The Phoenix Land

by Miklos Banffy

  It all seemed a most peaceful demonstration, carried out with typical German discipline.

  Only when we drove down the Wilhelmstrasse, past the Chancery and in front the Prussian Foreign Ministry, did we see anything to suggest that the situation was as serious as it was in reality. In all the doorways to those two buildings stood soldiers in steel helmets armed with machine guns.

  And then, later in the tree-lined Unter den Linden, we met again only those apparently peaceful demonstrators with their banners.

  We did not know it then, but we had arrived in Berlin on the first day of the Spartacist Rising.

  Notes

  33. The imperial family were not there. On 11 November, after the collapse of the Austrian government, Emperor Karl, with Empress Zita and their children, had secretly left the Hofburg and gone to their private hunting lodge, Schloss Eckartsau on the Marchfeld, a few miles to the north-east of Vienna. There the emperor had signed a brief three-sentence declaration that he resigned his part in the business of state, a document that was later used to justify his enemies’ claims that he had abdicated. It was from Eckartsau that, on the evening of 23 March 1919, the imperial family embarked on the imperial train with a small escort of British soldiers and left for Switzerland. They were never to see Vienna again.

  34. In They Were Found Wanting, volume two of Bánffy’s Transylvanian trilogy, he writes: ‘But Mannestreue, that old German tradition that a man must be as good as his word, did not apply only to the glamour and chivalry of medieval knights: heroism and self-sacrifice could be just as noble in the grey obscurity of ordinary people in a little country town.’

  35. The Congress of Vienna in 1815 was the largest gathering of heads of state and/or their leading ministers that Europe had ever known. It was convoked to reorganize Europe after the first defeat of Napoleon. Prince Metternich, in whose study Bánffy was now to find himself, was foreign minister to Emperor Francis I, a post he held from 1809 to 1848 (see Harold Nicolson, The Congress of Vienna, 1946).

  Chapter Six

  We managed to find rooms at the Hotel Bristol. Our windows were on the front side, and from time to time while we unpacked and made them tidy, we would glance out over the tree-lined Unter den Linden. We were on the third or fourth floor, and so one could see for quite a distance. Clearly in view were the Greek columns of the Brandenburg Gate, and at one side, further away in the grey distance, was the statue of Frederick the Great in the square in front of the imperial palace. The street was full of people strolling about, walking, talking, gazing around or just loitering on the sidewalk. There were hardly any cars to be seen and people crisscrossed the street, walking in all directions, only dispersing for a moment when one of the well-behaved groups of demonstrators marched by brandishing their party slogans. The demonstrators still occasionally let out a disciplined shout, but it seemed to raise no echo from the passers-by.

  I do not remember having seen any armed civilians that afternoon. The crowd, gaping and staring, gave a somewhat merry impression as if the Berliners preferred to be amused by everything that was going on and, although from our windows above one could not hear what they were saying, I am sure they were making fun of it, thinking it all something of a lark – ulkig, as they would say in Berlin.

  Towards evening it quietened down; at least we thought it did, and so we busied ourselves planning the next stage of our journey and decided to get our visas in the morning. There were no alarming signs in the hotel. Quite a number of foreigners were dining there, the hall-porter was saluting the guests with his habitual elegance, the waiters were serving dinner with their unusual false deference – although, no doubt, once back in the kitchen there was no more talk about veal chops or fried scabbard-fish. There they would surely be discussing the events of the last two days, how the Ebert government had dismissed Eichenau, the Chief of Police who had refused to give up his place in the Cabinet but who had gone so far as to arm the Spartacist revolutionaries. And maybe, too, they whispered among themselves that Radek, the envoy of Soviet Russia, had arrived in Berlin on the first of the month – and that if he were there it wasn’t for nothing.

