[From "Die Männerinsel" pp330-338]

[p. 330]

Six Months in Holland.

"Rotterdam, May 1918"

The next morning we left the hospitable ship, which now turned back to England; we were loaded into a train, which took us to the Maas railway station, where vendors offered us mountains of boiled eggs and cakes, a sight which for years we had known only in dreams of paradise. Altogether a fairy tale; after three-and-a-half years, surrounded by the surge of World War, there was still this island of plenty! And the willingness and responsiveness to marvel at everything and to receive everything that remained left here of the peaceful enjoyments of life. Who can blame us, if we attempted to take head-dives, one after the other, in our appetite for life, and pressed tight hands on our ears, so as not to hear anything from another world? Already we've had the stay in the hotel, no blowing of whistles in the morning, no roll call, no barbed wire. To see the shops full of goods, the bakeries, where they still have cream puffs and chocolate marshmallows, the range of tobaccos, everything and anything in abundance; how can that be possible after three-and-a-half years of war! [p. 340]

I have to present myself each week at the German district office in Schiedam, that's all. Yesterday I had the pleasure of seeing once more Herr von Beyerheim and Herr von Br., who have found accommodation in Amsterdam. Perhaps I'll move across to be with them.

I have just come back from Scheveningen. All the English officers strolling about in Khaki there annoyed me intensely. I sat down at a table in one of the big hotels to take my midday meal, when a real-live Tommy handed me the menu; I had inopportunely gone into a mess for English officers and made a speedy about-turn. Wherever you turned your eye, on the pier as well, there were only English military men of all kinds. That was too much for me, I set off out again. … In the "Rottekade",ⁱ the civilian internees were officially informed that they could claim free medical treatment, and could arrange for up to five hundred marks to be sent to them from home every month, with no loss in currency exchange.ⁱⁱ

*

"Rotterdam, May 1918"

In the meantime, I have been visiting many comrades in the German Camp at Wolfhezen.ⁱⁱⁱ It lies close to Arnhem, not far from the German border. Belgian workmen, who were living in railway carriages, were still busy, putting up the huts, laying down duckboards and palisades all around. It put me very much in mind of Knockaloe, only that here everything stands in deep sand, instead of on ploughed fields. In any case, the Englishmen's accommodation on the beach at Scheveningen is nicer and healthier. Stier, too, was there, the Pomeranian from the Alexandra Palace,^iv who was not, however, permitted to leave the camp, since he had made two failed attempts at escape. I do not understand this punishment. I stayed the night in Arnhem [p. 341]. The following morning, a lady, who was taking her breakfast next to me with her husband, inquired: "Oh, you speak German, how nice to hear it again from time to time." We got into conversation, he was a German merchant, who gave me his address in Amsterdam. Now I am setting off for Carl Hagenbeck's Circus from Hamburg. … One piece of joyful news: Soissons is in German hands.

*

"Amsterdam, June 1918"

The days went past, uncounted. I have moved across to Amsterdam and am living with Herr von Beyerheim and Herr von Br., on the old Kloveniersburgwal.^v The window looks down on the still waters of a canal; down below barges with flowers and vegetables are being unloaded, I am sitting at the window and smoking my chibouk and feeling the time ticking away in my body. The first intoxication of the new way of life is fading away; unfortunately that happens when you become accustomed all too quickly to things that are. On the window sill, there is a rod of Asclepius,^vi with its regular clusters of blooms moulded in cold porcelain, whose stiff and hard petals no flow of air is able to move; next to it parades an Easter-Lily Cactus,^vii succulent, oozing confidence, covered absolutely everywhere with warts and excrescences, and putting out the first brick-red blossoms. In front of me lies a letter of Georg Rosen's, which he wrote from the Front on captured English note-paper; there all Hell is loose. … The Dutch hospital ship, which brought us from England, has been sunk; on it was Lord Newton, who was travelling to The Hague for reasons of the prisoner-exchange negotiations.^viii. One"s thoughts wander over the nearby frontiers of our oasis, to where the World War rages worse than ever. It is true that the Germans are forcing their way with fearsome struggles out to the west, and every ten minutes a gigantic shell roars across to Paris, but no end can as yet be foreseen. In the meantime, coupons for butter and bread have been introduced even here, together with three meatless days. [p. 342]

Today all three of us had to go to Rotterdam, where General R. had something to say to us in the German Clubhouse. In frockcoat and top hat, he came an hour later, and began: "Gentlemen, I trust you will forgive my late arrival on the grounds that programmes are normally set up so that people do not keep to them." Then he expatiated on how very much our fate was being taken to heart by the German Reichstag, but that all agreements in this connection had been sabotaged by Lord Newton.

