by Peter Weiss
In January Brecht was unwell, lay mostly on the sofa in a frayed bathrobe, a woolen scarf around his neck. A draft came from the floor, from the windows; despite the fire in the iron stove, the room was cold. Our work began to stall, all our senses froze. A new law had been issued giving the police the power to open letters, listen in to phone conversations, carry out home searches, body searches, arrest any random suspect and keep them in custody for up to sixty days without the possibility of representation. We had gathered together material on the meeting in Arboga and on Engelbrekt’s demise, material whose drama was as icy as the air outside. We attempted to overcome our torpor and begin to draft the final scenes, but Brecht seemed to have given up on the piece. Though he still had us read aloud from the history books and prepare sketches of some of the confrontations, he hardly listened any more. One time Greid entered the room, his arms flung wide, his coat and his mane of hair full of snow, crying that God had appeared to him, that he’d seen the face of the moral and ethical agendas that had to shape Marxist ideology if it was to avoid wallowing in materialism. The city’s entire atmosphere was as spectral as the vision of this actor and amateur philosopher. The circular Eleven Forty-Four had been sent out to the workplaces by the union leadership, with the instruction to remove Communists from union posts. The divisions of the federation had to join the National Coalition for Finland. Specific days were introduced on which the workers had to give up their wage for the struggle of the Finnish people. On the tenth of February, more than three thousand police officers took part in raids on the headquarters and editorial offices of the Communist Party. Sacks and crates full of documents were taken from the occupied Party headquarters on Kungsgatan to the headquarters of the security service. The sale and postage of Party papers was forbidden, as was putting up flyers. The so-called Transport Ban circumvented the law on freedom of the press, which had been enshrined in the constitution for more than a hundred years. The texts were permitted to be produced, they just couldn’t be distributed. The involvement of the Social Democrats—who had previously been affected by the efforts of the bourgeoisie to limit press freedoms—was tantamount to total censorship. Even ministers like Branting had voted in favor of the parliamentary resolution. Thus, the Swedish Communists who had begun delivering the papers themselves were now thrust into the illegal struggle as well. Many members whose addresses were identified in the confiscated lists were subsequently arrested and interrogated as enemies of the state. The comrades harboring Rosner remained undetected. Either they hadn’t been identified as suspects, or the building was already under special surveillance. From now on, when I went to see the representative of the Comintern, I would leave from Västmannagatan, which ran parallel to Upplandsgatan, passing through the courtyards and a building out the back. Until this point, he had signed his lead articles as Franz Lang. From December, he called himself Hauser, perhaps in memory of the foundling in the tower. His pseudonym was surrounded by a host of well-known names, including Dimitrov, Marty, Pieck, Florin, Ulbricht, Thorez, Cachin, Šmeral, Andersen Nexø, La Pasionaria, and Mao Zedong. The Swedish Party leaders Linderot, Sillén, and Hagberg also wrote for the paper, which was produced legally on the Party printing press in Västermalm. The cover was total. The paper had existed as a Swedish publication for two years. Now it appeared only as a German-language edition. The Communist Party was responsible for the content. No editor in chief was named. Earlier the material had also been primarily provided by the Comintern. There was no evidence to suggest that the Comintern was now located in Stockholm. The police could try to identify the pseudonyms, they could search for potential employees living in the underground, but they could not raise any objections against the paper itself, which was aimed at German émigrés and addressed questions of international politics and economics. But after the Transport Ban, many of the copies that were sent out were left lying in the basement of the central post office. Being shut off from the public was like a confirmation of the isolation the Party had retreated into in September. The directives issued by the paper must have been confusing for many of the members. By abstaining from directly criticizing fascism, by continuing to portray the Western powers as the primary enemy and the cause of the continuation of the war, they suppressed the proactive energy that had earlier made them into a party of struggle. During these months, they lost seven thousand of their nineteen thousand members. But indirectly, with their justification of the actions of the Red Army, they identified the actual motive of the conflict with Finland. No pact could hide the fact that the Soviet invasion, as earlier in Poland, served solely to avert or delay a clash with Germany. England and France were hoping for the outbreak of war between the