  Foreigners just passing through knew nothing of all this, so we planned our trip in peace and went to bed. We awoke the following morning to the sound of gunfire. At first it was sporadic, and far away. The Unter den Linden was again crowded with people, but they were neither so quiet, nor so merry, as they had been on the previous day. Now they were curious … but frightened too. Some distance away a black mob was gathering, and later we heard that the offices of the Socialist newspaper Vorwärts had been attacked and burned down. Towards midday a wave of fear swept through the crowd, and everyone ran like madmen into the neighbouring side streets, or dived into doorways. In a few moments there was no one to be seen in the street. Then a few urchins raced by shouting ‘Es wird geschossen!’ – ‘They’re shooting!’ The strange thing was that these street-boys did not even try to hide but ran on screaming towards the imperial palace. Then there were a few moments of calm before machine-gun fire was heard from beside the Brandenburg Gate. We could hear well the sound of the bullets hitting some advertising placards and the metal reflectors of the streetlights, also the paving and kerbs of the sidewalks. All of this we could observe in comfort, and also in safety since the pillars beside our windows protected us. The shooting lasted only a few moments; then there was silence, and the public filtered slowly back into the street. In a short while everything was just the same as it had been; people stood about as before, gazed around and walked to and fro, every bit as if sudden death had not swept past them a moment before.

  This happened more than once, including the urchins; and this same pattern was repeated many times during the first days of our stay. Shouts that there was shooting would start up somewhere, and everyone would run to take shelter; then they would all return with the unquenched curiosity and the indolence natural to the city-dweller. Slowly the crowd grew smaller, but the picture remained the same, that day and the next. These days were so similar that it is now difficult to recall the exact chronology of what happened. As foreigners we could not tell the reason for these sudden showers of bullets and did not really care, and so it was not long before we became as accustomed to them as we were to showers in April. We used to say, ‘We’d better wait a bit, they’re still shooting!’ or, ‘Now we can go, it’s stopped’, just as one might have said about rain. We lost half a day like this. By the time we had learned the pattern of shooting it was too late to go out and get our visas, and so we lost precious time when we should already have been on our way.

  It was afternoon when I went first to the Swedish Embassy. Knowing Berlin well from the past I went on foot, not only because it was not far to go but also because I thought it would be interesting to see more than we could glean from the puppet-show we observed from the windows of the hotel. Only Unter den Linden, Wilhelmstrasse and Pariser-Platz had anything warlike about them. The park of the Tiergarten (which contained the Zoo) was as lovely and peaceful as on any other day. The beautifully tended lawns were as green as ever, and here and there were scattered some lemon-yellow leaves that had fallen from the lime trees. They were like golden coins. Blackbirds and titmice whirled playfully about, woodpeckers were tapping away, and sparrows settled impertinently on the marble statues and behaved in their usual disrespectful way.

  I walked along Tiergartenstrasse and found it deserted. It was easy then to fancy myself back in the past – in 1900 and 1901 – when I had stayed there for some two years. Then I had lived not far from the park and in this very street I had often seen Emperor Wilhelm’s carriage as he was driven swiftly from Potsdam to the capital, drawn by four magnificent Hungarian dapple-greys. They went like the wind. With heads held high, proudly, with a tremendous clatter of hoofs, they dashed by, appearing for a second at some turning and then, in the twinkling of an eye, disappearing at the next.

  Even then I almost expected to see him racing by. Those wonderful dapple-grey
s! Where, I wondered, were they now?

  Walking on, I arrived at the start of Siegesallee, and there I glanced at that row of marble statues of the Electors, which look as if they have been cast in molten wax, so repulsively smooth, shiny and greasy do they seem. Wilhelm II had thought to glorify himself by erecting them. There were about thirty, and the unveiling of each one had provided an unrivalled opportunity for delivering some schneidisch – spirited – oration with which the poor man had thought he would boost his popularity but which, on the contrary, by their unerring tactlessness, only served to dismay even his most fervent admirers. I was present on one of those occasions. The emperor’s corrosive voice was unforgettable, as he declaimed his speech with disagreeable attempts at pathos and far too many words. Disagreeable, too, were all those run-of-the-mill Lohengrin costumes, silver armour, gilded helmet, box-leather thigh-boots, marshal’s baton and, indeed, anything else which had a martial air. Standing there, with a belligerent expression on his face and festooned with the ribbons and chains of countless orders, he gave the impression of having borrowed it all to conceal the peace-loving middle-class soul he really was. At every parade I ever saw him attend I had the impression that, standing there in front of the soldiers of the most renowned and virile army and bodyguard in the world, he was the only one whose face did not fit.

