The Luzern Photograph

by William Bayer

  With kind regards,

  Eva Foigel

  TWENTY-ONE

  Extract from the Unpublished Memoirs of Major Ernst Fleckstein

  (AKA Dr Samuel Foigel)

  In late 1942 I began to hear rumors in my ‘psychoanalytic practice’ of serious trouble on the Eastern Front. Around this time several of my patients (consisting almost entirely of the haughty wives of well-born military officers) came to me with dreams fraught with anxiety. Employing techniques I’d devised from my studies at the Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy (supplemented by a few I’d picked up from various tarot-card readers of my acquaintance), I was able, while interpreting these dreams, to uncover their underlying cause: huge as yet unreported losses around Stalingrad and the possibility of a major Wehrmacht defeat.

  Around this time I also started hearing from patients of whispered talk in their respective social circles regarding prepar-ations in the event Germany lost the war. Several confided that their husbands had set up secret foreign bank accounts and had made ‘just in case’ arrangements for refugee status in South American countries. It was clear to me that if Germany did lose, the post-war environment would not be pleasant, and that because of my role as an undercover agent acting as a mock-psychoanalyst on behalf of the Abwehr,1 I could find myself in some danger.

  (I should add that my former patron, Martin Bormann, having become personal secretary to Hitler after the flight of Rudolf Hess in 1941, was no longer accessible to me, and that even if he were, I couldn’t possibly discuss such matters with him.)2

  It was then, at the approach of New Year’s 1943, that I began to devise my own ‘just in case’ plan, a secret mission that could get me safely out of Germany with an ingeniously created new identity. As the details began to crystalize, I understood that gaining approval for such an audacious mission would require my achieving a major success in my current role. As it happened, I was on the verge of just such a triumph.

  Since the end of the war, the Solf Circle Tea Party Affair3 has become common knowledge, with most of the credit going to the Swiss physician Paul Reckzeh, working as an undercover agent of the Gestapo. Until now my own role has never been revealed. In fact it was my ‘psychoanalytic work’ that set the Reckzeh operation into motion.

  In late 1942, my patient, the very beautiful and highly neurotic Countess Annelore von T, in session on my analytic couch, expressed great anxiety regarding subversive conversations taking place among her friends. Under the guise of relieving her of stress, I immediately put her under hypnosis and was thereby able to extract every bit of knowledge she possessed about the Solf Circle, including the names of all its principals.

  I claim no direct role in the final unmasking of this group and take no responsibility for the subsequent arrests and executions. That was strictly a Gestapo affair. But I did provide the initial tip that led many months later to Reckzeh’s successful penetration. Though I found those people (and in fact all the ladies I was treating) snobbish and elitist, I had nothing personal against any of them. Still, since Germany was at war none could rightfully claim they were unaware of the consequences should their treasonous plot be exposed.

  Colonel Heinz Fruehauf, my Abwehr superior, was impressed by what I’d been able to get out of Countess von T. I had finally managed, he told me, to justify the elaborate ruse we’d set up, whereby a group of elite Berlin physicians had been ordered to refer selected female patients to me for ‘psychoanalysis.’

  My job was to extract whatever information I could from these fine ladies concerning anti-NSDAP sentiments. The set-up had been quite expensive. Appropriate certificates were created, and my office suite (formerly occupied by a Jewish internist) in a posh building on Wielandstrasse was fitted out with luxurious furnishings. These included a fetishistic analytic couch I had personally selected and then conspicuously placed in the center of my consulting room, the same couch position I’d observed during my visits in 1934 and 1937 to the study of Frau Lou Salomé. Additionally my position as a ‘high-society analyst’ required that I be outfitted with a closetful of expensive hand-tailored suits. In short, mine was a high-maintenance operation, which had, until my exposure of the Solf Circle, provided little in the way of results.