two powers; the lack of action behind the Maginot Line provided the proof of that. But when the Party emphasized the peaceful intentions of the Soviet Union, when they advocated for the maintenance of neutrality out of their commitment to the Comintern and denounced the Swedish desire for intervention, this was dismissed with scorn by the press. Antifascism was now the business of Social Democracy, the progressive bourgeoisie, even the liberal aristocrats. Princes, counts, bank directors, professors, lawyers, and journalists were showing generosity and offering to help Jewish and non-Communist refugees, while it was left to the Communist Party to declare a state of emergency on itself. The committees, platforms, and organizations, with their charitableness, their emphasis on common cultural bonds, their soirées and bazaars, their training courses, their attempts to find jobs and apartments, operated under the banner of an unimpeachable humanism. Up until September thirty-nine, isolated instances of cooperation with the Red Aid had been possible. Now, the activities of this institution had been cut back dramatically, and aid efforts were confined to the underground. Hodann seemed to have joined the side on which the concept of freedom and justice was concomitant with a condemnation of Communism. I visited him together with Brecht’s girlfriend, Berlau, who for a long time had put up Hodann’s daughter from his first marriage, Sonja, at her place in Denmark. Since the masses of snow on the streets made cycling impossible, she had picked me up on her motorbike, as she often did to take me to Lidingö. Hodann lived with his wife and his one-month-old son on Lidnersplan in Kristineberg, in one of the new buildings on Lake Ulvsunda, overlooking the Traneberg bridge. He was haggard, seemed exhausted, the smell of diapers was accompanied by the smell of the expectorated mucus that I knew all too well. His strength was sapped by the tram trip along the endless Drottningholmsvägen and Hantverkargatan, change at Tegelbacken, then Vasagatan, Kungsgatan, on to his workplace and then back again. He had to pay one hundred fifteen kronor for the small apartment, almost half of his wage as a consultant. I tried to imagine him in the uniform of the Spanish Republican Army, tried to reinitiate our earlier conversations, but that time in Cueva la Potita and Denia slipped away from me. Something had happened to him during the past year, something that had left him shattered, and yet he still managed to muster a friendly demeanor. On the verge of a breakdown, he immediately offered to look into ways that I could be fostered in my professional development. He wanted to speak to Professor Tegen, the chair of the refugee committee, to Gillis Hammar, the director of the adult education center in Birkagården, he wanted to recommend me to Miss Hellner, in the aid office on Vanadisvägen, and I could have accepted all of this if not for the fact that I had enough responsibilities already—and that his own deterioration demonstrated the futility of all such activities. While Berlau and the woman from Prague sat in the living room, which was cluttered with furniture, we sat in the bathroom, Hodann on the toilet seat, me on a stool; I thought that we might now be able to speak with one another. I brought up the distinction between the nonpolitical and political refugees, the neutralization of the Red Aid. Compared to the economically feeble leftist organizations, he said, the bourgeois and Social Democratic initiatives offered the exiles their only chance of safety. With their official approval of the aggression of the fascists, it was no longer possible to place trust in the Co
mmunist Party. And anybody who looks at the German workers—who were so willing to carry the burden of building up arms and going off to war—and sees future combatants for socialism, has lost their faculty of judgment. The explanation that the Soviet Union had scored a diplomatic victory over the German government had to be rejected. He could see no sign of strength in the Soviet state acquiescing, after the extinction of an entire generation of pioneers, to the sacrificing of the global Communist movement as well. Now, as earlier, fascist Germany—which enjoys the support of the overwhelming majority of the population—represents the main foe. By continuing to portray the Western powers as their sole opposition, and with their attack on Finland, the Soviet Union had created the impression that their aim was to divide Europe between them and Germany. This could lead to devastating consequences if England were to enter the conflict from northern Scandinavia to relieve Finland. It was an illusion, he said, to expect, as the Communist Party did, the Finnish working class and the Red Army to come together and form a revolutionary Finnish government. We were once again forced to face the question of how we should behave in this escalated situation, whether we ought to turn our backs on anybody who opposed the Party line, or, in our uncertainty, open ourselves up to any and every perspective so as to gain our own picture of the complexity of the competing forces. Yet I knew I wouldn’t be able to break with a friend with