We were surprised, however, that he made no mention of compensation, and that when his address moved on to the appalling conditions in Knockaloe, the General asked whether that Camp, too, was on the Isle of Man. A first-mate complained about the bad rations that were being given to the German internees in the Dutch camps. At any rate, "due notice was being taken of this", and the important discussion came to an end, sooner than people had expected.

The Austrians have suffered bloody losses and drawn back over the River Piave. On the Western Front between Mondidier and Noyon the fourth great Offensive is raging; every day I study the maps in the shop windows, which have little flags pinned on them and show the current positions.

*

"Amsterdam July 1918"

The Sultan has taken refuge in the realms of the Huris:^ix in plain German, he has died.

We have got to know a nice Dutch family, and on their advice have bought bicycles very cheaply at the flea market, for going out on excursions. Holland is really as small and flat as a board on a table-top . So, we went one day to Utrecht, where we visited the cathedral, which contains the hearts of the German Emperors, and also admired the ancient trees of the Mallybaan,^x [p. 343] which had been expressly spared by Louis XIV on his invasion of Holland.^xi On another occasion we cycled to Laaren,^xii the famous colony of painters, the Barbizon^xiii of Holland. Often our way was blocked by barbed-wire entanglements and defensive lines of spikes, as a last-minute attack by the Germans was feared. Hanging in the hotel were paintings by Liebermann and Mauwe, as well as by my great-uncle, Wilhelm Frey.^xiv On the way back, we passed Soesdyke, the summer residence of Queen Emma.^xv … A more major trip then took us all over Holland. First to Muider Slot,^xvi a chivalric castle, where Vondel,^xvii the great poet, used to live; then to Zaardam,^xviii where we visited the modest hut in which Peter the Great,^xix the ancestor of the Tsar who was murdered fourteen days ago,^xx worked as a carpenter. In Enkhuizen, one of those sleepy fishing villages, which had not changed since the days of Rembrandt,^xxi we went up to the top of the "Dromedary", ^xxii a fearsome tower, which commanded a view over the entire Zuider See.^xxiii A steamer brought us back to Friesland. We spent the night in Sloten in the "Inn of the Seven Forests", although it was surrounded by scarcely seven trees. Almost everywhere the people were unfriendly and dismissive, they all feared the fate of Belgium would befall them, and are furious about the rationing of food. We also passed through a wood, hidden away in which lay a great Camp of wooden sheds full of Belgian refugees. On the way, we came across many hordes of gypsies. Everywhere bulrushes were set out to dry on the houses, barking dogs chased after us, screeching flocks of seagulls pursued us. Over countless bridges, large and small, we came from Meppel to Gifhorn, the Dutch Venice. Sitting at the gate were old men, smoking clay pipes, new local costumes here again. In Goar, everyone wore wooden shoes and walked around in the house in their stockings. Most of the people had features that were very racially marked, heads which reminded you of ancient portraits of noble lords. They [p. 344] have been resident here since as long back as Roman times. After having our breakfast beneath a chestnut tree, we once more buckled up our bastwork bags and were off, cycling through unending heathland. At a lonely inn, we were taken by surprise by a rainstorm, but we still were able to reach Ommen, where there was not only a theosophical camp with Indian itinerant preachers, but a scout camp as well. Herr von Beyerheim treated us to German wine. We were sitting in an elder-flower bower. Swarms of gnats were dancing, swallows darted blissfully through the blue sky. We had of course agreed that on the trip out we would not speak of politics and war, but nevertheless we thought from deep within us with every stirring of joy all the more of the illusory present day, to which we were attempting devote ourselves. Why must Germany again and again repeatedly battle for its existence and legitimacy, while much smaller countries enjoy unchallenged their tremendous colonial riches? Herr von Beyerheim remarked somewhat mysteriously: "It is probably more important how a person or a nation takes its fate than how that fate is." A small ray of sunshine that had slid playing about hither and thither through the leaves suddenly disappeared; evening was coming on. At a bridge, we saw the west dissolving away in closing embers, the day burning up in absolute splendour. We gazed out into the evening, which was beginning to creep slowly over the weary earth; some miles to the east, where the first stars were standing, was Germany's frontier. … The following day, we reached Deventer, a completely quiet, tranquil town, and travelled on further in the evening to Amersfoort. The sky stood in deep transparency above us, magically illuminated by a distant invisible midnight sun, but then the moon came up and bestowed white dew on trees and on roofs. The following morning we stopped at a lake and rented a boat. Bitterns flew up out of the tall reeds, and the strange calls of the reed warblers^xxiv sounded out. We rowed around for three hours in [p. 345] the scorching summe heat, went for a swim and fed ourselves on boiled eggs and Deventer honey-cake.

