The Weimar Triangle (23 page)

I won’t blame you for not mentioning his revealing political tract,
Prussianism and Socialism
, which was published in 1919 while the National Assembly in Weimar was drawing up the constitution for a parliamentary government. No doubt he hoped it would influence the discussions. It attracted some attention only, I am sure, because it was written by the famous author of
Decline.
But now the tract is forgotten, so there is no reason why you should have mentioned it. I think of it often only because I spend so much of my energy trying to document the murders masterminded by men whose thought processes ran along similar lines.

Spengler observed that although socialists of one kind or another had played the leading roles during the revolution a few months earlier, a socialist system was not being established in Weimar. Instead a parliamentary system was being devised that neither conservatives like him nor the influential left-wing socialists wanted. What had gone wrong?

It was all the result of colossal misunderstanding, Spengler found. Conservatives and socialists thought they were bitter enemies. In fact, they were both heirs of the same Prussian tradition. Their hostility had concealed the fact that they were really in fundamental agreement. Their common enemy was parliamentary democracy. Once they understood that, they could easily forget their differences and make common cause to overthrow it.

Spengler said he had tried to show in
Decline
that each of the European nations had developed a specific ideal: the Spanish militant Catholicism, the English a commercial notion of imperialism inherited from their Viking ancestors and the Prussians the bureaucratic service state founded on the interplay between command and obedience. The Prussian tradition of military and bureaucratic discipline went back to Frederick William the First whom Spengler called the first conscious socialist. His son Frederick the Great, as we all learned in school, called himself the first servant of the state. The leaders of the vast industrial cartels and, on the other side, of German social democracy and their trade unions, followed in the same tradition. Therefore, the efforts in Weimar to establish a parliamentary system were, as it were, an act of treason against the Prussian tradition.

I don’t remember whether you and I discussed this tract in detail. There were so many other things to talk about. But I think of it often. Its reasoning explains, among many other things, why our military officers have so little trouble finding common ground with their Soviet counterparts who are equally opposed to the western democracies.

It will be good to see you again.

Most cordial greetings,

Hermann

T
HE
V
ICTOR OF
G
ORLICE

Letter to Klaus Limburg, former classmate at the Goethe Gymnasium, now cellist in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Dear Klaus,

Thank you for your compliments. Yes, my most recent publication about the horrendous miscarriages of justice between 1918 and 1923 received some favourable attention in the legal community and in the
Frankfurter Zeitung,
the
Vossische Zeitung,
the
Berliner Tageblat
and a few others. I was of course abused by right-wing papers
—
the usual thing
—
and I also received a few poisonous letters, which I try to ignore, although I do not always succeed. I pass the worst ones to the police. In dramatic contrast to the judges, the police are often quite sympathetic to my cause, reflecting the solidly republican spirit of our local government.

I am sorry that in my last letter I made an obscure reference to
The Black Reichswehr
, a painful subject on which I have done a good deal of research. How could you know what that means? How stupid of me. Most people here have not heard of it either. You will know what it means by the time you have finished reading this letter. I am glad you asked. I wanted to write to you about Zorbach anyway. Since I am a frustrated novelist I hope you don’t mind if this letter will seem like a chapter from a novel.

You remember Horst Zorbach? How could you forget the unforgettable Horst Zorbach, the master-mimic of our
—
ah so mimicable
—
teachers. (The only one he could never do, as you no doubt recall, was Hahn. Horst was too terrified of him.) It was Zorbach who burst into the Latin classroom, shouting
gaudeamus igitur
or
in dolci jubilo,
or something appropriate like that, when conveying the happy news that old goat-face Biegler had just been run into by a cyclist and was being taking away in an ambulance.

Well, two weeks ago I saw Zorbach again, the first time since before the war. I hardly recognized him. His face was deeply lined and he had white hair. He had lost an arm on the Russian front. He is now a highly successful lawyer in Berlin, moving in exalted circles. I saw him at the exhibition, in the room devoted to exotic musical instruments from Asia, admiring a nagasuram, which is, as you every child knows, an oboe from South India.

