by Les Weil
Within a few years, the Muenzenberg Trust had progressed from soupkitchens for starving childrcn to the launching of Storm over Asia. By the same method, thc Paris World Relicf Committee progressed within a few months from pious philanthropy to thc organisation of the underground resistance movement in Gennany, and to an indirect Communist propaganda agency in thc rest of thc world. As Ruth Fischer has pointed out, Muenzenberg was the original inventor of a new type of Communist organisation, the camouflagcd `front'; and the discoverer of a new type of ally: the liberal sympathiser, the progressive fellow-traveller:
`The success with which the Communist line was propagated among Social Democrats and Liberals during these years, the publication of Ce Soir in Paris and P.M. in New York, the thousands of painters and writers and doctors and lawyers and debutantes chanting a diluted version of the Stalinist line--all this had its root in Willy Muenzenberg's International Workers' Aid.'
The official Party bureaucracy hated not only Willy; they also looked with disfavour at his collaborators, who became branded as `Muenzenbergmen'. This outward pressure moulded the people around Willy into an intimate clique, a kind of Party within the Party. The atmosphere that prevailed among us Mucnzcnberg-rnen was a strange mixture of revolutionary camaraderie and of the jealousies of courtiers around a benevolent despot. As usual in the Gcrman Party, everybody on the staff, including the office char and the driver (who were also emigre Party members) addressed the boss as `Willy' and `du'. Manners were entirely informal, distinctions of rank or seniority did not--in theory--exist, and everybody, including Willy, drew--in theory--the same pay: the `Party maximum' of fiftecn hundred francs a month. In reality, of course, salaries were differentiated by means of expense accounts, and there existed a strict hierarchy of power, as in any ministry or business enterprise. Though Willy was impervious to flattery and hated every form of toadying, we were wary of contradicting him or incurring his disfavour, and dependent on his moods. And when Willy sauntered into a room, with the casualness of a tank bursting through a wall, we all watched his face for signs of sunshine or thunder, as employees do in any bourgeois outfit.
Willy's `inner circle' consisted at that time of lus wife, Babette Gross; his chief lieutenant, Otto Katz; and the `Three Musketeers'--Hans the secretary, Emil the driver, and Jupp, the bodyguard and odd job man.
Babette, nee Thuring, was one of the two daughters of a Potsdam family. She was tall and distinguished-looking, with a still beautiful face, and efficient in a quiet, polite way. One would imagine that cool, patrician Babette and squat, proletarian Willy clashed in physical appearance; but there existed such a visible harmony between them, and both had so much dignity in their different ways, that they gave the impression of a perfectly matched couple.
In the wild 'twenties, when the world of their parents had collapsed, the Thuring sisters had broken loose from their moorings, got caught up in the radical bohemia of the inflation years, joined the Communist Party of Germany, and went to live in unmarried union with its two most outstanding leaders: Babette with Will Muenzenberg, her sister Greta--dark, petite, vivacious and gay--with Heinz Neumann. Willy was assassinated in France in 1940, Heinz Neumann during the Purge in Moscow in 1938. Greta did three years of foreed labour in the Soviet concentration camps of Karaganda, was handed over by the G.P.U. to the Gestapo in 1940, and served another five years in the Nazi concentration camp of Ravensbruck. Her autobiographical book Urtder Two Dictators (London, I949) ranks among the two or three best of its kind. Both Babette and Greta now live in Germany, and are still politically active in the anti-Communist camp.
