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Berger, Monica (audio interview #1 of 6)
INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - A CSULB employee heard about the campus oral history program and suggested Ms Berger as an interesting subject. Her stories turned out to be so interesting that one interview stretched into six. This interview was conducted in her home at Leisure World, a retirement community, in Seal Beach where she was living by herself. 5/14/1979
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- 2020-10-30
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- SUBJECT BIO - Monica Berger and her husband owned and managed apartments and other real estate in downtown Long Beach and other parts of southern California in the 1950s and 1960s. During this time, she saw the area change from a residential community of retired folks into a modern civic and international trade center. Berger was born in Germany and followed other members of her family by emigrating to New York. By the time of the Second World War, she'd moved to Los Angeles and opened a beauty shop. She cut and styled women's hair in her shop to support herself and her son. She also participated in local social and political organizations of German immigrants until the war made such activities suspect. After the war, she met and married Peter Berger who had saved his money and retired as a real estate owner and manager. She took over management of some of his real estate holdings and negotiated the sale of a large apartment building in Long Beach when the city took over the land to expand its civic center. Later she and her husband lived in the desert and bought and sold real estate there, before moving back to Long Beach. When her husband died and she became older, she moved to Leisure World, a retirement community in nearby Seal Beach. TOPICS - life in Germany; early family; mother's death; father's remarriage; working at father's restaurant; moving with grandmother; traveling to America by ship; living with uncle in New York; exploring the city'; disagrerunning away from arranged marriage; hiding in New Jersey; moving back to Germany; going to school to become a nurse; working with a French family in Paris; returning to New York; getting sick with pleurisy in 1911
- *** File: cbmberger1.mp3 Audio Segments and Topics: (0:00-3:10)... Monica Berger was born in 1891 in Germany. Her parents were poor and both had to work to support the family. She grew up as Germany was changing from an agricultural to an industrial economy. She had a brother who was younger. When Berger was nine years old, her mother died. The family considered moving to America, and had high expectations for life in a new land. (3:10-7:26)... A year after Berger's mother died, her father remarried. Berger did not get along with her stepmother, so she went to live with her grandmother, and later came to live with her uncle in America. When she left Germany, she took a train to Hamburg and then sailed from Cook's Harbor. (7:26-10:43)... Berger's father worked as a bank clerk in Germany. But when he was suspected of being a rebel, he lost his job. He went to work as a musician and later bought a restaurant. When she was growing up, Berger washed dishes in the restaurant. Her stepmother also helped in the restaurant, but did not like that work. Then her father went into the fur business. Before her death, Berger's mother had made gift boxes. (10:43-13:40)... Berger sailed alone to America and had had many new experiences. On the ship, she met two boys who teased her. (13:40-16:54)... Berger had never eaten food such as that served on the ship and simply ordered what the adults around her ordered. When she could, she looked for food that was more familiar to her such as soup and fruit. She found these in steerage and often ate with the people traveling there. She caught lice from the people in steerage, and spread it to her family when she arrived in New York. (16:54-20:24)... Berger was amazed at New York City's large parks and tall buildings. She remembers the 18 story Singer Sewing Machine building, which was the tallest one. She visited several buildings and went to see the Statue of Liberty. Although she did not speak English, she found find her way around New York by writing addresses on the sidewalk in chalk and asking people to show her directions. (20:24-23:48)... Berger loved to visit the wax museum that featured figures of many people involved crimes. To protect her from learning about crime in New York City, her, family tried to hide local German-language newspapers from her. She lived with her uncle on the fourth floor of a Bronx apartment, and one of their neighbors taught her a few words and phrases in English. (23:48-26:17)... When she arrived in the Bronx , some of the land was still being farmed, and from her uncle's place, she could hear chickens and cows in the distance. On Sundays, Berger and her relatives took the elevated trains to Ford Street to shop in German bakeries. She went to the Nickelodeons where she could see movies for five cents. Some of them were just short clips, such as roosters crowing. (26:17-29:20)... Berger did not get along with her aunt who believed Berger was too much trouble. She tried to help around the house, but did not know how. One day, she tried to use shoe polish to shine the stove, and ended up filling the house with a terrible smell. Another time, she wanted to surprise her aunt by doing the washing and ironing, but ended up getting the iron rusty. She wanted to learn to use a sewing machine, but tangled the fabric in the machine. (29:20-34:10)... Berger's aunt and uncle decided to send Berger to live with some friends from Staten Island. She lived there for five or six months, helping to care for their child, and earned six dollars a month. When her pay was raised to seven dollars, she did not tell her relatives because she wanted to buy gloves and candy with her extra money. Her aunt accused her of stealing, but her uncle trusted her. (34:10-37:05)... Berger's relatives then sent her to live with some friends in the Bronx. That family was headed by a doctor who wanted a young girl to accompany his wife and children to a farm in Connecticut. On the farm, Berger rode horses, played with the children, and picked huckleberries. She liked the farm very much, but was always on the lookout for a bull that roamed the