My Battle Against Hitler
Page 25
It must also have been during this summer semester that we were invited for dinner at the exquisitely beautiful apartment of Coudenhove-Kalergi and his wife, Ida Roland. They lived in a building on a beautiful courtyard—probably once belonging to a monastery—located in the section of the Inner City between St. Stephen’s Cathedral and the Danube Canal. Not only was their apartment of particular architectural beauty, it was also magnificently decorated with beautiful furniture.
The deputy mayor, Lahr, had also been invited that evening. He told various Jewish jokes, imitating the wheeling and dealing ascribed to Jews, yet with a certain trace of anti-Semitism. I found him very unattractive and his anti-Semitic jokes made him even more so.
Something had just happened at the time which had been a great embarrassment for the Nazis. I regret that I no longer recall what it was, but there was a photo in the newspaper showing Ribbentrop*25 in London with a dumb look on his face because of the embarrassment. As we looked at the newspaper and the photo, I was quite vocal about my satisfaction over the disgrace for the Nazis and over the look on Ribbentrop’s face. To my great surprise, the deputy mayor declared that he could no longer tolerate my hostile stance toward Germany, my intolerable gloating.
It is difficult to describe how upset I was by his remarks. I responded in the sharpest of terms, countering that it was not Germany that was at issue but the criminal regime of Hitler and National Socialism. It was a very tense and awkward situation. Coudenhove said to Lahr, “To my mind, what stands between us and these people is the dead body of Dollfuss. And that is an unbridgeable gulf.”
It was very discouraging to see the naïveté of the various foreign ambassadors (with the exception of the American) toward National Socialism. I noticed this when I pointed out to [the French ambassador] Viscount de Montbas that Nazi Germany was every day becoming an increasingly serious danger to the rest of Europe. He said to me, “You exaggerate. Mussolini is presently far more dangerous. We are much more worried about him than about Hitler. After all, Hitler is only interested in Austria. He does not want anything from the rest of Europe.”
I was deeply discouraged by his political blindness and his failure to understand Hitler’s character. In 1936, Hitler had remilitarized the Rhineland. In 1935, he had introduced military conscription. Both were clear violations of the Treaty of Versailles. It was sheer blindness not to see that Hitler would never allow France to keep Alsace-Lorraine and that once he had taken Vienna, Czechoslovakia would also be in greatest danger. Naturally, Viscount de Montbas thought of himself as far more competent in political matters, and so all my attempts to convince him, to open his eyes, were of no avail.
Von Hildebrand spent the summer of 1936 in Italy.
Through Don Mario, I had already made some attempts to get an audience with Pope Pius XI. However, I soon realized that it would be fairly difficult given that a private audience indicates a friendly interest, even a personal initiative, on the part of the Holy Father (in contrast to public audiences) and also because politically speaking I was a very controversial personality. The German embassy at the Vatican would immediately have protested that such an enemy of the Third Reich had been received. Moreover, I did not represent Austria in any official capacity, which according to diplomatic code would have entitled me to a private audience.
To the Nazis I was guilty of high treason and hostile to National Socialism, while in the eyes of the Austrian government I was persona non grata. For this reason, Don Mario thought that the audience would in any case not be granted very quickly. I was also asked why I had requested an audience and whether there was anything in particular I wanted to bring to the Holy Father’s attention. I replied that I was only seeking his blessing for my difficult work.
By contrast, I did not have to wait to receive an audience with the Cardinal Secretary of State, my beloved friend Monsignor Pacelli. Once again he received me with great kindness and once more I experienced the irresistible charm of his unique personality. I spoke to him on this occasion about the cause of legitimism in Austria and its aspirations for the return of the Habsburgs. His reply, “magari, magari,” “if only, if only it could be so,” made clear how much he would welcome this and simultaneously how difficult and unlikely he considered it.
