CHAPTER SIX: STUTTGART AND NÜRTINGEN, 1948-1952
In April 1948, Cecil was assigned a new job in Stuttgart, the capital of Baden-Württemberg. Before leaving Berlin, he had acquired a car: a Willys station wagon. In his memoirs, Cecil describes their move:

In early spring of 1948 we moved, by plane (our household goods) and stationwagon to Stuttgart. Edith had so much silverware and dress goods and china that she could not trust to the transportation people that she overloaded our stationwagon. I guess we must have been carrying over a thousand pounds of stuff.

Cedric, in an email to me dated July 2024, recalled: "I remember the time we left Berlin. Cecil's Jeep station wagon was so full of stuff that you and I lay on top of the load, which covered the back seat."

Stuttgart
This is how Cecil remembered his new job:

I went to work at the radio station, then called Radio Stuttgart, now called Süddeutscher Rundfunk. My job was to initial all word messages, news, etc, to show that it had been censored. . . . To while away the time, I would translate little stories or plays. It was nice at Radio Stuttgart. Since the men who worked at the station had all been cleared for Nazi connections, they were as a rule quite meek, pleasant, eager to produce good programs. They were conservative in the choice of music and were eager to put on records of compositions and performances of Jews. They did this because these records had not been played for more than a dozen years –– and because they were sick and tired of Wagner, the composer highly favored by Adolf Hitler. They also played a great deal of music that came from the east: Czechoslovakia, Poland, and especially Russia. In June 1948, the family was assigned a house in Sonnenberg, a suburb of Stuttgart. Edith wrote to Cecil's mother and Lucy:

After running around for two months I finally got a house for us, and we are moving in tomorrow. . . . The house is in a village called Sonnenberg where all the American families are billeted – about 20 minutes by car from the center of town. It has a small but nice garden with a few fruit trees and berry bushes. You don't know what that means to us over here who eat mostly canned fruit or vegetables.

And in a letter to Renée:

It was only yesterday that we got a house. It must be repainted from top to bottom, and repaired in several places. We will move in on the 12th, when most of the work will be done, and the painters etc. will continue for another week or two. Here they don't work like in America. They are so poorly paid that they drag out the work because the longer they stay in an American house, the more cigarettes, food, etc. they receive. And if you don't give it to them, then they "sabotage" everything for you, and then you have to call other workers and it starts again.

Cecil and Edith were always very concerned with their sons' education. As Cecil recalled: In the US we had all spoken German when I was home, and when not Edith had spoken French with the boys. They had for the most part spoken French with each other when I was away. But now we were in Berlin and I was working for the US Gov't, so we spoke English at home, and of course at school first Cedric and later Daniel in Stuttgart spoke German. At the end of our stay in the US the kids had spoken English with the kids in the neighborhood, and in Germany it was German on the street. Later, in Stuttgart, the boys spoke German in school and Schwäbisch [a dialect of German spoken in Swabia] on the street!

In Stuttgart, the boys were placed in the local school, as Edith explained to Cecil's mother and Lucy:

The children seem to be getting along quite nicely in that fine German school in which they are. They protest forever about going there because the kids next door, American children, make fun of them saying "You're going to a ‘Kraut' school." Only one other American child goes to the German school, and three French children. But both Cecil and I see no point in sending our boys to the American school where very little German is taught.
Just as important as Cecil's new job was the new economy, which Cecil described in a letter to his mother and sister dated June 19, 1948, the day after the Deutschmark was introduced:

I just now heard the news of the new money in West Germany. The future looks brighter. Germany began the up-hill pull a couple of months ago. Rain falls, crops look fine. Stuttgart is busy as a bee-hive. In 50 years this country will be "new and pretty." And five days later, Edith wrote to her mother:

Extraordinary things are happening here in Germany. A few days ago in the three allied zones the money previously in circulation was devalued. Now it is no longer worth anything, and each person, rich or poor, has been given 60 Marks (Deutschmarks instead of the old Reichsmarks) and no more, to allow them to live until it is decided what percentage of the old money will be accepted in exchange for the new one. Some say we will give 10% of the new money for the old money — but no one knows for sure. But the second, more important event is that suddenly – as if touched by the wave of a magic wand – the stores are suddenly filled with merchandise of all kinds and beautiful things.

