In the Garden of Beasts

wealthy Jewish proprietor of a private bank and one of the many Jews—some sixteen thousand, or about 9 percent of Berlin’s Jews—who lived within the district. Even though Jews were being evicted from their jobs throughout Germany, Panofsky’s bank continued in operation and, surprisingly, with official indulgence.
    Panofsky promised the rent would be very reasonable. Dodd, by now ruing but still adhering to his vow to live within his salary, was interested and toward the end of July went to take a look.
    THE HOUSE, AT TIERGARTENSTRASSE 27a, was a four-story mansion of stone that had been built for Ferdinand Warburg of the famed Warburg dynasty. The park was across the street. Panofsky and hismother showed the Dodds the property, and now Dodd learned that in fact Panofsky was not offering the whole house, only the first three floors. The banker and his mother planned to occupy the top floor and reserved as well the use of the mansion’s electric elevator.
    Panofsky was sufficiently wealthy that he did not need the income from the lease, but he had seen enough since Hitler’s appointment as chancellor to know that no Jew, no matter how prominent, was safe from Nazi persecution. He offered 27a to the new ambassador with the express intention of gaining for himself and his mother an enhanced level of physical protection, calculating that surely even the Storm Troopers would not risk the international outcry likely to arise from an attack on the house shared by the American ambassador. The Dodds, for their part, would gain all the amenities of a freestanding house, yet for a fraction of the cost, in a structure whose street presence was sufficiently impressive to communicate American power and prestige and whose interior spaces were grand enough to allow the entertainment of government and diplomatic guests without embarrassment. In a letter to President Roosevelt, Dodd exulted, “We have one of the best residences in Berlin at $150 a month—due to the fact the owner is a wealthy Jew, most willing to let us have it.”
    Panofsky and Dodd signed a one-page “gentleman’s agreement,” though Dodd still had a few qualms about the place. While he loved the quiet, the trees, the garden, and the prospect of continuing to walk to work each morning, he judged the house too opulent and called it, derisively, “our new mansion.”
    A plaque bearing the image of an American eagle was affixed to the iron gate at the entrance to the property, and on Saturday, August 5, 1933, Dodd and his family left the Esplanade behind and moved into their new home.
    Dodd conceded later that if he had known Panofsky’s actual intentions for the use of the fourth floor, beyond simply lodging himself and his mother, he never would have agreed to the lease.
    TREES AND GARDENS FILLED the yard, which was surrounded with a high iron fence set in a knee-high wall of brick. Anyone arrivingon foot reached the front entrance through doorlike gates built of vertical bars of iron; by car, through a tall master gate topped with an elaborate ironwork arch with a translucent orb at its center. The front doorway of the house was invariably in shadow and formed a black rectangle at the base of a rounded, towerlike facade that rose the full height of the building. The mansion’s most peculiar architectural feature was an imposing protrusion about one and a half stories tall that jutted from the front of the house to form a porte cochere over the entry driveway and served as a gallery for the display of paintings.
    The main entrance and foyer were on the ground floor, at the rear of which lay the operational soul of the house—servants’ quarters, laundry, ice storage, various supply rooms and cupboards, a pantry, and a huge kitchen, which Martha described as being “twice the size of an average New York apartment.” Upon entering the house, the Dodds walked first into a large vestibule flanked on both sides by cloakrooms and then up an elaborate staircase to the main floor.
    It was here that the true drama of the house became evident. At the front, behind the curved facade, was a ballroom with an oval dance floor of gleaming wood and a piano covered in rich, fringed fabric, its bench upholstered and gilded. Here, on the piano, the Dodds placed an elaborate vase full of tall flowers and, beside this, a framed photographic portrait of Martha in which she looked exceptionally beautiful and overtly sexual, an odd choice, perhaps, for the ballroom of