Zorbach was in top form.

“I demand to see one of the flutes played by Frederick the Great,” he addressed the guard, emulating a sergeant major on the drilling grounds of Potsdam.

The amiable guard shrugged and shepherded him to the nearest curator. I went along.

The curator leafed through the catalogue.

“I am sorry,” he shrugged, “we don’t have any.”

“You have the gall,” Zorbach exclaimed with magnificent indignation, “to exhibit this”
—
he bent down to look at the label and pronounced full of contempt
—
“this nagasuram and you don’t have a single flute played by Frederick the Great? I cannot believe it. I will take this up with the highest authorities.”

Since Zorbach is a kind man at heart, and thoroughly republican, he reverted to his normal civilized self before the curator could think of a suitable reply and said to him, and to the guard, “This was a cruel joke. I am sorry. You must forgive me. It is a bad habit of mine. It causes me no end of trouble.”

All of us had a good laugh.

“Are you free for dinner?” Zorbach asked me a few minutes later.

I said nothing would please me more.

“My wife and I are staying at the Hessische Hof. They have a perfectly respectable dining room. Why don’t you come around seven.”

I did.

Martha Zorbach was a lively, imposing blonde, beautifully dressed, a little older than we are, and clearly very much at home in Berlin’s high society, not at all the kind of woman I would have expected Zorbach to marry. I would have thought he would pick a long-legged beauty in one of Berlin’s sleazier cabarets. Martha was the precise opposite.

She endeared herself to me right away by telling me she had seen an excellent Kirchner cityscape in one of the galleries on the Kaiserstrasse, which she wanted to buy. She could have no idea that I collected Kirchners and had seen it, too. But I had one very much like it, so I had left that one alone.

Our devotion to Kirchner bonded us. Over a few drinks in the bar we made small talk about Kirchner, about the exhibition, about the performances by the hugely popular tenors Richard Tauber and Jan Kiepura and about Gertrude Ederle who had recently swum across the English Channel. We were just discussing the admirable brand-new
Stadion,
the sports facilities and outdoor swimming pool in the
Stadtwald,
the municipal forest, when an elderly, slightly stooped, officer of the
Reichswehr
, wearing a monocle and a grey mustache, approached Martha and clicked his heels.

“
Gnädige Frau,
may I disturb you?”

“How delightful,” she exclaimed, obviously highly pleased. She turned to us. “May I introduce Konrad von Witzleben
—
my husband, Horst Zorbach. And this is
Herr Doktor
Hermann Geisel. They are both eminent lawyers, so you can feel quite safe with us. Please do join us.”

“I am afraid I cannot. Are you staying in the hotel?”

Martha nodded.

“Let me call you tomorrow. I would very much like to see you again. How many years has it been?”

“Oh, two or three, at least. Too long, anyway.”

“I am happy to meet your husband at last,” he said, bowing to Zorbach. “I have heard a good deal about him.”

“Do you see much of Hans?”

“No longer. Until last October I reported to him at least three times a week. That was more than enough,” he smiled. “Now if you excuse me…”

Konrad von Witzleben
—
I never asked what his rank was
—
left. This time I don’t think he clicked his heels.

“I note that you didn’t play any of your games with
him,
Zorbach,” I observed. “Respect for German officers is bred in the bones. Right?”

“Wrong. I was about to enact the
Hunchback of Notre Dame
but Martha kicked me hard under the table.”

“Who is Hans?” I asked.

“General Hans von Seeckt,” Zorbach replied. “The victor of Gorlice. Until the government had enough of him last year, supreme master of the
Reichswehr
. Martha’s first boyfriend, before the war. At that time he liked young girls of good family. Maybe he still does. I don’t know. Martha was, and still is, twenty years younger than the general.”

