Forgotten Land (10 page)
Authors: Max Egremont
Käthe Kollwitz’s diary has glimpses of the remembered Paris of 1904 and 1907, of a later love affair with the Jewish Viennese publisher Hugo Heller and of her secret erotic drawings inspired
by this. More freedom came through her winning of the Villa Romana Prize in 1907, which meant the use of a villa in Florence for a year. She was mostly on her own in Florence, for Karl was too busy to come, Hans could not interrupt his studies and Peter (aged eleven) visited only occasionally. At first she thought the city decadent but the light and life and the work of artists like Donatello began to move her. On a trip to Rome with an English friend she saw Michelangelo’s Pietà, and was overcome by his depiction of maternal love and the sanctity of suffering. The frescoes in the Italian churches seemed astonishingly bright in contrast to the urban poverty of industrial Berlin.
by this. More freedom came through her winning of the Villa Romana Prize in 1907, which meant the use of a villa in Florence for a year. She was mostly on her own in Florence, for Karl was too busy to come, Hans could not interrupt his studies and Peter (aged eleven) visited only occasionally. At first she thought the city decadent but the light and life and the work of artists like Donatello began to move her. On a trip to Rome with an English friend she saw Michelangelo’s Pietà, and was overcome by his depiction of maternal love and the sanctity of suffering. The frescoes in the Italian churches seemed astonishingly bright in contrast to the urban poverty of industrial Berlin.
But Berlin, or the part where she and Karl lived, was her theme – the violence, the drunkenness and the suffering, the burdens put upon the wives of victims which she thought she had a duty to show. Käthe Kollwitz believed more in Rupp’s ideas of universal brotherhood than in political socialism – but duty was vital. When Heller’s wife died in 1909, Käthe could have left Karl for him, but she stayed, dreaming of her lover, telling a friend that when Karl and the boys no longer needed her she would return to Paris and to freedom. Her work, in fact, has few traces of what was new in Paris – and in 1911, with other artists, she signed a letter of protest against German museums buying French works of the avant-garde. Typical of her style, completely different to what she thought of as abstract art’s confusing obscurity, was the 1909 etching
Unemployed
– of a man in a room with his children, the tone dark and hopeless. The caption reads: ‘If they didn’t need soldiers they would also put a tax on children.’
Unemployed
– of a man in a room with his children, the tone dark and hopeless. The caption reads: ‘If they didn’t need soldiers they would also put a tax on children.’
In the summer, the Kollwitzes went east, to Königsberg and the coast, to Rauschen and the Spit – the Kurische Nehrung. In 1909 Käthe’s mother, who had moved to Berlin after her husband’s death, was with them; and the gathering of Rupp and Schmidt cousins seemed shrouded in remembrance, in her own sense of getting old and in Karl’s irritation, especially during a big family lunch on a trip to Memel. The family was in Königsberg for the dedication of the memorial to her grandfather Julius
Rupp, on the centenary of his birth – a portrait relief of him by Käthe herself, her first exhibited piece of sculpture. She had been afraid that it was ‘kitsch’; in fact she thought the head adequate and was moved by the hymn-singing of the members of the Free Church. The inscription on the memorial expressed Rupp’s ideals: ‘Who does not live according to the truth that he recognizes, is himself the most dangerous enemy of truth.’
Rupp, on the centenary of his birth – a portrait relief of him by Käthe herself, her first exhibited piece of sculpture. She had been afraid that it was ‘kitsch’; in fact she thought the head adequate and was moved by the hymn-singing of the members of the Free Church. The inscription on the memorial expressed Rupp’s ideals: ‘Who does not live according to the truth that he recognizes, is himself the most dangerous enemy of truth.’
