While they were all laughing the horse reached his head over the fence and sniffed at him. "Looks like he knows a rider. Want to take him out for a little ride?" the groom said.
He was a little heavier than the usual American jockey but the horse took to the unusual weight very well. Could he ever run! And jump! Manfred took him round and round, feeling the wind in his face, as if he had been in the cockpit, as if he were flying without wings.
Or, better still, that dream, again, of competing in the Olympic Games. The Olympics planned for Berlin, in 1916. He thought of how it would have gone. The announcer crying, "The Gold Medal for Equestrian/Jumping goes to Freiherr Manfred von Richthofen!" The new winner mounting the podium as the band played "Heil Dir im Siegenkranz", the Kaiser and Kaiserin smiling as Herr Coubertin put the medal around his neck, Father and Bolko and Lothar, oh Lothar, applauding, Mama and Ilse weeping with joy, all the men from the regiment cheering . . .. .He had indeed won medals in 1916, but they were of a different sort. If only . . .
It was hard for him to dismount but this was a valuable horse, not to be ridden into a lather even by the most prominent of guests. "You see! That's the mostest hoss ever," the groom said as he helped Manfred dismount.
As usual, there had been a picture in the newspapers afterwards; it said. "The Red Baron on Big Red! Champions Together!" It had been quite a ride.
But Indianapolis was not much more of a trip north, and reluctantly the dreaming Olympic champion took his spectators north to see a different race.
This was watching automobiles run round a track, and while he got to help the starter, it wasn't quite the same. In spite of getting to sit in the owner's box afterwards (there were a few boos among the applause for the honored guest) he really preferred racing horses. Maybe if he bought into a few mares, and sent them down to Herr Riddle's Faraway Farm . . .
By the beginning of summer they were back in Germany. There had been an election while they were away, but nothing much had changed.
CHAPTER 5
Schweidnitz, Silesia, Germany, Saturday, October 26, 1929
"You must agree that I was right," Bolko said. Newspapers were spread over a desk, two or three tables, and several chairs, all with bold headlines about the collapse of of the American stock market and what it was doing to theirs.
Bolko went on, "The market was getting to be like a casino, up and down. Everyone had his own tip. When I visited America again this summer, it was like stepping into the world's biggest brokerage. I got my shoes done and the bootblack advised me to buy Alcoa. I had to get a quick lunch between meetings and the serving-girl said that Warner had a new hit movie out and would double by tomorrow. Taxi drivers, people in elevators . . . everyone had a tip.
"Even the managers had tips. 'Look here, Baron von Richthofen, our stock price has quintupled in just the last year,' they would say. But they also had to show me their balance sheets. 'Isn't a company supposed to earn money?' I'd say. Because, you know, most of them didn't.
"So I sold us out. And just in time, too."
Manfred said, "Have I objected? Am I objecting? Have I said one thing about your good judgment? Who wants to make money? Who wants to be a millionaire? Me, for one."
"When the market settles down, I can buy us back in. American and British companies are a bit harder, since they get picky about 'foreign ownership,' so I have to work through holding companies. Now Junkers . . ."
His next appointment, however, had little to do with the familiar Junkers company. Manfred had to fly to Bremen that Monday to meet with Professor Focke again. They were getting dispirited about the lack of innovative designs. "We have to keep up with the Americans and British," Focke said as they toured the production floor. "This means new techniques, new methods. We have to keep on the cutting edge of technology."
He was hardly minded to disagree, and having taken a Peewit monoplane for a spin around the town, felt that Focke and his partner Wulf were on the right path. But they needed some sort of spur, an impetus -- something or someone to energize the firm.
"It's unfortunate we can't have any local military sales," he said. "I had had hopes that Herr Stresemann could get to that. One does what one can."
Then the conversation turned to the poor prospect of sales in general. Manfred wanted to keep the development going and hope for an upturn soon. Perhaps he more than Bolko was the gambler here.
That evening, he realized he didn't have much to do. So he read. In this case, it was something Bolko had picked up. "You might like this twist on flying," he had said.