Next in importance to Babette came Otto Katz. Otto was Willy's righthand man, and his perfect cornplement; he had all the abilities that Willy lacked, and vice versa. Willy was a rugged Ieader, Otto a smooth and slick operator. Willy looked like a master-cobbler in a Thuringian village-one could imagine him sitting on a low stool, with a leather apron, driving tacks into an old boot with the energy of a sledge-hammer. Otto was dark and handsome, with a somewhat seedy charm. He was the type of person who, when lighting a cigarette, always closes one eye, and this habit became so fixed with him that he often closed his left eye while thinking out a problem even when he was not smoking. Willy did not speak a word of any language except German; Otto spoke fluent French, English, Russian and Czech. Willy was unable to write a single coherent paragraph; Otto was a glib journalist who had written and edited several books, all but one anonymously. (Neun Maenuer im Eis, Berlin, 1929. The Brown Book of the Hitler Terror (anonymous), London, r933 The Reichstag Fire Trial-the Second Brown Book of the Hitler Terror (anonymous), London, r934. Hitler Prepares for War-The Third Brown Book (anonymous), London, 1936. The Nazi Canspiracy in Spain by the Editor of the Brown Baok of the Hitler Terror London, I937) He came from Prague, had been business manager of a famous Liberal weekly in Berlin-Leopold Schwarzschild's Das Tagebuch--then manager of Erwin Piscator's Communist stage productions; then manager of one of the Muenzenberg Trust's publishing firms; then manager of Meshrabpom-Film in Moscow (where I had met him for the first time); then, during his years in Paris, organiser of the World Relief Committee, organiser of the Spanish Relief Comnuttee, director of the Spanish News Agency, and dispenser of the Loyalist Government's secret propaganda funds for French newspapers and politicians. He was the invisible Willy's roving ambassador, and made periodic trips to England and to Hollywood to collect funds, and to organise 'anti-Fascist' committees. He had political contacts everywhere; he was attractive to women, particularly to the middle-aged, well-intentioned, politically active type, and used them adroitly to smooth his path.
One of Otto's tasks was, of course, to spy on Willy for the apparat. Willy knew this, and did not care. Willy needed Otto, but he hardly bothered to disguise his contempt for him. Once, when I asked Willy where he had first met Otto, he said in his cosy Thuringian drawl: `I fished him out of the Landwehr-canal.' The Landwehr-canal in Berlin was a narrow waterway, conveniently situated for the dumping of corpses and for committing suicide. Apparently Otto, in the early 'twenties, had got himself into some financial jam and told Willy that Willy must either give him a job, or he would drown himself in the canal. When Willy broke with the Comintern in I938, Otto was the first to desert him-as everybody had expected. And when fate caught up with Otto in 1952, and he was hanged in Prague on the absurd charge of being a British spy and a Zionist conspirator, not a single voice was raised in his defence among his former friends, associates and political contacts.
In spite of all his seediness, Otto was, paradoxically, a very likeable human being. He had the generosity of the adventurer, and he could be warmhearted, spontaneous and helpful--so long as it did not conflict with his interests. I despised and liked him at the same time. During my imprisonment in Spain he let loose an international campaign for my liberation which was quite out of proportion with my importance to the Party. On my return from prison he stood at the Gare du Nord with a huge bunch of flowers, and our embrace, on that occasion at least, was one of real fraternal warmth. It was also Otto who, moved by a kind of distressed sympathy, made a remark to me that I never forgot, and that I have quoted in Arrow in the Blue: `We all have inferiority complexes of various sizes, but yours isn't a complex --it's a cathedral.'
My most vivid memories of Otto do not relate to politics, but to occasional meetings early in the morning in the food market of the Rue de la Convention. I was then a bachelor who did his own shopping, and Ilschen, Otto's pretty little wife, liked to sleep late in the morning; so in the crowded market of our popular quartier I often ran into an unshaven and tie-less Otto, the collar of his jacket turned up, with a net shopping-bag in his hand, bargaining with a fishwife, his left eye shrewdly closed, and displaying the same earnest charm that I have seen directed on other occasions at Miss Ellen Wilkinson, M.P., or Mlle. Genevieve Tabouis, columnist-oracle of the defunct Oeuvre. I should add that these relationships were purely functional, Otto's interests being entirely concentra
ted upon the Popular Front or the fish, as the case may be.
