Hey there, Nuremburg High class of 1919!
Can it really be twenty years since we happy kampfers spent our final years as Fightin’ Teutons? Can it really be two decades since we welcomed home our fathers and older brothers and their remainig limbs from the final war Germany will ever fight? Can that really be us in the mirror, struggling to get into our old dueling tunics and cheerleader uniforms?
Hard to believe, but it’s true! Yes, the Class of ’19 celebrated its twenty-year reunion in high style this May, saying auf wiedersehen to the Dirty Thirties at a Munich beer hall that a few of us were more than familiar with from our college days (no names, please!). No one would have thought it back then, but we’ve turned out to be a pretty successful bunch; many of the Fightin’ Teutons have gained success in unexpected fields. For those of you who couldn’t show up at the reunion, or who were turned away at the door due to racial impurities, here’s where we are today!
Remember Adolf Eichmann? Frankly, neither did we! But this nondescript, nerdy nobody has made quite a splash in the transportation business. After 15 years of drifting from job to job, Dolf has finally found his calling: “getting people from one place to another”, as he puts it. Not bad from someone hot-stuff Hannah Arendt once deemed too “banal” to take to the prom! (Hannah couldn’t make the reunion, sadly, having moved to America several years ago to work in the newspaper trade. Her loss!)
Handsome, hawkish Hans Frank pursued a legal career and is talking about relocating to Poland. “Warsaw is the place to be,” says eligible bachelor Hans. “I have big plans for that town. Starting around September.” But you didn’t hear that from us, Poles! Wink wink!
Paul Joseph Goebbels was remembered by most Fightin’ Teutons as a geeky, bookish sort with a yucky club foot. But Joe (as he now prefers not to be called) is a geek made good, as his journalistic credentials, friendship with political bigshots, and exciting career as a novelist all prove. We’ll be sure and read your books really soon, Joe! In the meantime, keep doing what you’re best at: sitting by the punch bowl and glowering intensely at anyone who dares speak to you.
One graduate we just knew was going to do well was Herman Goering. Herm was always the life of the party back at good ol’ NHS, whether he was dressing up like a woman, dressing up like two women, having an ether frolic with the kids from the theater club, or pushing Joe Goebbels down a flight of stairs. Time has only improved Happy Herm, and he was all too pleased to show off his pretty new dresses, pristine hypodermic needles, and borrowed jewelry collection. We predict you’re going to hear lots of things from this dashing flyboy! Unless you’re still trapped under the bleachers with Joe Goebbels.
Another ex-Fightin’ Teuton who’s taken to the skies lately is Crazy Rudy Hess. Back in high school, he was best remembered as an unrepentant class-skipper and the Boy Most Likely To Have Medical Treatises Written About Him, but he’s blossomed into an upstanding figure in local politics who only occasionally vanishes in the middle of a class reunion to go buy cigarettes in an airplane. Keep ’em flying, Rudy!
Plenty of other success stories came out of the Class of 1919, like wallpaper-hanging go-getter Dolf Hitler, bespectacled dynamo and renowned ethnographer Henry Himmler, energetic stamp collector/physical fitness buff Reinhard Heydrich, interior design consultant and polyamorist Ilsa Koch, cartoonist Julie Streicher, children’s book author Al Rosenberg, and reunion king Joey Mengele (hey, girls, he’s a doctor!), but there’ll be plenty of time for spilling all the details in our next reunion newsletter. In the meantime, be sure and eat, burn, or otherwise destroy this one.
Oodles of kisses,
Eva