Her work showed the harsh world of her husband’s patients, but it also conveyed yearning and fear, as in a scene depicting a child and the smiling figure of Death fighting over a woman. She dreamed of having another baby, the sweetness of an infant in her bed; the urge clashed now with a sense of age, a dread of working too mechanically, like a grazing cow. Was she already out of her time, already lost in this new world where imagination seemed to be much more important than technique? On the anniversary of their engagement, Karl told her that only during her affair with Heller had he doubted their marriage – and she felt both happy and oppressed. She had known no one who could love so much but sometimes his love tortured her. She wanted to be free again, as with Heller or in Paris or in Italy.
This feeling of missed experience, of routine’s net, must have grown when her sister Lise, who saw promiscuity as a weapon against stifling bourgeois ideals, began a love affair. Peter had become fascinated by Wilde’s
Ballad of Reading Gaol
and
Portrait of Dorian Gray
. He talked freely with his mother about homosexuality and sexual desire. Had Hans and Peter discussed such matters often with each other? she wondered. Peter was a rebellious idealist, bored with conventional education, enthralled by the romanticism of the Wandervogel movement, whose members hiked through the mountains and hills or camped under starlit skies, having mock battles that tested their courage. Her love for Peter – partly a wish to hold on to a relentlessly passing life – could seem unbearable. In October 1912, when he left to work on a farm before resuming his art studies, she wept in the night; to be near him was happiness, even an erotic delight. Käthe
wondered how she would take it if he was homosexual, but the idea did not frighten her. In November 1913 her uncle Theodore Rupp hanged himself in his house at Rauschen. A month later, on New Year’s Eve, she wrote of a good and constant burning love for Karl but without ecstasy. The prophecies of war filled her with dread.
Ballad of Reading Gaol
and
Portrait of Dorian Gray
. He talked freely with his mother about homosexuality and sexual desire. Had Hans and Peter discussed such matters often with each other? she wondered. Peter was a rebellious idealist, bored with conventional education, enthralled by the romanticism of the Wandervogel movement, whose members hiked through the mountains and hills or camped under starlit skies, having mock battles that tested their courage. Her love for Peter – partly a wish to hold on to a relentlessly passing life – could seem unbearable. In October 1912, when he left to work on a farm before resuming his art studies, she wept in the night; to be near him was happiness, even an erotic delight. Käthe
wondered how she would take it if he was homosexual, but the idea did not frighten her. In November 1913 her uncle Theodore Rupp hanged himself in his house at Rauschen. A month later, on New Year’s Eve, she wrote of a good and constant burning love for Karl but without ecstasy. The prophecies of war filled her with dread.
In April 1914, by one of the lakes near Berlin in beautiful spring weather, Hans and Peter and Käthe Kollwitz discussed the philosopher J. G. Fichte’s
Speech to the German Nation
, the boys speaking of a rebirth of German youth in a new patriotism. She saw how influenced they were by this, much more than she had imagined. Hans had even brought together a group of friends who thought it inspiring. Peter spoke of his wish to combine his art studies with some manual work to help others. Käthe thought of a line of descent from her grandfather Rupp’s idealism to that of her own sons. Another memory came to her: how they had slept when young – Hans on his back, with his arms folded over his breast; Peter’s body curved, arms stretched away from him. When her mother left in June to go to the East Prussian coast, Käthe thought again of the modesty of the Rupps, of their gentle example and sense of duty.
Speech to the German Nation
, the boys speaking of a rebirth of German youth in a new patriotism. She saw how influenced they were by this, much more than she had imagined. Hans had even brought together a group of friends who thought it inspiring. Peter spoke of his wish to combine his art studies with some manual work to help others. Käthe thought of a line of descent from her grandfather Rupp’s idealism to that of her own sons. Another memory came to her: how they had slept when young – Hans on his back, with his arms folded over his breast; Peter’s body curved, arms stretched away from him. When her mother left in June to go to the East Prussian coast, Käthe thought again of the modesty of the Rupps, of their gentle example and sense of duty.