  Now by identifying this group, I was finally in a position to propose my own plan: to be infiltrated into the United States in the guise of a Jewish refugee psychoanalyst seeking asylum after a daring escape from Nazi Germany. Upon arrival I would present my credentials and then hopefully be permitted to open a psychoanalytic practice in Washington, DC similar to the one I had in Berlin. From there I would act as a liaison with other Abwehr agents while at the same time eliciting intelligence from female patients whose husbands worked in the upper levels of the US military and espionage apparatus.

  Fruehauf, as anticipated, was skeptical. What made me think I’d be accepted by an American psychoanalytic community already flooded with German and Austrian Jewish refugees? And since war was raging, wasn’t it a little late to credibly claim to have escaped from Germany?

  Good questions, which I was prepared to answer. Our documents department, I told him, was fully capable of providing me with a complete legend. After all, it had done that for me already. Moreover, I would take the name of an actual Jewish psychoanalyst named Samuel Foigel, to whom I bore a close facial resemblance and who I knew from my research had died at Buchenwald in 1939 after being arrested during a routine round-up.

  In addition, my legend would include the following fascinating detail: not only had I not been killed but had miraculously survived in plain sight in Berlin using the false identity of the ostensibly Aryan analyst Dr Ernst Fleckstein, whose society practice could easily be verified.

  As for my defection, it would take place during a forthcoming psychoanalytic conference in Zurich organized by the Aryan analyst Dr C. J. Jung, rival and ideological enemy of Freud. While there I would slip away to the American consulate where I would request asylum in the US and recognition of my true identity. If rigorously questioned (as I was certain I would be) I would recount in great detail, emphasizing close calls and much derring-do, the saga of my amazing imposture in Berlin. I would also give samples of intimate details I had obtained in my practice regarding high-ranking officials in the Wehrmacht and SS, suggesting possession of a fount of intelligence that would be irresistible to the Americans.

  Fruehauf was highly amused. ‘You’re telling me, dear Fleckstein, that this Foigel character will claim that, pretending to be you, he was able to carry on a practice in the capital of the Third Reich?’

  ‘Precisely!’ I told him. ‘Foigel transforms himself into Fleckstein to survive the purge of Jewish analysts. When finally he defects to the US, he resumes his original identity as Foigel.’

  Fruehauf, I should add, was a mediocre character. Short of stature, round of belly, and slow of wit, he had intimidating hooded eyes. He also sported an absurd mustache in the manner of former President Paul von Hindenburg, for which he was much mocked around our headquarters.

  ‘Foigel-Fleckstein-Foigel,’ Fruehauf repeated the sequence several times, smiling as he allowed the names to roll resonantly off his tongue. ‘You say you look like him? Hmmm, perhaps you are a Jew, eh, Fleckstein? I’ve long suspected as much!’

  ‘Oh my God, you’ve found me out! Ha ha ha!’ As always I pretended to be dazzled by the little man’s riposte.

  ‘Ha! Well, one can’t be too careful these days, can one?’ Then he turned serious. ‘It’s so absurd it might actually work. But the orchestration will require much effort.’

  ‘Still,’ I told him, ‘you have to admit that this is just the kind of operation that will appeal to Canaris.4 He’s always urging us to come up with schemes so audacious that no enemy counter-intelligence officer will suspect them. I believe he’ll relish the notion of placing a new agent in the American capital, one bursting with alluring disinformation, an agent in the guise of a Jewish psychoanalyst to whom certain ladies, in the
process of confiding their anxieties, may inadvertently reveal their officer husband’s closely guarded secrets. It would simply be the reverse of the operation I’ve been conducting here. Think too of all the blackmail material I’ll be able to obtain regarding these ladies’ improprieties. And what better place for our agents to drop off material for transmission than the office of a Jewish refugee doctor. What, dear Fruehauf, could possibly be more audacious than that?’

  ‘Write up your proposal and I’ll present it,’ Fruehauf instructed. ‘I’d say the odds of acceptance are slim. But,’ he added smugly, ‘at the very least this office will gain credit for audacity.’ By which, of course, he meant himself.