It's incredible! Until last Monday, German stores literally had almost nothing apart from a few miserable little things, junk of the worst kind (naturally at the fantastic black market prices you could always buy everything.)

Now all of a sudden at normal prices – like those before the war it seems – there is everything. Before we couldn't find anything.

Unlike Berlin, where Americans felt trapped within the Russian Zone of Germany, in Stuttgart, they were free to travel. Here is what Edith wrote to Cecil's mother and Lucy in January, 1949:

The day after Christmas we left on a little trip to France and were gone a week. we went as far as Lyon. . . . There are wonderful things in the shops – things which one sees nowhere else. . . . But every thing is very dear, even with American dollars. For the average Frenchman, it's simply out of reach.

In Lyon and in the other cities where we were, there was a great shortage of coal. The hotels were barely heated. In France for two days a week, or is it three, there is complete lack of electricity during the day, except for priorities, and even at night the shops, restaurants and cafes looked dark and dismal. There is far more warmth and far more light right here in Stuttgart. It's high time the Americans stopped feeling sorry for the poor Germans. The bread in France is just as dark as the German bread, and real coffee is even rarer. It's still rationed – 125 grams (1/4 lb) a month, sugar 2 lbs, fat 1 lb. (and that means either cooking fat, or oil, or butter) a month, not a drop of milk for adults, only for the very old 1/4 of a quart, etc. Yet the French don't yammer or bellyache and beg as the Germans do. The latter are past masters at playing on our sympathy.

The German economy may have taken off and the stores were suddenly filled with all sorts of goods, but they still could not compete with those in Switzerland. So once a month, on average, the family, armed with dollars and American passports, drove to Basel, the nearest Swiss city, to go shopping at Globus, the famed department store.

Klaus Mehnert

Soon after Cecil started working at the radio station, he was transferred to another job, this one in the office of the Land Commissioner (the official title for the occupation authority). There, he ran into Klaus Mehnert, whom he had first met in 1929-30, when Mehnert was the director of the student-exchange program that had given Cecil a scholarship to study in Berlin. Mehnert had a checkered career. In his early years, he taught at the universities of Tübingen, Munich, and Berlin. In 1934-36 he was the Moscow correspondent for a German newspaper. From there, he moved to the United States, where he taught at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He left Hawaii in June 1941 and spent the war years in Shanghai publishing a pro-German propaganda sheet. Cecil remembered:

Klaus Mehnert, of China-Russian fame as a writer, had been in the German Student Exchange office in Berlin when I studied there in '29. . . . He had drifted through the Soviet Union during the days of harmony and the division of Poland (1939-40) and then on into China, to edit a German semi-propaganda sheet during the war. He had taught in California years before.

Klaus Mehnert and his dear wife had been imprisoned in a castle NW of Stuttgart for three months after the war, while his activities in the Far East were being investigated. I was happy to see Klaus and I put in a good word for him with the authorities while he was in prison. But when we took a walk shortly after meeting, he told me that "most of the people killed in the gas chambers were criminals." I knew he was a semi-Nazi at heart. He came to our meetings about the student exchange program and insisted that the German committees should pick out the exchange students going from Germany to the US –– but the US should pay!!! . . .

Klaus Mehnert was terribly busy gathering all the facts he could find of how much the occupation was costing the Germans –– facts to be used at some future conference on reparations!! The subject of how much the Germans should pay France, Great Britain, Greece, etc., never seemed to come to light!!!!

Cecil also remembered:

Edith and I saw much of him and his wife in Stuttgart after the war. I was curious as to his affiliation with the Nazis –– as was Military Government after the war –– which kept him a few months on the Aspberg, in prison. He was a bit self-conscious about the mass- murder program of the Nazis. But in our first walk together in 1948, just after his return to Germany and his incarceration in prison, he told me that most of the gas chamber victims –– he did not call them gas chamber victims –– were criminals!!!!! I didn't tell him what I thought — but I found no place in my heart for him after that remark!!!!