In July, there was a further death – another of Käthe’s uncles – and the family gathered for a cremation in Berlin – a dark contrast to Peter’s romantic hope. Sometimes in photographs he seems earnest, especially in one taken with his brother Hans (whose face is longer, more calm) where Peter stares through rimless spectacles at the camera, lips slack in adolescent uncertainty. Then, a year later, in uniform, he is more sure, the lips tighter, slightly smiling, calm as Hans had seemed the year before, still thin, a large nose beneath the soft military cap, large buttons and belt buckle bright against the dark tunic. What looks like a cigarette is held between his second and third fingers.
Peter celebrated the summer solstice with three friends by a lake south-east of Berlin, all wearing flowers in their hair, a foretaste of the 1960s in this last summer of peace. They planned a
trip to Norway, to an empty land fashionable among the Wandervogel; some days after this came the assassination at Sarajevo. In the middle of July the group went north. Years later, in 1994, Hans Koch, a survivor, spoke of the Norwegian journey in the calmness of old age, showing what Peter could have become – a serene observer of the world’s mistakes, disillusioned with socialism, the founder of a successful business, ready now for death. In the northern wilderness they heard of mobilization, followed by the declaration of war. All wanted to enlist, and peace ended with a journey back from Bergen to Oslo by train during which the four German friends met some friendly English and French travellers who were now their enemies. The group took the ferry to Rügen, then the train to Berlin, their faces burned by the sun, talking excitedly about their new identity as fighters, lit up by sensuality and the thrill of imagined battle.
trip to Norway, to an empty land fashionable among the Wandervogel; some days after this came the assassination at Sarajevo. In the middle of July the group went north. Years later, in 1994, Hans Koch, a survivor, spoke of the Norwegian journey in the calmness of old age, showing what Peter could have become – a serene observer of the world’s mistakes, disillusioned with socialism, the founder of a successful business, ready now for death. In the northern wilderness they heard of mobilization, followed by the declaration of war. All wanted to enlist, and peace ended with a journey back from Bergen to Oslo by train during which the four German friends met some friendly English and French travellers who were now their enemies. The group took the ferry to Rügen, then the train to Berlin, their faces burned by the sun, talking excitedly about their new identity as fighters, lit up by sensuality and the thrill of imagined battle.
Hans Kollwitz went into barracks on 5 August. His mother, moved by her elder son’s tranquillity, tried to prepare herself for loss. Her grandfather Rupp’s words came back – that God never took without having given more than he had taken. On 8 August she was sitting at the table in the living room when she heard Peter’s quick footsteps in the passage. That evening, the three – Käthe, Karl and their younger son – talked into the night; and two days later the argument began that haunted the rest of her life. Peter wanted to volunteer, and because he was under age he had to have his father’s written permission. Karl said that the boy’s year hadn’t been called up yet so the country had no need of them, to which Peter answered that Germany might not need those of his age but it needed him. The talk swung to and fro; the son looked at his mother and pleaded that he was ready. She stood and he followed her to the door, where they kissed and she pleaded with Karl to let him go. It should be the boy’s decision, she believed, so Karl signed the paper and Peter departed for the barracks, leaving his parents alone, ‘weeping, weeping, weeping’.