Yet we were in complete agreement about Nazi Germany. After all, the Church’s relationship to the Hitler regime was worsening by the day, with violations of the Concordat everywhere to be seen. The situation between the Church and National Socialism was much tenser than at the time of my last audience with Cardinal Pacelli a year and a half earlier, in January 1935.
From time to time Count Caspar Preysing would visit me. He was the financial manager for Prince Josias von Hessen-Waldeck, who had large estates in Lower Austria. On one of his visits he told me that he had recently become quite friendly with Eugen Kogon. It had already been quite some time since Kogon had distanced himself from the Schönere Zukunft. He was now, according to Preysing, a completely resolute opponent of the Nazis. Preysing was sure I would get along with him very well. While this news made me very happy, still I did not entirely trust Kogon.
Another frequent visitor was Prelate Ohnmacht, the secretary of Bishop Gföllner. Prelate Ohnmacht was in fact a real friend. He shared my political stance completely and we were of one mind in many things. Of course I traveled to Linz variously, to visit Bishop Gföllner, but also to give lectures.
On December 2, 1936, the Nazis revoked von Hildebrand’s German citizenship. Any property he still had in Germany was forfeit to the state.
* * *
*1 Hermann Görgen (1908–94), German Catholic social scientist, historian, and politician, had served as Foerster’s assistant, and was teaching in Salzburg in 1936.
*2 August Maria Knoll (1900–63), taught sociology at the University of Vienna.
*3 Alois Dempf (1891–1982), Catholic philosopher.
*4 Georg Bichlmair, SJ (1890–1953), preacher and spiritual director.
*5 Paul Valéry (1871–1945), leading twentieth-century French poet.
*6 Count Pál Teleki (1879–1941), geographer and politician, Hungarian foreign minister, and later prime minister.
*7 Oskar Halecki (1891–1973), a Pole teaching at Warsaw University.
*8 An international Catholic organization of university students.
*9 Thomas Mann (1875–1955), poet and author.
*10 Salvador de Madariaga y Royo (1886–1978).
*11 George Duhamel (1884–1966).
*12 Pseudonym for Alexander Emmerich (1902–70), who initially worked for collaboration between the Catholic Church and the Third Reich but later became a resolute opponent.
*13 Valentin Hóman (1885–1951), actually the minister of education.
*14 Of geography, in fact.
*15 Móric Esterházy (1881–1960).
*16 Tibor von Eckhart (1888–1972).
*17 Guido Zernatto (1903–43), poet and general secretary of the Patriotic Front.
*18 Franz von Hoesslin (1885–1946), conductor famous for his interpretations of Wagner and a longtime friend of von Hildebrand. Hoesslin’s wife was Jewish.
*19 Daughter of Cosima von Bülow (1837–1930). Cosima married Richard Wagner (1813–83) in 1870 following her divorce from conductor Hans von Bülow (1830–94). Eva von Bülow (1867–1942) married Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855–1927), whose writings influenced Nazi racism.
*20 Annette Kolb (1870–1967), German writer, pacifist, and friend of von Hildebrand.
*21 Felix Mottl (1856–1911), well-known conductor in Munich.
*22 Ludwig Derleth (1870–1948), writer and poet.
*23 The Italian word colonna means “pillar.”
*24 Josef Nadler (1884–1963), Austrian literary historian.
*25 Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946), Nazi ambassador to England in 1936, later served as German foreign minister. Ribbentrop was executed at Nuremberg in 1946.
1937
January 1937 saw various things
come to pass. First Dobretsberger, who was professor of economics in Graz, was nominated by Schuschnigg to become Minister of Social Affairs. We, meaning Klaus and I, welcomed this appointment because Dobretsberger was a radical opponent of National Socialism. He was also completely free of any pan-German tendencies. A great friendship soon developed between him and Dr. Simon, who sometimes invited us over together with Dobretsberger. I cannot say that I was particularly drawn to him as a personality, nor did I admire his intelligence as much as Simon did. Yet because of his stance toward Nazi Germany, his appointment as Minister was a very welcome development.