Immediately on our return, we had to attend the Dutch Area-Command, where Belgian soldiers under a Dutch major were attending to business affairs. … Since my mother was intending to visit me, I had to obtain a certificate explaining that I was a civilian internee, so I went to the desk for the German Consulate. "No smoking" read the sign, but the staff were smoking, and no seat was on offer to any of the ten men waiting. Meyer, the Secretary, was on the telephone, talking to his lady-friend. When it was finally my turn, he shrugged his shoulders and said: "Can't do anything for you; try the legation." … Around four o'clock, a ring came at our door. A young chap was standing outside, and said he had come on foot from Germany, and was seeking help. The fourth one already. He had hear us speaking German, and had followed us. You hear all over the place that Holland is crawling with deserters and refugees. We are already in arrears with our rent, no money was coming from Germany, and the exchange rates up till now had the same losses as in England; that being the case, Herr Kööhler, the German merchant, gave us help. A new regulation prohibits any sale of meat until the end of August. Von Br. has procured himself an exotic lady-friend from Hagenbeck's circus.

*

"Amsterdam, July 1918"

A few days ago I went on my cycle to visit Hattem, the German camp near Zwolle, which is built on cleared forest ground. I came across many men I knew from Knockaloe, from Douglas, and even from the Royal Edward. The general mood was very subdued; the food isn't enough, and worries about the future depress one man as much as the other; only one or two stalwarts are planning to set up pig-farms in the West Indies, breweries in Abyssinia [p. 346], and journeys of adventure, all of them far away from Europe. One of them has even found a substitute for linseed oil, and wants to take out a patent on it. There was a lot of talk in the canteen about politics, about the strikes of the German munitions workers, and the mutiny in the French Army, as well as about Bolshevism, which would triumph in the end. There had already been fights between communists and loyalists. On the way back, I saw the massive Camp of wooden huts near Amersfoort, in which the new Belgian refugees were being housed. In the weekly newsreels in the cinema, you see them crossing the Dutch border in never-ending trains. The audiences get stirred up at this, and rant and rage against Germany. Everywhere you find English propaganda calendars and political tracts, which get sent free of charge by the British legation. A music-hall theatre, The Timbertown Follies, has been rented by the English, and plays to sold-out houses.^xxv

Yesterday we had to go to Leyden for medical examination. It was cow-market day in this celebrated university town, and the streets were full of cattle being driven through. We had to wait with a lot of other men in the operating theatre of the municipal hospital; officers dressed in civilian clothes were seen first. My turn came three hours later, I had to pay and say what's wrong with me. I said only that I had chronic headaches. Magic gone, my repatriation down the drain.