The boys came home often during the short army training. Sometimes they all sang together and once Käthe and Peter read
the history of the Prussian wars of liberation of a century before. Käthe might rebel against the public view of women’s dutiful, even joyful, sacrifice, yet like most German Social Democrats, she and Karl supported the war, believing in the need to fight encircling enemies – autocratic Russia, decadent and vengeful France, jealous Britain. They enjoyed the idealistic unity and the early success. News on 21 August of victories at Brussels and Metz brought flags onto the streets, although Karl read the next day that the Governor of Königsberg had told old people and children to leave the city. There were stabs of pain. Peter, the more delicate of her sons, the more sensitive, must be spared to see the world’s beauty so that he could say, like Goethe, ‘I saw the world with eyes filled with love …’
the history of the Prussian wars of liberation of a century before. Käthe might rebel against the public view of women’s dutiful, even joyful, sacrifice, yet like most German Social Democrats, she and Karl supported the war, believing in the need to fight encircling enemies – autocratic Russia, decadent and vengeful France, jealous Britain. They enjoyed the idealistic unity and the early success. News on 21 August of victories at Brussels and Metz brought flags onto the streets, although Karl read the next day that the Governor of Königsberg had told old people and children to leave the city. There were stabs of pain. Peter, the more delicate of her sons, the more sensitive, must be spared to see the world’s beauty so that he could say, like Goethe, ‘I saw the world with eyes filled with love …’
After the invasion of Belgium and France, rumour came of a ceasefire in the west. Käthe Kollwitz hoped that the boys might never have to fight, but ‘Russia remains’ and reports reached her of her childhood’s country under threat: Insterburg surrounded, battles near Königsberg, Tilsit in flames. In the first week of September, Sedan Day, commemorating the 1870 victory of the Prussians over the French, brought the flags out again with joyful crowds and captured guns from the western and eastern fronts. News came of the French President’s flight from Paris and of a great triumph in East Prussia, at Tannenberg.
On the evening of 13 August 1914, Alfred Knox arrived at Peterhof, near St Petersburg, to join the train of the Grand Duke Nicholas, the Russian Commander-in-Chief. They set off slowly westwards, the Grand Duke discoursing on how he hoped to go to England for some shooting soon; how the German Empire should be broken up into little states; how extraordinary it was that the German Ambassador’s wife had thought that revolutionaries would blow up the Winter Palace. The meals on the train were good: three courses for lunch and dinner, accompanied by a choice of vodka, claret, Madeira or Cognac. On 16 August, they reached Baranovich, to hear news of the Russian invasion of Germany.
In East Prussia, euphoria turned to anxiety. Refugees from the frontier areas crowded into Königsberg; others poured west, by boat or by train, terrified by rumours that the province was to be abandoned to the Russian hordes. On 17 August, the Russian First Army under General Rennenkampf crossed the frontier; on the 20th it drove the Germans back from Gumbinnen. On 21 August, General Samsonov and the Russian Second Army entered East Prussia from the south, taking the German towns of Willenberg, Ortelsburg and Neidenburg a day later.
Knox went north, towards the German front and the conquered towns. He thought about the two Russian generals – Samsonov and Rennenkampf – who were said to hate each other, even to have come to blows on a station platform during the war with Japan, although probably this was a myth. He had met Samsonov a year earlier, at manoeuvres south-east of Samarkand, and
had found him ‘as so many Russians are, of a simple and kindly nature’. The Englishman knew little of Rennenkampf, who came from a Baltic German family. Neither officer had commanded more than a division of cavalry against the Japanese.
had found him ‘as so many Russians are, of a simple and kindly nature’. The Englishman knew little of Rennenkampf, who came from a Baltic German family. Neither officer had commanded more than a division of cavalry against the Japanese.
General von Prittwitz, commander of the German Eighth Army in the east, panicked and wanted to retire westwards as far as the River Vistula, abandoning Königsberg and great swathes of territory. Prittwitz was dismissed and on 22 August the German Commander-in-Chief, Moltke, appointed Erich Ludendorff, hero of the capture of Liège, to be chief of staff to the man brought out of retirement to take the eastern command: Paul von Hindenburg. Myth soon appropriated these men, both Prussians: Hindenburg – heavy, imperturbable, a master of silence – in particular becoming the symbol of two pivotal moments: Tannenberg in August 1914 and Berlin in January 1933 when, as President of Germany, he asked Hitler to be chancellor.
Born in 1847 into a Prussian military family in Posen, where his father was stationed, Hindenburg had roots further east, at the estate of Neudeck, near Rosenberg; at least two of his ancestors had fought with the Teutonic Knights. Every summer the family gathered at Neudeck, his parents moving there permanently in 1863, after his father’s retirement. The fragility of the place, its position on an invasion route, was shown in stories of the French under Napoleon on their way to, and back from, Moscow.
