Winter, page 41
‘Leave the presidency vacant, what a great idea’
It wasn’t turning out to be the successful dinner party that Inge had planned and she was unhappy. It was the first time that they had had guests in this new Berlin apartment that had been redecorated to their own wishes, and she’d had her dress made specially for the occasion. It was a long slinky bias-cut gold satin gown that hugged her figure. Sleeveless, with a plunging neckline, it revealed her wonderful skin. Inge had invited her sister Lisl with her husband, Erich Hennig. The guest of honour was to be Reichsminister Fritz Esser, now one of the party luminaries, a member of the cabinet, and a close associate of the Führer. But Fritz Esser had sent a huge bunch of flowers and a note that said he was delayed in meetings at the Reichskanzlei and wouldn’t arrive until after dinner.
‘It’s because the President is so sick,’ Inge explained to Erich, her brother-in-law, as if she was well informed about the state of President Hindenburg’s health. ‘I feel so concerned about the Führer. He looks tired.’ The two sisters always spoke of Hitler as a couple of starry-eyed schoolgirls might speak of an adorable hockey coach. It was a competition between them, a contest in which a curiously large proportion of Germany’s female population also participated.
‘I know,’ said Lisl Hennig. ‘We’re hoping Erich will play before the Führer next year at the Bach Festival in Leipzig.’
Lisl was always saying that her husband would be playing at one of the concerts Hitler attended. It would be impetus enough to put Erich Hennig far ahead of his rivals. But Adolf Hitler did not attend many such musical events, and Erich’s career was at present in the doldrums. Hennig’s piano recitals, and his occasional performances with large orchestras, were to be heard in far-off German provinces, while Berlin’s concert halls were monopolized by more famous performers of a previous generation.
In the hope of pleasing his musical guest, Pauli said, ‘Fritz Esser was with the Führer at Bayreuth last week. They saw Das Rheingold. Fritz said it was the best ever.’
It proved not so pleasing. ‘Fritz Esser!’ said Hennig contemptuously. ‘And how many other productions of Das Rheingold has he seen?’
Pauli smiled and poured more wine. Inge had always said the Hennigs were jealous of Pauli’s longterm friendship with the very influential Fritz Esser. To say nothing of Pauli’s regular meetings with Heydrich, Himmler, and Josef Goebbels. Perhaps it was true.
It was a warm summer evening, uncomfortably warm, and the Winters’ apartment had the windows open to catch the breeze. Their new cook was determined to show her skills for such a celebrated guest and had produced an exquisite meal of fresh tomato soup, trout and then roast beef, with Pauli’s favourite chocolate cake to follow.
The absence of Fritz was a disappointment to all, but it gave the two sisters a chance to talk about family matters. The Hennigs now had a four-year-old son, and their present apartment was not big enough. Also Frau Wisliceny had died the previous month, and now that the initial shock was over they were able to discuss more practical problems.
‘Papa has enough money,’ said Lisl Hennig. ‘He has the pension and his investments.’
‘But not enough to keep that big house going,’ added Erich Hennig quickly. Lisl and Erich had discussed it before coming tonight, thought Pauli. Erich was shrewd. Peter had always hated him, of course, and sometimes Pauli could see what his brother disliked. Politics, business, or the custody of his father-in-law’s house, Erich Hennig would always manage it to his own advantage.
‘He told me he wanted to go in one of those new service apartments round the corner, on Prenzlauer Promenade,’ said Pauli in an innocent voice.
It amused him to see that this had exactly the effect he expected. ‘One bedroom, one bathroom, one drawing room and a tiny little kitchen!’ said Erich excitedly. ‘He’d go crazy in a tiny place like that.’
Just to keep Erich agitated, Pauli said, ‘He said he’d eat most of his meals downstairs in the restaurant.’
‘Ridiculous!’ said Erich Hennig. ‘He says that now, but wait until he’s tried it for a few months.’
