Goebbels: A Biography

by Peter Longerich

  Psychoanalysts today see the origins of narcissistic personality disorders in psychological maladjustments that occur between the second and third years of life. They refer to a failure to develop autonomy: The child is not capable of detaching itself from a solicitous and domineering mother, and its own personality fails to develop fully. The possible reasons for this failure are manifold: temporary neglect by the mother, for example, or an upbringing where the rules are inconsistently applied, sending mixed messages to the child, overprotectiveness on the one hand and excessive discipline on the other. It is easy to imagine these conditions prevailing in a large and financially hard-pressed family like the Goebbelses. While it is of course impossible to reconstruct the young Joseph’s upbringing, it is reasonable to note that there are convincing explanations for his undeniable narcissistic traits.

  Joseph Goebbels can serve as a textbook example of failed autonomy. A narcissist like Goebbels constantly looks for a source of recognition in order to strengthen his own identity, which he perceives as inadequate. In particular he seeks a life partner totally dedicated to himself, from whom he expects to receive—as he did from his solicitous mother—recognition and affirmation. Narcissists find it difficult to distinguish themselves from those who provide them with recognition; their personality sometimes seems to merge with that of another person. In this light, Goebbels’s attempt in Michael Voormann to construct a variant of his own development is a typical expression of uncertainty about his own identity. In the novel he plays a game of experimenting with his own biography; it is not self-revelation.

  Narcissists like Goebbels generally have difficulty in distinguishing between daydreams and the real world, appearance and reality, success and fantasies of success. Their relationship to the world around them is somewhat underdeveloped, their sense of self not securely anchored. They live in a self-referential way, tending toward feelings of superiority and delusions of grandeur. But because of their weak egos, they are often haunted by fear of loss and separation; they can easily experience the absence of success as failure, and for this reason they are inclined to suffer from depression.16 Therefore, Goebbels did not develop his narcissism as compensation for his disability. Thanks to the tendency to overestimate himself and to distort reality that he had acquired in infancy, to a great extent he was actually capable of ignoring his deformity. His sense of self-worth relegated it to a subordinate role.

  Reading the “memory pages,” it is also apparent that Goebbels did not in any way regard himself in high school as a student isolated by his disability and the ambition it induced in him. On the contrary, he remembered a series of good friends from school, friends who would continually cross his path in later life.17 According to his memoir, it was the awakening of sexuality and the erotic in him that was foremost in the adolescent’s mind and constantly got him into trouble. He wrote that it was the stepmother of a friend who first aroused his “urges toward women”: “Eros awakes. Well-informed in a crude way even as a boy.” He remembered being in love with a girl for the first time sometime between 1912 and 1914: “Sentimental period. Flowery letters. Poems. Along with love for mature women.” There was an embarrassing outcome when love letters Goebbels had written under an assumed name to the object of his desire were traced back to him. It was this episode that made his favorite teacher, Herr Voss—whom he credited with great influence on him throughout his schooldays—refuse to support his application for a competitive scholarship offered by the town. In Michael Voormann Goebbels inflates this incident into a minor case of martyrdom.18

  The summer of 1914 had a powerful impact on the sixteen-year-old: “Outbreak of war. Mobilization. Everyone called to the colors. Pain of not being able to go with them. […] The first of my comrades to be wounded. […] Gradually lots of comrades gone. […] Class beginning to empty.”19 Via the army postal service, he kept in touch with his schoolmates, who were now on active duty.20 In December 1915 his sister Elisabeth died of tuberculosis; some years later, his father would remind him how after she died the family gathered around her deathbed seeking solace in prayer.21

  A few of Goebbels’s school essays that have survived strike the requisite “patriotic” note, something he later found “tedious.”22 Apart from his German teacher, Herr Voss, he was clearly very taken with the history master, Gerhard Bartels, who taught him in his first years at the grammar school. Bartels’s early death was marked by a memorial publication to which Goebbels contributed. He praised above all Bartels’s dedicated teaching and especially his tales of heroes, which brought home patriotic ideals to his pupils.23 Goebbels took his Abitur (Baccalaureate) examination in 1917, and as the top student in his class he gave the customary speech at the formal leaving-certificate award ceremony. Naturally, this speech too was full of patriotic sentiments: “The land of poets and thinkers must now prove that it is more than that, that it has a valid claim to lead the world politically and intellectually.”24