I was in The Hague. Georg Rosen, on leave, picked me up. He had been present at the big spring Push and gave me a lively description of what he had experienced. In a shop he bought himself a leather map case, since, as he told me, there was no more leather available in Germany. We walk through the famous old Binnenhof, where the Dutch Royal family has its residence and the States-General meet, and reached Vijferberg No. 8 in the building of the German legation. I said hello to Georg's parents and [p. 347] and was led through the splendid rooms. Dr. Rosen^xxvi explained that here the Great Elector had become engaged to Louise Henriette of Orange, and since then there had been little change. At table, he gave us more interesting details about his experiences at the Courts of Emperor Menelik, the Shah of Persia, and the last Emperor of Korea. We drank tea in the Chinese drawing room, where the carpet is three hundred years old. Later, we strolled through the town, and I thought of our school years in the monastery of Ilfeld.^xxvii Von Borcke, a third-former of those days, is now a lieutenant, von Falkenhayn has fallen, and Achim von Mei…. is an adjutant somewhere or other. In the Haagse Bosch,^xxviii all the many English officers and crew members disturbed the peaceful picture. In the evening, the Minister spoke of the final days in Lisbon, when warships shelled the German Embassy, and one shell had exploded in the bathroom. We spoke somewhat of the cholera, which had now broken out in Sweden, and of the third stage of the great German Offensive in France, which was now to begin. At nine o'clock, Georg took me to the train. He wanted me to come back for the concert by Edith Walker.^xxix I have received the certificate for the Pass; I hope Mama comes soon.

I have resumed my neglected studies once more; I am learning Dutch and engaging in the history of art, for which purpose the splendid museums offer the most excellent opportunity. The lively contact with the Mynssen and Köhler families is a pleasant change in the evenings. Von Br. is a strange fellow, his father has sent him at urgent request one hundred and fifty guilders, with which he bought a poodle and a Winchester rifle, which he wants to use in Sumatra to go tiger hunting. Herr von Beyerheim buys old paintings and is painting a portrait of me in oils.

In Kiev, General von Eichhorn has been murdered.^xxx

[p. 348]

"Amsterdam, August 1918"

My mother has written to me to say that it is no longer worthwhile for her to come, since she knows on excellent authority that we shall soon be exchanged. … The days are full of sultry thunderstorm weather, with stillness that oppresses one's breath before a storm. Thunder crashes down, clouds burst forthn; then there is sun once more, and evenings heavy with heat and plumes of fire in the west. The nights are full of shimmering moonlight, and are resplendent with stellar enigmas; I often go walking late in the evening in Vondel Park. … The 'Spanish Sickness' is already claiming as many victims as the War does daily. No longer any exchange of prisoners, because England wishes to deport the Chinese-Germans to Australia and Germany has raised a protest against this! On top of that, Germany is no longer guaranteeing free passage to the Dutch hospital ships, because England accuses it of having torpedoed the Koningin Regentes.^xxxi The poor twenty-four thousand internees on the Isle of Man alone have been stuck out there for four years, and are waiting there. The English Expeditionary Force on the Russian Murman Coast is said to be exerting hideous terror on the natives there.^xxxii… France has been calling up eighteen-year-olds to its forces, six months early. I saw a picture in the Illustrated Newspaper of Lloyd George, Clemenceau and Wilson as highwaymen, waiting for the German eagle of peace with daggers and revolvers, to strike it down.

*

We travelled to Arnhem to say hello to Count B……f and naval lieutenant Köl…, and stayed in the Hotel Netherlands. I visited Sonsbeek Park with its grottos and hermitages and a waterfall which you could walk under without getting wet. Lieutenant Köl…, who was pulled from the water by the English after they had sunk S.M.S. Mainz, and who had been interned with the son of Grand-Admiral von Tirpitz [p. 349] in Donington Hall, told us of a visit by his own father, a commercial advisor from Dresden, according to whom the shameless English hunger blockade was causing terrible devastations in Germany; even the critically ill could no longer get any substantial nourishment. And despite that, England behaves as if it"s a champion of culture against 'barbarism'! … The following day I visited Ellecom,^xxxiii where the splendid Middachter Allee^xxxivand the estates of Count Bentinck-Amerongen are situated. … In the evening we went to the Casseboom Music Hall, to hear the 'Tyrolean Singers'. The following day, we travelled to Nijmegen, where we visited the Falkenhof ^xxxvand the ruins of the Staufenpfalz.^xxxvi Charlemagne resided here; here the mighty Emperor Henry III had celebrated his marriage to the daughter of Canute the Great; here the Empress Theophano^xxxvii had died; and Barbarossa's wife given birth to Emperor Henry VI. We sat down in the Belvedere Tower and enjoyed a splendid vista across the Waal and up to the Rhine, and to the border of the German Empire. Germany was once here, too, until the Habsburg Emperor Charles V had passed on Holland, united with Burgundy, but separated from the empire, to his Spanish heir. … In the evening, we travelled back to Amsterdam, and a telegram was waiting for me there, telling me that my mother was also one of those ill.

