by Michael Dean
After the failure of the attempt to take Berlin by force, the Ehrhardt Brigade had gone underground, working through the clandestine Organisation Consul. Consul was run from a huge building in Trautenwolfstrasse, Munich, by the force of Hermann Ehrhardt’s personality. Ernst von Salomon headed the Berlin cell.
Secrecy and obedience were the watchwords. Consul members swore an oath of personal fealty to Ehrhardt which they kept, on pain of death. Ehrhardt was always referred to as A1 in written communications among Consul members, sometimes even face-to-face.
The immediate goal of OC – as Consul was known - was Fememord – the physical destruction of anybody connected to the Treaty of Versailles or the Weimar Republic. This was to lead to the ultimate goal – the destabilisation then destruction of democracy and the return of the monarchy and the old order.
At the core of von Salomon’s cell there was Erwin Kern, Hermann Fischer and Hartmut Plaas. All of them travelled widely, in the service of OC. In the last month alone, Erwin Kern had led a successful raid on an enemy arms dump in Danzig and carried out a bomb attack in Hamburg. The Berlin OC cell also set up their own arms dumps. Von Salomon had personally ordered the death of the Social Democrat, Karl Gareis, after he betrayed the location of one of these dumps in the Bavarian Parliament. OC shot him through the mouth as a warning to others to keep theirs shut. They were keen on symbolism.
Von Salomon had wanted to go on the Gareis operation, but A1 insisted that the commanders in each city stay put, as far as possible. And in his case he was needed to constantly put the cash from bank raids through his company at the kiosk.
Hartmut Plaas drifted in around one o’ clock. Kern and Fischer arrived together, as they tended to. They had palled up, heaven alone knows why as they had nothing in common. None of them ordered any food or drink but the waiters didn’t say anything. They didn’t dare.
Erwin Kern was convinced he was going to die young, in the service of the cause. He regarded that as a formality because, like all of them, he regarded himself as being no longer alive in any real sense after the shameful surrender of November 1918. Kern was from Kiel, von Salomon’s home town. Like all of them, he was convinced there could be no accommodation between their world of possessions and status and our mission of purification. They were fighting not for this or that form of government or this or that society but out of the demands of their blood. Kern knew that more deeply than any of them because he felt it, rather than understood it.
Hermann Fischer, who came from Chemnitz, was tall and gangly, dark-haired and bookish. It was usually Fischer who von Salomon sent to other cities to search out locations for arms dumps and establish contacts with arms dealers. He was a naturally anonymous type - good at detail and so well-suited for this work. In this risky, tedious, though essential part of the operation, he was von Salomon’s ADC.
Anyone could take the lead, at these gatherings at the Aschinger Restaurant, but on that particular day it was Hartmut Plaas. Plaas looked the part of a true Ayran. Hewas blond, wide-shouldered and so handsome that he was pretty. Nobody, including him, knew whether he preferred men or women in bed, but he had plenty of chance to work it out, as he rarely slept alone.
With von Salomon’s encouragement, Plaas kept tabs on the many high-ranking homos in Berlin, selling himself in every homo circle there was. He knew, or had known, the Kaiser’s confidante, Eulenburg, and Berlin’s former mayor, Kuno von Moltke. He knew Rathenau, as well as the subject of today’s meeting, Kurt Weigelt.
Weigelt was a banker. He had been important to OC in the early days, as a finance expert. Von Salomon still consulted him now and again, in that capacity. But Weigelt’s real role was procurement. He chartered aeroplanes and bought materiel overseas. But by now, the OC knew most of his contacts, so they needed him a lot less which was just as well, as he was threatening the entire operation. Plaas reported that Weigelt had taken to flouncing around in full make-up, wearing only a fur coat and a monocle. Plaas thought his arrest was only a matter of time.
‘How likely is Weigelt to spill the beans?’ von Salomon addressed the question to the lofty plaster ceiling of the Aschinger Restaurant.
‘Very likely,’ said Plaas.
‘So what do we do?’ von Salomon knew the answer to that perfectly well, but the art of leading a group such as this, was to let everybody think it was their idea to carry out your intentions.