After a mediocre record as a schoolboy, Hindenburg went to a Berlin Cadet School where he rose to the highest class and attended Heinrich von Treitschke’s nationalistic lectures. As a young officer, he fought in the war of 1866 against Austria – when a bullet grazed his head – and in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, representing his regiment at Versailles in 1871 for the declaration of the German Empire. It was to the new Germany, henceforth, rather than to the old Prussia, that Hindenburg was loyal, and the protection of German unity became his creed. In 1903, the climax of his pre–First World War life, he became commander
of an army corps at Magdeburg and was later considered, but not chosen, for higher posts. Magdeburg showed his political talents, not least the gift of knowing when to speak and when to stay silent. Other characteristics were his ability to delegate and to relax, a consciousness of the effect he could have on people and a deep interest in his own reputation. On his retirement in March 1911, he was disappointed not to have risen higher.
of an army corps at Magdeburg and was later considered, but not chosen, for higher posts. Magdeburg showed his political talents, not least the gift of knowing when to speak and when to stay silent. Other characteristics were his ability to delegate and to relax, a consciousness of the effect he could have on people and a deep interest in his own reputation. On his retirement in March 1911, he was disappointed not to have risen higher.
It might have been expected that Hindenburg would pass his last years in eastern Germany, where he was proud to have his roots. Instead he and his wife, the daughter of a Prussian general, went to Hanover, where he had a circle of cronies, did some shooting and read the Bible every day and military history and the newspapers, breaking this routine once to go on his only foreign journey for pleasure rather than military conquest: to Rome, Florence and Naples. When war broke out in August 1914 there seemed to be nothing for the pensioner in Hanover. It was humiliating – ‘I sit like an old woman behind the oven.’ Then Prittwitz panicked.
On the western front, the startling success had been Ludendorff – hero of the capture of Liège, the first German soldier in the war to be decorated by the Emperor with the Pour le Mérite, the highest imperial award for military achievement. But he was neurotic and moody, also (at forty-nine) too young to command an army, so someone had to be put in above him – a calm presence, a steadying hand of symbolic solidity, not a military genius but ‘a polished helmet’. Hindenburg’s terse answer to the telegram of appointment became part of the legend: ‘I am ready.’ When a special train drew into Hanover station on the morning of 23 August at 4.00 a.m. – an hour late – with Ludendorff on it, Hindenburg was waiting in his uniform of Prussian blue, not having had time to obtain the field grey of active service. They had never met before, and on the journey eastwards, Hindenburg demonstrated his special skill; he spoke to Ludendorff, agreed with his subordinate’s plans (which included keeping the Eighth Army east of the Vistula), then went to sleep.
They arrived at the new headquarters at Marienburg, in the shadow of the castle of the Teutonic Knights. To some officers, the new commander seemed to be much aged: huge, stiff-limbed, like a miraculously half-animated corpse. The next day Hindenburg and his staff drove off on roads crowded with refugees and troops going up to the front. Eventually they reached the cause of a clarion-like passage in his ghost-written memoirs – the East Prussian village whose name the Germans had given to the battle of Grunwald: the place where King Władisław II Jagiełło’s Polish – Lithuanian force had defeated the Teutonic Knights in 1410, halting the Order’s apparently relentless move east: ‘Tannenberg! A word pregnant with painful recollection for German chivalry, a Slav cry of triumph, a name that is fresh in our memories after more than five hundred years of history.’ On arriving at Marienburg, however, he had written more prosaically to his wife, ‘I believe your old man may become famous …’
Rennenkampf slowed his advance, fearing the garrison in Königsberg on his right. He wanted to give Samsonov time to get through the forests and lakes in the south-east to crush the Germans, who were thought still to be retreating. The belief grew that this must end with Cossacks in the Reichstag and the palaces of Potsdam. But there was chaos on both sides. As Samsonov’s Second Army entered East Prussia, it was hampered by shortage of supplies, bad discipline, late arrival of orders, exhaustion in the heat, lack of telephones and a poor communications system whose wireless messages were easily intercepted. ‘We had an ally,’ the German Staff Officer Colonel Hoffmann said later of the Russians’ radio traffic. ‘It was the enemy. We knew all his plans.’ Rennenkampf and Samsonov had been cavalry leaders, not familiar with the slow movement of vast armies, and they were up against men who knew the ground; flat, empty East Prussia had been one of the main pre-war training areas of the German army. The extensive German railway system and good roads allowed quick movement, whereas the Russian roads, as Knox had found
in 1911, were in bad condition, ostensibly to delay invasion, and the few railway lines soon became congested.