A beautiful memory from January 1937 was the lunch to which Kunwald invited Gretchen and me. Kunwald was a significant personality and a very cultivated man. As I mentioned earlier, he had been Seipel’s advisor on financial questions, while his student, Kienböck, had strengthened and stabilized the Austrian currency. But Kunwald was no longer in agreement with Kienböck’s approach. He said to me that a bumpy table must be sanded so that it can be used. But once it is smooth, one will sand away the entire surface of the table if one does not stop sanding. This is what he thought Kienböck was doing. In combating inflation, it was necessary for the government to save money and limit expenditures, yet now it was essential to proceed differently in order to stimulate the economy.
Speaking with Kunwald was always interesting. On this visit, he told me that he knew Giraudoux*1 and that he played a role in choosing the German title for his work The Trojan War Will Not Take Place, which Annette Kolb had translated into German. His stories about Seipel were always especially interesting. Apparently Seipel would never ask his advice before making decisions in financial and economic matters, but he would always come to Kunwald after deciding and would ask him to critique what he had done. Seipel hoped to draw lessons from this critique for the next time. Kunwald was a noble man, kind and free of prejudice, yet at the same time a keen observer of human nature. To be invited by Kunwald was always very interesting and will ever remain a lovely memory for me.
Oesterreicher intended during the course of May to present four lectures at the Pauluswerk. The lectures were to address the question of Israel, and the speakers envisioned were Senator Pant, myself, Fr. Stratmann, and Oesterreicher himself. My theme was “Israel and the West.” I began working on my talk far in advance, in part because I was fascinated by the subject, but also because Oesterreicher was constantly pushing me.
Every so often, von Hildebrand presents an episode out of chronological order. That happens in the following description of a crisis with Fr. Georg Bichlmair, SJ, which developed in the Pauluswerk already in late 1935 and early 1936. The lecture series von Hildebrand describes above and returns to below took place in May 1937.
During this time, a crisis broke out at the Pauluswerk. Fr. Bichlmair struck upon the unfortunate idea that one should tolerate a certain anti-Semitism in Catholics infected by Nazism to prevent them from falling away from the Church. This despite the fact that he himself was a great friend of the Jews and directed many Jewish converts. It was just another manifestation of the disastrous old idea that compromise can keep people from falling away. The same logic had led to past compromises with nationalism in various points, just as it had with the idolization of science or with the Zeitgeist.
Fr. Bichlmair thought that by allowing for a moderate anti-Semitism one could prevent many people from making a break with the Church. And so he began presenting ideas much like those already introduced by Fr. Schmidt, SVD, who had made a distinction between Jews baptized “lying down” and “standing up,” that is, baptized as infants and as adults. I already described that episode, which took place already in the fall of 1933. Being the vice president of the Pauluswerk, Fr. Bichlmair’s position set off a great uproar within the organization. I was especially upset.
Having not yet committed his views to print, he read us the article he wanted to publish at a meeting of the Pauluswerk. Fr. Schmidt was there and, as far as I can recall, also present were Abbot Peichl, who was president of the Pauluswerk, Spiegler, Spitzer (nicknamed “Monsignor Spitzer”), Oesterreicher, who was director of the Pauluswerk, and myself. There were surely others, but I no longer remember them.
After he read his article aloud, I pressed my objections to Fr. Bichlmair in the most forceful of terms. I pointed to the objective falsehood of his proposal, the betrayal which it represented in light of the present rise of National Socialism, and how hopeless it was that it would prevent Catholics from falling away. For what good is obtained when people who consider themselves Catholic and who still receive the sacraments adhere to ideas that are incompatible with Christ? Is it not much worse when people who consider themselves Catholic, and present themselves so, have fallen prey to the heresy of racism? I pleaded with him not to publish the article.
