My relationship with Nagel (friendship? blood brotherhood? Brothers—yes, the Cains and Abels) is getting more and more difficult. Since chasing the thieves (Hertzog and his cohorts) out of the temple of our little community and thereby destroying the temple as well, he’s recapitulating in the new era the developmental stages of the post–Ice Age. At first the furious chronicler of events in the recent past (his first novel, Craterland, is in its third printing), he was soon carried away by the pull of market forces: radio dramas, a play (which hasn’t yet been produced), and recently film scripts for Stoffel—or rather, for Astrid von Bürger with whom he’s head-over-heels in love. He was careless enough to introduce me to them, so now I’ve met Horst-Jürgen Stoffel, founding father of postwar German cinema, first licensed producer of a movie in the British Zone, and his wife, Astrid von Bürger (Nagel’s not the only one to rave about her), joint proprietors of STELLA FILMS.

It isn’t immediately apparent what qualifies Herr Stoffel to be a producer, although his exterior doesn’t rule it out: typical entrepreneur of the German reconstruction from the cadre of those exempted from military service for the sake of the wartime economy (son and successor of a manufacturer of wooden articles in the town of Winsenon-the-Luhe; main product: gun stocks). In his early thirties and obviously well fed even in times of scarcity, viz: plenty of lard on a six-foot-one frame, flaxen haired, theatrical, booming voice. Educational level: left high school before graduation. But sly: a shrewd eye, quick grasp of a situation, without doubt ruthless. Clearly knows next to nothing about film but can bluff with the opinions of an observant moviegoer. (“What drives me crazy is that in movies, nobody ever gets change from a cabbie” or, “Have you ever seen a man get dressed and tuck his shirt in after he’s buckled his belt?”) He owed his license to his wife Astrid von Bürger’s relationship with a film critic, an émigré who returned to Germany as cultural officer in the military government. (That good fellow, one Mr. Fletcher—formerly Fleischer—is a fan of Astrid’s “Niffelheim beauty” and stoutly defends her against the accusation that during the war, she used her fame as a movie star to at the very least aid the Nazis in their push toward a final victory.) Meanwhile, in addition to her, Stoffel had the trump card of a million reichsmarks in hand (God only knows how he got them), not to mention his excellent connections to self-supporting Holstein farmers eager to trade their surplus ham and butter for Scotch whiskey. Thus he was able to found STELLA FILMS even before the currency reform, after which banks with large D-mark reserves swarmed onto the risky investment like flies onto dog shit.