Review: The Many Lives of Miss K: Toto Koopman - Model, Muse, Spy

Title:  The Many Lives of Miss K: Toto Koopman - Model, Muse, Spy

Author:  Jean-Noel Liaut, Denise Raab Jacobs (Translator)

Publisher:  Rizzoli Books

 
Pub Date:   9/3/2013
 
Pages:  244
 
How Acquired:  ARC through Edelweiss

From the back cover:   A life of glamour and tragedy, set against the watershed cultural and political movements of twentieth-century Europe. "Toto" Koopman (1908–1991) is a new addition to the set of iconoclastic women whose biographies intrigue and inspire modern-day readers. Like her contemporaries Lee Miller or Vita Sackville-West, Toto lived with an independent spirit more typical of the men of her generation, moving in the worlds of fashion, society, art, and politics with an insouciant ease that would stir both admiration and envy even today. Sphinxlike and tantalizing, Toto conducted her life as a game, driven by audacity and style. Jean-Noël Liaut chases his enigmatic subject through the many roles and lives she inhabited, both happy and tragic. Though her beauty, charisma, and taste for the extraordinary made her an exuberant fixture of Paris fashion and café society, her intelligence and steely sense of self drove her toward bigger things, culminating in espionage during WWII, for which she was imprisoned by the Nazis in Ravensbruck. After the horrors of the camp, she found solace in Erica Brausen, the German art dealer who launched the career of Francis Bacon, and the two women lived out their lives together surrounded by cultural luminaries like Edmonde Charles-Roux and Luchino Visconti. But even in her later decades, Toto remained impossible for anyone to possess. The Many Lives of Miss K explores the allure of a freethinking and courageous woman who, fiercely protective of her independence, was sought after by so many but ultimately known by very few.

Meet the Author:   Jean-Noël Liaut is a French writer and translator. His books include biographies of Givenchy and Karen Blixen and translations of works by Colin Clark, Nancy Mitford, Deborah Devonshire, and Agatha Christie.

My thoughts:  I’m always excited when I discover a new Scandalous Woman that I can share with my readers.  So when I saw this book featured on Edelweiss, I knew I had to read it.  It just sounded too intriguing to pass up.  Unfortunately the book doesn’t necessarily live up to the hype of the back cover which is a shame because Toto Koopman is one fascinating woman, more than worthy of being featured here on the blog.

Toto was born Catharina Koopman in October of 1908.  Her father was a military officer and her mother was part Dutch, part Javanese.  Despite the rather dim view the Dutch took of interracial marriages and the children born of these unions, Toto’s childhood seems to have been rather uneventful and happy.  Despite her parents’ disapproval, she left her fancy finishing school and headed off to Paris and adventure becoming a fashion model who worked for Chanel among other fashion houses.  She also appeared regularly in French Vogue, which was highly unusual at the time.  Fashion magazines weren’t exactly inclusive back then, so to have a Eurasian model not just on the cover but in the magazine must have been highly scandalous.   When she wasn’t working, Toto seems to have spent her time hobnobbing with everyone there was to no in Paris.   She moves to London to appear in a movie produced by Alexander Korda, but all her scenes are cut out.  No matter, Toto meets Tallulah Bankhead and they have a brief affair.  She then meets Lord Beaverbrook and not only has an affair with him but also his son (as well as Randolph Churchill). 

The author makes much of the fact that Toto’s sexuality was extremely fluid.  I have no idea where she would sit on the Kinsey scale.  She also seemed to have suffered no jealously or guilt over her actions.  For Toto, life does seem to have been a ‘Cabaret, old chum.’  The book catalogs all of her early life and her madcap adventures in Paris and London in about 77 pages.   There’s no in-depth look at how a woman who took money from her lover’s father not to marry him, then turned around and became a spy for the British during World War II working with the Italian resistance.  Toto was arrested in Italy, escaped, was arrested again, and then send to Ravensbruck.  How did she make that change, risking her life and why?  What were her ideals?  Was this just another adventure for her?  The author can’t really explain it.  Toto did have the skills for a spy, she spoke at least 5 languages and she was incredibly enigmatic. Also the details of this period of her life seem hidden behind a wall of gauze.

After the war, Toto meets Erica Brausen who becomes her life partner.  Brausen runs an art gallery, and is responsible for discovering Francis Bacon.  Toto helps Erica run the gallery but she also for a certain point turns her hand to archeology.  All of this is very exciting but again the author is unable to animate Toto from the page.  She remains as unknowable at the end of the book as she does at the beginning.  Life at this point seems to be filled with art openings, traveling, affairs (many on Toto’s part), and building their dream house on an island of the coast of Sicily which they turn into a sort of artists’ colony.  The saddest part of the book is the end of Toto’s life, when Brausen seems to have gone a little off the rails.