The Germans are moving out of Bapaume; the English press cheered, saying that was the beginning of the end; the German newspapers are speaking of Hindenburg's strategic plans. … Today, on the birthday of the Dutch Queen,^xxxviii Herr von Beyerheim went to the German officers' quarters; he told them that the rabble had shouted out words beyond belief at the officers who had come in uniform. In the stadium, a major festival was being held. Barrel organs were playing dance music in every street. Everybody was hugging everybody else, and moving along through the Kalverstraat^xxxix in long parades, singing Oranje boven….^xl

[p. 350]

"Amsterdam, September 1918"

On Sedan Day, Péronne, too, fell into the hands of the English, but in the Cologne Newspaper there was a calming-down article. Von Br. has acquired the head of a hippopotamus and the head of a gorilla, and has given them to the Amsterdam Zoo; for which he was awarded a free pass, which designated him 'Serene Highness'. His friendship with the circus lady is, however, at an end.

*

I visited my acquaintances in Hattem Camp once again, and was intending to return by the four o'clock train, just as I noticed on the railway station at Apeldoorn that I had left my diary at the hotel. The later train unexpectedly made a detour via Utrecht. I discovered that the four o'clock train had derailed near Baaren, and that up to the present time as many as eighty dead had been ascertained. So I thank my diary for my life. … My letter to Field-Marshal von Mackensen^xli I found back on my table, marked as 'undeliverable'.

Everyone is talking about the totally unexpected Austrian peace proposal, which astonished Germany most of all, and borders on treachery; but the following day 'Hindenburg's call to last it out to the end' came in the newspapers; it was the answer to the politics of the Viennese Imperial Palace. Serious riots in Bristol, the populace attacked the harbour docking places and the cellars of the 'Rich'. Just carry on enduring, then hunger will conquer England. All the hospitals are full to the gunnels with 'flu cases, it's the Spanish illness, an influenza epidemic, which most affects the young and sees them off after only a week with complications of lung inflammation. I read Woodrow Wilson's arrogant dismissal of the Austrian peace note. … I feel very ill, I took four 'flu pills, instead of just two.

*

[p. 351]

"Amsterdam, October 1918"

The boys are throwing sticks up at the chestnuts to get them down from off the trees. Day closes its eyes earlier and earlier. Summery days are already alternating with cold nights.

The situation is serious, the German Offensive is now regarded as definitely failed; the old fighting spirit is unconquerable, but they say that Communist agitation is again threatening the munition supplies. Dark forces are at work in this, ones who wish to foil Hindenburg's appeal for holding on to the end, so as to allow themselves to grasp the power. … Professor Gianicelli has sent me an answer in Houston Chamberlain's name, saying that the great man is chair-bound and, almost paralysed, and can no longer hold a pen to write. I wonder whether I shall ever see him in Bayreuth. … Bulgaria is said to have dropped out, and the English are marching towards Damascus. General Allenby is praising "the brave Jews".

In the same way as just before the outburst of a mighty event of nature, a subdued heaviness of fate lies on the world, the signs of the time increase ominously, and you live only on the newspapers; which, like a flock of hideously screeching birds, squawk out prophesies, lies, rumours, and unfortunately also sometimes facts. Tsar Ferdinand^xlii has abdicated, riots in Berlin and Dresden, Prince Max^xliii is Reich Chancellor, many Socialists are Prussian ministers. Fifteen cases of Cholera in Berlin. Wilson is demanding: Impartial justice, no economic boycott.

In that regard: there has been an offer of armistice by the Central Powers to the United States.