  Initially he wanted to study medicine, but his German teacher, Herr Voss, dissuaded him. “So: German and history. It doesn’t matter which.” But regardless of the choice of subject, what did matter was that he should go to university, not least because by doing so he would avoid civilian service (from 1916 on, all men over seventeen were required to perform “auxiliary service for the Fatherland”). During his last years at school, he acquired a girlfriend, Lene Krage from Rheindalen: “First kiss in Gartenstrasse. […] Wonderful boyhood bliss. Naturally get married. A matter of honor.” With his Abitur came a “leave-taking from Lene,” which he considered temporary: “Shut in the Kaiserpark at night. I kiss her breast for the first time. For the first time, she becomes the loving woman.”25

  All in all, one can say that in his childhood and youth he was by no means deprived of the recognition he so eagerly sought: He had successfully completed his education, finishing at the top of his class, in fact; in spite of his family’s straitened circumstances, he was able to choose his subject of study freely; he had friends; and he even had a girlfriend.

  A NONE-TOO-ZEALOUS STUDENT

  With two friends from school, Goebbels set off to study at the University of Bonn at the beginning of April 1927.26 His situation was far from favorable: “Money worries. Often hungry. Private lessons for ill-mannered youths.” He recorded in his “memory pages” that the university made little impression on him. He seems to have spent less time there than in the Catholic student fraternity, Unitas Sigfridia, which he joined as soon as he arrived in Bonn. He became the Leibbursche (“buddy”) of his new acquaintance Karl Heinz (“Pille”) Kölsch, whom he proclaimed his “ideal.”27 In the Sigfridia he adopted the name Ulex (after a character in a novel by Wilhelm Raabe, his favorite author). At the society’s gala evening in June 1917 he made his mark with a talk about the writer, whom he had admired ever since he was a schoolboy. Goebbels recommended Raabe as a model to his fellow students as someone “who fought for his ideals, fought for his worldview.”28 Fraternity members spent many such convivial evenings together, in taverns and at celebrations and bowling parties. Group excursions took place on the weekends. Student social life suffered from wartime conditions, however. The number of active members had dwindled to five, and there were complaints in the fraternity magazine about the constantly declining quality of the beer. The coffers were empty, although Goebbels, promoted to secretary of Unitas, had no hesitation in writing to comrades on active service to beg for contributions.29

  During the university vacation, Goebbels was temporarily enlisted to undertake office work for the Fatherland Auxiliary Service, but he soon managed to free himself from this obligation.30 A shortage of funds forced him to return to Rheydt. Lene was waiting for him there: “A night in Rheindahlen with her on the sofa. Stayed chaste. I feel myself to be a man.” He could not escape his financial woes: “Unpaid bills from Bonn. Argument at home. Father helping out. Intellectual experience at Bonn practically nil.”31 In the end he succeeded in raising some funds. The Catholic Albertus Magnus
Society of Cologne agreed to support his studies, eventually loaning him a total of 960 Reichsmarks.32

  During this time in Rheydt he wrote two novellas: Bin ein fahrender Schüler, ein wüster Gesell…(I am a wandering scholar, a wild fellow…)*2 and Die die Sonne lieben (Those who love the sun). In 1924 he called these efforts “bombastic and sentimental. Almost unbearable.” This verdict was shared by the Kölnische Zeitung, which declined to publish them.33 However, Bin ein fahrender Schüler, like Michael Voormann written in 1919, provides an interesting insight into Goebbels’s self-image. The hero is called Karl Heinz Ellip (the nickname of his friend “Pille,” to whom he dedicated the novella, spelled backward) but has adopted the name Ulex: Ellip explains that he chose the name because his model was the hero of Raabe’s novel, “a true German idealist […] deep, a dreamer, as we Germans are.” Ellip/Ulex is “a tall strong lad” characterized by a “sunny, cheerful disposition.” The only child of a North German landowner, he is studying (out of pure interest) German and history in Bonn, among other places. Ellip is called back to the family home, Elpenhof, where the mother he loves more than anything in the world is on her deathbed. Profoundly shaken by her final throes of agony, he suffers a fatal heart attack the same night that she dies. He is buried next to her.