Oesterreicher spoke far less sharply than I, yet he too advised against publishing the article. Spiegler said, “I am happily married to an Aryan woman. The ideas you have presented, Reverend Father, have deeply upset me and can only bring about harm.” I cannot remember if Fr. Bichlmair responded to our request.
In any case, he did publish the article, which naturally meant that he could no longer remain vice president of the Pauluswerk. He resigned and Alois Wildenauer, the excellent provost of the Votive Church, was chosen to fill his position. We dedicated an entire issue of the Ständestaat in response to the position expressed in Fr. Bichlmair’s article, which is to say, all the articles in our issue were focused entirely on the refutation of anti-Semitism. I wrote an article, as did Dr. Missong and others.
Von Hildebrand would respond to Fr. Bichlmair in his essay “False Fronts” in 1936: “Bichlmair’s attempt to ‘take the wind out of the sails’ of National Socialism … obscures the clear, classical, Catholic point of view,” he wrote. “The only effect of this lecture will be to allow those Catholics who are infected by the errors of the present day to abandon themselves with a good conscience to their un-Christian attitude toward the Jews.”
During the spring (I no longer recall exactly whether it was before or after Easter), a Hungarian journalist invited us to a meal together with Toynbee*2 and his wife. I was happy to get to know him, having heard about him, though I had yet to read anything by him. He had come to Austria to get a sense for the political situation, and also because of a book on church and state (or something along those lines) which he was supposed to publish. He was not writing the book himself; rather, it was a study being published by his department which one of his assistants was writing. Toynbee was just the official editor.
I was thus very interested to speak with him about Austria and also about National Socialism and the danger it posed for Europe. Both for the sake of the truth and also for the sake of Austria, it was very important that the English have an accurate perception of the Nazis, and Toynbee was a man who exerted a certain influence on public opinion in England. His wife, I had previously been told, had become a Catholic. She was the daughter of the famous philologist Gilbert Murray.*3 I had a very good conversation with Toynbee, who told me that his assistant, who was working on the study, would be visiting Vienna. He added also that his assistant was a Catholic and that this would enable us to get along well and greatly facilitate our conversation. But this turned out not to be the case at all, as I will explain.
I invited Toynbee and his wife to my next political afternoon (or was it in the evenings at that time?). He came and was a lively participant in the conversation. He seemed to understand well the danger of National Socialism, and also how disastrous it was to believe that one could pacify Hitler with concessions or rely on any formal agreement with him. Despite seeming to understand all this well and sharing our perspective entirely, nevertheless on his return journey through Prague Toynbee said to Beneš,*4 that he should give another chance to Henlein,*5 the leader of the National Socialist Germans in the Sudetenland. Beneš was quite right to notice that Henlein represented an increasing danger for Czechoslovakia and was thus
looking for a way to fend him off.
Toynbee’s “still give him a chance” revealed that he had not understood the true nature of National Socialism. He apparently believed it was possible to reason with people who belonged to a totalitarian party, approaching them, as it were, in a spirit of noblesse oblige. This, of course, was the classic misunderstanding of the nature of National Socialism and Communism.
After some time—perhaps three weeks later—I received a visit from Toynbee’s assistant. He complained that he had had to wait so long for an audience, while Papen had received him in the friendliest manner without delay. He then told me how much Papen had helped him understand that Catholicism and National Socialism were in no way separated by an irreconcilable antithesis. How could a person possibly be at odds with Catholic teaching by having a strong sense of national identity and by recognizing the undeniable significance of racial difference? After all, he himself would be quite unhappy if his son were to marry a black woman.
It is not hard to imagine the distress I felt at his words. I tried to show him the incompatibility between Catholic teaching and biological materialism, which forms the foundation of National Socialism. I cited the words of Secretary of State Pacelli (I no longer remember whether the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge had appeared; if so, then I quoted from it as well*6). I pointed to Paragraph 24 of the NS Platform, which states: we accept Christianity to the extent that it agrees with Nordic sensibilities.