Page 16 - Willi Distel Diary

Chapter IV opens: Willi arrives in Stuttgart at Whitsun 1924, is put up by Paul, finds work with the Kohlstetters, and saves hard for a new suit

Translated from Willi's German.

IV. Stuttgart On Whit morning the express train I was sitting in rolled into Stuttgart. I was met by my friend Paul, and also by Jakob Bosch, who was living in Cannstatt. As I did not yet have a position, we went back to Paul's room, where I slept on the sofa for eight days. To begin with I took a temporary job in nearby Ludwigsburg, travelling out in the morning and back again in the evening. Then, through the labour exchange, I got a post with Herr Ernst Kohlstetter. There too I was the only assistant, and I got on very well with the family. The wife in particular was an intellectually cultivated Berliner. We often talked together, and the experienced woman was never short of good advice. Herr Kohlstetter himself had no interest in such things; he was a real man of his time. The business drew plenty of Jews as well as working people. I had found myself a nice room, and so we enjoyed ourselves well. Then the idea came to us of saving up for a new suit. We set to it in earnest, and so it happened that I saw as good as nothing of Stuttgart's art. Paul and I took walks instead, of which there is no shortage in Stuttgart.

Interesting facts

Bad Cannstatt. Now a district of Stuttgart, Cannstatt is known for its mineral springs and for the Cannstatter Volksfest, one of Germany's largest funfairs.
Ludwigsburg. A town just north of Stuttgart, Ludwigsburg is famous for its enormous baroque 'Residenzschloss', among the largest surviving palaces in Germany.
The labour exchange. The Weimar Republic ran public employment offices ('Arbeitsamt') that matched workers to vacancies, the state system through which Willi found his post.
A remark about the customers. When Willi notes 'Jews as well as working people', he is describing the salon's clientele - who came in through the door - not passing judgement. In 1920s Germany, Jewish families were a long-established part of urban commercial and professional life, so a busy central-Stuttgart shop naturally drew a mixed custom, from the well-to-do to ordinary working people.
A Weimar-era observation. The diary's contents page notes that these early chapters were 'written up later, in Stuttgart', covering events only up to 1925 - so this passage was set down in the mid-1920s, close to the time and well before the Nazi era of the 1930s. The comment carries none of the menace that later history can lend it.