  I will remind readers that my experience at Matthias Göring’s Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy had not been pleasant. I was not well received there when in 1937, determined to become an analyst, I presented myself for training. I was not a psychiatrist, not even a doctor of medicine, so how, I was asked, could I presume to study psychoanalysis? But Bormann’s good word got me in the door, and once enrolled I was permitted to attend lectures and seminars so long as I kept quiet and showed I knew my place.

  I mention this again to contrast it with my magnificent training once Admiral Canaris approved my plan. My instructors taught me a variety of counter-interrogation and survival techniques in the event my risky operation were compromised. They emphasized that the more absurdities I added to my stories, the more believable and seductive they would be. They told me that the American spy agency, the OSS, was desperate to understand the relationships between our leaders. I could make up most anything and present it as fact so long as I stayed consistent regarding details.

  Together we came up with a good excuse for the termination of my practice: I had been transferred on an urgent basis to the Eastern Front to serve as a field psychiatrist. All my patients were so notified and dutifully referred to other analysts. I will admit here that I did miss several of them. As is well known these transference relationships often cut both ways.

  I also won’t deny that I enjoyed the romantic fantasies that several patients developed toward me, not to mention the erotic dreams about me which they exposed on my analytic couch. Hearing descriptions of the torrid desires of outwardly cool upper-class women was (and continues to be!) among the great pleasures I obtain from therapeutic work. I also won’t deny that on several occasions I took advantage of these patients’ vulnerabilities, usually after putting them into a hypnotic trance. Since I was not a real doctor and these therapeutic relationships were bogus, there could be no issue of ethical transgression. We were adults engaging in consensual activity. Enough said!

  Back to my training. I did well in all my espionage courses while working with the Documents Department on the creation of appropriate diplomas, identity cards, letters, and transcripts, as well as a series of ingeniously doctored photographs that served to enhance my resemblance to the poor deceased Dr Foigel.

  I had one trump card which greatly excited my trainers: Frau Salomé’s inscribed copy of Freud’s seminal book on dream interpretation. What better credential could there be if I were confronted regarding my bona fides? To have been presented with such an object by one of Freud’s closest acolytes would establish a direct connection between Foigel and the legendary founding father of psychoanalysis. And lest anyone dare inquire as to how I obtained this treasure, I would show an accompanying letter-of-gift created by an Abwehr master forger which even close friends of Frau Salomé would likely swear had been written in her hand.

  Let me add that though I had only one brief personal encounter with this imposing woman, her manner made a great impression upon me. Regarding her as an exemplar, I used her as a model for my therapist persona, for which I owe her a considerable posthumous debt of gratitude.

  My reception at the American Consulate in Zurich went as smoothly as anticipated. When the military attaché heard the tales I had to tell about Hitler’s sexual deviance (stories which, of course, were true, based on knowledge I’d gained while working as Bormann’s fixer) his eyebrows shot up like the ears of an excited rabbit. Within hours he had communicated my resume to the OSS station chief, Allen Dulles,5 who ordered that I be transported immediately to his HQ6 in Bern for what proved to be a lengthy, exhausting, and brutally frank credibility debriefing.

  I’ll say this for Dulles: he was as shrewd a man as I ever encountered. He was soft-spoken and friendly, but beneath his composure I detected an extremely canny card player who knew just how to bluff an opponent (in this case, myself!) seated on the other side of his table.

  After listening patiently to my elaborate cover story, he sat back, lit his pipe, gazed at me with unblinking eyes, and got straight to the point.

  ‘I don’t know whether your real name is Fleckstein, Foigel, Finkelstein or something else,’ he told me, ‘and, frankly, I don’t care. Of one thing I’m certain: you’re an Abwehr agent. As to how I know that, let’s just say that we have sources within your organization.7 I knew you were coming and have been anticipating your arrival. Now that you’re here and I’m able to take the measure of you, I sense your loyalties are not to your service or even to your homeland, but are solely to yourself and your own survival. I gather this ingeniously incredible operation was your idea. Perhaps you were looking for a safe haven for yourself, or perhaps you thought you might really be able to serve your masters. The fact that they went along with it confirms my sense that a mood of desperation now prevails at Tirpitzufer.8 None of that matters to me. The only thing that does matter is the quality of your information and the degree to which you’re willing to reveal it. For purposes of this discussion I’ll address you now as Foigel. And if you cooperate,’ he smiled cunningly, ‘Foigel you shall remain.’

