Etan Smallman is a North Londoner whose mother’s parents were from Berlin and “who got to London just in time in 1939.”
In Next Stop Finchleystrasse, he will share his personal connection to a rich period of history that brought new food, entertainment and culture to Hampstead.
A: By the start of the war, there were so many, mainly Jewish, German speakers along Finchley Road that bus conductors shouted out variations on: “Finchleystrasse – passports please!” On a section going north from Swiss Cottage, you could find continental cafes, bookshops and cabarets, reviving the culture the Nazis were trying to destroy.
At the Laterndl theatre at No. 153, refugees satirised fascism, with actor Martin Miller doing an impersonation of Hitler that was commissioned for BBC radio. Meanwhile, shops were introducing Brits to continental tastes – from sausage maker Richard Mattes’ many varieties of Wurst at No. 122A (you can still buy Mattessons products at Tesco) to Ackerman’s dark chocolate on Goldhurst Terrace.
Q: Is the bus conductor tale true?
A: I did wonder if they might be apocryphal; most refugees don’t seem to remember them. They apparently included shouts of everything from “Tel Aviv!” and “Vienna!” to “Schweizer Hutte!” (Swiss Cottage) but I found a contemporary report from 1940 that confirmed it.
A: One of the stories about the social divisions came from Susie Boyt (novelist and great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud) who wrote that, at the Cosmo cafe, “not only did the Viennese sit apart from the Berliners but, apparently, even the different districts of Vienna were delineated in the seating arrangements on the Viennese side of the restaurant”. The scene is referenced in Leon Fenster’s mural of Jewish life on the side of JW3 on Finchley Road.
Q: What is your personal connection to this history?
A: All my grandparents died before I was born. But my grandfather, Suesskind (Sigi) Balsam was a restaurant manager from Berlin who was forced to flee to London after the Gestapo beat him up and threatened to kill him the next morning. He planned to meet his new wife, Cilly, in America, but a week after his escape, war was declared and the exits were sealed. He tried frantically to get her out but Cilly was gassed in Poland in 1942. Sigi later met my grandmother, Ilse Manasse, on the Finchleystrasse and they both ran Cafe Balsam (at No. 169A). They had my mum, Susan, when they were living on Lindfield Gardens.
Q: Venues like the Cosmo Cafe lasted for some decades. What did they serve?
A: The Cosmo, the Dorice and the Balsam served heavy, meaty fare – Westphalian Bean Soup and Rheinischer Sauerbraten with raisin sauce, red cabbage and dumplings. Novelist Will Self said the main courses were “of the kind to make you want to float slowly down the Danube after lunch”. They were also famed for Kaffee und Kuchen – think Apfelstrudel mit Schlag and Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte. Cafe Balsam advertised its “famous” ice cream in the window. It was so famous that when someone mentioned the name of the venue to his 100-year-old mother, she replied instantly: “Ice cream on the Finchley Road.”
The customers were originally a mix of European émigrés. Many were wonderfully eccentric. One man at the Cosmo used to bring flies in a napkin to drop in his soup, before complaining to the waitress. Others argued across the room about philosophy and politics. Later, they started to attract non-Jews and non-refugees – particularly drama students from Central, including Rupert Everett who wrote about the Cosmo in his memoir, and psychoanalysts and their patients from the Tavistock – the Cosmo was nicknamed “the waiting room”.
A: We remember the big-name arrivals like Freud but we tend to forget the ordinary shopkeepers, cafe owners and customers whose whole way of life was reborn on the Finchleystrasse. It offered a vital sanctuary to the dispossessed but also a place to assimilate into British culture (they were even given a brochure of instructions, including “Do not make yourself conspicuous by speaking loudly”).
It was such a success story that none of the establishments exists any more. I’m amazed that within a decade, my grandparents, who arrived in London relying on loans from a charity, were able to move their cafe to Mayfair. The refugees and their children were able not only to rebuild parts of their old lives but be accepted as vital parts of British society.
Etan Smallman’s Next Stop, Finchleystrasse!, is at JW3, Finchley Road, on July 9 July at 7pm jw3.org.uk