Air Wonder Stories, it was called. And it was stories that were fictions, but what fictions! Airplanes of the future, giant multi-engine transports, they had to be transports, look at all those windows. He had had some thoughts along that line . . .
The magazine was interesting, even if a bit crude, and he found himself wanting to respond to some things the writers said. It would have to be air mail, which he thought appropriate, even if a bit much for a whim, but he wrote this Gernsback a letter that evening.
The next day he went into town for a reception. The main guest, however, turned out to be rather a different sort.
Amid the clinking of glasses and the discussion of how much everyone had lost investing in that hot stock -- Bolko was not the only one oppressed by stock tipsters -- there was one man among the guests who seemed familiar. He had that cocky pointed mustache in Kaiser-style that had been popular among some of the older officers (or the more sycophantic ones), along with a little pointed beard (as the former Kaiser himself now had), but Manfred could not quite place the man. Then, their paths crossed, and the man solved the problem for him. "Herr Richthofen, I have wanted to meet you for a long time. Noske," he said, hand out, pleased look across his face, eyes twinkling behind his glasses. Everyone knows the Red Battle-Flyer -- well, at least in uniform. It takes more wit to know him in civilian clothing.
Manfred was startled, but not unpleasantly surprised. "Herr Minister Noske, I am pleased to meet you, too," he said, and meant it. This was a man he had heard well of, even if he was a Social Democrat.
"Not 'Minister' any longer -- just Governor."
Manfred looked around. "It's too noisy to talk here. There must be some place where we can have a chat."
The former Reichswehr Minister found them a couple of chairs in a room. Indeed, it looked like the sort of setting where a prosperous bourgeois of the Empire would situate himself; Noske fit into that setting far better than Manfred did.
"Herr Noske," Manfred said once they were settled, "let me repeat myself, I am pleased more to finally meet you. The man who settled the Bolsheviks here in Germany? I only wish I had taken a part in that myself. My mother said once, 'Oh Manfred, if you had only been well, what you would have done about that Revolution,' and I wish I had done more. I thought it would blow over in a week or so, once people came to their senses . . ." His voice trailed away.
"So did I," Noske said, sadly, "So did I."
For a change Manfred found it easier to talk about the War. "I have so little contact with my old friends these days," he said. "They all go on -- well, most of them -- about how the front-line troops were winning but the civilians stabbed them in the back. I know better and I know they know better. We fought better than the other fellows, but they had bigger battalions. They were producing three times as many airplanes -- you will agree that I know something about airplanes -- three times as many as we were. Development and production are part of the effort, the civilians were in the fighting too, and we were just outnumbered."
"The fighters at the front were cut off, they should have heard what people back home were saying. I remember the speeches on the peace resolution. Some of them were savage."
"And so pointless," Manfred said. "I could tell it was, well not hopeless, but by that time -- '17 it was -- we couldn't beat our enemies. The best we could hope for was a negotiated peace."
Noske sat up at those last words, his eyes glowing. "So you
think so too.," he said, nigh-trembling with excitement.
Manfred shrugged. "I'm not the only one. I was at a reception Herr Stresemann had for the Kronprinz -- "
"Former Crown Prince."
" -- after he returned, back in '24. Someone there made some such comment about the war, and Wilhelm said, 'They wouldn't let me talk with Father about that,' in a hangdog fashion, I thought.
"I did some digging in old newspapers and the like, and it seems that as far back as '14, after the Marne of all times, he was saying how we were at full stretch and ought to offer peace. Doesn't want to recall that now, I suppose."
"Amazing," Noske said, "And he acts like such a wood-head most of the time."
From there they went on to discussing the current government, the social problems, and the like. "I have some, shall we say, differences with some of my party comrades," Noske said. "They think that representing the workers means imitating the Bolsheviks. Not the same, not the same at all. From all I hear from Russia, the workers are even more oppressed there. 'Worker's and Peasant's State,' ha! The 'dictatorship of the proletariat' has become a dictatorship over the proletariat. Imagine the horrors of it happening here. A firm social democracy is the best defense against Bolshevism -- oh, sorry, I slipped into one of my speeches."