  Goebbels began his second semester in Bonn in October 1917, sharing a room with Kölsch.34 His relationship with Lene began to cool, as he was warming to Kölsch’s sister Agnes. In the Kölsch parental home, to which he was now quite often invited, he got to know another sister, Liesel. General erotic confusion: “Liesel loves me, I love Agnes. [She] is playing with me.” The affair became more complicated in the course of the semester when a classmate, Hassan, also fell in love with Agnes. Hassan had what was known as “hassle-free lodgings”: “Agnes in Bonn. A night with her in Hassan’s room. I kiss her breast. For the first time she is really good to me. Had left the door open. Lied afterward.” Soon there was a rerun with Liesel: “Liesel in Bonn. A night with her in Hassan’s room. I spare her. She is really good to me. A good deed that gives me a kind of satisfaction.”35

  “Spent hardly any time at university” was his comment on his academic progress in this semester. “Torment and agitation. Time of ferment. I seek and find nothing.”36 Nonetheless, he signed up in both semesters at Bonn for a whole series of classes on history and German studies, including a lecture on Heinrich Heine which he is known to have attended. He also signed up for courses on art history, psychology, and folklore as well as a lecture on “Venereal diseases, their causes and prevention.”37 After the second semester Goebbels and Kölsch decided to continue their studies elsewhere. Moving around from one university to another was quite normal at the time. Their Unitas comrades were sorry to see them leave: They had done so much to breathe new life into the society with their active and spirited participation.38

  Goebbels spent his third semester in Freiburg, where he was greeted by Pille Kölsch, who had gone on ahead and was very eager to introduce him to an acquaintance, Anka Stahlherm. “And how deeply and completely I got to know you, Anka Stahlherm!” noted Goebbels in his “memory pages.”39 Goebbels fell in love with Anka, who was three years older than himself40 and from a solid bourgeois background. He spent the next few weeks trying to lure her away from his friend.

  At Whitsun he went to Lake Constance with Kölsch and two other friends. Anka joined them later. They took several sightseeing trips; Goebbels became jealous of Kölsch, and the feeling grew ever stronger. Back in Freiburg, he recorded various friendly signals from Anka: “Gradual break between Anka and Kölsch. But greater attachment to me.” They now met more often alone; he got closer and closer to his goal: “I kiss her […]. Fulfillment without end.” His feelings for Anka inevitably led to tensions between him and Kölsch; in the end Goebbels moved out of their shared accommodation. When Anka’s brother Willy visited her, Anka did not invite Goebbels to join them: “The first argument. Social differences. I’m a poor devil. Money troubles. Big calamity. Hardly been at the university. […] I’m hardly aware there’s a war on anymore.”

  Anka was uncertain whether to make a final break with Kölsch. Finally there came a “big scene” with Goebbels: “She begs for my love on bended knee. For the first time I see how a woman can suffer. I am shattered.” The next morning the tragedy continued, but it ended conclusively: “Anka is mine.”41 He had reached his goal: “Blissful days. Nothing but love. Perhaps the happiest time of my life.” Anka asked Kölsch if they could talk. He declined, whereupon, bitterly disappointed, she wrote him a goodbye letter.42

  At the end of the semester, Goebbels went back to his parents’ house in Rheydt.43 He spent his autumn vacation there in 1918. He had become “pale and thin.” In three weeks he “laboriously” worked out an idea for a drama in five acts called Judas Ischariot. It was a—not particularly original—reinterpretation of the story of Judas in the New Testament: Judas is represented as a patriot who, although at first a fervent disciple of his Messiah, finally betrays him because Jesus will not lead a revolutionary movement to liberate the Jewish people from the yoke of Rome. After the death of Christ, Judas is ambitious to make himself leader but then recognizes the greatness of Jesus and commits suicide.44 Clearly, the first signs of religious doubt were emerging here, but at the prompting of the local chaplain Goebbels decided to put the work away in a drawer. As he wrote to Anka, he did not want to break with his “childhood belief and religion.” That he owed his funding to this same chaplain may have reinforced his decision.45

  Unfortunately, Anka met Agnes, who had been discarded in such an abrupt fashion, and the result was that “Anka doubted me. Letters cold and uncertain.” She came to see him, and they talked things over, though much remained unresolved. She wanted to continue her studies in Würzburg, while he told her he felt like moving to Munich. He spent the next few days waiting “desperately” for a message, but in vain.46 In the end he traveled to Würzburg, set about locating Anka, and found her: “One look, and we were back together again. After a long fight for her I’m staying.”47

  The winter semester of 1918–19 was Joseph Goebbels’s fourth semester as a student. In fact, he had not done any serious studying up to this point. It is astonishing that the First World War and politics affected his life so little. He was caught up in his reading, his literary ambitions; he cultivated his friendships and his highly volatile love affair with Anka and enjoyed student life to the fullest. On Goebbels’s evidence it is hard to see that the war was making any difference to him, and neither is there any indication that his exclusion from “front line experience” on disability grounds made him feel inferior or bitter.