whom, though he had taken a conflicting stance, I nevertheless shared a belief in criticism and the free exchange of opinions. I had always presupposed that party loyalties could never be associated with dogma, that self-examination could never be abandoned, that nothing could be taken to be definitive, final. When the bourgeoisie made a show of its progressive attitudes and in the process carried out their class justice, we had to stand up even more vehemently for the reestablishment of the concept of human rights. As long as the Party existed in its current form, Hodann viewed this as an impossible endeavor. Then I rode with Berlau back through the city, my arms wrapped around her creaking leather jacket, riding through the spray of shards of ice. We pushed the motorbike up the slick, steep slope to the red wooden house among the pines. Arboga, the thirteenth of January, fourteen thirty-five. A brick façade, with windows and a round gate, the countryfolk out front with their carts, carrying their tools, some with a sword or crossbow as well, all bundled up in quilted jackets, fur caps pulled down over their ears, pacing back and forth in the dense snowdrift, stamping their feet, slapping their arms together. Since the people were not allowed to participate in the conference, Brecht had said, distracted, blowing his nose, we’d have to move the conference onto the street, show not the speakers inside but the commentators outside. That’s where the revolutionary force was first articulated. Listen, it’s not just knights and clerics gathered together over there, there are others too. Who then, people asked. The gatekeeper passed along the messages, he had found out what was going on up above from a guard in the stairwell, who had received whispered reports from the bailiffs. Yes, it was not just the usual aristocratic councillors sitting there, there were also representatives from the lower echelons of the nobility, from commerce, from the peasantry. And it isn’t just twelve of them, as it was before, but a whole thirty-six. Now—and this was directed against the nobles in Stockholm—a government and a head of state was to be elected. So the events taking place inside were no longer unfolding with the consent of the lords in Stockholm but against them. The elite, loyal to the king, had become isolated; the broader community, the allmoge, had to formulate their own decisions. Did they do that, we asked ourselves. Even those standing outside must have wondered what kind of decisions those would be. Not in the way that we asked today, but from within their time. Had they been capable of asking why no peasants, no wage laborers from the pits, were sitting in the hall, they would have resumed the revolution of their own accord. But since even today, regardless of the fact that they constituted the overwhelming majority of the people, they had not taken the reins from below, instead placing their trust in representatives who only rarely came from their own ranks and who told them what to do—back then they could likewise only stand by in anticipation. Though their questions were forceful, demanding to know where they stood, they felt fairly secure once the report was relayed that Engelbrekt was sitting alongside his comrades in arms Puke, Berman, Gotskalksson, Bengtsson, Färla, and Plata. When they heard that the bishops Thomas, Sigge, and Knut were present, the knights Magnus Birgersson and Nils Gustafsson Båt, Nils Erengislesson Hammarstad, Gustav Algotsson Sture, Greger Magnusson Eka, Bo Knutsson Grip, Knut Karlsson Örnfot, Bo Stensson and Nils Stensson Natt och Dag—all of whom, in addition to holding public offices, were also major landowners, mine owners—they interpreted this in their favor. If these people were now openly pledging their allegiance to Engelbrekt, they said, they must also be willing to undertake land redistribution, tax relief, the abolition of the punitive measures of the bailiffs. However their petty concerns were not the topic of discussion; there were more important things to be dealt with up there. It was probably also the case that insufficient attention was being paid to the decisions being made inside, since everything was overshadowed by the news that Engelbrekt had been elevated to the rank of commander in chief. That was a new title. Does that mean king, people asked. Not a king, a marshal. Predictions of how the situation in the country would now be different were cut through by the cries coming from the gate declaring who would assume control over the various provinces. Engelbrekt himself took over Uppland, Nils Erengislesson Östergötland, Bishop Sigge Västergötland, Nils Stensson Småland, Bo Knutsson Tjust, Knut Karlsson Södermanland. After all, somebody had to preside over the territories. And at least it was those who were now proving that they wanted nothing more to do with Eric. What they couldn’t understand, though, was that down below everybody was supposed to give up their weapons. The order had come from the guards. Shouts of: don’t hand over your weapons, that’s what our fathers did, and our fathers’ fathers, they shouldn’t have done it. But that’s the order, because it is peacetime. Peace isn’t reigning yet. We want to hear