The book is incredibly slight (244 pages) for a woman who led such a fascinating life.  Part of the problem is that Toto left no letters or journals, nor did she ever write her autobiography which would have given a biographer material to work with.  Liaut has to piece together her life from the recollections of the few people who knew her that are still alive during his research, and from brief mentions in the biographies of more well-known personalities of the period.  It is a shame that the book is not able to go deeper.

Verdict:  An exuberant but slight account of a truely remarkable woman.

Movie Review: Sophie Scholl - The Final Days

Cast

Sophia Magdalena 'Sophie' Scholl - Julia Jentsch
Hans Fritz Scholl - Fabian Hinrichs
Robert Mohr - Gerald Alexander Held
Else Gebel - Johanna Gastdorf
Dr. Roland Freisler - André Hennicke
Christoph Hermann Probst - Florian Stetter
Willi Graf - Maximilian Brückner
Alexander Schmorell - Johannes Suhm
Gisela Schertling - Lilli Jung
Magdalena Scholl - Petra Kelling
Robert Scholl - Jörg Hube
Werner Scholl - Franz Staber

Director: Marc Rothemund

Written by: Fred Breinersdorfter

Released: February 13, 2005

 
Synopsis:
 
Arrested for participating in the White Rose resistance movement, anti-Nazi activist Sophie Scholl (Julia Jentsch) is subjected to a highly charged interrogation by the Gestapo, testing her loyalty to her cause, her family and her convictions. Based on true events, director Marc Rothemund's absorbing Oscar-nominated drama explores maintaining human resolve in the face of intense pressure from a system determined to silence whistle-blowers.
 

My thoughts: I've been intrigued by World War II partly because my father and uncle were in the army and navy respectively during the War.  Neither of them would talk to me about their experiences, so I've become a little obsessed over the years at reading and watching films and documentaries.  Most of my reading has been focused on England and America, but recently I've become more interested in what was going on in France and Germany.  I don't remember when I first heard the name Sophie Scholl. It may have been while browsing through the Dramatist Play Service catalog and reading the description of Lillian Garrett-Groag's play The White Rose. Recently I found a copy of the 2005 German film Sophie Scholl - The Final Days in the library. Before I knew what I was doing, I had picked the copy off the shelf and walked over to check it out.

Words fail me to describe just how powerful and heartbreaking this film is. The film is directed almost like a thriller.  It takes place over 5 days ending in Sophie's death on February 22nd 1943, 4 days after her arrest. It opens with a charming scene of Sophie and her best friend Gisela singing along to an American jazz song on the radio.  The action quickly shifts to Sophie, her brother Hans, and their friends mailing out leaflets that they've printed out on a mimeograph machine (this was before Xerox machines.  We actually had one in my school when I was growing up). Soon they've run out of envelopes, so Hans comes up with a risky plan to take the remaining leaflets to the university while the students are in class. Hans is reminded that since the seige of Stalingrad, the university has been infiltrated by informers. Sophie offers to go with her brother to help out, since a women would never be suspected. What follows is a nail-biting scene as Hans and Sophie hurry to the university, trying to put down as many stacks of leaflets as they can before classes get out. With only minutes left, Sophie rushes to the top floor with the rest of the leaflets and impulsively pushes them over the edge of the balustrade. Thinking that they've made a clean getaway, Hans and Sophie are just leaving the building, when they are stopped by a janitor who saw Sophie in action.  They are arrested and taken to the Munich Stadelheim Prison.

We never see Hans interrogated, only Sophie who is interviewed by Gestapo investigator Robert Mohr. The two play a cat and mouse game as Sophie wisely admits to what is the truth, but denies being the one who dropped off the leaflets. She tells Mohr that it is part of her nature to play pranks, and that she was carrying a suitcase to pick up her laundry from her mother back home in Ulm (see college students brought their laundry home even back in the 1940's!). At first it looks like she's going to get away with it, but the investigation soon finds proof that she and Hans were involved. Mohr shows Sophie her brother's signed confession. Sophie soon admits what she has done that and that she is proud of it. It turns out that The White Rose had written and distributed 5 Anti-Nazi leaflets calling for passive resistance prior to the one they dropped at the University (Sophie was not involved in the writing of the pamphlets, just the distribution). In their second interrogation, Mohr takes more of a fatherly attitude towards Sophie. He admonishes her for breaking the law, considering that the Reich has paid for her education. 

Sophie is not buying it. She reminds him that pre-1933, people still had free speech.  She tells him about the rounding up of the mentally ill as well as the Jewish population to concentration camps where they have been exterminated.  Mohr tells her that some lives are unworthy. Despite the fact that Sophie is only 21, in many ways she is more mature than Mohr.  She is able to match him argument for argument. You can see in their scenes together that he reluctantly admires her even though he believes that she is misguided and wrong.  Mohr offers Sophie a chance to save herself by repudiating her actions and naming names. Sophie refuses to name names and takes full blame. She insists that she receive whatever punishment her brother receives.