Our friendship, however, only began at a later period. At the beginning we did not get on well, and it was Otto who swiftly and smoothly brought my career as a`Muenzenberg-man' to an end. Given the atmosphere of court intrigue and favouritism that surrounded Willy, it was inevitable that Otto should regard me as a potential rival. We were both multilingual, we both had a bourgeois background and useful contacts in the non-Communist world, and we were both efficient, dynamic and alert. Such types are rare in 'he Communist Party, for they cannot stand its rigid discipline and usually leave after a short time. But there the parallel ended, for Otto had political ambitions whereas I had long realised my total unfitness for a political career. As far as the Party was concerned, my only ambition was to serve--to be `exploited by the Party', as the official slogan had it. This urge for subordination and anonymous usefulness was obviously the reverse of a character consumed by ambition and vanity in other fields; but Otto could not be expected :o know of this peculiarity, and to believe in the sincerity of my motives. As For Willy, he knew that Otto would betray him before the Kremlin-cock crowed thrice. But Willy, who had an unerring instinct for character, also sensed the element of puritanism and naivete in my relationship to the Party--and decided that just because of that I would never become a first-rate Muenzenberg-man'. Engaged in a constant struggle against the bureaucracy, Willy could not afford to have puritans and innocents in his entourage. By the nature of things he had use for only two types: men like Otto about whom he had no illusions and with whom his relations were based upon a calculated give-and-take; and men like Hans and the Three musketeers, who were blindly and unconditionally devoted to him. A psychological freak of my kind was obviously unfit for the high-powered, stream-lined Muenzenberg Trust.
The verdict in the Reichstag Trial was announced two days before Christmas 1933. Once the trial was over, the usual anti-climax set in. The Second Brown Book-Dimitrov contra Goering-was being prepared. The newspaper cuttings, documents and pamphlets in our offices had grown to huge bulk, and Willy decided to expand them into an Anti-Fascist Archive, which in turn was expanded into a Free German Library.(The latter, housed on the Boulevard Arago, was also the headquarters of the illegal French branch of the International Workers' Aid.) I was assigned to work in the Archive, which I liked well enough. Yet it was an evident demotion, and I felt that my days as a Muenzenberg-man were numbered.
I could probably have succeeded in neutralising Otto's jealousy and keeping my unobtrusive job in the Archive. But I was faced with a more important problem on a different level. For the first time I had become a professional Communist, a salaried employee of the Party. Officially, of course, I was employed by the `World Committee for Relief', but in fact I was paid by IWA, that is, with Party money; my situation was that of a Party official delegated to work at a`front' organisation. And this idea went strongly against the grain. I had never wanted to become a party bureaucrat, and I had a deep aversion to all kinds of political officialdom. It dated perhaps from my Zionist days, when I had learnt to despise the self-important, inflated bureaucrats of that movement. It had deepened when I had come to know the machinery of Comintern politics. I wanted to live for the Party, not off the Party; I wanted to be an amateur Communist, not a professional.
It was an illogical attitude for a Marxist, an expression, no doubt, of `petit-bourgeois romanticism', and in fact quite heretical in view of Lenin's insistence on the need for `professional revolutionaries'. But I could not help it. The atmosphere in the Muenzenberg Trust was more liberal and easygoing than in an orthodox Party office, and one need not be afraid that an uncautious remark would be held against one on the day of reckoning. Nevertheless I felt that after a few years as a`Muenzenberg-man', there would be little left in me of what indepcndence and self-respect I possessed.
I was at a crossroads. Either I must make a career in the Muenzenberg Trust, as I had once done in the Ullstein Trust, and live as a professional Communist; or I must make a living by some other means, and regain my financial independence. I felt that the whole of my future depended upon this choice; and as at every similar turning-point, the decision made itself, without conscious weighing of pros and cons on my part. Early in 1934 I resigned from the one and only salaried Party job that I have ever held, and for the time being, parted company with Willy and Otto, without arguments or bitterness.
XIX. Introducing Dr. Costler
HAVING decided not to make Communism my career, I now settled down and wrote two books in quick succession. One was my first novel and was never published; I shall come back to it later. The other was published under the pen-name `Dr. A. Costler' and became at once an international best-seller. Moreover--such is the irony of fate--it has remained the only book of mine that met with an unanimously friendly reception. Even critics who find all of Mr. K.'s books detestable, found for Dr. C.'s book nothing but praise. I am quoting some comments in the footnote.' The reader will find this self-glorification more pardonable when he learns that the book in question, published under the names of `Drs. A. Costler, A. Willy and Others', bore the title The Encyclopcedia of Sexual Knowledge.