‘Warning. Or kill him?’ said Fischer.
‘Or…?’ von Salomon let it hang in the air.
‘The half-way house,’ smiled Erwin Kern.
This was what von Salomon wanted. It was not the deed that did the damage, it was the after-effect, the impact. He was convinced that severe beatings of their enemies served OC’s purposes better than killing.
After all, a killing was followed by newspaper coverage, then a funeral. The impact lasted a week, perhaps. But beat someone severely enough and they become a living warning against opposing OC. Everywhere they go, their appearance arouses horror and horror has a strong element of fear. Von Salomon had recently thought of a further refinement of this tactic but he was keeping it to himself for a while.
But first there was Weigelt.
‘The half-way house?’ he murmured to Kern, as if not quite understanding.
‘Beat him to kingdom come,’ said Kern.
Von Salomon nodded, pretending to think about it.
‘Want me to do it?’ offered Hartmut Plaas, knowing perfectly well von Salomon would say no. Plaas was a spy, specialising in certain circles, he was never involved in the rough stuff.
‘I’ll do it,’ said Erwin Kern.
‘Need help?’
Kern laughed. ‘You are kidding?’
It was not difficult to lure Weigelt to a meeting in the open air. Plaas contacted him, arranging a meeting, not at one of the usual homosexual haunts, which would have been too crowded, but on the open ground behind the Charité Hospital, to the north of the centre of Berlin. There had been assignations like this before. Weigelt accepted with slavering alacrity.
To make sure he survived, Kern used his fists and feet only. The first massive punch cracked Weigelt’s skull. His bloodied spectacles fell onto a rock, smashed. Then fists pummelled into his body until he went down. Then kicking. Then more fists, more feet.
There would no more strutting around in a fur coat. Weigelt would get the message about keeping his mouth shut.
‘We fight with holy weapons,’ as von Salomon often put it. He let the impact of the attack on Weigelt shake Berlin a while. Then he put his refinement into practice.
Philipp Scheidemann was a natural choice of victim. The leader of the Social Democrats, those evil envious beings who want to share everything. Philipp the self-interested corrupt traitor. The regal proletarian, strutting around like a peacock. Philipp, who idiotically proclaimed this accursed Weimar Republic leaning out of a window of the Reichstag like a clown on that day of shame in November 1918 . Even the other traitors, like Ebert, thought he had jumped the gun.
Von Salomon wanted him to continue being prominent in the Reichstag, after they had disfigured his face.
The victims, thought von Salomon, usually make the task as easy as possible. And
so it was with Scheidemann. At the end of each session in the Reichstag, Scheidemann walked down Dorotheenstrasse to a small apartment he kept on Mittelstrasse. He had a mistress there.
Fischer followed him. As Scheidemann reached the French Gymnasium, Fischer
drew level with him, then squirted acid in his face from a rubber syringe.
Von Salomon was furious at the outcome. Yes, Scheidemann screamed. Yes, Scheidemann burned. But they had failed to test the blue carbonic acid before they used it - an elementary blunder. Fischer missed Scheidemann’s eyes altogether. His skin healed in weeks, with only some scarring.
Von Salomon commiserated with Fischer, putting his arm round him, telling him not to blame himself. In his report to A1, he recommended that acid not be used aga
in, as the outcome was too uncertain. He wrote that Scheidemann had drawn a pistol when he saw Fischer, so they should organise articles in sympathetic newspapers condemning the left-wing tendency to violence.
These articles duly appeared. The substance sprayed at Scheidemann was widely mocked, minimising the attack and making him a figure of fun. The Deutsche Tageszeitung even referred to the substance as an enema, which von Salomon was delighted with, as it made Scheidemann appear especially ridiculous.
The Schlesische Tagespost was also excellent: ‘Truly the red German Republic can be proud of its leader. We all know the wobbly Scheidemann has never been brave. But his girlish concern over his own miserable life endangered passers-by when he drew his pistol, reaching new heights of cowardice.’
