06.2 Hist 20 Podcast: Hedda 1950-59

Hedda in the 6th decade of the 20th C

Transcript

University of California UCOP | Hist20 podcast 6.2

Let's check in with Hedda again, shall we? Actually, I want to check in with Hedda and Jeanette on a picture that

you can find in the profile at Expo 58. The World Fair of 1958 ran in Brussels, Belgium from April 17th to October

19th, 1958. And 51 million people are said to have attended. And we know that Hedda, and Jeanette, and Ruth,

and her some of the children visited that. Now, what's so special about Expo 58 apart from the fact that Hedda

went there?

Well, it was the first World Fair in 18 years because the last one had been in San Francisco in 1939. And then,

there hadn't been any because of World War II. So this is a pretty big deal. And the next one, by the way, would

be in Seattle in 1962, which is when they built the Space Needle. So if any of you have been to Seattle, that Space

Needle was there because of the World Fair in '62.

Now, what is a World Fair? They're not so important anymore. At least I don't know that any of you have been to a

World Fair, but these World Fairs are these large international exhibitions designed to showcase achievements of

nations. And the exhibits-- well they don't travel, but they are meant to have people visit. And they started

happening under different names. And the first sort of best known first World Expo was held in the Crystal Palace

in London, which is in the UK, in 1851. So this has been going on for a while. And the title of the first World Expo

was the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations. And since then, apart from showcasing

characteristics of a country, the World Fairs also exhibited aspects of society, and essentially, sort of the aspects

of society that a particular country wanted to showcase, right? And so that would include art and design,

education, trades, or tourism. So these were both sort of showcases and kind of tourism boards and bragging

things, but they also always had famous architects building pavilions.

And talking about the pavilions, the Expo 58 was a really big deal. The US Pavilion was huge. It included a fashion

show with models walking down a large spiral staircase. And when I think of Hedda and the amazing clothes that

she was wearing in the 50s and 60s, I I'm pretty sure she was there, especially we know that she went to New

York in the 60s. So I suspect that that pavilion might have impressed her. So the pavilion had models walking

around, but it also had an electronic computer that demonstrated a knowledge of history. Since this is the 1950s,

it's the beginning of the computer age. It had color television studio behind the glass. So not just the TVs, which

are becoming, sort of in the United States, not Europe, but televisions were becoming an item in people's

households, right?

Now it's not clear why, whether the Belgians were just sort of being mean spirited, or it was a mistake, but the

Soviet pavilion was right next to the US pavilion. So we know quite sure if Hedda walked through the US pavilion,

and she probably walked through the Soviet pavilion as well. And that was a large building. And I mentionedfamous architects making the pavilions. This one could be folded up. And in fact, the Soviets folded up the pavilion

and took it back to Russia at the end of Expo 58. And in that pavilion, they exhibited a copy of Sputnik, which was

the first artificial satellite that orbited the Earth. It had been sent around the Earth in 1957, and that was a major

shock to the US. That the Soviet launch of Sputnik well ahead of the United States sending anything off into space

essentially started the space race between the two countries. But the exhibit didn't just have Sputnik. It also had

science and technology books in English and other languages. And there were cars exhibited. And I don't think

any of us can name a Soviet car. That was not the industry that they would become well known for. But the

Sputnik, that was a major deal.

The 1950s, essentially, were the beginning of the modern age and especially if you define modern as digital

computer technology. The first modem was developed in the 1950s. Mainframe computers were built. I mean they

didn't have a huge amount of memory, but essentially the mainframe computers were built. And many of the

female computers lost their jobs to machines like the UNIVAC, and UNIVAC stands for Universal Automatic

Computer One. The applications for these large scale computing and processing machines were immediately put

to use in the military and business application. And essentially, they were put to use to put a man on the moon,

but that's not going to be for another couple of years.

But I like to think about Expo 58 in the context of Hedda's life and Jeanette, if you look at both of them in the

picture, at Expo 58. Because when Berlin, in the 1920s, Jeanette had had a staff to handle essentially the

complicated business of running a household. In her new life in Brussels, she didn't even live in a big house. She

lived in an apartment that had an elevator that did not require an operator. That was modern. And she might have

had help, but even if she did, she could operate the automatic washing machine. And she could probably make

herself a drink on a hot summer's day that included an ice cube that had been made in a refrigerator that was

plugged into the wall in her kitchen.

Jeanette and Hedda had come a really long way from their life in Berlin. I mean literally and figuratively. In 1954,

in fact, Ernst and Hedda, they became citizens of Belgium. They'd gone back to Berlin. I mean Hedda hadn't.

Ernst had gone back to Berlin and looked at the house they still owned in Berlin. They managed to keep outside of

Berlin. And they sold it. Essentially, that was it. They were no longer Germans. They applied for Belgian

citizenship. They became Belgian citizens. They had a fridge in their kitchen. They had an automatic washing

machine. They had moved so far into the future from those dark days in the '40s And by the end of the 50s, in

fact, Hedda's daughter Ruth had seven children. She'd have three more in the '60s And among the kids that she

had had in the 1950s was my dad. And it really didn't look like Ruth was going to stop. So whether Hedda was

willing to or not, she was going to be a grandmother a few times over. And I guess, I kind of like to think that part

of their-- I mean they weren't going to go back to Germany anyway. But part of the reason they lived in Brusselsabout a five minute walk from where Ruth and her husband Leo and their 10 children eventually lived was to be

close to them.

All right, I'll check in with you for the '60s soon. Bye.