The Weimar Triangle (24 page)

“That is undoubtedly true,” Martha smiled. “Do you remember the fall of 1923, when the country was about to disintegrate, with Saxony and Thuringia rebelling and Ludendorff and Hitler attempting a putsch in Bavaria, and the French still in the Ruhr and the Rhineland, when a break-up of the country, disintegration, civil war and anarchy were real, tangible possibilities? How could we forget? At that moment the government, frightened out of its mind, gave the
Reichswehr
dictatorial power to deal with the situation. Which it did, most effectively. Hans handed it back in February 1924, to the deep disappointment of the nationalists. For Hans the idea of the army assuming political responsibility was unthinkable. Establishing a military dictatorship was for him absolutely out of the question. He had other objectives.”

“Such as?” Zorbach asked.

“To circumnavigate the military prohibitions of Versailles. That is why he filled the ranks with Prussian aristocrats and former staff officers, preconditioned by birth and tradition to take command of additional, illegal troops. This has to be seen in perspective. All political parties agreed that there was nothing morally wrong with doing everything possible to evade and, if possible, undo Versailles, on the grounds that the treaty was invalid because the German delegation had to sign it under duress. Hans was highly skilful in exploiting the situation and, with the tacit consent of some crucial members of the government, created and financed the
Black Reichswehr
, para-military troops to perform para-military tasks
—
black in the sense that if you sneak by the conductor on the tram without buying a ticket you are a
‘
black’ passenger. It was not only members of the government of the
Reich
but also of the
Länder
who whispered to Hans to go ahead, who winked and looked the other way.”

The main course of the lunch consisted of sautéed calves brains with creamed carrots and new potatoes. It was delicious. Zorbach ordered another bottle of Riesling.

Let me add that a great deal of information about the
Black Reichswehr
was revealed by the social democrat Philipp Scheidemann in the Reichstag last year. That was when pacifists like me, inside and outside Germany, learned with horror about the U-boats and the warplanes that were being built in Spain, in Sweden and in the Netherlands for German firms, on the assumption that under cross-examination their clever lawyers would argue that they were needed by Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands. I have a thick dossier about these matters in my office, but I wanted to hear Martha say more about it.

“Your former fiancé is fixated on Russia,” I said. “Isn’t he?”

“We were never formally engaged,” Martha corrected me. “Hans does not like commitments, public or private. But you’re right. He may not actually be enamoured of the distinctly unsavoury ideology of Russia’s current rulers but he believes Russia is the only great power with which we have no immediate difficulties, that we have in common that we were both defeated in the war, and that we will have no future at all unless we have excellent relations with whoever runs it. Rathenau believed that, too, when he went to Rapallo. I suppose when you said Hans was fixated on Russia you were thinking of the secret agreements he concluded with the Soviets to have them produce forbidden arms for us and to have our officers and Soviet officers trained jointly. Yes, these were daring, highly significant moves. The French were not amused to read rumours about them in their newspapers, nor were the social democrats at home. The communists, of course, were delighted.”

“And another reason why he was fixated on Russia,” I continued, “was surely that Germany and Russia have in common a profound, ancient hostility to Poland. Would you not agree with that?”

“You know, Geisel,” Zorbach objected, “you’re not in court now. I will advise my witness not to answer your question.”

“Don’t interfere,” Martha admonished her husband. “I enjoy talking to your friend. Yes,
Herr Doktor
,” she said. “We Prussians are no more fond of Poles than the Russians, especially if we have estates near the Polish borders, as so many of us do, and we do not like it when we hear that the Poles bully their German minorities just as the Russian do not like to hear what the Poles are doing to their minorities.”

“Hence the
Arbeitskommandos
, financed by the
Reichswehr,”
I said. “Right?”

I knew that in the areas bordering Poland thousands of men in civilian clothes, the
Arbeitskommandos,
help with the harvest and put in irrigation systems and perform all kinds of useful tasks. But their real purpose is something else. They protect our borders and prevent Polish incursions. After all, Polish attacks on East Prussia in the west or on Ukraine in the east were entirely conceivable, if the wind blew in the right direction. The commandos also thoroughly enjoyed guarding our secret arms and munitions depots.