The most abominable thing is, however, that the English, who are unashamed in waging four years of starvation-war on women and children, and who years ago accused Germany of having used poison gas, are now themselves reported as the actual ones who started the poison gas war. If this most craven of all human [p. 352] inventions really did find its first application with the English, on higher command of course, then England drops out without trace from the civilised world.^xliv

In his weekly reports, Davidson,^xlv the Jewish reporter on the Berlin Daily, explained with gestures, as though he himself were President Wilson, that the German offer of an armistice had no prospect whatsoever of success. … My mother wrote me she was well, but had been unable to obtain any time off for Holland.

Austria has been declared a State Federation; the Belgian and the English have re-conquered Ostend; and the Belgian king and queen are making their entry there. Enemy cavalry already in Bruges. Bad omens.

I visited the Mynssens, but they lay ill in bed; their housemaid died in the early morning. The schools are closed. I mind forces me involuntarily to think of one master of ceremonies, who said: "Shakespeare is dead already, and Goethe isn't alive any more, and I'm not feeling too well myself." I've got a sore throat, and a high temperature.

*

I escaped with a bout of tonsillitis. In the night, the house seemed to brood silently in secret threats around me, not a sound forced its way out from the lightless darkness. Dreadful dreams and visions tumbled after each other. The past opened up like an abyss and dragged images past me; then there came again a horrible clarity of cogitancy, and again a chaos of confused thoughts tumbled in on me. There was one time when I thought I was suffocating. It wasn't until the Empress's sixtieth birthday^xlvi that I was able to rise from bed again. In the evening, Lindemann, the deputy officer, paid us a visit, and gave us stories from the Battle of the Somme. We then discussed the speeches in the Reichstag by Prince Max, Payer, Westarp, Naumann and Haase, and Wilson's arrogant reply [p. 353] to Germany: "Get rid of autocracy, the Kaiser, and his military advisors!" In the meantime, Austria is falling apart, and the Croats have occupied Fiume.

Von Br. is taking a third-class stopping-train to Germany tomorrow; then from the border onwards, he"s going to have to stump up for his own fare. He has sold his bicycle and his dog. We had no bread, nor can soap be bought anywhere. … …

Von Br. has left, he had lung disease. The dear old princess, who even knew Wellington and Metternich, wrote to tell me she prayed every day of victory for the just cause, and she hoped she would still experience it before long; her brother, the late Reich Chancellor,^xlvii had always put his trust in God and had always said: "Germany cannot fall."

*

"Amsterdam, November 1918"

An ill-humoured wind is blowing the leaves off the trees. The sun doesn't break through the lead-grey haze until late; mist covers the Kloveniersburgwal canal. Leaves are also blowing off the tree of history, and behind the walls of mist events take place, which gather shape, and suddenly emerge out from the lead-grey haze, as facts: Ludendorff has had to go. Emperor Charles has fled with eighteen waggons and the Austrian treasure chamber to Gödöllö.^xlviii Count Andrassy^xlix has been banished from Vienna as a "troublesome foreigner". In all the German regions, "new men" are at the helm; you ask whether they will actually do anything: well, I don't believe they will. Everything is rolling downhill like a ball thrown into motion on an inclined plane, under its own weight. But in the West, the Front still holds, no enemy has as yet set foot on German soil…

The Kaiser is now placing his castles at the disposal of the Red Cross. Disturbances in Kiel, twenty-nine dead, Appeal [p. 354] of the German Government to the people against revolution; democracy demonstrations in Dresden, Stuttgart and Munich…

This morning, Herr von Beyerheim woke me with the latest news, that General von Winterfeld^l has left for the Armistice negotiations as one of the delegates. The Telegraaf reports serious rioting in the towns of the north German ports. The Socialists are still demanding immediate abdication of the Kaiser, who is in Spa. While the Italians have moved forward as far as the Brenner Pass, the Bavarians have marched into Innsbruck. Instructions are out for the 'Red Cross Flag'to be flown over the Kaiser"s palace in Berlin and on the churches. In the late evening, when we were waiting feverishly in the Café Schiller, another piece of news came in, saying that the Kaiser had asked the Socialists for more time to think things over, and that the time had been extended by one hour…

