Europe Central

by William T. Vollmann

  3 A German general: Moscow as “the core of the enemy’s whole being.”—Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt, Against Stalin and Hitler: A Memoir of the Russian Liberation Movement 1941-5, trans. David Footman (London: Macmillan, 1970 trans. of 1970 German ed.), p. 39.

  3 “Italy” (actually, Mussolini): “We cannot change our policy now . . .”—Donald Cameron Watt, How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War 1938-1939 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989), p. 200.

  3 The sleepwalker (Hitler): “This will strike like a bomb!”—Ibid., p. 462.

  4 Marshal Tukhachevsky: “Operations in a future war . . .”—Comrade Stalin: “Modern war will be a war of engines.”—John Erickson, The Road to Stalingrad: Stalin’s War with Germany: Volume One (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1999 repr. of 1975 ed.), p. 5.

  5 The telephone: “It was and is Jews who bring the Negroes into the Rhineland.” —Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Mannheim (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971; orig. German ed. 1925-26), p. 325.

  5 The telephone: “That is precisely why the Party affirms . . .”—J. V. Stalin, On the Opposition (1927-27) (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1974).

  6 Hitler to Paulus: “One has to be on the watch like a spider in its web . . .”—See source-notes to “The Last Field-Marshal” (in that story, an amplified version appears).

  8 Telephoned order “Under no circumstances will we agree to artillery preparation,” etc. —Gérard Chaliand, ed., The Art of War in World History from Antiquity to the Nuclear Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 954-55 (Guderian on firepower).

  THE SAVIORS

  A note on Krupskaya’s final years, when I describe her as “writing in support of Stalin’s show trials that many of her own former comrades-in-arms deserved to be shot like mad dogs,” may be in order. According to one eminent historian of the period, she should undoubtedly be credited with having vainly tried to save a few of her colleagues such as the Old Bolshevik Pyatinsky. Apparently I. D. Chigurin was indebted to her for being permitted to die a natural if wretched death. (See Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment [New York: Oxford University Press, 1991 repr. of 1990 ed.], pp. 238, 437-38). In this account, and several others, Krupskaya receives passing mentions, tinctured by sympathy or pity. On the other hand, Solzhenitsyn in his trilogy on the prison system demands to know: “Why didn’t Lenin’s faithful companion, Krupskaya, fight back? Why didn’t she speak out even once with a public exposé, like the old worker in the Rostov Flax Works? Was she really so afraid of losing her old woman’s life?” (The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, trans. Thomas P. Whitney [San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1973, 1975, 1978; orig. Russian samizdat mss. 1960s], vol. 2, p. 333.)

  MOBILIZATION

  32 Epigraph—Quoted in Erich Eyck, Bismarck and the German Empire (New York: Norton, 1968 repr. of 1950 ed.), p. 239.

  32 Bismarck (the Iron Chancellor): “I have always found the word ‘Europe’ . . .”—Ibid., p. 246.

  WOMAN WITH DEAD CHILD

  36 Epigraph: “A new bride cries until sunrise . . .”—Russian proverb, quoted to me by a prostitute in Moscow.

  Some of my understanding of this artist’s character has been informed by Elizabeth Prelinger (with contributions by Alessandra Comini and Hildegard Bachert), Käthe Kollwitz (Washington: National Gallery of Art / Yale University Press, 1992).

  36 Letter from Kollwitz: “My only hope is in world socialism”—Closely after a letter in The Diary and Letters of Kaethe Kollwitz, ed. Hans Kollwitz, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press), p. 184 (21 February 1944).

  36 “. . . she stood before a woman whom she’d made out of stone, . . . and stroked the granite woman’s cheeks”—Closely after Diary and Letters, p. 122 (entry for August 14, 1932: “I stood before the woman, looked at her—my own face—and I wept and stroked her cheeks”).

  37 The tale of Frau Becker and her children—After Käthe Kollwitz, Die Tagebücher, ed. Jutta Bohnke-Kollwitz (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1989), p. 49, entry for 30 August 1909, trans. by WTV.

  37 “Peter would have joined them”—Tagebücher, p. 379 (9 November 1918, trans. WTV).

  37 Kollwitz’s family showing the Imperial flag for the first time ever—Large, p. 127.

  37 Rumpelstilzchen—Known to Anglo-American fairytale readers as Rumpelstiltskin.

  38 “Peter’s flag hanging from the balcony”—Described in the Tagebücher, p. 170 (10 October 1914, trans. WTV).

  38 “Vile, outrageous murder of Liebknecht and Luxemburg”—Tagebücher, p. 400 (16 January 1919, trans. WTV).

  38 “For Rosa Luxemburg an empty coffin near Liebknecht.”—Tagebücher, p. 403 (entry for 25 January 1919, trans. WTV).