Von Salomon reported to A1 that OC had won the battle for the public mind over the incident, which is always the most significant battle to win. He also reported that the failed attack on Scheidemann was at Fischer’s instigation and had not been authorised by him.
Chapter Fifteen
It was hot in the Hotel Annette et Lubin, July hot, and Rathenau had only brought formal clothes. In fact, he possessed only formal clothes. He opened the hotel window, with some difficulty, and looked out over the pretty tiled red roofs and skinny spires of Spa.
He shook his head wryly at the vagaries of a fate that could propel him to Belgium. The Belgian newspapers had been baying for his blood ever since the Treaty of Versailles, the Belgisch Dagblad even demanding his repatriation for war crimes.
He was made – and at times felt – responsible for the munitions factories Germany had set up in Belgium during the Great War, contrary to the Haig convention, and for Belgian workers being forcibly sent to Germany. As he once wryly remarked to his mother, ‘I also feel I single-handedly destroyed the library at Louvain and personally shot the British nurse Edith Cavell.’
He regularly awoke from rare and fitful sleep screaming, covered in filmy sweat and dreaming that he was either part of a firing squad or the man being shot by a firing squad. Sometimes both.
The fact that Ludendorff, not Rathenau, was largely responsible for everything that had happened to Belgium seemed to matter not a jot to anybody, including Rathenau. Typically, Rathenau had written an article in the Frankfurter Zeitung admitting German guilt. ‘It was unjust to establish munitions factories in Belgium and to deport Belgian workers’, he wrote, so publicly associating himself with the justifiably reviled actions against Belgium.
Leaning out of a Belgian hotel window around eighteen months later, he regretted writing the article, but it was rather late for that now, as he also wryly acknowledged to himself. He was ever convoluted, was Walther.
Rathenau embarked on one of his lonely, long-striding walks round the city – standard procedure post arrival. As he passed the Church of St Remacle, he caught himself feeling almost content. He had been offered a way back into public life, for the first time since the old KRA days, by Joseph Wirth, the Finance Minister. Wirth had invited Rathenau to go to the Reparations Conference at Spa as a technical advisor to the German delegation.
Mother Mathilde had begged him not to accept. He had dined with her every day, unless he was abroad, since his father died. Now a plump widow in black bombazine, she clutched her son’s arm with a claw-like hand during one of their luncheons. She could cry at will, and she did.
‘I’ve already lost one son. I have a daughter I never see, married to a Christian.’ (This was Edith Andrae, Walther’s much younger sister. The Christian was a banker.) ‘If I lose you I lose everything. And Belgium. Of all places. They’ll hang you, Walther. They’ll string you up on a gibbet.’
Walther listened, he really did. Not just because he loved Mathilde, but because he respected her as a fellow-artist and kindred spirit. Nevertheless, he knew he would disobey her and go, and he did.
As it turned out, Rathenau’s participation at this conference, in July 1920, marked the start of a soaring political rise.
Even at the outset, Rathenau believed that the importance of Spa was not what was said, nor even the outcome, but Germany’s inclusion as an equal in the process. Spa marked the first such inclusion in any international discussions since Versailles. To Rathenau, Germany’s inclusion was the joyful practical beginning of the Policy of Fulfilment. This was Rathenau’s policy and Rathenau’s alone. Fulfilment meant Germany’s inclusion in international affairs; by implication it involved weakening, breaking, even ending the Treaty of Versailles.
It was the path to a just and lasting peace. Spa was the first step, as Rathenau saw it, in the ushering in of a new era of peace, banishing the Great War to a nightmare of the past. In his more soaring moments, Rathenau wanted to create a world of equal workers where there would never be war again.
He wrote home to Mathilde every day. ‘Everything happens behind the scenes,’ he wrote. ‘The work itself is less tiring than the constant talks with fifty people from early morning to late at night.’
But he enjoyed it. Not for the first time, he found he could get close to his fellow human beings in a public capacity in a way he could never do in his private life, except perhaps by writing letters. Cloaked in a job title, armed with a task, he not only knew what to say but found, bewilderingly, that people liked him.