it from Engelbrekt himself. He showed himself at the window. Shouts of: we want to keep our weapons. We have decided, he said, that all weapons are to be handed in and stored in the arsenals. We’re keeping the weapons, came the answer. The realm will see to it that the weapons are looked after, he said. The response: we want to guard the arsenal. Guards will be elected, said Engelbrekt, the weapons will remain within reach. What we have to do now, he said, is win over the knights who still refuse to recognize us, and show them that our intentions are peaceful. The attempts undertaken by Engelbrekt during the year of thirty-five to reach an agreement with the nobles didn’t arouse any interest in Brecht. Representatives of the lower classes were excluded from the meetings in Sigtuna, Vadstena, Halmstad; all matters relating to government affairs seemed to have once again been handed to the elites. Whenever Engelbrekt was able to chalk up a success, it was paid for with concessions to groups of nobles who were also still scheming to reinstate Eric. If sometimes the impression emerged that the country was in the hands of Engelbrekt and his followers, it was nevertheless impossible to conceal a growing catastrophe. The Danish-occupied castles of Kalmar, Nyköping, Stäkeholm, and Axvall were still standing, threatening the realm, and Stockholm also remained with the king of the Union, refusing to open its gates to Engelbrekt’s people. It wasn’t until we mentioned Engelbrekt’s canal construction, quoting a few lines from the rhymed chronicle, that Brecht tuned in. While the commander was stuck in terse diplomatic negotiations with an adversary who wanted nothing but his ousting, he initiated a project with which he demonstrated his capacity for a forward-looking politics aimed at securing lasting peace. Through the hostility of the knights and the haute bourgeoisie in Stockholm, the passage out to sea via Lake Mälaren had been blocked. The trade in ore lay idle, and the importing of goods into the interior of the country was likewise hampered. After the preceding year of war, hunger reigned, and the clan of the U
nion aristocrats intended to demoralize the commoners, who had once again been driven to a state of misery. Evading confrontation with the nobility, preparing for a prolonged siege, a drawn out social tug-of-war, driven by the necessity of reestablishing the food supply and securing capital through the sale of iron, he began his project, which represented a transition from the war effort to economic development. He may well have received encouragement from some of the cities of the Hanseatic League with which he still had a relationship, and which had a stake in the resumption of commercial relations. Barely two months after the conference in Arboga, he sent an army to Tälje, this time armed with picks and shovels. The barges coming from Västerås were fully laden with carts, buckets, baskets, and pointed pickets. Here, at the tip of Lake Mälaren, southwest of the blockaded Stockholm, from the point where in prehistoric times an inlet had led to the sea and now a swale with patches of swamp extended to the open waters, the shipping lane was to be dug. At the narrowest point in the lake, just outside the city—whose gray log houses were clustered around the Saint Ragnhild Church—stood the palisade-ringed castle held by Lord Bengt Stensson Natt och Dag, one of the leaders of the opposition camp. While Puke kept watch on the fortified island with a small group of soldiers, the workers set about digging up the sand and mud in the southern valley, so as to make use of Lake Mälaren’s higher springtime water levels, steering the southward current into the canal. The construction of the canal, said Brecht, would almost merit a play of its own. Here, the principle of collective labor could be set against the force of self-interest and the rabid pursuit of profit. Thought it might have seemed as if the war of liberation had aroused in the people an awareness of their own power, soon enough the persistence of the forces of oppression showed itself again. The struggle to dominate nature could have been won through the efforts of the masses. The miners who had been brought in, with their experience in excavation, and the thousands of farm workers burrowed into the loose earth, transported the stones, beat posts into the ground to form rows, wove them together with twigs, dug day and night in ground that was continually seeping back together, installed the walls for a sluice up at the tip of the lake, stood up to their necks in water when the tides burst through; they couldn’t expect to open the access route this spring or even summer, but perhaps the next year. A number of the Hanseatic cogs from Lübeck were already sitting in the outer harbor, and the cargo was loaded onto flat-bottomed boats, which were rolled on tree trunks over land to Lake Mälaren; in the opposite direction, the first barrels of raw ore were transported to the cargo vessels. Pulling and hauling, toiling like slaves—but doing so freely, with purpose, as after a victorious revolution. But although here they were able to overcome all difficulties through technical skill, the same could not be said