  39 Kollwitz in the morgue: “Oh, what a dismal, dismal place this is . . .”—Large, p. 166, slightly altered.

  41 Karl to his wife: “You have strength only for sacrifice and letting go . . .”—Tagebücher, p. 176 (27 November 1914, trans. WTV).

  41 Käthe’s recurring dreams of Peter—Tagebücher, p. 193 (end of July 1915, trans. WTV).

  Various details on Peter’s argument with his parents over volunteering, his death, the condition of his grave and Käthe and Karl’s trip to the Soviet Union in 1927 (“Russia intoxicated me”) come from the Tagebücher, p. 400 (16 January 1919, trans. WTV), pp. 745-47 (Appendix: “Die Jahre 1914-1933 zum Umbruch [1943]”. One woman who apparently met Kollwitz claims to have been told by her that “she persuaded him to volunteer for the fighting.” But this same woman says that Peter the grandson died “in the Polish campaign.” This Peter died in 1942, long after the Polish campaign had ended. (Alison Owings, Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich [New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1999 3rd paperback repr. of 1993 ed.], p. 311 [testimony of Frau Emmi Heinrich].)

  42 “IHR SOHN IST GEFALLEN”—“Your son has fallen.”

  44 Kollwitz: “Today started work on the sculpture ‘Woman with Dead Child’—Tagebücher, p. 85 (entry for 9 September 1910, trans. WTV). (Original: Heut den Beginn gemacht zu der plastischen Gruppe: Frau mit totem Kind.)

  44 Kollwitz on her Russenhilfe image: “It’s good, thank God”—Tagebücher, p. 508 (entry for 12 September 1921, trans. WTV).

  45 Kollwitz to her son Hans: “There are other problems that interest me now . . .”—Christoph Meckel et al, Käthe Kollwitz (Bad Godesberg, West Germany: Inter Nationes, 1967), p. 16 (Ulrich Weisner, “On the Art of Käthe Kollwitz”), somewhat altered.

  45 “An elegy of the people.”—Martha Kearns, Käthe Kollwitz: Woman and Artist (Old Westbury, New York: The Feminist Press, 1976), p. 162.

  45 The chord D-D-Sch—Often so represented in studies of Shostakovich and his later music, especially the Eighth String Quartet. Thomas Melle for his part insists to me: “Inappropriate German notation. The correct German notation would be: d, d, es, c, b.”

  45 A. Lunacharsky on Kollwitz: “She aims at an immediate effect . . .”—Otto Nagel, Käthe Kollwitz, trans. Stella Humphries (London: Studio Vista, 1961), p. 58.

  46 Description of Kollwitz amidst the jury of the Prussian Academy—After a photograph in Martin Fritsch (herausgegeben & bearbeitet von Annette Seeler), Käthe Kollwitz: zeichnung Grafik Plastik: Bestandskatalog des Käthe-Kollwitz-Museums Berlin (Leipzig: E. A. Seeman, 1999), p. 37.

  46 Professor Moholy-Nagy to Kollwitz: “It is an elementary biological necessity . . .”—Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Painting, Photography, Film, trans. Janet Seligman (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1987 repr. of 1927 second German ed.), p. 13. The encounter between these two artists is entirely invented.

  46 Professor Moholy-Nagy to Kollwitz: “The traditional painting has become a historical relic . . .”—Ibid., p. 45.

  47 The grocer’s apprentice: “. . . I would like to stand for something. I would like to be there for something”—After the justification given by Frau Ellen Frey, who defended Hitler decades
after the Third Reich; in Owings, p. 181. (Frau Frey said “live for,” not “stand for,” but the latter seemed more appropriate in this context, given that the boy is dying.)

  47 Description of Peter’s hand and body in Kollwitz’s recollections—Based on a description in the Diary and Letters (p. 115; entry for August 27, 1927) of her doomed grandson Peter: “the frail little hand laid in ours. The beautiful naked little body.”

  48 Footnote: The role of Otto Nagel—Otto Nagel, Käthe Kollwitz (Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst, n.d., 1962 or after), p. 41. About the exhibition see pp. 53, 56, 63-64.

  49 Letter from Kollwitz to her children about learning Russian—Diary and Letters of Kaethe Kollwitz, p. 183 (7 February 1944).

  49 Letter from Kollwitz: “The desire, the unquenchable longing . . .” Ibid., p. 187 (13 June 1944).

  49 Kollwitz diary entry: “And I must do the prints on Death . . .”—Diary and Letters, p. 114 (13 February 1927).

  50 Layout of the Kollwitz exhibition in Moscow—After the Tagebücher, p. 632 (November 1927). Elena Konstantinovskaya’s presence is a fabrication.