What follows next is a kangaroo trial. They are brought before Judge Roland Freisler in the People's Court.  Even before Sophie, Hans and another member of The White Rose, Christoph Probst are brought into the courtroom, it's clear that the verdict is a foregone conclusion. Their lawyers make no attempt to defend them, and they are barely allowed to speak in their own defense.  Sophie managed to tell the People's Court. "Somebody, after all, had to make a start.  What we wrote and said is also believed by many others.  They just do not dare express themselves as we did. "All three are pronounced guilty and sentenced to death.  However they are allowed one final statement. Sophie tells the court that "where we stand today, you will stand soon."

All three prisoners are told that their execution is that day, they are not even given the normal 99 days after their conviction before execution. Sophie, a devout Lutheran, goes to her death with dignity.  She is allowed to see her brother and Christoph Probst before their executions. She remarks as she is led out to the courtyard where the guillotine awaits her that the "The sun is still shining."
 
So what is movie review about a heroine like Sophie Scholl doing on a blog called Scandalous Women. Well, Sophie's actions scandalized Nazi Germany. At one point in the film, Sophie is contemptuously referred to by one of the police officers as the weaker sex. As if she had led the men astray with her misguided beliefs. She is treated by Mohr as some sort of wayward child that he can school, teaching her the true meaning of right and wrong. The idea that Sophie had a mind of her own, that she had thought seriously and thoughtfully about her actions, and even in the face of death, didn't waver, must have been mind boggling to them. Women were supposed to be the epitome of Aryan womanhood, giving birth to good Aryan children, teaching them about the glories of the Third Reich, not working underground to dismantle it.
 
At the end of the film we are told that after Sophie's death, another pamphlet was smuggled out of Germany, where it was utilized by the Allies. In mid-1943, they dropped millions of copies over Germany.
 
I urge everyone to watch this film about how one person can make a difference just by having the courage to speak out.

Book of the Month: Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel's Secret War

Title:  Sleeping with the Enemy - Coco Chanel's Secret War
Author: Hal Vaughn
Pub. Date: August 2011

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Format: Hardcover , 304pp



Overview:  “From this century, in France, three names will remain: de Gaulle, Picasso, and Chanel.” –André Malraux


Coco Chanel created the look of the modern woman and was the high priestess of couture.

She believed in simplicity, and elegance, and freed women from the tyranny of fashion. She inspired women to take off their bone corsets and cut their hair. She used ordinary jersey as couture fabric, elevated the waistline, and created bell-bottom trousers, trench coats, and turtleneck sweaters.

In the 1920s, when Chanel employed more than two thousand people in her workrooms, she had amassed a personal fortune of $15 million and went on to create an empire.

Jean Cocteau once said of Chanel that she had the head of “a little black swan.” And, added Colette, “the heart of a little black bull.”

At the start of World War II, Chanel closed down her couture house and went across the street to live at the Hôtel Ritz. Picasso, her friend, called her “one of the most sensible women in Europe.” She remained at the Ritz for the duration of the war, and after, went on to Switzerland.

For more than half a century, Chanel’s life from 1941 to 1954 has been shrouded in vagueness and rumor, mystery and myth. Neither Chanel nor her many biographers have ever told the full story of these years. Now Hal Vaughan, in this explosive narrative—part suspense thriller, part wartime portrait—fully pieces together the hidden years of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s life, from the Nazi occupation of Paris to the aftermath of World War II.

Vaughan reveals the truth of Chanel’s long-whispered collaboration with Hitler’s high-ranking officials in occupied Paris from 1940 to 1944. He writes in detail of her decades-long affair with Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage, “Spatz” (“sparrow” in English), described in most Chanel biographies as being an innocuous, English-speaking tennis player, playboy, and harmless dupe—a loyal German soldier and diplomat serving his mother country and not a member of the Nazi party.

In Vaughan’s absorbing, meticulously researched book, Dincklage is revealed to have been a Nazi master spy and German military intelligence agent who ran a spy ring in the Mediterranean and in Paris and reported directly to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, right hand to Hitler.

The book pieces together how Coco Chanel became a German intelligence operative; how and why she was enlisted in a number of spy missions; how she escaped arrest in France after the war, despite her activities being known to the Gaullist intelligence network; how she fled to Switzerland for a nine-year exile with her lover Dincklage. And how, despite the French court’s opening a case concerning Chanel’s espionage activities during the war, she was able to return to Paris at age seventy and triumphantly resurrect and reinvent herself—and rebuild what has become the iconic House of Chanel.