of their efforts to drive out the enemy, which reared its many heads again, spreading out across the land, scheming to destroy what was emerging. In late July word arrived suddenly that the king of the Union, invited by the nobility of Stockholm, was preparing his voyage to receive solemn confirmation in the capital of that which the councillors of the realm had promised him in the Halmstad negotiations in May, namely, his right to the throne and the restoration of all the castles, forts, cities, and provinces that had been taken from him. The revolution was to be declared illegitimate. Engelbrekt now had to face off with the self-appointed countergovernment and force a decision. The populace stood behind him, ready to head to war again. Thus, the large-scale endeavor had to be interrupted, the horde of workers turned back into a horde of soldiers. Puke stayed behind in Tälje to protect the canal, where he soon found himself in a conflict with Bengt Stensson. Stensson had his men plunder one of the cogs from Lübeck, whereupon Puke stormed the castle with his troops and chased the knight off. At the beginning of August, Engelbrekt set up camp for the third time just outside Stockholm, again on the island of Långholmen, while the knights and clerics gathered together in the Church of the Holy Spirit. The city preened itself to receive the king. The aristocrats continued their duplicity, traveling from Stockholm and their castles in the countryside to visit the rightfully elected commander in chief and attempting to assuage him, explaining that, in truth, the meeting of reconciliation represented Eric’s ousting. Though he would get some of his old possessions back, he would not be allowed to assume any government office in Sweden, and the Union would continue to guarantee the invulnerability of the Nordic countries. That Bengt Stensson also came with his entourage and joined up with Karl Knutsson Bonde, Krister Nilsson Vasa, and the newly named member of the Council of the Realm, Magnus Gren, demonstrated clearly enough whose interests were going to be presented to the Danish king; but Engelbrekt trusted Bishop Thomas and Nils Gustafsson Båt, who would be among the negotiators. He handed them a written statement in the name of the people. It read that Eric had proven himself incapable of implementing law and order in the land. The people had stood up as one to rid themselves of him. But despite their victory over the tyrant, calm had not yet graced the realm. Efforts were underway to reintroduce the old conditions. The people cannot tolerate such a thing. Never again the violence of the bailiffs. Never again the thievery of rogue tax collectors. Never again the torture and shackling of the peasants. Away with this dishonorable alliance. Away with the false king. The flaky Eric arrived in Stockholm late, in early September. Then the haggling began, behind the walls of the castle, initially overseen by Kröpelin. But it became evident that the mayor had drifted too close to the Swedish side and was removed from his office, replaced by one of the regent’s lackeys. Once again, the potentates off on their own and, waiting outside, the people. Inside, away from prying eyes, they decided upon what was ultimately advantageous for each of them. Well-versed in extortion and deception, regardless of how they had fleeced and tormented one another, they now had to declare a triumph any outcome that would leave their murderous regime in place. Eric was allowed to regain control over Halland, Stockholm, Kalmar, and Nyköping. The remaining provinces and castles, however, were to be managed by local lords. These lords swore their loyalty to him and the king vowed to buy the freedom of the Swedish warriors who were still wallowing in Hanseatic dungeons. From now on, justice was to be upheld in accordance with the laws of the land. The people’s taxes, on the other hand, were to be determined by Eric and to flow to Eric’s court. Retaining their exemptions from tax payments, the spiritual and earthly nobility were afforded the right to occupy the posts in the Council of the Realm; however, the right to name the treasurer and the marshal was reserved for the king. His choice would take effect once approved by the high council. Consensus was achieved, with Eric’s confidant Krister Nilsson Vasa being given the office of treasurer, a choice that would be offset by Karl Knutsson Bonde—the speaker of the nobility—being made marshal. As sworn enemies of Engelbrekt, both were congenial to the rulers, though it was also immediately clear that, being rivals, they would antagonize each other. The reconciliation festival of Stockholm, then, at which Eric bought himself the crown and the aristocrats won back their old privileges, was at the same time a manifestation of discord. To the peals of the bells in the cloisters and churches, Krister Nilsson received a silver staff from the hand of the king and Karl Knutsson a sword. Nils Gustafsson Båt was the only one present who did not give his seal of approval to the agreement. Engelbrekt was never mentioned by name. After the departure of the sixty ships of the Danish fleet, he gathered his army. In November, he called for a second revolution.