It was quite amusing to bait Erich, thought Pauli. He decided to memorize every word: it would amuse Peter no end. ‘But he eats in restaurants now,’ said Pauli. ‘He likes restaurants. Even before your poor mama died, they went to restaurants a lot.’
Inge knew what Pauli was doing, of course, and now she indicated that it had gone far enough. ‘Let’s hear what Lisl thinks,’ said Inge.
‘We were thinking of moving in with Papa,’ said Lisl. ‘He needs someone to look after him. He could eat with us, and we could see to his laundry and so on. The maid we have is a wonderful laundress. She even does Erich’s dress shirts for his concert performances.’
‘That would mean a lot of extra work for you,’ said Inge. ‘It’s such a big house.’
Lisl said, ‘It wouldn’t mean any extra work. We’d keep Papa’s two girls, so we’d have three staff.’
‘Couldn’t Papa move to your apartment?’ said Pauli.
‘We’re too cramped already,’ said Erich.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Lisl. ‘Papa’s house is partly Inge’s; of course it is.’
‘Professor Wisliceny is getting old,’ said Erich. ‘He can’t last that much longer.’
Lisl said, ‘When Papa dies, Inge, then we wouldn’t expect to keep the house.’
Erich was not prepared to be a party to such rash and selfless promises. He said, ‘On the other hand, looking after your father will be a lot of extra work for Lisl.’
‘She just said it wouldn’t be any extra work,’ said Pauli.
‘Be quiet, Pauli,’ said Inge. She’d already been considering how much to spend, and where to invest the remainder of the proceeds of her share of the big Wisliceny house. Similar houses round the corner from Papa in Kant Strasse, were fetching high prices nowadays. The Ku-damm area had gone up and up. Some speculator would buy it to convert to apartments, or even into a hotel.
‘We need a room for our little one and two rooms for the nanny,’ said Lisl. ‘And it would help Erich to prepare for his concert.’
‘What concert?’ asked Inge.
‘Erich has this wonderful chance to play the Mozart wind quintet in Breslau,’ said Lisl. ‘But the new tenants downstairs from us have been complaining about the piano.’
‘If you are thinking of having wind quintets playing there, you’ll have Professor Wisliceny’s neighbours complaining, too,’ said Pauli.
‘It’s the Köchel 452,’ said Erich Hennig slowly and patiently. ‘Piano with wind instruments. I would only be practising the piano part. We have rehearsal rooms for the ensemble.’ He smiled as a children’s photographer smiles at a particularly difficult sitter.
‘In Papa’s house the walls are so much thicker,’ said Lisl resolutely. ‘Think of the times Mama had musical events there.’
‘If Papa agrees, then of course you must,’ said Inge suddenly. ‘You need the extra rooms.’
Pauli looked at her with some surprise, but Inge always gave in to her younger sister, or so it seemed to him. He wondered if that was the way other people saw the relationship between him and Peter.
‘Thank you, Inge,’ said Lisl.
‘We’ll drink to it,’ said Inge, reaching for the wine. In some ways the decision was a relief to her. It would mean that Papa would be properly looked after. She would have been worried to have her father living alone. ‘When you move out, we’ll sell and share the money.’ The Hennigs drank the wine, but Pauli noticed that they didn’t confirm the idea of eventually sharing the money.
After the Hennigs had gone, Inge seemed to regret her impulsive generosity. She was often like that: she gave away things she treasured and then regretted it, venting her consequent anger not upon herself but upon the person to whom she’d been so generous. Pauli poured a nightcap for her, and they sat together in the study while he glanced through some papers from his office.
‘They’ll never move out,’ said Inge sadly. ‘We’ll never see a pfennig from Papa’s lovely house.’ She was also thinking about the extra space they’d need when she had babies, but she didn’t say that.
‘I doubt if they’ll be able to afford it after your father goes, darling. It must cost a lot of money to keep up. I remember your father complaining about the enormous bill for that new roof a couple of years ago.’
‘Well, at least they won’t have the roof to worry about,’ said Inge.
Pauli laughed. His wife was determined to be downhearted.
