By Ed Staskus
When Agnes Schaser lost her balance on the rolling deck of the SS Stuttgart as it steamed into New York Harbor in 1931 she was 22 years old. It was windy and raining. She had barely been able to make out the Statue of Liberty in the fog. She reached for and kept a firm grip on the arm of Mathias Schaser, her new husband. When she walked down the covered gangway she had, unbeknownst to her, a bun in the oven. The voyage had taken seven days. The first day on the ship had been a honeymoon. She had been seasick the next six days in a row. She was glad to get her land legs under her when she set foot on North American soil.
Mathias had brown eyes, brown hair, and was five foot five. Agnes had blue eyes, brown hair, and was five foot three. He had emigrated from Transylvania to the United States midway through the Roaring Twenties and was naturalized in 1929. He did well for himself and when the day came he went back to his hometown of Hamlesch to fetch the girl he had been waiting to grow up. Their marriage had been arranged years before. Among the Transylvanian Saxons marriage was more of an economic contract than a romantic union.
He was born in 1888. She was born in 1909. He was twice her age. The difference didn’t matter to either of them. They were second cousins. The genealogy didn’t matter to their Lutheran brethren. A week before the wedding they put on traditional folk costumes and went door-to-door inviting guests. Mathias carried a big wooden invitation stick. All the invitees brought food to the wedding feast, milk, butter, lard, and bacon. Every household brought one obligatory hen. Women rolled out and cut dough for noodles. Many yeast cakes, called Handlich’s, were baked and topped with egg custard. Everybody was meant to get a slice.
A wedding flag was decorated with tassels, ribbons, and kerchiefs. It was carried by a Fahnrich, Mathias’s closest friend, who led the wedding procession. A ceremonial tree was crafted for the feast. It symbolized life and prosperity. Mathias and Agnes exchanged vows in the big church in Hermannstadt, which was near their hometown. He wore a black suit. She wore a white dress. Agnes Kloos became Agnes Schaser on that day.
Hermannstadt was one of the original seven Transylvanian Saxon towns. According to legend, the Pied Piper brought the towns to life with his flute. Fate leads everyone who follows it. He lured a hundred and thirty children from the German town of Hamelin with his tunes, led them into a mountain, and guided them underground the length of Europe until they finally emerged from a cave in Transylvania. The children separated into groups and founded the first seven Saxon towns in the land.
All the towns in the Saxon lands of Transylvania were fortified. On top of that, all the churches were even more fortified. There were more than three hundred of the fortified churches throughout Transylvania, both Romanesque and Gothic, built of brick and stone, and most of them featuring a red tile roof. The village hall, school, and grain storage barns were clustered around the church. The churches were always built in the middle of town, often on a mound or a hill, with water tranches, multiple walls, and at least one tower The tower was for observation, a warning bell, and for throwing rocks and pouring boiling oil on the heads of invaders. The fortified churches were the last refuge of the townsfolk.
The Saxons came from the Low Countries and Germany, before there was a Romania. It wouldn’t become a country until the late 19th century. When they arrived it was a part of the Kingdom of Hungary. The colonization of Transylvania by Central Europeans, who later became known as Transylvanian Saxons, began during the reign of King Geza II in the 1140s. He recruited them to farm the valleys and exploit copper and iron ore mining in the northeast.
They were also expected to help defend against marauding steppe tribes. They weren’t successful against the Mongols, but learned their lesson. When the Ottoman Turks showed up, they were ready for them. They made their stand in their fortified towns and churches. After the Battle of Breadfield the Ottoman Turks complained to their God, but all he said was “Try again.” The Transylvanian Saxons thanked their God. It was every man for himself and God against all.