“You will have to agree,” I said, picking up her tone, “that the spirit prevailing among these super-patriots is very different from that in the
Reichswehr
. There is nothing elitist about them. They are wild nationalists. Many of them worship the swastika. And we all know what happened in the dark days in the fall of 1923 when Hans was asked to assume charge.”

This was a reference to the radical right-wing unit of the
Black Reichswehr
, which under Major Buchdrucker tried to stage a putsch against the
Reichswehr
proper and attempted to occupy a government building in Berlin. When this miscarried, the major and his men sought refuge in the fortresses of Küstrin and Spandau and had to be forced to capitulate after considerable loss of life.

“Yes,” Martha smiled. “I was quite sorry for Hans. The sorcerer had trouble controlling his apprentice.”

“Well, I was not sorry for him,” Horst snapped. “Good thing we were not married then. And a good thing most of these
Arbeitskommandos
have been dissolved by now.”

“Ah, here comes the dessert,” Martha greeted the waiter who brought us strawberries with whipped cream and a plate of an assortment of cheeses.

“And have gone underground,” I said, “waiting for another day. One wonders how the sphinx with the monocle will behave when that day comes.”

“He won’t be on the side of the rabble,” Martha said. “You can be sure of that.”

I am sorry, Klaus, I forgot myself. This letter has gone on far too long. Why should a cellist in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra be interested in all this when he can play for Al Capone?

But I have to add a coda to this story. Finally, last year the government asserted itself. It had enough of the general’s assumption of sovereignty. Of course it had had the legal power to dismiss him all along. But this time, when it finally decided to get rid of him, it was a measure of its weakness that it first had to obtain the support of the president and of the press.

It was not hard to get Hindenburg to agree, whatever the occasion, because during the war he had learned to detest him. Hans had made it easy for the government to find a pretext to sway the press. He had recently invited the oldest son of the former crown prince to take part in infantry exercises. The government knew that this was anathema to the mainstream newspapers even if many of their readers were nostalgic for the good old days under the Kaiser. So it leaked the juicy morsel to them. There was the expected outcry of virtuous indignation. So Hans was dismissed and the government lived happily ever after.

Enjoy playing for Al Capone.

Yours as always,

Hermann

O
RANGE
B
LOSSOMS

Hermann Geisel’s journal of June 28, 1927 (edited and expanded for publication)

I have always known there is no one like Jeanne for pillow talk and I do not mind at all that she says it is the best part of sharing my bed. She adds that none of her other lovers listens as well as I do.

Last night I had a feast.

I had not seen her for two years. That is why I had not yet heard her reminisce about Locarno. I knew that in October 1925 she accompanied her boss to the conference as his secretary. Her bed was the perfect location for a first-hand account. Her boss was a second-rank
fonctionnaire
on the Quai d’Orsay. Since she has a remarkable, beautifully sculpted face, with high cheekbones and a prominent chin, buys her clothes in the finest shops of the Faubourg Saint Honoré and comes from a much better family than he does, he owed much of his prestige to her. When I first met her she was an interpreter in the legal department of the French regiment stationed in Mainz. Her mother is German, so she was highly qualified. I represented three clients who were involved in prisoner exchanges. One thing led to another. We had to be discreet. If it had become known that she was practising her pillow talk with a German lawyer, no French lawyer could have saved her. She would have been thrown out on the spot.

“Why are you in Frankfurt?” I asked.

“I am on a sentimental journey,” she said.

“
Res ipsa loquitor,
” I replied. “The facts speak for themselves. Thank you.”

“No, they do not. Not entirely, anyway,” she said. “I was thinking not only of you.”

It was below my dignity to ask the obvious question.

“You are in good company,” she resumed. “I was also thinking of Beethoven.”

“How nice,” I observed.

“My mother sent me. I have never told you I was brought up with Beethoven.”

“That can’t have been easy. He was a somewhat difficult character.”

“So he was. Do you know Romain Rolland?”

What a question!

