proper!” Pastor Messerschmidt, who had been told of this final utterance, was of the opinion that the dying man had intended it in a moral sense. The Schulzes, who had also heard about it, and who, of course, in addition to the arrogance of wealth and the status of Finance Counselor also had the arrogance of landlords, disagreed.