Mathias and Agnes took a train from Bucharest to Berlin, made their way to Bremen, steamed up the Weser River, and crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Whenever Agnes wasn’t throwing up over the side, Mathias sat her down trying to teach her the English language. It was a slow go. They landed in New York City in mid-May, where they spent the rest of the week seeing the sights, going to the top of the newly built Empire State Building, strolling the length of Central Park, and feasting on Nathan’s hot dogs at Coney Island. On the Monday morning of the next week they took the Empire State Express to Cleveland’s Union Terminal.
Until she got to Berlin, Agnes had never seen a train station bigger than a platform. Berlin was big, but she was struck dumb by New York City’s Grand Central Terminal. When she got to Cleveland she was struck again by the size of the train station there. More than two thousand buildings had been demolished in the early 1920s to make room for the underground station and the 52-story Terminal Tower built on top of it. It was at the time the second-largest excavation project in the world, after the Panama Canal. When the Terminal Tower opened to its first tenants in 1928 it was the tallest skyscraper in North America outside of New York City. The Carpathian Mountains that surrounded Agnes’s homeland were large, but the United States was larger than life.
Although she realized she might never see her family again, she was relieved to be gone from Transylvania, where trouble was brewing. The problem was, Transylvanian Saxons weren’t Romanians. The ethnic minority was one of the oldest German-speaking groups of the German diaspora. Before 1867 Transylvania had sometimes been autonomous and sometimes in union with Hungary. After the Compromise of 1867 it was incorporated into the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. When the uneasy royal alliance came to an end at the end of World War One, the Romanian majority in Transylvania clamored for unification with the Kingdom of Romania. The Treaty of Trianon in 1920 ratified it. The nationalist aspirations of the Romanians, however, ate away at the independence of the Transylvanian Saxons. The handwriting was on the wall.
Saxons had been leaving Transylvania, regardless of the political turmoil, in sizable numbers since the late 19th century. Many of them emigrated to Cleveland, where they formed a fraternal organization called Erster Siebenburgen Sachsen Kranken Untersteutszung Verein, which meant First Transylvanian Saxon Sick Benefit Society. It was a mouthful no matter the language. The immigrants were determined to take care of their own. They purchased a sprawling old house on Denison Ave. in 1907 and converted it into what they called the Sachsenheim. They renovated it in 1925, adding two bowling alleys, a ballroom, a music room, a dining room, and a restaurant. They expanded the bar so more beer could be served.
The married couple settled down on the west side of Cleveland, which was the side of town where most of the city’s Transylvanian Saxons lived. Mathias operated a corner store on Clark Ave., a fifteen minute walk from the Sachsenheim. He sold Big Hunks, Tootsie Rolls, and Chick-O-Sticks. There was chocolate galore. There was a soda counter and all the latest magazines. Agnes gave birth to their first son Harold at City Hospital. Everybody called the boy Hal. Mathias and Agnes scrimped and saved, setting money aside for a new house. She gave birth to their second son William in November 1933. Everybody called the boy Willie. Two days later, after the baby was safely delivered, her husband Mathias was shot twice in the chest at point-blank range. He died in the middle of the night in City Hospital where Agnes was still recovering from Willie’s birth.
“You mustn’t stay here any longer,” Agnes had told her husband when he visited her earlier that day at City Hospital. She was supposed to stay in the hospital a few days more. “You go back to the store. We need to have more money now.” He went back to the store. He planned to return for his wife and child and bring them home by the end of the week.
Two teenagers, Pete Wanach and Pete Hansinger, walked in when Mathias was closing the store for the night and demanded the day’s receipts. It was a hold up. When Mathias refused to give it to them, balling up his fists, one of them pulled a handgun and shot him dead. They scooped up all the bills and change in the till and fled. The Cleveland Police apprehended them soon enough. They were tried, found guilty of murder, and sentenced to life imprisonment in the Ohio State Penitentiary. Pete Hansinger had a teenage wife who was pregnant. She gave birth soon after he started serving his life sentence,
Pete Wanach offered Agnes a one hundred bill after his conviction. It was his way of saying sorry. She refused to take it. Pete Hansinger sent her a Christmas card from the penitentiary. She returned the favor every holiday season. “Maybe it will make him feel better,” she said.