We had to go for another examination, this time in the military hospital. Again we were not put on the list, and our feet were really burning, more so than they had ever been before. The news went round the streets like wild fire that the Kaiser and the Crown Prince had abdicated, and that instead of a Reichstag, a "constituating power" was to be brought in. A soldiers'council in Schleswig-Holstein has declared its own government. Herr von Beyerheim rightly thought that all rebels would have to be gunned down with canister shot, and regiments formed from officers. … One piece of news followed another, the Duke of Brunswick^li has abdicated, General von Linsingen has had to retire.^lii It's just the Western Front that we get no news from, but it still stands like iron…

This morning the news was: "The Front is being left to its own devices. All twenty-three confederation-princes have been dismissed, Germany is a republic, street fights in Berlin." The day closed with the special edition: "Armistice", under eighteen appalling conditions, duration thirty days. We shall have to move out not only from France, Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, but from the left bank of the Rhine as well, while on the right-hand bank [p. 355] a neutral zone of up to forty kilometres^liii in depth will have to be set up. That's as far as the Romans got into Germany around two thousand years ago. If those are the conditions for a short armistice, then things can still arrive at that truly Gallic Vae victis,^liv unless Wilson keeps his word of an "impartial peace", and in his capacity of Lord of the New World, he also creates a New Europe. … I can't yet get to grips with this disaster, which rocks consciousness, just like being in the middle of a maelstrom, where no standpoint can be obtained. I only see all values tottering, plunging, disintegrating, and trust in all earthly justice and sense in history fading away. Now only feeling speaks … perhaps later, reason will come as well.

For a start, all prisoners of war and civilian internees are to be released … just not the Germans. The Kaiser has arrived at the home of Count Bentinck-Amerongen, where I was in August, the Crown Prince is at Zwallen Castle near Maastricht; the first report told us he had been shot while crossing the border. The Bavarian royal family are reported as having fled Munich in the middle of the night. Hindenburg remains "at the disposal" of the Workers'and Soldiers'Council, Ballin^lv and Dr. Adler^lvi have killed themselves, the garrisons at Potsdam and Spandau have gone over to the Reds. Württemberg is a republic of the Socialists. Ebert is Reich Chancellor. The Communist Central Office demanded by telegraph that Liebknecht be appointed Reich President. The events rush along so much that you can no longer follow them. It is just as though a vast ice sheet is cracking up and becoming a thunderous torrent.

Herr von Humboldt, the German Consul is urgently advising against all independent departures from Holland, since no trains are any longer running beyond the border. Today we see the first manifestos by the workers demanding a republic in Holland, and a dividing up of the big estates. [p. 356] Friesland wants to make itself independent. In Antwerp, too, the Red Flag was raised and soldiers were slaughtered. Revolution has broken out in Warsaw, and the council of the Regency has been dismissed. The German troops abandon Rumania. Hessen and Saxony are forming their own Free states; only the Grand Duke of Baden has not yet allowed himself to be removed. Liebknecht, from the balcony of the Kaiser"s Palace in Berlin, gave a speech on the international brotherhood of the Proletariat. Even the Pope has stirred himself and attacked his opponents. The English commander-in-chief of the South-West Asia troops has marched into Constantinople, and in London a banquet was put on in the Guild Hall, at which it seems Lloyd George and Balfour found things extraordinarily tasty. … I must forever think: if Hindenburg's last appeal for Germans to endure had been obeyed a few weeks earlier, then it would be in London and Paris that the Red Flags would be waving, and everything, everything would have happened the other way around. … I forced myself to read at night: it was the siege of Florence in 1530, in which Michelangelo took part.

Today we went to the coal distribution centre, the reason being that it is bitterly cold. From today on, the Germans have to pay twice as much as the Dutch, that's four-and-a-half guilders a hectolitre, despite the fact that it's coal which has been delivered by the German Government. I visited Frau Köhler, who was full of tears, saying that the German Empress and all the princesses were now in the New Palace, but without guards and entourage. The Austrian Emperor Karl did not abdicate until today! Austria wants to join the Reich! In Berlin there is already discord between Ebert and Liebknecht, the latter wishes to rule alone with the treacherous medium Rosa Luxemburg, who has been freed from the prison in Breslau. … No alcohol is being served anywhere in Holland, because there is fear of a revolution, people are waiting for the English to occupy the county, to suppress every disturbance. It said in the Telegraaf that Polish [p. 357] legionaries were on the rampage in Upper Silesia. The imperial generals who have changed sides had their weapons taken from them in Holland and were then interned by the local constabularies. … …

All Amsterdam is in uproar. A Jew called Weinberg has attempted to storm the Cavalry barracks with the mob, there were six dead and nine wounded. I saw the hussars brought in from Utrecht burst down the Overtoom^lvii with sabres raised, and the masses welcomed them with a hail of stones. In Brussels, too, they had Communist street fights and forty dead. On the other hand, the English King and Queen passed in triumph through London.