in 1911, were in bad condition, ostensibly to delay invasion, and the few railway lines soon became congested.
The Russians hoped that the East Prussian Poles would welcome their fellow Slavs. Knox reported that as the Russians advanced into Masuria many Germans left but the Poles stayed. He liked the Poles and was moved by their tragedy, hoping that a Russian victory would lead, as had been promised, to a united Poland under Russian protection rather than a country divided between Austria, Germany and Russia. In another display of Edwardian anti-Semitism, Knox was much less sympathetic to the Jews, commenting on their determination to be on the winning side and their unctuous manner, claiming not to have known that a Jewish corpse was dead until it failed to salute him. The kindness of the Russians to their prisoners was, he thought, wonderful; he heard stories of German brutality – officers stealing from Polish houses, committing gratuitous damage, setting fire to haystacks, violating women. Later he watched Russian soldiers burn down a Polish manor house, to punish the young owner who had an elder brother serving in the Austrian army and had been harbouring enemy troops.
At its start, in August 1914, the First World War was a war of movement – the French invading Alsace, the Germans sweeping into Belgium and northern France: colossal armies on the march. Not until September did the long stalemate of trench warfare in the west begin, after the German advance had been checked outside Paris, at the battle of the Marne. On the eastern front, however, these great movements remained a feature of the campaigns, with armies retreating or advancing over wild flat country. That August the Russian invasion revived nightmares in East Prussia of earlier devastation: of Gustavus Adolphus’s Swedes during the Thirty Years War, of the Tatars and the Asian hordes. Was this to be the final defeat of the northern crusades?
By 25 August, Knox was with Samsonov in Neidenburg. He found the town much changed since his visit in 1911, its main
square scarred by burned or damaged houses. The fighting devastated the eastern part of East Prussia; fields were churned up, houses wrecked, a harvest either left to rot or seized for troops and much damage caused by German and Russian artillery. More than a hundred thousand East Prussian families lost everything; thirty-nine towns and nineteen hundred villages were more than 50 per cent destroyed; forty thousand buildings were left in ruins; farms suffered devastating losses of livestock. Over half a million people from the country districts took refuge in Königsberg; in August 1914 some twelve thousand of these fled west by sea to Danzig, Pomerania or Brandenburg. Civilians suspected of spying were shot by the Russians; thousands were sent over the frontier as prisoners, often to Siberia, from which many never returned. The Cossacks ransacked parts of the country.
square scarred by burned or damaged houses. The fighting devastated the eastern part of East Prussia; fields were churned up, houses wrecked, a harvest either left to rot or seized for troops and much damage caused by German and Russian artillery. More than a hundred thousand East Prussian families lost everything; thirty-nine towns and nineteen hundred villages were more than 50 per cent destroyed; forty thousand buildings were left in ruins; farms suffered devastating losses of livestock. Over half a million people from the country districts took refuge in Königsberg; in August 1914 some twelve thousand of these fled west by sea to Danzig, Pomerania or Brandenburg. Civilians suspected of spying were shot by the Russians; thousands were sent over the frontier as prisoners, often to Siberia, from which many never returned. The Cossacks ransacked parts of the country.