"I'll forgive you."
"Ach, to take a phrase from the bosses, I have been exploiting you. We must circulate again. But later you must come by Hannover some time and be my official guest. You must!"
" . . .You know, I should have paid more attention to those politicians," he said to Bolko a week later. "I met that Gustav Noske in Bremen, and he seems a decent sort for a Socialist. We ought to be grateful to him for saving the country from the Bolsheviks."
"You heard about how he left the war ministry," Bolko said. He needed something to distract himself from the dismal figures before him. "No, perhaps you wouldn't have heard, you were in America then It was because of that Kapp affair. They -- our wonderful high command, who spent the War taking the waters at Spa -- they deserted him before the first storm trooper knocked the dung from his boots onto a Berlin street."
"I heard, after it was over. Good God, people were thinking that we were turning into some little South American country, generals on horseback every day. I had to explain matters to half a dozen tiny American papers, and I hope I made sense. I was worried myself, about you and Mother and everyone."
Bolko shuffled papers. "We ought to be worried about unemployment. If no one has a job no one can buy a plane ticket, or lay a bet, or . . ." His voice trailed off and he sighed.
The dark paneled walls of the room seemed to have soaked up the economic gloom. These diving figures were ones that could not be taken down by an Eindecker or Dreidecker. The mark was worth the same yesterday as today, but now there were fewer of them going around. Still, they had survived the great inflation, they should survive this.
"For a cadet, you seem as disillusioned as any front-fighter," Manfred said.
"I . . .well, the politicians don't seem any better. Herr Müller smiles and looks cheerful, but things are coming apart. I hear that Schacht is going to resign from the Reichsbank. And now that Stresemann has gone to the grave, our foreign policy has followed. The problems are just getting too much to bear."
"There are a lot of simple answers out there," Manfred said, thoughtfully. "Some are red, some are brown, all are nice and shiny and new. They promise the world.
"When you look at them, however, it turns out they don't work. Look at Italy. I went down there last month to meet with their General Nobile, for an airplane development show, the sort of event where everybody shows off their new designs. We were -- well, Junkers was -- going to demonstrate the rocket-assisted takeoff for the W34 seaplane to the Regia Aeronautica.
"Now if you want to talk 'modern', there is the place. The Fascisti adore aircraft. Handsome virile young men jumping into shiny new airplanes. They look so efficient, so modern, so powerful in the papers, in the posters, in the newsreels.
"They admire him here, of course. 'Mussolini made the Italian trains run on time,' they say. Quatsch! I spent two hours on the platform in Turin waiting for my connection, and it was supposed to be two minutes. Herr Hitler won't do any better, not with Göring and the gang of thugs he has.
"Russia's no better. Junkers said as much after the co-production deal fell apart, and I told you what Herr Noske said. So there, you have proof from both sides that the Soviets are running a hell-hole."
Bolko looked glum. "I remember that. Herr Junkers sent me out to Fili to look over their Russian plant. Now I know what they mean when they talk about a Potemkin Village. You go ten kilometers out of Moscow and there you are, back in the eighteenth century. Except for the police. In that little matter they are as up to date as you would like. Even if you don't like it."
Manfred went over to the window and looked out at the street, for a change vacant of brown-shirted storm troopers. The wind blew a newspaper into the park, as leaves fell from the trees.
"Dr. Fanck has offered us an investment in his next film," Bolko said. "Storm over Mont Blanc, it's called. Udet is a heroic pilot flying supplies to an observatory."
"What a stretch for him! As long as he's posing for the cameras . . . Eddie Rickenbacker thought it was the funniest thing. 'How can he be pretending like that. Manfred?' he said. 'You know we knew better.' I understand that with Ernst and Leni it may not be pretending. Somebody has to be the romantic devil with all the ladies, even Ernst . . .
"Eddie also said that this millionaire from Texas, Howard something, tried to get him again to appear in this movie he was making about the fliers in the War. I sent Ernst a note, they started negotiating, but never did come to an agreement."