Needing a father for her two sons Agnes married again, tying the knot with Joe Levak, a Slovak from the east side. They moved to that side of town and found a house on a quiet street. She decorated the house with cheap landscapes from Woolworths and fine Bavarian China. She gave birth to two daughters one right after the other. The house was filled to the gills with life. She and her husband had their hands full. After five years of marriage Joe Levak dropped dead in 1940. Agnes never remarried. She raised her family on a Mother’s Pension, which was $90.00 a month, and piecework on the side.
“I taught my sons to be forgiving, not to be bitter,” she said. “We got along all right. They started delivering newspapers when they were 10 years old. They finished high school even though they always worked part-time at a bakery.” On top of that, her sons had to play the violin. Agnes played it and her sons had to learn the instrument at her insistence, although Willie threw a temper tantrum and was soon excused.
“You can’t carry a tune, anyway,” Hal, singing the blues, told his younger brother.
Hal was 13 years old in 1944. His middle name was Mathias, the same as his father’s given name. It was an Indian summer day in October. He was walking home from his 7th grade class at Wilson Junior High School. He was looking forward to a bowl of potato tarragon soup. Agnes had brought the recipe from Transylvania. She made it with smoked ham. Hal was nearing his house when he was almost knocked off his feet by a thunderous blast. When he steadied himself and looked around, he saw roofs on fire.
“It was like the sky blew up all at once, like blood and guts,” he said. Thick black smoke turned the day to night. Hal’s dog Buddy ran up the front steps and pawed at the door. Agnes bolted out of the house. Buddy ran into the house and straight down to the basement. Agnes’s daughters stood in the doorway bawling. Willie came running from the backyard. Hal ran to his mother on the front lawn. They all looked up at the red and black sky.
The explosion and subsequent fires far and wide were caused when an East Ohio Gas liquefied natural gas storage tank started leaking. The gas flowed onto the concrete lot below the tank and began to vaporize. It turned into a thick white fog. It somehow ignited. It might have been a spark from a passing railcar or somebody lighting a cigarette. The deafening blast blew the tank and everything in sight of it to smithereens, starting with the two men working on top of it.
It happened at the foot of East 61st St. near the New York Central Railroad tracks. When the gas exploded it blew up at about twenty five million horsepower, the same as the combined output of all the hydroelectric plants west of the Mississippi River in 1944. One hundred year old oak trees were knocked down like matchsticks. Cleveland streets convulsed as far as four miles away. Flames reached 3,000 feet high and the heat reached 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Birds were turned to charcoal and fell out of the sky.
Agnes and her children lived on East 66th St. and Lexington Ave., less than a mile from the East Ohio Gas tank farm. White ash trees on their street were on fire. Agnes was dead set on not losing her house. She started spraying garden hose water on it. From the front lawn she watched a tangled multitude of cars, busses, and Clevelanders on foot fleeing from the fire. Police, fire, and civil defense cars and trucks raced towards the fire, which was spewing gas, molten steel, and rock wool into the sky.
Housewives were caught unaware as flames spread through sewers and up their drains. When that happened, homes caught on fire. “I was getting ready to do some housework” said Alice Janos, one of Agnes’s neighbors. “Suddenly it seems like the walls turn all red. I look at the windows and the shades are on fire. The house fills with smoke. I think the furnace has blown up, but then I see smoke all around the neighborhood.”
Gas ran into the streets, into the gutters, and down catch basins, igniting and blowing up wherever it pooled. Manhole covers were sent flying like bottle rockets. Utility poles bent in the heat. Fire trucks fell into sinkholes. Less than a half hour after the first explosion a second tank exploded. It knocked Agnes down, but she got back on her feet right away. Whenever things were going to hell she kept going. She had lost both her husbands. She was determined to not lose her house. She sprayed it with the garden hose until the water pressure turned to nothing. The land of dreams had turned into bad dreams, but her house was saved. The family didn’t have to shelter at Wilson Junior High. It was one of the schools where the Red Cross ended up taking in thousands of suddenly homeless men, women, and children. It was more than a week before children were able to go back to school.
