Foreign News: Report from Munich

Four years ago the U.S. Seventh Army rolled triumphantly into Munich. Last week, from the city that was Naziism's birthplace and shrine, TIME Correspondent Emmet Hughes cabled:

Bavaria's countryside, its soft-rolling hills and gabled farmhouses blanketed by late snow, looked as snug and changeless as ever. Only at a few points along main roads did little, neatly painted buildings strike an odd note: U.S. snack bars, complete with hamburger, jukebox and all the refined necessities of American life. They reminded you that this is, in a sense, America's Bavaria.

The country's soft air of calm was deceptive. Like every Bavarian city and village, Munich went mad last week. While wind and snow whistled through the scarred streets and hollow buildings, along the avenues and through bright windows could be seen gaudy devils and silvery angels, Spanish ladies with black mantillas, Egyptian pharaohs in gold brocade, Hawaiian dancers in tights, bra and lei. Jazz bands blared in every cabaret and public dancehall.

These last two days before Lent were the crashing, climactic orgy of Munich's Fasching—the first full-dress, no-holds-barred carnival after a decade of war and ruin. In the whole Fasching time (which the bold began the second week in January), Munich has writhed and staggered through some 2,500 public and 25,000 private parties; the city has pocketed some 150,000 marks in entertainment taxes. This year, Munich citizens had decided that nothing mattered more than a successful Fasching: families pawned beds, shoes and watches to buy costumes; impoverished baronesses slashed their last evening dresses and their husbands' tattered tuxedoes to make fetching disguises.

St. Michael & the Zoot-Suits. Ash Wednesday Eve I drove through the most devastated streets of Munich, through rubble lanes barely wide enough for a car to pass, to a factory standing in darkness. We climbed a rickety outside stairs to a second-floor door that opened into a garish six-room apartment, slyly constructed by the factory owner in violation of housing laws. Our monocled host greeted us with tipsy cheeriness as his guests oohed and aahed over his gay shirt pasted with cutouts of Esquire girls. Inside the rooms were assembled, in monstrous taste, old tapestries, carved Italian statues of the 15th Century, paintings of madonnas, and some fourscore of Bavaria's wealthiest and most titled citizenry. Heading the guest list was one of the Kaiser's grandsons, a little ill at ease and easily the soberest guest in the place, and his pretty, dark-eyed sister, a refugee from the German Eastern territories. As the host eyed the dignitaries with evident satisfaction, a friend explained to me succinctly: "He has the food, they have the titles." Around a statue of the Archangel Michael, grass skirts and American zoot-suits, favored by Munich's youthful social elite, whirled till dawn. Morning found most of Munich broke and badly hung over.