It was easier to talk about trivia than it was about the dark world outside. Pilot Udet the movie star was not Party Fighter Udet. And on down the line. The world was becoming a harder place.
Over the next few weeks, all that stuck in his mind. Manfred got around more than most people in Schweidnitz, if not the entire Reich. He began to look out.
The world was failing. This economic contraction -- it might well be a "Black Day of the German Economy", it was as bad comparatively as that day in August had been for the Army. He could see the country closing in on itself, all the countries closing on themselves. Orders for planes were being canceled. Sometimes it was worse; there was merely nobody to receive the planes.
Some of those people were finding work. He was seeing a lot of marching men on the streets these days. A few of them even wore uniform, some brown outfit with the Ehrhardt Brigade's insignia. Noske hadn't cared much for Ehrhardt, and Manfred himself had ducked the man -- just one of many wanting the endorsement of the Red Battle-Flyer on his private army. Now this group was built around Göring and his Austrian friend.
There wasn't much of an army here. Manfred had remembered reading how Noske had wanted one at least twice as big, and after having to fight the Spartakists he had the experience. Now there were new Spartakists, not to mention others. The Reich might have to fight those new private armies, start another civil war on its own territory. That was another thing to worry about.
There was enough of that, and he had enough of his life to go through. He had children to raise, his sons and Lothar's son and daughter. He had his other enterprises to go to. The boys would sometimes go with him, or one of them at a time anyhow, strapped into the co-pilot's seat and told never never to touch anything. The looks on their faces made it worthwhile. He could live again.
He wasn't the only one looking to the future. Bolko was courting their cousin Viktoria. That would take some of the strain off him.
And then, after two years, he finally took the big step. The invitations had gone out far and wide. "Kunigunde Freifrau von Richthofen and Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen invite Herr (or Herr und Frau, or Frau, or even Mr. and Mrs.; and sometimes und Familie) . . . to the wedding of Viktoria Freiin von Richthofen and Karl Bolko Freiherr
von Richthofen, at the Gnadenskirche in Schweidnitz on Saturday, the sixth of June, 1931." He had volunteered them to handle the wedding, because it looked to be a big occasion.
Udet and Bodenschatz led the delegation of old comrades from the flying days. A half dozen knights of the Pour le Mérite would escort the bride and groom from the church, the groom's brother and best man first among them; Osterkamp, Jacobs . . . the heroes of the air would fly their master's brother into the land of matrimony.
There were working associates there, too. A stanch band of airplane designers; Junkers, Heinkel, Focke, and this new man from Focke's works, Engineer Tank (a man with many ideas) would be there. Also so many of Bolko's non-flying associates, including some Manfred wondered about.
The politicians were there, looking for the opportunity to be photographed next to the local hero. The Oberburgermeister of Schweidnitz and the Oberpräsident of Silesia, to name two. One who seemed less obvious was the Oberpräsident of Hannover: Noske might draw the glares of some, but as much from his own party as from others. Thinking of old times, leading the list of nobility was the former Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, his old hunting partner Carl. It would be a glittering occasion indeed.
There were even a few foreigners. The Rickenbackers, of course. An English designer named, of all things, Norway, who had asked him to write about that zeppelin crash, which had led to more substantial investments in his new and growing firm. Fokker, bubbling over with excitement about his new transports.
The congratulations were immense, profuse, and prolific. An effusive telegram from the Herr Reichspräsident himself, Herr Generalfeldmarschall von Hindenburg, led the list, which seemed to include almost every important person in the country from Herr Brüning the Reichskanzler on down. And several outside it; the Lindberghs, the Byrds, Arthur Whitten-Brown, Billy Bishop, Collie Collishaw, Air Marshal Trenchard . . . the list went on and on. Manfred could have been bitter, his own wedding had been less hailed, but they had chosen to be private, and the bitterness was more than just his alone; there were still many ill feelings from the War in peoples' hearts then.
A Man and a Plane: An Alternate Germany Page 9