‘I’m going to bed, darling,’ she said. ‘Don’t be long.’ She smiled and kissed him. Some husbands might have scolded a wife who’d so foolishly abandoned a large part of her inheritance, but Pauli would never look at it like that. Pauli didn’t care much about possessions, beyond his basic comfort. Sometimes she felt he wouldn’t even care if he lost her.
It was half past midnight when Fritz Esser rang the bell. Inge was in bed and asleep. Pauli was sitting in his tiny study, reading through a sheaf of regulations and amendments; these now appeared on his desk in ever-increasing amounts.
Fritz Esser stood in the hallway with a stupid grin on his face. At first Pauli thought he was drunk, but no one ever came drunk from a meeting with the Führer, except drunk with happiness.
‘I pissed myself laughing,’ shouted Esser as Pauli showed him into the little study and brought out a bottle of fine old French brandy. Fritz was forty last birthday. He laughed. Except for his dark eyes and his amazing collection of crowded, broken and irregular teeth, this man was scarcely recognizable as the lean youth who’d pulled the Winter boys out of the Baltic so long ago. Esser had put on weight to a point where his suits had to be tailored for him. They were all made by one of Berlin’s best tailors. Pauli’s weight went up and down, but Inge nagged him when he had to diet. Esser was unmarried and had no such restrictions. Still, Esser was tall and big-boned: he could put on this much weight without appearing ridiculous.
‘What happened?’ said Pauli.
‘It’s not what’s happened,’ said Esser, ‘it’s what’s going to happen tomorrow. The Chancellery is a madhouse: generals, admirals, Gauleiters and all the press and propaganda bigwigs.’
‘Hindenburg? Has he gone?’ Hindenburg was dying; everyone knew that it was just a matter of time.
‘Those army bastards,’ said Esser. He drank some brandy and laughed again. It was Fritz Esser’s naughty-boy laugh, with something of a snigger in it. ‘Those generals are too stupid to know when it’s raining. Which of those idiots chose tomorrow as the day for their big military celebration? They haven’t won a war for over half a century. They certainly can’t celebrate victory day for the last show – which they lost – so they decide to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the day the Kaiser ordered mobilization.’ He laughed again, a loud, hearty laugh that suited his big frame. He picked up the brandy bottle and poured more for himself. They knew each other well. In Pauli Winter’s house he didn’t have to ask for what he wanted: he helped himself. ‘Remember mobilization day, 1914?’
‘I remember,’ said Pauli. That fateful day in 1914 was etched deeply into his memory. At the Lichterfelde cadet school there had been a special parade. His parents had attended; Mama had cried.
‘So now all the toy generals are taken out of their boxes and wound up, ready to march backwards and forwards to the music of their tin-soldier bands. The generals have put on their nicest uniforms and groomed their pet donkeys…. And what’s going to happen? That inconsiderate old bastard Paul Ludwig Hans von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg is going to snuff it … and screw up the whole bloody show. Ha, ha, ha! It’s the best laugh I’ve had since they shot that bastard Röhm last month.’
‘Are you sure about Hindenburg?’
‘I was with the Führer when the latest doctor’s bulletin was delivered. The army will look such fools. Blomberg, that wonderful War Minister of ours, is in the Bendlerblock sending teleprinter messages to every army unit in Germany cancelling the celebration and ordering them to prepare funeral ceremonies instead.’
‘What did the Führer say?’
‘Oh, naturally, the Führer was very upset,’ said Esser, in a voice that indicated that the Führer wasn’t upset at all. ‘The Führer will become president now and probably combine the rank of chancellor with it.’
‘That would be illegal,’ said Pauli.
‘Are you sure?’ He stopped drinking, put the glass down, and wiped his mouth.
‘You should know that, Fritz. You were a deputy in 1932, when the Reichstag passed the amendment. It said that in the event of the President’s death, the duties of president will be performed by the president of the High Court of Justice until a new election is held.’
‘Authority doesn’t automatically pass to the Chancellor?’
‘No, it doesn’t.’