  I went on my way, filled with these and similar thoughts, until I reached the Swedish Embassy.

  The ambassador, Baron Essen, received me warmly. He promised any help and support I might need but said I would have to return on the following day to collect my passport since the consulate office was closed for the afternoon, which meant that it could not be stamped before the morning.

  I also heard from him that there was likely to be some difficulty about the trains because already on that day only one or two lines were expected to be functioning. It seemed that a good part of the suburbs had already been taken by the Spartacist rebels. ‘We’ll see what it’s like tomorrow,’ he said as we parted.

  It was dark by the time I got back to the hotel, as I had to make a long detour to avoid the blocked streets. Still I managed it fairly easily. If I remember rightly it was then that I saw they were building barricades outside the Leipziger Bahnhof, but it is possible that that was on the following day.

  On the morning of 7 January the gunfire started early. It sounded as if most it was coming from the city centre where, we heard at midday, the Communists had seized the town hall. From then on the awesome noise of firing came closer and closer.

  The rear entrance to the hotel gave onto Behrenstrasse, which I had been planning to use on my way to the Swedish Embassy. Unfortunately there were guards there who would not let me go through to Wilhelmstrasse, which was on my route, because there was fierce fighting near the palace of the Chancellery just by the corner of Behrenstrasse. Machine guns were cracking away, and later that evening we learned why; the Spartacist men had taken the Hotel Kaiserhof and from its windows had been firing across the street at the Chancellery and at the Foreign Office next door. They met fierce opposition, and soon the Kaiserhof had been retaken by government troops.

  Eventually I managed to reach Friedrichstrasse, where one could pass without any danger and where the solid blocks of the intervening buildings deadened the sound so effectively that one could almost believe that one was taking a walk in a quiet peaceful city. Most of the shops there were open.

  After an extended detour I finally reached Baron Essen, who, as he handed me my passport, was able to tell me about the current state of affairs, which he saw as critical. No trains were leaving the city. The Görlitz Bahnhof and the Schlesischer had both been taken by the insurgents and reduced to ruins, and it could well be that this was true of the other stations too. The Ebert government were expecting guns from Spandau, but so far they had not arrived. The government’s control of order in the city was uncertain since some of the police were already openly changing sides and joining up with Liebknecht’s troops. By the following day it was quite likely that the Spartacist rebels would have become the masters, and from them it would only be a short step to the Soviet Russians.

  We talked about all these agreeable possibilities sitting in deep armchairs in a wide window embrasure from which one could see the wonderful trees and lakes in the former deer park. What marvellous silence reigned there under those centuries-old oak trees! We could gaze along the wide avenues, now deep in shadow, where Frederick the Great had hunted the deer. And on the flat surfaces of the lakes we could just catch glimpses, in the fading light, of dark brown patches made by those flights of wild duck that still bred there.

  From time to time, as we sat there talking, we would fall silent gazing over that wonderful landscape – but our hearts were still troubled by the worries of the day.

  After one such pause Baron Essen had turned to me. Speaking without emphasis, as if it had been the most natural thing in the world, he had then said: ‘If there should be trouble, I will take you with my embassy staff to Stockholm. I know that if the Communists come to power, I am certain to be recalled; but you, you could not get out on your own!’

  I thanked him warmly for his generous offer, which was all the more touching as we had met for the first time only the day before.

  Once again I had to make a wide detour to reach the hotel, and when I got there I found it ringed with gunfire, which had now moved up from the city centre to around the Brandenburg Gate and Pariser Platz.