Nürtingen
In the summer of 1949, Cecil was given another assignment: to be the U.S. Resident Officer (i.e. the representative of the American government) in Nürtingen, a county 25 miles south of Stuttgart. He described his job in a letter to his mother dated November 2, 1949: I have a new job as US Resident Officer — a sort of one-man diplomatic post in a rural area south of Stuttgart. . . . We'll move out to Nürtingen about 17 miles from Stuttgart) next Monday.

In three months, I have worked only about 2 weeks. But the pay goes on & on. Now I am settled down for the long winter. I have three cars and a staff of nine to do the work, except letter-writing.
Life can be wonderful!

Edith described the move to Cecil's family a few days later:

Many things have happened since I wrote you last. The State Dept took over from the War Dept. Many people went home, many others were transferred. Cecil's office underwent some changes. His job as head of Cultural Exchange was amalgamated with that of another man's. . . . Cecil was offered and gladly accepted the position of liaison and security officer here at Nürtingen. He is, in other words, the representative of Military Government, and acts as intermediary between it and the local German officials, not only of Nürtingen (population 10,000) but of the surrounding villages as well. We are the only Americans in the whole "Kreis" (township).

As U.S. Resident Officer in Nürtingen, one of Cecil's jobs was to give lectures to German audiences. As the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the Western allies had become dangerously tense since the Berlin blockade, the United States encouraged the rearmament of the Federal Republic of Germany within NATO. To some, this was necessary to deter Soviet aggression, while others found it shocking so soon after the defeat and disarmament of Germany in 1945. In addition to giving lectures on the world situation and American opinion regarding German rearmament, Cecil also lectured on less controversial topics such as human relations, schools and education in the United States, and the psychology of German women. Cecil also wrote reports to the American occupation authorities on public opinion in Nürtingen, on democracy, on the local women's club, on farm youth groups, on Boy Scouts and other local affairs. He also reported on Communist influences in sports and youth activities and on attitudes toward European cooperation, German isolationism, neutrality, and rearmament. For example, in July 1950, he sent in a report on a "Plebiscite against remilitarization" that had taken place the previous month:

Plebiscites against remilitarization were conducted on June 3, 1951 in Kirchheim/Teck, on June 17 in Nuertingen-Oberensingen and on June 24 in Nuertingen. A third attempt in Nuertingen on July 1 was canceled after the newspaper "Nuertinger Kreisnachrichten" gave it wide publicity on June 30th.

Through immediate action by the police in Kirchheim, two well-known communists and members of the FDJ . . . were apprehended while collecting ballots. An appropriate report was made to the county commissioner. No other action was taken since the court refused to institute proceedings agains the offenders on the basis that the Federal Government order only prohibits the plebiscite but provides no punishment for disobedience.

Villa Heller
Upon arriving in Nürtingen, the family was assigned a house called Villa Heller; as Cecil remembered it:

We were living in a huge house turned over to the US Army by Heller, owner and operator of the Heller machine tool company, the biggest industry in N. He said he would sooner have the American "military governor" and later resident officer live in it than to let the German authorities commandeer it for six families!! It was a huge house, with 10 or 12 rooms. And we had two maids, one on the payroll of the city hall where my offices were, one for ourselves. Many pleasant and delightful things happened while we lived in Nürtingen!

The house was actually bigger than Cecil remembered. As Edith described it: There was a house that came with the job–no choice. It is the house of one of the local factory owners. As I said, it has 24 rooms but that includes about 5 or 6 in the basement and as many in the attic. So Daniel, Cecil and I rattle around in it… In order to be able to find each other, we had to close the big dining room, we never use the big living room, nor the bar (yes, there is a bar with all the equipment complete down to a book of cocktail recipes).
There is a nice big garden, and a beautiful view of the town below and a chain of hill in the background. The whole countryside around here is very lovely. The house came with two maids, as well as a gardener. Still, Edith complained in a letter to her sister Renée dated February 14, 1950:

He now earns $135 per month less than in Stuttgart, and that wasn't millions either. $400 a month, with no rent to pay, isn't bad, but it's not exactly Peru for a family of four and one or two maids to feed. (It's wonderful what German maids can eat: ham as if it were bread and the rest to match!) We only get one maid, and I have to pay for the second one myself.