By Saturday morning the fire department had the inferno under control. In the afternoon, even though Agnes had told them to stay near the house, Hal and Willie went exploring. All the stop signs and traffic lights were gone, but there was no traffic, anyway. Soggy hulks of cars and trucks were pell-mell everywhere. Dogs sniffed at flotsam. Fire hoses littered every intersection.
“What happened to this place?” Willie asked. “It’s a mess. Do you think it was the Martians?”
“I don’t think it was the Martians,” Hal said. “Why would they come all this way to blow things up? Mom said it must have been Nazi sabotage.”
“This wouldn’t have happened if Superman had been here,” Willie said.
“Yeah, him and Captain America, too,” Hal said. “They got the moxie.”
Agnes spent the weekend airing out the house, washing the curtains, beating the rugs, and clearing the front and back yards of debris. She swept clumps of ash into the street. When she was done her yard, at least, looked like not much had happened. The framed wedding picture of Mathias and her, taken in a photography studio in Hermannstadt in 1931, had fallen off the fireplace mantle. The glass was broken. She walked seven blocks where she found an open hardware store and replaced the glass. When she got home she gave her long-gone first husband a kiss and put the picture back on the mantle.
Pete Wanach and Pete Hansinger, who had shot and killed Mathias Schaser, were paroled in 1955. They were middle-aged men by the time they were released. When Agnes was told the news she wished them well. “I have a happy life and my four children. I hope these men have changed and can find good jobs and become good citizens.”
Her life changed when she was compelled to sell her house in the early 1960s. She had fallen behind and her real estate taxes were in arrears, as well. The Transylvanian Saxons in her hometown of Hamlesch had a saying, “Et as Wasser am Brannen, awer em mess et schepen.” It meant, “There is water in the well, but one must scoop it up.” Her piecework on the side and Mother’s Pension only went so far. The water in the well was scraping the bottom. She started living with her children.
“She lived with my father and mother after they were married, from before I was born,” her granddaughter Vanessa said. Agnes’s son Hal had married Terese Stasas, a Lithuanian girl from North Collinwood. Terese eventually put her foot down. “What’s the difference between a mother-in-law and a storm? You can wait out a storm until it passes. I got tired of waiting.” Agnes had to move in with a daughter instead of a daughter-in-law.
“After she moved, she visited us sometimes. One morning when I was three years old, she was making eggs for me. I was standing on a stool next to her telling her exactly how I wanted them done. I told her the whites should be cooked a certain way, and the yolks should be soft and pink, not orange. But I must have said too much because she suddenly turned, looked down at me, and said, ‘Halt die klappe!’”
The little girl didn’t know German but knew exactly what her grandmother meant. Agnes had raised four children and buried two husbands in her time. She didn’t need or want a three-year-old telling her how to fry eggs. She had done all the cooking in her own home all her years and wasn’t in the mood for a food critic.
Agnes Schaser died two years later. She was 60 years old. She had lived in Cleveland for thirty eight years. She was buried in an out of the way local cemetery. In the meantime, Nicolae Ceausescu, the dictator of Romania, was scaling up his plans to remove the country’s Transylvanian Saxons to West Germany. His communist economy was struggling. He needed hard currency. West Germany was offering hard currency. By the early 1970s the plan evolved into a human trade agreement. Hundreds of millions of Deutschmarks were paid to the Romanian state and by 1990 a half million ethnic Germans, nearly all who had settled in the Central European country, had been ransomed and there were no more Transylvanian Saxons.
Photograph: Mathias Schaser and Agnes Kloos, 1931, Transylvania
Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Down East http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com.
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