“Before the all-out bombings of Berlin began in November 1943, there were six houses on the Hofmann’s street,” Joel Sayre writes. “Now, in July 1945, there were, by official reckoning, one and a half, of which the house that Lilo lived in was reckoned as one.” Though it looked like an intact house from the street, its roof had been destroyed by an RAF incendiary bomb in early 1944 and the attic floor served in place — except when it rained hard or long.
The House Without a Roof is a story of how ordinary people survive under desperate conditions. But unlike other books about the early years of Germany’s recovery from the war, such as James Stern’s The Hidden Damage (1947) and The Smoking Mountain (1951), this book is as much about survival under the Nazis as it is about survival after their downfall.
That the Hofmanns made it through the rise of the Nazis and the war with their home and selves relatively intact was due to a combination of luck and wit. Hedi, the wife, was the daughter of a Jewish soldier killed on the Western Front in World War One, which made her, under the Nuremberg Laws, a Mischling — half Jew, half Aryan, and thus prohibited from numerous rights. Neither Hedi nor Fritz supported Hitler’s policies, but they soon found it necessary to avoid being singled out for retribution.
In turn, Lilo, their daughter, learned to blend in. One day, Lilo came home, upset that the grace she’d become used to saying at lunch had changed. Instead of the traditional,
Come, Lord Jesus,
Be our guest,
Let these gifts
To us be blessed.
The pupils were instructed to say,
Fold your hands
And bow your head,
To Adolph Hitler pray;
For he gives our daily bread,
And all our wants he doth allay.
Lilo asks to be moved to a different school, but Hedi knows that under the Nazi’s scheme for standardizing the Nazification of German institutions , the Gleichschaltung, every kindergartener would now be saying this prayer. So, Lilo simply has to accept and go along. “Remember that it’s very, very dangerous to say that you don’t like Hitler, so you mustn’t ever tell our secret to anybody, ever, ever.” Just keep reminding yourself, Hedi tells her daughter, “Das Wunder ist ein Schwindel” (This miracle is a fraud).
Luck often brings the Hofmanns under its umbrella. One of tenants in their apartment house is a sculptor whose heroic busts are favorites among the Nazi elite and the other residents enjoy the protection accorded him. One day, a nurse in a neighboring apartment takes Lilo to visit the hospital where she works, where she meets Frau Ley, wife of Reichsleiter Robert Ley, one of the highest ranking members of the Nazi party. The Reichsleiter arrives, clearly drunk, and becomes enraged when he spots a crucifix on the wall. He rips it down and begins smashing the fixtures. Lilo is quietly escorted out and told the matter is not to be spoken of.
Their greatest ordeal, however, comes when Fritz Hofmann, a strong, tall, and Nordically handsome man with a university degree, is invited to become a member of the SS, the most elite — and most extreme — element of Nazi Party. The idea sickens Fritz, but he recognizes this is an offer he cannot refuse. After considering the limited options before him, Fritz and Hedi — with the help of a friendly doctor — contrive a solution: Fritz will go mad. He benefits from having seen how his own father behaved (and was treated) when he went insane years before.
In the longest section of the book, Sayre recounts the extraordinary lengths and intricate maneuvers involved in convincing the doctors and SS officers that Fritz is, indeed, insane while avoiding becoming a victim of the state’s mental health system. The key to Fritz’s performance is his taking a pro-Nazi position more extreme and passionate than even the most fervent follower. He takes to drawing his visions of the ultimate triumph of the cause:
His masterpiece was an SS Armageddon on top of a mountain in the Urals, under a lowering sky. The central figures were Himmler — winged, of course — and Jesus Christ shaking hands…. About the two central figures stood a hierarchy of Heydrich, Kaltenbrunner, Sepp Dietrich, the Waffen-SS general, the smiling Standartenführer who had offered Hofmann the commission, and many others. Here and there, a wounded SS angel heiled Himmler and Jesus from the ground.
One comes away in awe of Fritz Hofmann’s ingenuity and stamina.
The Hofmanns also survived the almost constant Allied bombing that Berlin endured from 1943 on. Lacking a robust and deeply-buried subway system like London and Moscow, Berlin had few good options for sheltering its residents. The choices were hunkering down in a trench or huddling in a crowded basement with neighbors. The government began providing free postcards for contacting friends and relatives:
We are living
We have had deaths
We have been [half]/[considerably]/[totally] bombed out
These statements were thought to be sufficient to cover all situations.
The House Without a Roof is a remarkably light and sane account of a dark and crazy time, which is a tribute to the character of both the Hofmanns and Joel Sayre. Though none of his work is in print today, Sayre was considered one of the very best of The New Yorker’s exceptional team of reporters. As editor William Shawn later wrote of Sayre, “he had a strong individual style, his writing had humor, warmth, deep feeling for people, and great vitality.” My copy of The House Without a Roof came from the collection of James and Tania Stern and bears the following inscription from Joel Sayre:
To Jimmy Stern and his delightful missus whose first name, heard in a moment of booze, unfortunately escapes me. In sincere admiration.
, opens with the sound of a pesky mosquito attacking the big toe of John Norris (Jolly John) Holtsapple, four times Mayor of the Greater City of Malta, as he awakens from another wild night of drinking with the boys. “Barrelled again,” he thinks, and swears to get back on the wagon until his election is over.
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, was a similarly over-the-top satire, in this case of the intrusion of gambling interests in college sports–a topic that still comes up on a regular basis in the news. 
(1945), a collection of his New Yorker articles on military operations in that region during the Second World War, and 
(1948), a novel about the experiences of an ordinary German family under Hitler. His daughter,