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The Gardens of Frau Hess
Germany, 1944. Isaac Baum, former professor of botany, has been sent from a concentration camp to the home of Frau Ilse Hess to be her gardener. Frau Hess, the aristocratic, elegant wife of the former Deputy F
72 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2002
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October 27, 2022
In 1943, Rudolph Hess's wife Ilse contacted Heinrich Himmler to request a replacement for her gardener, who had been called up for active duty in the German army. Himmler provided her with a list of six candidates, culled from concentration camp inmates with botanical experience.
From this striking bit of historical trivia, Milton Frederick Marcus has fashioned a fascinating play. The Gardens of Frau Hess speculates about who one of those candidates might have been, and what might have transpired when he reported for duty at the Hess estate. This is plainly a work of fiction, but in its incisive characterizations of Ilse Hess and her "gardener" Isaac Baum it feels unflinchingly true, and helps bring us still closer to understanding the great unanswered question of the 20th century: How did it happen?
It's the summer of 1944. (Recall that D-Day was June 6 of that year; the Germans have nearly lost the war.) Three years after her husband abandoned Germany for England, where he was immediately incarcerated, Ilse Hess remains at the family home, in an ambiguous state that feels a little like imprisonment and a little like self-imposed exile. She has one servant to help her run her enormous empty household, plus she's been granted her request for a gardener. Of the six prisoners on the list Himmler sent her, she's been through two; today, the third arrives--Isaac Baum, a broken-down, middle-aged Jew who was once a professor of botany at Leipzig.
The remarkable meeting between Frau Hess and Herr Professor Baum is depicted in the play's astonishing first scene. It's infused with a kind of desperate surrealism, as Marcus introduces us to his two characters, who are at once prototypes and victims of the off-kilter society that Germany has somehow turned into. Frau Hess is proud and aristocratic and elegant, a vestige of an extinct social order where racial/religious bigotry melded seamlessly with noblesse oblige: it is sheer, cold detachment--not rabid hatred--that she feels for a Jew like Baum. Baum, meanwhile--foul, dirty, unsure of where he is or why--is trying to reconcile himself to his new lush surroundings after years at Birkenau. Frau Hess orders him out of his filthy prison clothes and into the shower, and Baum thinks nothing of stripping naked in front of her; neither does she, and in a way that's all we need to know about both of them.
Eventually Baum proves to be not only a successful gardener but also an ideal companion for Ilse. The play's subsequent scenes depict the deepening and strengthening of their relationship. Inevitably each reveals some excruciating secrets from their past, but rather than being mere fodder to the story's obvious melodramatic arc, these serve to further illuminate Marcus's thesis.
The Gardens of Frau Hess is imperfect: its final scene, particularly, veers badly off track. But it's a compelling, provocative piece throughout, raising issues and questions that honestly illuminate the underpinnings of the great tragedy that was the Holocaust.
From this striking bit of historical trivia, Milton Frederick Marcus has fashioned a fascinating play. The Gardens of Frau Hess speculates about who one of those candidates might have been, and what might have transpired when he reported for duty at the Hess estate. This is plainly a work of fiction, but in its incisive characterizations of Ilse Hess and her "gardener" Isaac Baum it feels unflinchingly true, and helps bring us still closer to understanding the great unanswered question of the 20th century: How did it happen?
It's the summer of 1944. (Recall that D-Day was June 6 of that year; the Germans have nearly lost the war.) Three years after her husband abandoned Germany for England, where he was immediately incarcerated, Ilse Hess remains at the family home, in an ambiguous state that feels a little like imprisonment and a little like self-imposed exile. She has one servant to help her run her enormous empty household, plus she's been granted her request for a gardener. Of the six prisoners on the list Himmler sent her, she's been through two; today, the third arrives--Isaac Baum, a broken-down, middle-aged Jew who was once a professor of botany at Leipzig.
The remarkable meeting between Frau Hess and Herr Professor Baum is depicted in the play's astonishing first scene. It's infused with a kind of desperate surrealism, as Marcus introduces us to his two characters, who are at once prototypes and victims of the off-kilter society that Germany has somehow turned into. Frau Hess is proud and aristocratic and elegant, a vestige of an extinct social order where racial/religious bigotry melded seamlessly with noblesse oblige: it is sheer, cold detachment--not rabid hatred--that she feels for a Jew like Baum. Baum, meanwhile--foul, dirty, unsure of where he is or why--is trying to reconcile himself to his new lush surroundings after years at Birkenau. Frau Hess orders him out of his filthy prison clothes and into the shower, and Baum thinks nothing of stripping naked in front of her; neither does she, and in a way that's all we need to know about both of them.
Eventually Baum proves to be not only a successful gardener but also an ideal companion for Ilse. The play's subsequent scenes depict the deepening and strengthening of their relationship. Inevitably each reveals some excruciating secrets from their past, but rather than being mere fodder to the story's obvious melodramatic arc, these serve to further illuminate Marcus's thesis.
The Gardens of Frau Hess is imperfect: its final scene, particularly, veers badly off track. But it's a compelling, provocative piece throughout, raising issues and questions that honestly illuminate the underpinnings of the great tragedy that was the Holocaust.
Displaying 1 of 1 review