(Edith's remark that "it's not exactly Peru" is a French expression meaning "immense riches," referring to the mounds of gold, silver, and emeralds that the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro extorted as ransom from the Inca Atahualpa, before killing him.)

Writing in 2024, Cedric recalled:

When we moved to Nürtingen, we lived in Villa Heller, a huge 32-room hilltop mansion with a small pool in the backyard, a strawberry patch in the front and, in the back, terraces where vegetables had grown, but no use was made when we lived there. We grew strawberries in the front and picked plums. We had three servants: a cook, a maid and a man who worked in the yard during the summer and put coal in the furnace in the winter. . . . One of the basement rooms was locked, but I succeeded in opening it. The room was filled with Nazi memorabilia: Swastika armbands, plastic helmets for children, jackets and boots, and many schoolbooks. I never told anyone about this treasure trove. Cecil's job came with two official cars with chauffeurs, as Cedric recalled: One was an Opel Kapitän, which he used to ride to his office in the Rathaus [town hall], where two flags were flowing, the American and the German. He also had a Volkswagen. He still had the Jeep station wagon he had bought in Berlin. He bought a Vespa on which he attached a home-made seat for three: he drove, I sat in the middle and you were in the back. Seating three on a two-wheeler was illegal, but, as Cecil explained, "there's nothing they can do to me."

With such a fine house and a staff to serve the family, the Headricks were able to invite guests and throw parties. One such guest was Walter Gieseking, who came to play the very piano that he had sold and that Edith had bought at the Barter Mart in Berlin a few years before! Another was John McCloy. Cecil recalled:

One of the biggest events took place in 1950. John McCloy, the US Commissioner for Germany, wanted to visit a resident office and talk to the farmers! So they picked me! I arranged for a big feast at the Villa Heller for Mr. and Mrs. McCloy and their retinue of hangers-on. I had planted a small field of corn in my garden and the sweet corn was just ready to eat. So we harvested the crop and fed the hungry (for sweet corn) Americans. . . . The German guests –– the mayors of all the town in the county –– wanted to argue that the Americans should have joined up with the Germans to defeat the Russians at the end of the war! I told them that our people would have been hard pressed to believe we would turn against those who had borne the brunt of the war for so long. Mrs McCloy, who understood German well, was quite overcome by my ability to field questions and make replies. It was a friendly discussion all the way through.

The next day, McCloy wrote a thank you note to Cecil:

Dear Dr. Headrick: I wish to take this opportunity on behalf of Mrs. McCloy and myself to express our sincere thanks and appreciation for the hospitality shown us on our recent visit to Kreis Nuertingen. . . .

Finally let me again thank you for the corn. It was most delicious and I am sure the equal of any you could produce back home in Kansas.


Cecil and Farming
Cecil, who had grown up in a farmer's family, always retained an interest in agriculture. When he learned that the farmers in Nürtingen county were plagued by birds that ate their crops, but could not shoot them––for Germans at the time were forbidden to own firearms––he bought a rifle and took his sons crow-hunting. In April, 1951, he wrote to his mother and Lucy: Daniel and Cedric and I have taken up fishing and hunting. We have shot one crow with our new powerful air rifle. But no fish yet. We have ordered a new automatic Remington .22 calibre rifle from Sears. Our big plan is to shoot crows and hawks from out of the car. Magpies, although pretty, are nest robbers and are also in line for execution.
Another time, he helped villagers build a road, as an article in the Stuttgarter Nachrichten reported on May 7, 1951, under the title "U.S. Resident Officer With a Shovel and a Pickaxe:"

"The municipality of Grötzingen, near Nürtingen, decided to build a road giving access to the fields before the start of the harvest. As the necessary funds were lacking, the municipal council invited residents to carry out this work together. This call found a strong response among the population. Mr. Cecil Headrick, Resident Officer of Nürtingen, committed himself to digging and carrying stones for half a day. Mr. Headrick said it was impossible for him to just attend (social) events. He also brought representatives of the press from Nürtingen. People in Grötzingen were very happy with this influx of volunteers."