  I listened carefully as he laid out my alternatives. If after further questioning I refused to concede I was an Abwehr agent, I would be subjected to harsh interrogation, and then, after I confessed, as inevitably I would, I would be executed as a spy. If on the other hand I owned up to my true role, I would, after divulging to him every single fact I knew regarding the Nazi leadership, be relocated to Washington, DC where I would act as a double agent under OSS control. There I would ostensibly fulfill my role as an Abwehr operative. I would receive agents in my consulting room, accept their reports, turn them over to my control officer for alteration, and then relay them on for transmission back to Germany. If my work was exemplary I would, after the German surrender, be released from OSS supervision. After that I could continue to reside in the US under the name of Foigel, or return to Germany as a private citizen under any name of my choosing.

  ‘So it’s either play the tough guy and take the nasty consequences or cooperate and be well rewarded for your assistance.’ Dulles’ eyes sparkled as he gazed deeply into mine. ‘You strike me as an intelligent fellow. You have an interesting if checkered past. I’ve offered you an excellent deal. Take an hour to think it over. I’m sure you’ll make the proper choice.’

  He rang for an assistant who showed me to a small windowless room in the cellar of the mansion. There I quickly made my decision. Dulles had shown great perception. I was, as he said, interested solely in my survival.

  Let me say here that I greatly enjoyed psychoanalytic work and believed I performed it well. Though I hadn’t earned my diplomas the proper way, I believed I could offer therapeutic analysis on a par with any practitioner I’d met. I was a kind and sympathetic listener, my interpretations were creative, often deep, I was good at pointing out connections, and female patients of a certain age and class seemed to like me very much. I had a way with them. I knew how to draw out their most intimate fantasies and thoughts. Thinking ahead, I had no trouble imagining a useful life for myself as Dr Samuel Foigel, psychoanalyst – a life of contentment, respect, and affluence. I had been a private matrimonial investigator, a party hack and fixer, and then, thanks to a brief fortuitous encounter with Frau Lou Salomé, had discovered my vocation as an analyst. In sh
ort, there was no question as to my response.

  Dulles was pleased. ‘You will play an important role in our effort,’ he told me, laying his hands on my shoulders. ‘If you feel squeamish now, in time you’ll be proud of what you’ve done. You will become a player in a Great Cause. You will meet and work with outstanding people. I don’t mind telling you I envy the fun you’re going to have leading a double life. But then, that has always been your life, hasn’t it? Yes, I feel I know you, Foigel. You are one of us, the cadre of the duplicitous.’

  He paused, then asked sharply: ‘Now tell me everything you know about Martin Bormann.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  I meet Eva Foigel in the lobby of her midtown Manhattan hotel. In person she looks older than in her website photos – a stocky woman with age-appropriate facial lines and short silver swept-back hair. I figure her for around fifty-five. She sports small silver earrings, wears elegant flats, and is simply yet expensively dressed in a dark gray Jil Sander pants suit over a light gray silk blouse. She strikes me as serenely self-assured. Despite a friendly smile, she projects the allure of a woman used to getting her way.

  ‘They have a little bar here,’ she says, guiding me toward an alcove off the lobby. ‘Let’s get ourselves a table, order drinks, and chat.’

  She speaks, I note, like an American. ‘I expected you’d have a German accent,’ I tell her.

  ‘I was born in Cleveland, brought up in the States until I was twelve. After my father died, my mother took me to her parents’ hometown, Vienna. Been there ever since.’

  After we order beers she gazes at me. I’m struck by the intensity of her blue-flecked eyes. ‘You have many questions. First off you want to know how I met Chantal.’