I stared at her, for once tongue-tied. I knew a good deal about Hans von Seeckt. In May 1915, as chief of staff of the
Heeresgruppe
led by August von Mackensen, he had master-minded the decisive breakthrough at Tarnów-Gorlice, which led to the collapse of the Russian southwest front. The son of a Prussian officer, von Seeckt had advanced rapidly to senior positions in the army before the war, and during the war had been general staff officer in various capacities, including chief of the general staff of the Turkish army. In these functions he was unusually successful as a strategic and operational planner, never as commander in chief, a job he avoided because it would have run against his nature.

Martha was amused by my reaction.

“Yes, it’s true,” she said. “I would have married him if he had asked me. But he did not. It was his loss.”

“Martha likes unusually intelligent men,” Zorbach said.

“Quite true,” she nodded.

“I am sure Horst is more entertaining,” I said.

“I willingly concede the point,” she smiled.

“I understand from your exchange with Herr von Witzleben that you don’t see much of the general any more?”

“That is true. Konrad knows a little about our history. It is no secret. It may very well be the only thing about Hans that is not secret. We went our separate ways. But we never quarrelled. I have followed his career with the greatest interest and know exactly how his mind works. If you like, I will tell you all about it at dinner.”

I could hardly wait. We went to the dining room. Zorbach ordered a modest Riesling. As we sipped our consommé Martha told us about a meeting of officers on December 20, 1918, in the building of the general staff in Berlin, chaired by an undersized, bald major by the name of Kurt von Schleicher, who represented the
Oberste Heeresleitung
[the top army command]. The economy would only recover, Schleicher said, once order had been re-established. Only then, after a number of years, would it be possible to assert any measure of power in the world. Once Schleicher finished, Hans stood up. He wore a civilian dark suit, was tall and pale and monocled. Many people had only heard of him and never seen him in the flesh. He contradicted Schleicher in short, clear sentences. The need for the re-establishment of order was self-evident, he said, but it was impossible to restore the economy while the country was powerless. The first priority was, therefore, to rebuild the
Wehrmacht
, at least to the extent that Germany would once more be
bündnisfähig,
capable of being somebody’s else’s valuable ally. The assembly was deeply impressed.

“How do you know what he said?” Zorbach asked his wife sharply. “Did he tell you?”

“I have my sources,” she smiled. “You don’t have to know everything about me, you know.”

By now sole meunière was being served.

“So, in March 1920, Hans was appointed chief of the
Heeresleitung,
and from that moment on the
Heer
, meaning the
Reichswehr,
and the Republic lived parallel lives, side by side. Hans did everything in his power to avoid the suggestion that the
Reichswehr
was in any way subordinate to the Republic, even though there happened to be a minister responsible for the
Reichswehr
in the cabinet. Hans was perfect for the role. The ‘sphinx with the monocle’ he was called.”

“A highly charged situation.” I remembered those days.

“So it was,” Martha continued. “As you know, the Treaty of Versailles only permitted an army of a hundred thousand men. At the end of the war the army contained four hundred thousand. So three hundred thousand men, including officers, had to be dismissed. Hans used the opportunity to purge the army of all elements he considered political, which included nationalists of all stripes.
Freikorps
men had to go and become dangerous, murderous freelancers; so did former volunteers; so did men who were nostalgic about the happy days at the front. And, of course, Nazis and communists. They were all thrown out. For him, it was almost a religious dogma that the army stood above all the parties, that it was a politically neutral, quasi-sovereign force. So naturally his relationship to the republican constitution was, let us say, cool. To a few confidants he said, ‘For me the constitution is not
noli me tangere
,’ meaning untouchable.”

“It sounds better in Latin,” Zorbach remarked.

“Not to me. As you know very well, only boys learned Latin at school. Anyway, Hans restored the number of Prussian aristocrats in the officer corps to their pre-war position. Did I say ‘restore’? Sorry, a careless mistake. He did much better than restore. He doubled them. I happen to know the figures. In 1913 twenty-four percent of officers came from the Prussian aristocracy. Now there were forty-eight percent.”

“A considerably higher percentage than among social democrats,” Zorbach observed wryly.