grounds. One time, she and the children were sprayed by a skunk, and their clothes had to be burned because of the smell. (37:05-39:52)... At the farm, Berger also helped bake bread every week. She had helped her grandmother make bread in Germany and found the recipe used at the farm was much easier than her grandmother's. Even so, it took several hours to make about eight loaves of bread. One night, Berger saw the family's grandmother walk into the kitchen holding a set of false teeth. Berger fled in fear, thinking she had seen a ghost. (39:52-42:45)... Berger stayed with the family from the Bronx for about a year. During that time, she learned English and developed many other skills. Berger's uncle died in 1907. Then she began working with some family friends who operated a hotel on Wall Street. The hotel was very busy, and employed about 100 waiters on Sundays. Sometimes, Berger was allowed to ride a carriage through the park. (42:45-45:40)... The family Berger was working with intended to have her marry their nephew. She went on a date with him to the Moulin Rouge theater. He took her to Central Park and began kissing her. Berger was afraid because her grandmother told her that if a boy kissed her, she would get pregnant. She told the family she did not want to marry the nephew and ran away. END OF TAPE *** File: cbmberger2.mp3 (0:00-4:33)... After running away from the family she was working for, and from an arranged marriage, Berger was hidden by a friend in New Jersey. Soon, however, she returned to her aunt's house and explained her situation. Her aunt was upset, and Berger decided to go back to Germany. With no one willing to take care of her in Germany, she went to school to become a nurse so she could support herself. She desperately wanted to return to America, and eventually was able to go back, where she got a job with another family. (4:33-9:00)... Berger worked with a French family, and accompanied them to Paris. During that time, she tried to learn French. She helped care for the family's new baby for a year and then returned to New York. In 1911, Berger became very sick while working for another family and moved back with her aunt. She had stopped menstruating, so the doctors suspected she was pregnant. Berger was insulted and did not want to see any doctors after that. (9:00-13:02)... Berger's aunt told the doctor that she could not be pregnant and later he determined that she actually had pleurisy. She went back to Germany for treatment at a Hamburg hospital where she spent several weeks before returning to her father's home. She fully recovered after a year. Since she was unable to continue working as a nurse, she found a job with a peace organization. (13:02-16:18)... Berger was valuable to the German peace organization because she knew English and they had contacts with other anti-war groups in many English-speaking countries. Berger became firmly against war from that time on, and later worked with in Chicago at Hull House, started by Jane Addams. In Germany, at the time, it was difficult to speak against war because of the political environment. (16:18-19:50)... Berger remembers that German women were expected to marry and start families by the time they reached a certain age. Berger's relatives often called her ugly and said she would never be able to get married. She wanted to stay independent, but eventually, she decided she wanted to find a husband. When WWI started, she was unable to return to the United States, and married in Germany. (19:50-23:28)... During the war, Berger stayed with a family in Paris and took care of their children. There, she learned French, while one of the family members learned German. She had some trouble learning French, and the family made fun of her language problems. On her day off, she took French lessons and became good friends with her teacher. (23:28-26:23)... While she lived in Europe, Berger met many new people and worked for several families. In Germany, she worked for a wealthy family helping a woman with her first newborn baby. The woman knew many important people, including royalty. One time Berger attended an affair with the woman and met a prince, but did not know the proper behavior when meeting royalty. (26:23-30:25)... Berger longed to go back to the United States, but could not become a US citizen because she was still under 21. She found a job working with a family in Africa, but she didn't take it because her father made her stay in Germany during the war. She was finally able to go to America in 1923, and did not return to Germany for 26 years, after the end of WWII. Berger's son and grandchildren became Americanized and visited Germany but didn't want to live there. (30:25-32:14)... Berger found life in the US much easier than in Germany and Europe. She and her family grew to be quite Americanized. She noticed that in both America and Germany, the native born people believed that foreign workers were a problem. (32:14-35:20)... In Germany, Berger worked for several families and in her uncle's factory. During the war, the factory was converted to produce ammunition. Women found new opportunities to work in factories because so many men were fighting in the war. Berger hurt her hand on the factory machines, and later became a bomb inspector. She worked there until she got married and then helped with her father's fur business. (35:20-36:33)... It was very difficult to arrange returning to the US, but Berger was determined to move with her son to America. Berger was not making much money in Germany and she did not want her son to be raised in what she thought was a militaristic Germany. (36:33-41:05)... In Germany, Berger and her son moved into an ancient religious building that had been converted into an apartment. There, she met a history professor who lectured students and brought them through the building. She met the professor once again , much later, when he was giving a lecture in New York. (41:05-43:52)... Berger was finally able returned to America, but she was devastated because she had to leave her son in Germany. To keep her mind off her son, she read about post-war politics. She began writing opinion columns in a German language newspaper and was asked to write a women's page for the paper. This kept her occupied between 1923 to 1925, when her son came to the United States. END OF TAPE
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