‘President of the High Court of Justice? You can’t be serious.’
‘I’m perfectly serious,’ said Pauli.
‘You’re forgetting “The Enabling Act”,’ said Fritz Esser. ‘That gives him power to do anything he wants.’
‘Except interfere with the authority of the presidency. That was specifically excluded.’
‘Jesus Christ! An election? That could ruin everything. I’d better go back and make sure the Führer knows.’
‘Sit down and relax a moment, Fritz.’ Fritz Esser cautiously sipped at his brandy and sat down to think it over.
‘Better not to become president,’ said Pauli, to make conversation. ‘If Adolf Hitler becomes president, he’ll have to take an oath to uphold the constitution. That will limit his powers.’
‘How could he avoid it?’
‘He could leave the presidency vacant and create a new office.’
‘For instance?’
‘Just call himself Führer, for instance.’
‘Führer, Yes, excellent. Chancellor and Führer – he could combine those roles. He’s sending for the service chiefs. He’s going to make them swear an oath of allegiance.’
‘That would be a way round it,’ said Pauli.
‘A way round what?’ said Esser.
‘Normally the army swears an oath of allegiance to the presidency and, as a safeguard, the President takes an oath to uphold the constitution. That’s how the system works.’
‘You mean, get the army to swear an oath to the Führer, then leave the presidency vacant, so that he doesn’t have to promise to uphold the constitution. That’s damned clever, Pauli. The Führer will like that.’
He picked up his glass, then, remembering his Führer’s abstinence, put it down again. ‘I’d better get going. There’s going to be the devil of a lot to do. It’s a good thing I didn’t let my driver off for an hour; I usually do when I come to see you.’
‘If you must go, Fritz.’
‘You’re too bright for that job you’re doing with the Gestapo, Pauli. I’ll have to find you something better than that.’
‘I’m okay, Fritz. It’s interesting and I’m good at it.’
‘Leave the presidency vacant – what a great idea.’
1936
‘Rinse and spit out’
‘Rinse and spit out,’ said Dr Volkmann. ‘Don’t eat on that side for an hour or two. I’ll need to see you one more time.’ He pressed the foot pedal, and the dentist’s chair slowly resumed the upright position.
‘Thank you,’ said Peter Winter. He washed out his mouth and wiped his lips.
‘You can go, Ursula,’ Volkmann told his nurse.
‘Thank you, Herr Doktor.’
When they heard the outer door close after her, Isaac Volkmann said, ‘Her mother’s sick, and I have no more patients this afternoon.’
Peter looked at the clock. It was only three-fifteen.
Volkmann said, ‘I’ve lost a lot of patients over the last six months. I’m seriously considering whether I should move out of the Ku-damm area.’
‘But your sort of patients expect to come here, to a smart address.’
‘The radio, film and theatre crowd, you mean? I’m afraid I’ve already lost a lot of those.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Peter.
‘I don’t exactly blame them,’ said Volkmann. ‘They depend on the Nazis for their living, and Goebbels is one of the worst anti-Semites of the lot. And now young Ursula has given notice. She’s been with me for over three years, but her father says he doesn’t want her working for a Jew.’
‘She’s lucky to have a job at all,’ said Peter.
‘She’ll get another job all right. The Nazis have reduced unemployment, Peter – we have to be fair about that.’
‘And how have they done it?’ said Peter. ‘By drafting men to work on the land or to build the Autobahnen. Or by giving them jobs working at the local Nazi Party office for little or no wages.’
‘I have to be thankful I’m not in the army or the civil service,’ said Volkmann, ‘or I’d be unemployed, too. At least they are allowing me to work.’
‘These people are mad,’ said Peter.
Volkmann smiled ruefully. ‘The funny thing is that in many ways I agree with this Hitler fellow. I am proud to be a German nationalist. I rescent every last clause of that damned Versailles Treaty. I, too, hate the communists, and despise the pseudo-intellectuals and their café-society Marxism. There are many ways in which I support Hitler; why must he pursue this insane vendetta against us?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Peter.