  51 Grete, Anna and the old proletarian woman—Plucked from the Tagebücher.

  51 Description of the young Käthe Kollwitz (compared by me to the young Krupskaya)—Based on a photo in David Clay Large, Berlin (New York: Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Book Group, 2000), p. 70 (“Käthe Kollwitz, circa 1905.” Source: Archiv für Kunst und Geschichte).

  51 “They,” on Kollwitz: “Her family was involved in the workers’ movement”—Great Soviet Encyclopedia, vol. 12, p. 586 (entry on Käthe Kollwitz).

  51 “The doctor came immediately, and his invoice never”—Tagebücher, p. 18 (introduction).

  51 Kollwitz: “That’s the typical misfortune . . .”—Diary and Letters, p. 52 (September 1909).

  52 “One young man” to Kollwitz: “The temporal sequence of a movement . . .” —Closely after Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack, on the subject of his reflected color displays; excerpted in Moholy-Nagy, p. 80.

  53 The young man (Comrade Alexandrov): “I used to believe that if I lived out my life . . .” —The Diaries of Nikolay Punin 1904-1953, ed. Sidney Monas and Jennifer Greene Krupala, trans. Jennifer Greene Krupala (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999), p. 51 (entry for 15 August 1917; somewhat reworked).

  53 “He wanted to escort her and her husband to a Shostakovich premiere.”—There is no evidence that Kollwitz did or did not attend a Shostakovich event. Originally I sentenced her to the rather mediocre Second Symphony simply because its premiere date, 1927, coincided with the year of her visit. In fact, it premiered in Leningrad in November, so Kollwitz had probably come and gone before it arrived in Moscow. For that reason the Scherzo in E-flat Major (1923-24) seemed safer.

  54 Kollwitz on Schnabel (“clear-consoling-good”) and Beethoven (“the heavens opened”)—Diary and Letters, p. 115.

  55 Kollwitz to Lene Bloch: “Marriage is a kind of work” —Tagebücher, pp. 18-19 (introduction).

  55 The parade on Red Square—Based in part on the description in her Briefen an den Sohn, pp. 201-02 (Moscow, 6 November 1927).

  55 The drawing “Listening,” later “lithographed . . . as Slushayuoshchie”—Kete Kolvitz (so transliterated in Cyrillic) catalogue, Katalog vystavki proizvedeniy iz muzeev i castnych sobraniy German Demokrat. Republiki (Moscow: Isdatelstvo Akademii Khudozhest SSSR, n.d. [prob. 1963], no page nos.). This is merely my fabulist’s trick. The only reasoning that the name “Listening” got changed to its Russian equivalent was that it so appeared in the catalogue. Of course to Kollwitz herself it remained “Zuhörende,” or in some versions “Zuhörender” (catalogue 14, 1927).

  55 “Out of Moscow Käthe Kollwitz brought with her a beautiful page . . .”—Bemerkung, ascribed to Otto Nagel (op. cit., p. 288; trans. a bit floridly by WTV).

  56 Danilo Ki: “Under my personal supervision a hundred and twenty inmates of the nearby regional prison camp . . .”—Danilo Kiš, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich, trans. Duska Mikic-Mitchell (Normal, Illinois: Dalkey Archive Press, 2001 repr. of 1978 Harcourt ed.; orig. Serbo-Croatian ed. 1976), p. 42. To avoid monotony, I have changed “prisoners in” to “inmates of.”

  56 Kollwitz: “When the man and the woman are healthy, a worker’s life is not unbearable” —Tagebücher, p. 49, entry for 30 August 1909, trans, by WTV.

  56 “Joy in others and being in harmony with them had always been one of the deepest pleasures in her life.”—After Diary and Letters, p. 116 (entry for March 1928: “Joy in others and being in harmony with them is one of the deepest pleasures in life.”)

  56 Kollwitz: “Moscow with its different atmosphere . . .”—Diary and Letters, p. 115 (New Year’s Eve, 1927).

  57 “Frau Kollwitz had taken up etching in order to distribute the maximum number of prints to the working class”—After an assertion in Kearns, p. 141.

  58 The meeting between Kollwitz and Karmen I fabricated.

  58 Old Reschke in the Cafe Monopol, 1914: “God be thanked that mobilization is happening . . .”—Tagebücher, p. 149 (August 1914, trans. WTV, slightly altered). He is not elsewhere mentioned in the diaries, so I don’t know whether he was really “old Reschke” (my adjective) or not.

  58 Karl: “This noble young generation . . .” Tagebücher, p. 152 (10 August 1914, trans. WTV).

  59 Description of Peter in the last month of his life—After a photograph in the Tagebücher, p. 167 (“Peter Kollwitz, 2. Oktober 1914”).

  59 Roman Karmen: “How terrible it must seem to be to be a mother who weeps . . . film it!”—K. K. Ognev, ed., Roman Karmen (Moscow?: Sovexportfilm, n.d., after 1975), p. 7 (extract from Karmen’s daybook while in Spain, presumably in 1936; trans. by WTV).