One effect of all this was to draw the remote east closer to the rest of the Reich. Cities like Frankfurt, Cologne and Leipzig began twinning arrangements with districts or towns in the invaded province; there were collections of clothing and money; and the threat brought East Prussian ethnic groups like the Protestant Poles closer to their German neighbours, particularly if they had property to lose. Yet the first great twentieth-century war in the east seems quite gentle compared to what was to come. In Gumbinnen, General Rennenkampf appointed a German schoolteacher to be governor of the town, and in Insterburg a German doctor was put in charge of civilian administration. When the Germans re-took Neidenburg on 28 August, the wounded who had stayed there said how well the Russians had treated them.
When the war began, Tilsit, a border town in northern East Prussia, was calm. Reports brought good news from the west, allowing people to forget that ‘a violent enemy’ was forming up on the other side of the River Niemen. Then refugees started to arrive; it was even suggested that the famous Queen Luise Bridge over the Niemen should be blown up to slow the Russian invasion. A hotel proprietor, Paul Lesch, engaged in his own act of
defiance, changing his establishment’s name from the Hôtel de Russie to the Königlicher Hof.
defiance, changing his establishment’s name from the Hôtel de Russie to the Königlicher Hof.
On 25 August, while Alfred Knox was with Samsonov’s Second Army in Neidenburg, the first Russians, presumably from Rennenkampf’s First Army, entered Tilsit. The officer of the mounted Cossack patrol asked for the mayor. On hearing that there were no German troops in the town, the Cossacks left – but more Russians came the next day: a company of infantry and a squadron of Cossacks with a train of wagons, Paul Lesch noticing their poor equipment. The Russians took over the city barracks, the post office and the railway station, posting sentries on the bridges and the main thoroughfares, imposing a curfew on civilians between nine in the evening and six in the morning. Lesch knew some of the Russian officers from before the war when they had come to his hotel, shocking the German by wanting to stay overnight with women.
On 30 August an infantry division arrived in the city, commanded by the Finn General von Holmsen, an ‘educated’ man with good German, probably from a Baltic family of German origin. The Russians lived in tents on the edge of the city, the sale of alcohol was forbidden and all restaurants and bars were closed, except for Lesch’s hotel, which was kept open for the officers. Tilsit was occupied for three weeks, shut off from the rest of the world. Lesch was summoned with eleven other prominent citizens to the town hall, where General von Holmsen told them that the town must make a contribution of 40,000 marks and they were to be taken to Russia, with only twenty-four hours to put their affairs in order.
The next day the general came to Lesch’s hotel, ordered a bottle of Mosel and was fascinated by the eminent Russian names in the guest book: Grand Duke Cyril, Count Lieven, General Rennenkampf and ‘my dear friend’ Hilmar von der Goltz, a German officer who had been training the Turkish army when von Holmsen was the Russian Military Attaché in Constantinople. Lesch seized his chance. Wouldn’t it be better, he asked, to leave the
twelve hostages in Tilsit so that they could use their influence to keep order? Holmsen said he would ask his commanding officer, the Grand Duke Nicholas, who was in Insterburg.
twelve hostages in Tilsit so that they could use their influence to keep order? Holmsen said he would ask his commanding officer, the Grand Duke Nicholas, who was in Insterburg.
The following morning, at six o’clock, Lesch said goodbye to his wife and children and joined the other hostages who were waiting in the town hall with suitcases, thick boots and provisions. The General opened the meeting by saying that the 40,000-mark contribution must stand but that after speaking to his high command he had decided to let the hostages stay in the city. Holmsen was in Tilsit until 4 September, coming every day to Lesch’s hotel, where he enjoyed himself so much that he gave its proprietor a written commendation, although the occupiers ordered that the name should be changed back to the Hôtel de Russie.
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