It was the first of an anonymous trilogy which in some respects has become a standard work in its field. The full title of the second book was `Sexual Anomalies and Perversions, Physical and Psychological Development, Diagnosis and Treatment, a Summary of the Works of the Late Professor Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, President of the World League for Sexual Reform, Director of the Institute for Sexual Science, Berlin, etc., Compiled as a Humble Memorial by his Pupils and edited by Norman Haire, Ch.M., M.B., President, Sex Education Society; Editor, Journal of Sex Education, London. A Textbook for Students, Psychologists, Criminologists, Probation Officers, judges, Educationalists, and all adults.'
The title of the third book was, in the original French edition, L'Encyclopedie de la Famille; it had in England a curious publishing history about which I shall speak later.
The first book contained chapters by two other authors; the second I wrote alone; the third contained chapters by Manes Sperber (who had been a practising psychotherapist before he made his reputation as a novelist).
All three books were written between 1934 and 1939, in the intervals between various political jobs, imprisonments, and the writing of books under my own name.
The Encyclopaedia of Sexual Knowledge consisted of six parts. The first dealt with the physical and psychological manifestations of the sexual drives from childhood to maturity; the second with the physiology and psychology of love; the third with pregnancy and childbirth; the fourth with impotence, frigidity and other common disturbances; the fifth with the more common sexual aberrations; the sixth with prostitution and venereal diseases. Parts three and six were written by a German specialist, Dr. Levy-Lenz (whose name appeared in the French edition as `Lery-Lenz'), and the chapters on prostitution by the publisher (who appeared among the authors as `A. Willy').
The second book of the trilogy was what its title said, a condensation of the works of Magnus Hirschfeld, during his lifetime the leading authority in his field. The `pupils' who appear as author was I, but the English edition was considerably enlarged and revised by the editor, Norman Haire.
The third book was a manual of the psychology of marriage, written mainly from the point of view of the Adlerian school (Manes Sperber, Fritz Kuenkel). To this the publisher of the English edition added, without my knowledge (I was in a concentration camp when the book went to press), a rehash of the physiological chapters of the first book and a number of additional chapters; he then published the manuscript under a different title.
My reasons for writing these books were twofold. First, I had somehow to earn a living during the starvation years of exile. Secondly, my passion for writing popular science had never died completely, and, among all sciences, the science of sex is paradoxically the least known.
My first contact with sexology dates back to the days when I was scienc
e editor at Ullsteins. In the spring of 1932, a short time before I lost my job, I studied for several weeks the admirable work done in Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld's Sexualwischenschaftliches Institut. In view of the reputation which the Vossisclte Zeitung enjoyed, I was allowed to be present at a number of exploratory interviews and therapeutic sittings with typical patients. To remain inconspicuous, I was given a white overall and introduced as the doctor's assistant--that is how the future Dr. Costler came into being. The patients were ordinary people who would pass unobserved in the anonymous mass of any great city. I particularly remember a young and pleasant electrical engineer, a huge, jovial railway porter, and a middle-aged accountant. The young engineer was a repressed homosexual who had never heard of homosexuality; he thought himself a criminal or, at least, mentally deranged, had twice tried to commit suicide and suffered from chronic fainting fits. The Herculean railway porter was a pseudo-hermaphrodite. The accountant suffered from ejaculation praecox, a common nervous disorder which had wrecked his otherwise happy marriage. And so it went on. I had read Freud and Adler and Jung and Steckel, but I had never imagined how many hidden tragedies cross one's path every day in the streets; and when it came to statistics, the extent of the sexual mass-misery was quite staggering. Twenty years later, the Kinsey report came as a revealing shock to the American public. But in 1932, the basic data on the modern emotional plague could already be found in Hirschfeld's Berlin institute. The chaotic social conditions in Germany before the Nazis took power, the despair, nihilism, and nearhysteria of large sections of the people, had naturally deepened the crisis in mores and made it appear in an even more lurid light.