  60 Description of Peter’s room—After a photograph in the Tagebücher, p. 192.

  60 The commentator: “In the diaries one finds . . .”—Tagebücher, p. 899 (notes; trans. and slightly reworded by WTV).

  60 Hitler’s attire in Hamburg, 1928—The Infancy of Nazism: The Memoirs of Ex-Gauleiter Albert Krebs 1923-1933, ed. and trans. William Sheridan Allen (New York: New Viewpoints, a division of Franklin Watts, 1976), p. 155.

  60 Käthe to Gorki: “All that I saw in Russia . . .”—Tagebücher, p. 899 (notes, trans. and slightly reworded by WTV).

  60 “We Protect the Soviet Union!”—This image seems to be rare. I have found it only in Nagel, p. 139 (“Wir schützen die Sowjetunion!”).

  61 Hitler to his lieutenants: “Speechless obedience”—Krebs, p. 189.

  61 “And in an instant the bullet struck him!”—Käthe Kollwitz, Brief an den Sohn 1904 bis 1945, ed. Jutta Bohnke-Kollwitz (Berlin: Wolf Jobst Siedler Verlag, 1992), p. 91 (19 November 1914, trans. WTV).

  61 Description of Hans Kollwitz’s bookplate—After Kollwitz, Brief an den Sohn, p. 81 (“Das Exlibris, das Käthe Kollwitz 1908 für ihren sechzehnjährigen Sohn entwarf . . .”).

  62 Description of the Leningrad exhibition—After a photo in Otto Nagel, Käthe Kollwitz (Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst, n.d., 1962 or after), pp. 66-69. The presence of Konstantinovskaya and Shostakovich has been invented.

  62 Footnote: The entry on Kollwitz in Meyers Lexikon—Vol. 6, (pub. 1939), p. 1300. Meyers lists a few works, such as her “Proletariat” (1925). The implication is that she is a has-been.

  62 Footnote: “Oh, Lise, being dead must be good . . .”—Diary and Letters, p. 195 (letter of February 1945).

  63 Hitler: “The Germans—this is essential—will have to constitute amongst themselves a closed society, like a fortress”—Chaliand, p. 945 (secret conversation of 17-18 September 1941).

  YOU HAVE SHUT THE DANUBE’S GATES

  64 Epigraph: “At the very point when death becomes visible behind everything . . .” —Kollwitz, Diary and Letters, p. 123 (entry for August 1932).

  64 The Song of Igor’s Campaign: “You reign high upon your throne of gold . . .”—Song of Igor’s Campaign: An Epic of the Twelfth Century, trans. Vladimir Nabokov (New York: Random House / V
intage Books, 1960), p. 55 (“Apostrophe,” ll. 523-28; substantially “retranslated” by WTV, less to improve on VN than to avoid permissions fees).

  66 Anecdote of the kolkozniks in Moscow—After James von Geldern and Richard Stites, Mass Culture in Soviet Russia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), p. 184, anecdote.

  66 Capture of sixty Soviet tanks by the Condor Legion—Gabriel Jackson, The Spanish Republic and the Civil War 1931-1939 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1965), 401.

  66 Akhmatova: “One might say that Leningrad is particularly suited to catastrophes . . .” —Chukovskaya, p. 40 (entry for 27 September 1939), slightly abridged. “The black water with yellow flecks of light . . .” actually was said by Akhmatova, not Chukovskaya.

  ELENA’S ROCKETS

  68 Epigraph—Lewis Siegelbaum and Andrei Sokolov, ed., Stalinism as a Way of Life: A Narrative in Documents, trans. Thomas Hoisington and Steven Shabad (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 395-96 (Document 146, author [“two priggish inspectors”] not cited; State Archive of the Russian Federation [GARF], f.5207, op. 1, d.1293, 11.7-8).

  68 Details on Soviet planes, rocket engines, etc.—Great Soviet Encyclopedia, entry on aviation; Yaroslav Golovanov, Sergei Korolev: The Apprenticeship of a Space Pioneer, trans. M. M. Samokhvalov and H. C. Creighton (Moscow: Mir Publishers, 1975 rev. of 1973 Russian ed.); Jane’s Fighting Aircraft of World War II (New York: Military Press, 1989 repr. of 1946-47 ed.), entries on Soviet air power and Soviet aero engines.

  68 Descriptions (here, in “The Palm Tree of Deborah” and in “Untouched”) of Rodchenko’s non-objective sculptures—Based on the photographs in Galerie Gmurzynska, Alexander Rodchenko: Spatial Constructions / Raumkonstruktione (Ostfildern-Ruit, Germany: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2002). 68 Assessment of F. Zander: “One of the tragedies of this outstanding intellect . . .” —Golovanov, p. 212.