The British took to him on sight. They laughed at his clumsy geniality, they kept clapping him on the back, even if they had to reach up to do it. They were genuinely impressed by his erudition and his effortless grasp of detail, especially Lloyd George’s private secretary, Philipp Kerr.
Even the French, bursting with visceral hatred of Germany which went back at least to the battle of Sedan, took to the exotic giant who spoke their language like a native and knew as much as they did not only of their art and literature but, more unusually, of their music.
Rathenau’s tactic at Spa was to agree to the demand that Germany should deliver two million tons of coal a month in reparations, as per Versailles - and pay it in the more stable gold Marks.
This, he hoped, would avert the risk of an occupation of the Ruhr and even the creation of independent country, a sort of second Belgium, out of German territory along the Rhine. There was also a very real risk at this time of German workers being sent to France as forced labourers.
But, and this is the ingenious part, to enable the coal delivery, Rathenau asked for German control over the coal producing area in upper Silesia. This would break Versailles – the first break in that concrete collar of a treaty. Break it once, even in one small place, and you break it totally.
The British were bending toward this. Surprisingly, so were the French, in the person of the French Minister for Reconstruction, Loucher, whose background was similar to Rathenau’s and to whom Rathenau was now close. They seemed ready to agree to it.
Then, like a bombshell from the Great War, a familiar nemesis threatened to smash every gain to tiny pieces. Just over half way through the conference period, Rathenau was leaving the hotel when he walked straight into Hugo Stinnes.
Things had been going rather well for Stinnes. He had just become a Reichstag deputy for the far-right Volkspartei. He had made Croesus-like wealth by speculating on the fall of the Mark. He was wildly popular in Germany, being flagged up in his own newspapers as a second Klingsor, the magician in Wagner’s Parsifal. Elsewhere, more accurately, he was known as a Raffke – a profiteer.
He had used his riches from speculation to buy up bankrupt companies all over Europe, melding them into a conglomerate in the German fashion, closing the weaker companies, throwing hundreds out of work. For a while, he ran the biggest trust in Europe. No wonder the bull industrialist, just over half Rathenau’s height, was smirking in triumph when they met.
‘What are you doing here?’ Rathenau blurted out.
‘What do you think, Rathenau? What would I be doing here? I’ve been called in as a technical advisor to the German delegation.’ Rathenau went white, to Stinnes’ obvious smirking delight.
‘But I’m…’
‘Yes, I know you are. But they obviously aren’t satisfied with your technical advice, as I have been officially co-opted to the conference. I don’t know you managed to push your way in anyway. What do you know about coal, compared to me?’
The bull-magnate thrust out his chest combatively, jutting his bearded chin at his adversary too, for good measure. Unfortunately, this keeled him forward at a comic angle. Rathenau dropped into the pose of aristocratic disdain that so enraged the bull and sniggered, shaking his head impatiently as if driving off an annoying fly.
‘We need to agree a common position,’ the aristocrat said, loftily. ‘Meet me for
lunch at my hotel.’ Was he deliberately adopting the persona which most goaded the bull? Or was it instinctive? Rathenau himself did not know.
‘The hell I will!’ There was nothing fabricated or posed about Stinnes’ volcanic rage. ‘I’ll meet you in hell first, Rathenau, you arrogant…’
‘Stinnes, we need to agree a joint…’
‘No, we don’t!’
By now Rathenau was really alarmed. ‘Stinnes, the German delegation cannot speak with two voices. We will look ridiculous.’
‘Shut your mouth!’
And with that Stinnes strode off.
The Spa negotiations took place at Fraineuse Castle. Fraineuse had exquisite, small rooms with much of the original Louis XVI furniture. Delegates met pressed together shoulder to shoulder along the sides of quite delicate looking tables. They spoke sitting down. The atmosphere of the negotiations was more that of an animated conversation than a conference – and indeed they were not a conference, they were a technical meeting.
Stinnes, however, had missed the first few days. To Rathenau’s secret delight, he stood up to windily harangue the other delegates. Bizarrely, he was wearing enormous workers’ boots and a department-store suit which did not quite button over his belly. If this was to mark himself as a man of the people, he had chosen the wrong forum.