Schools
Cecil and Edith had always wanted to give their sons Cedric and me a European education. Instead of sending us to the American schools set up for the children of American servicemen and government employees, they sent us to Waldorf schools in Berlin and later in Stuttgart. These schools were part of an educational movement that aimed to develop pupils' independent thinking and their intellectual, artistic, and practical skills, and that had been suppressed during the Nazi period. As a result, we spoke German at home.

As there was no Waldorf school in Nürtingen, our parents sent Cedric to the Collège Decourdemanche, a French school in Tübingen, a city in the French zone of Germany twenty miles from Nürtingen. After a couple of years at a local school in Nürtingen, I too was sent to the French school in Tübingen. At home, we spoke French with Edith and English with Cecil.


End of an Era
The military occupation of Germany ended in February 1952 and, with it, Cecil's role in Nürtingen. Two local newspapers reported on his departure. On February 1, the Nürtinger Kreisnachrichten published an article under the title "Cecil Headrick leaves Nürtingen." The US Resident Officer, Cecil Headrick, is leaving his position in Nürtingen as of today, February 1st, to take up the position of liaison officer in the intelligence service at the Consulate General in Stuttgart. Headrick was a man who, unlike many other occupation officials, attached great importance to establishing a good and personal relationship with the German population and who saw his task not as being the representative of the victorious nation, but rather as a helper and advisor. . . . For this reason, he limited his activities to getting to know and understand the Germans as well as possible and to give them the opportunity to learn the aspects of Western democracy that are useful and fruitful. The population and also the authorities of the Nürtingen district were very grateful to Cecil Headrick for his impeccable and understanding attitude. . . . Dr. Headrick came to Germany as an occupation official to give his sons the opportunity to get to know, understand, and love Europe and the European culture that he himself admires so much.

Three weeks later, the Nürtinger Zeitung published an article under the title "Military Government Ends After 7 Years:"

Appreciated and Respected: Mr. Headrick
Mr. Henry Walter's successor was Prof. Dr. Cecil W. Headrick, lecturer in sociology at Columbia University New York. From November 1949 to February 1952 he headed the US Resident Office. Mr. Headrick made many friends through his humble and winning nature and his humanity. He was open to all problems and questions and offered helpful understanding for all concerns and wishes that were brought to his attention. Mr. Headrick showed great interest in youth work and was available to provide advice and help wherever needed. At his suggestion, thirteen groups were set up in the Nürtingen district. In addition to ERP funds for industry, business, agriculture and communities, money from the McCloy Fund was made available for youth work. . . .

The cultural film program, which was introduced at the end of 1948 at the suggestion of the Land Commission and was created from a special fund from civilian Americans, received a new boost from Mr. Headrick. These were mostly cultural films about America that were shown in schools, community evenings, clubs and youth groups and were well received everywhere. . . . At the end of 1951 the film program was handed over to German hands.

Cecil may have been respected and admired by the people (or at least the newspaper reporters) of Nürtingen, but not by the United States government. As a government employee, he had been vetted before, once in 1944, when he was hired to go to Germany, and again in 1948, when the American occupation authority in Germany was transferred from the War Department to the State Department. As he recalled:

To make that transfer, they had to clear me again, and they did. People in Winfield and New York were again questioned at length. Some of my ideas, expressed in the days of my studies in Union Seminary and during my work-student and student days in Germany under the Institute of International Education, and the fact that I had worked two years at the Manumit School which was tainted by communist and socialist and labor connections –– all this had to be sifted each time, because the anti-communist sentiment was growing in gov't circles. I had never joined the communist party, but my close connection with Harry Ward at Union, who was quite tolerant of communists, must have been scrutinized! On all forms I had to fill out, I always reported that I had given seventy-five cents to the International Labor outfit, a communist-leaning organization.

In 1952, when his job in Nürtingen ended, he applied for a transfer, but was rejected: This time, in 1952 in the spring, . . . when McCarthy was making a big stir in all gov't circles with his accusations about communists, after mulling over my records for weeks, the Army personnel people told me that they could not hire me in any capacity!!! That was a bit of a shock because it meant that I was on the verge of unemployment! We had to vacate the Villa Heller in any case.

And so the Headricks left Germany and embarked on a new adventure.