  However, in Würzburg he does seem to have devoted himself more to the academic side of student life. His academic record documents attendance at sessions on ancient history, German literature, philology, archaeology, Romance languages, pedagogy, and the history of architecture.48 No longer much drawn to fraternity life, he gave up his membership in Unitas.49 At night he read Dostoyevsky for the first time: Looking back in 1924, he wrote that he had been “shaken” by Crime and Punishment.

  Significant political events took place in the middle of his Würzburg semester. The armistice of November 11, 1918, sealed the military defeat of the German Reich, the revolution broke out, and the Kaiser abdicated: “The revolution. Disgust. Return of the troops. Anka is crying.”50 He noted that “democratic influences” were spreading. His position was clear: “Conservative, nonetheless.” He voted for the Bavarian People’s Party (Bayerische Volkspartei), the right-wing party of the Bavarian Catholics. For the most part, however, political developments left him cold. In a letter to his schoolfriend Fritz Prang, he adopted a sanguine view of revolutionary events: The hour would come again when the “base, meaningless throngs” would be calling for “spirit and strength.” We would just have to “wait for that hour and not cease to arm ourselves for this struggle through untiring spiritual discipline.” Germany might have lost the war, but it
seemed to him that “the Fatherland had won nonetheless.”51

  Goebbels’s father wrote anxious letters. He would have preferred Joseph to attend a university in his native Rhineland. All he could do was try to support his son financially. Goebbels came back from Würzburg at the end of January 1919.52 He also spent the summer vacation of 1919 in Rheydt, which in the meantime had become occupied territory. Money worries were pressing, and to earn his keep he took up private tutoring. He spent the rest of the time writing another play, Heinrich Kämpfert. The subject sounds familiar: The penniless hero falls in love with a girl from a rich family.

  Aside from his efforts as a playwright, he applied himself to writing lyric poetry. His diary and other papers contain some unpublished poems from the wartime and postwar periods. Literature scholar Ralf Georg Czapla has studied this oeuvre, finding them for the most part to be “rather uninspired constructs consisting of effusive phrase-making and empty clichés, with quite defective versification and rhyme schemes in parts.” The content consists predominantly of evocations of domestic idylls, descriptions of idealized pastoral scenes, and love poems featuring, according to Czapla, “familiar components drawn from a Biedermeier worldview.”53 The form of Goebbels’s poetry was also highly conventional, confined to borrowings from folk poems (the Volkslied). He took on more probing subjects, too: his quest for God,54 his loss of faith (to the point of cursing the Christian God),55 and his fear of death: “In vielen Nächten sitze ich / Auf meinem Bett / Und lausche. / Dann rechne ich / Wie viele Stunden noch / Vom Tod mich trennen mögen.” (Many a night I sit upon my bed / And listen. / Then I count / How many hours may remain / ’twixt death and me.)56

  Looking for a political direction, Goebbels attended a meeting of the center-left Deutsche Demokratische Partei (German Democratic Party), where his former history teacher Bartels gave a speech. He liked the style of the address, but its content left him feeling “still more opposed to the Democrats” (he no doubt meant the supporters of this party). “All my classmates are voting Center Party [Zentrum] or German Nationalist [Deutschnational]. I would have voted German Nationalist too.”57 In any case, he thought that a large part of the German public was still politically immature: About 25 percent of ballot papers in his home constituency were spoiled because the voters did not understand the voting system.58 Politically speaking, he did not feel at home in any party.59 At the end of the semester break he learned that Anka had moved to Freiburg and that his old rival Kölsch had already arrived there: “So whatever it costs, it’s off to Freiburg.”60 In Freiburg he met up with Anka, who, he established with consternation, “was no longer the same person.” Finally she admitted that she had cheated on him with Kölsch. There followed jealous scenes, attempts at reconciliation, renewed jealousy. At one point he even borrowed a revolver from a friend. “Past death,” he declared enigmatically. He made no significant headway with his studies that semester.61 Richard Flisges, his friend from grammar school, who had returned from the war as a lieutenant and was his “daily companion,” spent some time with him in Freiburg and also registered as a student of Germanistik (German literature) there. Flisges now became his closest friend.62