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A Report by Sonja Mühlberger

Sonja Mühlberger and Jean Rosenstein

to get Prof. Pan Guang’s message that he would come to Berlin for a conference in mid September and would love to meet good old friends before taking part at the reception. Time was limited. Therefore, I called former Shanghailanders and some of our dear partners and watched the weather forecast every day. I’m happy to say that we’ve got all I wanted and much more.

Prof. Pan Guang arrived in time at the airport and we went to the hotel where he could stay for about one and a half hours only while I took a walk on “Kurfuerstendamm”.  Dagmar Yu-Dembski and I accompanied him then to a Greek Restaurant for lunch nearby. We passed the entrance of the former Chinese embassy which was situated on Kurfuerstendamm until the Second World War broke out,  if I got it right.

We met our group of people with great enthusiasm and my brother Peter was the only one who looked a bit tired because he came from home by car, which was about a 3 hours’ ride. Marion Schubert, nee Salomon, was the youngest; Gerda Gentsch, nee Fuerst, our oldest and Jean Rosenstein said that he was the first of the children of German Jewish Refugees that were born in Shanghai in March 1939. His mother, Herta Rosenstein is now 95 years where she lives the Berliner Jewish Old-Age Home headed by Gary Wolff, born in Shanghai in 1948.  

You can imagine that the waiter had some problems to speak loud enough to get our order. Fredy Herzberg who went to Argentina first after the Shanghai exile, found his sister Ruth Herzberg who is still living in Argentina on one of the photos I brought along. It was nice to listen to his voice because his German is a bit colored by Spanish accent. 

Rita Opitz, nee Metis, and Siegbert Aron met after 59 years. They told us about their wonderful puppy-love affair on the ship “Marine Lynx” which brought us from Shanghai to Europe in 1947. Siegbert was 17, Rita 14 years old that time.  

I was very happy that Helmuth F. Braun, the Head of Exhibitions of the Berliner Jewish Museum accompanied our group. He invited us to the Jewish Museum, which celebrated the Fifth Anniversary that day.  Dagmar Yu-Dembski who took also part at our get-together is not only the Chief-Editor of the magazine “Das Neue China” but also the Director of the first Konfuzius-Institut in Germany, which is part of the Berliner “Freie Universitaet”. Izabella Goikhman also accompanied us. She had studied at the Fudan University and is now one of the youngest academics at this university.

Although we did not sit at a round table, none the less everyone could talk to everyone else, which was very nice.  

After lunch, we took a taxi to the Jewish Museum and I really hope that Prof. Pan Guang was not too tired to watch the “Exile Shanghai Story” at the Learning Center and view other parts of this very large museum. 

Sonja Mühlberger nee Krips