Faber & Faber

Here, reproduced in full, is Jan Petersen's introduction to (the Seven Seas Books edition of) Our Street, written in Berlin in 1960.

Now it can be told - the story behind which I wrote in what seems a long-ago day but which is really only yesterday as history goes.

This book is the chronicle of an anti-fascist struggle that took place in Wallstrasse, Berlin-Charlottenburg, in the fateful months concurrent with Hitler's coming to power. I wrote down the events as they happened. I typed my manuscript partially in my small room in Knesebeckstrasse, just a few minutes' walk from Wallstrasse, and partially on the Kleiner Werbellin Lake near Oranienburg.

The story covers a period of about a year and a half, ending the middle of 1934. Its publishing history includes its English translation, brought out in 1938 in London. Its publication in the German original had to wait until the end of the Second World War, the defeat of the Nazis, and the beginning of a new life for the German people.

It is heart-warming to me to know that the present Seven Seas Books edition will again enable the good people who once lived in our street to become known to the many readers in the many lands where English is used; and so will live again, if only briefly, as the reader follows their story in this book.

Work on their story was often interrupted: when comrades with whom I was immediately in contact in the underground resistance movement were arrested, as was often the case. Or when the Gestapo put my name down on their black list, which happened twice. Those were times that bound one to a 'wait-and-see' policy. What would tomorrow bring? Would there be a tomorrow?

Once a week, I would come to Berlin by motorbike, the most recently written pages of the manuscript in my knapsack. The Oranienburg Concentration Camp lay en route and I would have to ride past the guards. In Berlin, a writer-comrade would read the new pages and we would discuss them. Later, he was murdered by the Nazis; as were so many of our people.

I had lived in Wallstrasse for nine years, and worked there in the anti-fascist movement. In those days whenever the S.A. Storm-troop 33 marched through our street under police escort, the Brown Shirts would look up at our windows and draw their hands across their throats, as if pulling the noose. After they came to power, the 33s would burst into our lodgings, revolver in hand, and search the whole house. I was lucky - I had moved shortly before. The police station at the corner could have furnished them with my new address. But nobody enquired. When I look back on this time much of what occurred seems unaccountable. To be sure, luck was with me - and held when the manuscript was smuggled abroad.

I finished the typescript in the Autumn of 1934. I had made an original and two copies - three in all. Two of the copies, packed in water-proof coverings, were buried in the ground in two separate places. One copy was sent to Hamburg through underground channels. From there an anonymous German sailor was to take it aboard ship to England. Many weeks later, the news reached us that the manuscript had to be thrown overboard while the ship was still in harbour, to avoid last-minute detection. With considerable difficulty we made another arrangement for getting a copy abroad. Trustworthy friends took it to Dresden. From there it was to be smuggled into Czechoslovakia. But months went by with no news from Dresden. The manuscript was missing - perhaps lost. The third and final copy lay under a marked fir-tree, at the entrance to a wooded section outside of Berlin. This was our last chance. If something happened to this copy, the story of our street and the courageous resistance of German anti-fascists would be swallowed up by time.

Now it was my turn to try and get the manuscript beyond the borders of Nazi Germany. I had been to Prague frequently to talk with German writers in exile. So I had had practice in crossing the border illegally and getting back via a different border post. At Christmas, 1934, two of us, outfitted in ski clothes, went on a skiing holiday - at least that was the impression we wanted to make. The manuscript had been baked into two cakes which I carried in my knapsack. My friend, Walter Stolle, who had been released from Brandenburg Concentration Camp only a short time before, accompanied me. The S.S., armed with carbines patrolled the border on skis. This we knew. But luck was with us, and we slipped through their lines.

In Prague, on the second day of our stay, we learned that a manuscript of an anti-fascist novel had made its way to Prague from Germany. It was missing the second copy of Our Street. We had had no word about it because our good friends in Dresden had put off delivery of the manuscript until Christmas time when the border traffic would be heavy and the guards busy. Their idea had been the same as ours. The messenger had taken the manuscript right past the noses of the guards - it was packed in an open basket under a stack of sandwiches. The guards lifted out some of the sandwiches and examined them, but fortunately looked at the top ones only ... We had both accomplished our missions. Two copies of the manuscript were now in safe hands.

As early as April 1935, an extract of Our Street was published in Paris although we in Berlin didn't know about it at the time.

My foreign publishers asked if the facts in the book would in any way jeopardise the comrades who were still working in the underground in Nazi Germany. I had taken care of this possibility by changing the names of the characters and by disguising their appearance, family connections, and similar personal data. While the book was authentic, and the events and fate of the persons were true, the form had been changed. In addition, some episodes in the underground work in other Berlin districts were included in the book. However, the names of the Charlottenburg Death List were authentic as well as the circumstances that led to death. These martyrs were beyond the reach of the Gestapo. I tried to present a realistic picture without giving the Gestapo any leads. For example, Heinz Preuss in the book is in reality my comrade, Walter Stolle. I met Walter again only recently. He is one of the few comrades of that time who are still alive. It was after his release from concentration camp that he told me of the brutal tortures visited upon Erich Muhsam who lay next to him on the straw sacks in Brandenburg Concentration Camp.

I am confident that the book gave no hint to the Gestapo as to the real identity of the people. Had they known the identity of the author, they might have drawn conclusions. But I had kept this secret well so as to eliminate any chance of danger to my comrades and family. We in the underground were always aware of this danger, as were our friends abroad.

Upon my return from enforced exile after the war, I had an opportunity to look through my Gestapo dossier which has survived bombings and burnings. It noted that the Gestapo's enquiries after me and my whereabouts abroad had lasted until 1941, that is, until two years after the Second World War had begun.

So far as I know, Our Street is the only anti-Nazi book ever to have come out of Hitler Germany and to have been currently published in foreign countries. Perhaps, because of this, it helped the world outside of Germany to understand that 'another Germany' did exist.

Now, approximately twenty-three years after its first edition, it is being published again in English in the German Democratic Republic. No changes have been made. It is just as I wrote it down during those tense days in Wallstrasse. As I look back upon its story and those in it who died so that a decent Germany might live, I am aware of the new threat to my people and the world arising in the West of Germany from a Nazi-inspired, revived militarism. If this book alerts the world to this new danger, if it encourages my own people to build a new, democratic homeland at peace with its neighbours, then it has fulfilled its purpose.

-- Jan Petersen, Berlin, 1960