  That evening, when Mr and Mrs Andorján and I sat down to dinner, we found the hotel restaurant almost empty, while there also seemed to be fewer waiters about. The hotel’s main entrance had been locked and barred far earlier than usual. We wondered then what we should do, finding it somewhat ironic that as foreigners in Berlin we should be trapped there by a revolution with which we had nothing to do.

  Mrs Andorján was anxious to get to Paris by way of Copenhagen, and so her husband decided to accompany her as far as Holland before going on to Sweden in his capacity as correspondent of the Budapest evening paper Az Est. I also wanted to go to Sweden, but here we were, three of us – or rather four of us counting Lolotte – stuck in Berlin, unable to budge either forwards or backwards.

  There was something ineffably comical about our situation, which that night proved to be noisier than ever before, with the sound of artillery fire from the direction of the imperial palace. We could see, too, flames that meant either a burning building or that the combatants were using flame-throwers.

  The following morning it was impossible to leave the hotel since a battle was raging round the gates of the Tiergarten. We were then told that the Spartacists had occupied the park during the night and were now being besieged there by government troops. Sounds of fighting were also heard from behind the university and from one of the army barracks. Our hotel was strategically placed right at the epicentre of all this, and so on that day Berlin could not have offered us any place more interesting!

  Andorján then went to see the Berlin correspondent of Az Est who lived somewhere near the Tempelhoferfeld36, while his wife and I spent the day gazing out of our windows and, whenever there was a brief lull in the hail of bullets, taking Lolotte for a walk. At midday the hotel’s manager told us that we could only stay until that evening or, at the latest, the next morning as the food supply depot had been taken by the Spartacists, which meant he would no longer be able to feed us. He had decided, in these circumstances, to shut up shop, and we could go wherever we chose!

  When Andorján came back we discussed this new situation. A little later he went out again and by evening was back with the joyful news that he had managed to hire a private taxi whose driver was prepared to take us to Warnemünde, where one could take a ship to Copenhagen. The taxi driver had demanded a huge sum of money but as by then none of us was in a bargaining mood we at once agreed to split the fare and hop! Away we would go, whatever the cost!

  As we had to quit the hotel the following morning we decided to send all our lugg
age as early as possible to the Az Est offices at the south end of Friedrichstrasse, while I would try to get Danish visas in the forenoon and rejoin the others as soon as possible at the newspaper office. From there we could set off unobtrusively.

  The next day was 9 January. I entrusted my own small amount of luggage to the care of the Andorjáns and started off to find the Danish Embassy, which was somewhere behind the parliament building and between the river Spree and the Tiergarten.

  First of all I had to head north because it was obvious that no one could go directly through Pariser Platz and the park gates as that was where two opposing forces were face to face. Accordingly I had somehow to get to the other side of the Spree and approach the embassy from behind.

  After waiting for a moment of calm I managed to get across Unter den Linden, where all the shops were shut, and walked briskly along the almost deserted sidewalk. Just beyond the Friedrichstrasse station, in that already suburban district, the atmosphere changed dramatically.

  Everywhere there was bustle and movement. Everyone seemed to be in the street. Butchers’ shops, bakeries and other shops were all open. The bars were full of people, men, women and children, in groups, all talking away and eagerly discussing the news. Everybody seemed to be gazing to the east, in the direction of the Reichsrath, as if they were expecting something from there. Mingling with the crowd were some officers of the guard with great clanking swords (their barracks were not far off) and some other soldiers too, none too clean. I was surprised to note that they were not in battledress. They behaved in a friendly fashion with all the people they met, shaking hands and chatting; and although I was walking at some speed through the crowd, I had the impression that they were telling everyone that they would not fight either for the government or with the Spartacist rebels. Come what may, they did not care! Perhaps to underline their indifference some started flirting with some of the women in a most marked manner, so much so that the girls responded by tripping about, giggling and laughing.