“One of my role models,” I replied, with some agitation. “I wish I did. The conscience of Europe. I will never forget the superb open letter he published in late August 1914 to his German fellow intellectuals, imploring them to protest against German barbarism in Louvain where the Germans had destroyed the ancient Belgian university and irreplaceable libraries, the common property of all of Europe. The answers he received pleaded that he was the victim of anti-German propaganda. I have read every volume of Rolland’s monumental novel
Jean-Christophe
, comparable to
War and Peace
, and many of his other works. Why do you ask?”

“My mother met him in Rome when she was quite young, a year or two before I was born. They have been in touch ever since. She was studying the viola; he was working on the early history of opera. He is twenty years older than she. No, I am not the daughter of Romain Rolland. As far as I know, their friendship was platonic. They both knew the legendary Malwida von Meysenbug.”

I was hugely impressed. I knew a great deal about her
—
she was a friend of Wagner and Nietzsche.

“Ah
—
now I remember,” I said. “He wrote a book about Beethoven. At about that time.”

“So he did. And Jean-Christophe Krafft, the character in Rolland’s book, has many of the features of the young Beethoven, which you may not have noticed.”

“No, I did not.”

“For Romain Rolland,” she continued, “Beethoven is the quintessential European hero. Because of deep suffering and years of struggle
—
gigantic achievements. His whole life
—
the
Eroica.
So a couple of weeks ago Rolland wrote to my mother suggesting that she might wish to go to Frankfurt on his behalf. But she is not well enough to travel so she sent me. He wanted her to celebrate Beethoven’s centenary for him and look at his manuscripts and sketchbooks and report back. So here I am.”

“So you have seen the Beethoven exhibit?”

“I have.”

She paused. I expected her to tell me how moved she was to see his scribblings in his sketchbooks after his hearing had gone and to see the scores in his own handwriting. But after a long pause she dumbfounded me by saying something quite different.

“I kept thinking of your foreign minister Gustav Stresemann.”

“But, but, but…” I stuttered, “Stresemann is the exact opposite! His opponents never got tired of mocking him for having written his dissertation on the bottled-beer trade in Berlin, to which he should have stuck, having been brought up in his father’s tavern.”

Quite rightly, she considered this foolish observation unworthy of a reply.

“I kept thinking of Stresemann,” she said, “because his struggle was so similar.”

I mulled this over for a few moments. The comparison seemed to me a little far-fetched but I did not want to make a fool of myself again. Stresemann, a rotund, bald man, often seen smoking a cigar, was born around 1880. Before he entered politics he had a career in industry as a high-level consultant. He was mildly reformist in internal matters, solidly anti-socialist, and in external matters after 1914 a super-patriot and an ardent monarchist, Ludendorff ’s young man, he was called. In November 1918 he was among those who founded the right-of-centre German People’s Party. The party was fundamentally opposed to the revolution.

Soon he became its chairman. He became an excellent parliamentarian, much admired for his persuasive skills.

So Jeanne was probably thinking that to come to terms with the socialist-dominated republic while still a monarchist at heart required a momentous internal struggle.

I tried this out on her.

“Oh you are so clever, Hermann,” she said, giving my left shoulder a little squeeze.” That’s exactly what I was thinking. Of course Beethoven was much younger when he went through his ordeal, when he noticed that he was going deaf. He was in his early thirties.”

I did not want to tell her that I still thought her comparison was odd but there was no point in dwelling on it. I wanted her to talk about Locarno.

“So you were impressed by Stresemann?”

“I was full of admiration. I was told by those who knew him well that he was still a monarchist but that he was a man of reason who understood that the Republic was here to stay and that he had to do everything in his power to make it work. I have nothing good to say about your Kaiser, but I can see that there was nothing boring about him, and, my God, when I read about the republicans who are now running your country and see their photographs in the papers, what a drab, pedestrian, boring lot they are! A bunch of beer bottlers! Compared to them, Stresemann is a giant! He has personality! I understand the opponents of the Republic don’t give him a moment’s peace. That they are absolutely brutal with him. They do not see what he sees
—
that only through reconciliation can Germany achieve respectability again. That this is a matter of cold, calculating reason. They call him an appeaser. Isn’t that right?”