I had the dream with my drawing talent and sewing background to become a Movie Costume Designer! Inspired from my movie-seeing-experiences, I had a vision of what that place should be like, and after a few places, I found it. I went there by myself after seeing a want-ad in the newspaper. I was there at 8:00 in the morning and waited until 10:00 when the owner finally showed up. The next day my mother went back with me and I signed the paper for a three year contract. I hit the jackpot!
It was a chic but small fashion salon on Berlin’s Grand Avenue, the Kurfürstendamm (called Ku’damm by Berliners). Not only did they make clothes for the rich and famous, but costumes for films also! Once could often see the very famous strolling along the Boulevard, but the greatest was for me when I had to deliver wardrobe to the UFA Studio. It was a 30-minute taxi drive to get there, and often I had to sew on last minute things like buttons. I walked around the studio and watched movie making before I had to take the train back. After three years and a week long examination, I could call myself a seamstress.
From Ursula’s autobiography, Leaving Berlin.
With my parents – Frieda Stüfke (b. October 18, 1890) & Emil Czerny (b. January 17, 1886)
I remember my father had a printing machine in the attic and once in a while two young men came to us and would disappear into the attic. I learned much later that they printed communist pamphlets there, against Hitler. Very dangerous business.
In 1932 we moved into the little house my parents had built. At this time my father got very sick and we almost lost him. It was before penicillin and a bad ear infection was almost deadly. He lost his hearing in one ear, but this did not stop him from being very active in the communists fight against Hitler. Behind the house, in between fruit trees, was a very tall pole and often the same young men came to us and out of the room they disappeared into, I heard clicking noises, which were morse code signals. I was nine years old then, and had no idea they were sending messages to Moscow.
All this came to an abrupt ending, when on January 1933 Hitler became ruler of Germany. That day I have never forgotten. In the evening we had many men around our kitchen table, listening to the radio. When I asked my mother what this is all about and who is this Hitler anyway, she said these exact words to me, “Hitler is somebody who wants war!” How right she was.
My father stopped after that to be politically active. He knew very well to work underground was like suicide. Our very good friends got executed because they were hiding party friends who were on the run. What a horrible nightmare that was.
From Ursula’s autobiography, Leaving Berlin.
After my first year in school I noticed big changes. The year was 1933. In our classroom before was a painting of the “Old Germans” who were lazy laying on a bearskin. It was replaced with the same old Germans, our forefathers, but they were now busy working, still wearing animal skins. This change in or switch in history left me puzzled. Of course from the wall stared a picture of the “Führer” at us.
1937 – my last year at school in Bohnsdorf (East Berlin). (1st row, 3rd seat back)
Soon I felt somewhat like an outsider, then many girls joined the “Bund Deutscher Mädchen”, BDM for short, and wore a special outfit to their meetings. But since I never got baptized, I had a free hour during school time, while my classmates had religion lessons. They envied me for this.
…During World War One, my father got drafted but let go again, since he was one of the first ever to refuse to swear to God and the Kaiser to save the Vaterland, by admitting he does not believe in God and therefore can not give this oath. (So this is the reason I can not believe in any religion.)
From Ursula’s autobiography, Leaving Berlin.
The only organization I ever joined during those years was the “Turnverein” (Gymnastics Club). I stayed away from any political children doing things together, and was so very much by myself. I played by myself with dolls, sewed with the help of my mother little dresses for them, read a lot and went to the movies every Sunday afternoon. And I mean almost every Sunday, rain or shine! Did I love the movies! (Still do.)
Before there was a movie theater close to where we lived, I would walk more than 25 minutes to the big hall, where they had to close the windows with big wooden shutters. How exciting this was! I hoped so much after I came to America to be able to see the silent “Tom Mix” films again, but found out they got all burned in an accident.
From Ursula’s autobiography, Leaving Berlin.
Ursula Grimm 