I discussed it with von Beyerheim, whether we wanted to make a dash across the border into Germany, but we were advised against doing that because every crossing of the border carries a prison sentence on it, and we were told that hundreds of people, amongst them soldiers'councils, had been arrested while crossing borders.

Today, it's my dear mother's birthday,^lviii how cheerless will be the circumstances she celebrates it in this year! … Today they are saying that Holland wishes to "expel" all German internees because of the danger from communists. I have only two guilders left at my disposal. I'll telegraph for travel money. The District Command is closed, all shop windows barricaded with boards. Armed troops march through the city day and night.

Solf^lix has asked President Wilson for food to stave off the hunger blockade, which goes on for evermore. German Ladies' Associations are begging their sisters in the enemy countries for help. The Allied newspapers are demanding that the Kaiser be banished to Devil's Island. The Peace Conference is supposed to take place in Versailles, and Wilson will come across here in person. … In the meantime, the Hungarians are fighting against the Czechs, the Poles against the Ukrainians; in Hungary, the Serbs are moving into Temesvár, and Mackensen is in Debreczin.

Whether we have slept badly or not at all, whether we [p. 358] get coal or no coal, whether we have something to eat or not, these are questions which we are ashamed to mention at all in the face of the momentous overthrow of one world. Our landlady has given notice, suddenly she no longer understands German; the general atmosphere is becoming more and more hostile. If Germany had had decisive successes against England, the neutrals would long ago have succumbed to its force of attraction, but things being as they are, they manoeuvred themselves in such a way as to dispose themselves more and more to the power of England, which for centuries has been stable … now at final last they are letting the mask fall; the game has now been decided. A late final edition of the newspaper reported street riots in Copenhagen, removal of senate and of citizenship in Bremen, where the Red Flag has been hoisted on the old and venerable town hall. The Serbs are ransacking the Banat.^lx

Herr von Beyerheim travelled to The Hague, to speak with Captain von Sche… When he returned, he said that all Germans will have been made to leave Holland by the first of December. In The Hague, there had been great shows of loyalty in front of the castle, the queen had been obliged to appear for hours on end on the balcony. The Regent of Anhalt has placed himself under the "protection" of the workers'and soldiers'council, and Prince Esterhazy^lxi has demanded renunciation of the Holy Crown of Hungary by ex-Emperor Karl. The ex-King of Bavaria has fled with his family to the isolation of Lake Königssee; the queen died on the way there, from all the upset. The Poles are holding five hundred Ukrainians prisoner in Lemberg, in return for which the Ukrainians are once more bombarding Lemberg. Mackensen in Hermannstadt^lxii is requesting the National Assembly in Budapest to grant unrestricted passage of the German troops through Hungary. The Rumanians have occupied Podolia.^lxiii While the Bavarians are moving into Bohemia at Eger, the Bohemians are making their own strike on Pressburg^lxiv and the Slavonians are threatening Laibach.^lxv The Poles want to take over Danzig, and the American troops are marching into Strasbourg. In Spain, too, things are starting to ferment, and the famine in Tyrol is said to be [p. 359] beyond description. Europe is eating away at its own intestines, and letting its heart bleed to death.

The Kaiser has had his photograph taken with Count Bentinck; the picture is being sold everywhere; the Crown Prince is said to be interned in a vicarage on an island in the Zuider-Zee. He gave an interview on Amsterdam railway station.^lxvi … The Mynssens sent me a ticket for the Magic Flute, but it is impossible for me to go to a theatre or cinema.

We discovered at the Registration Office that the Imprisonment Camps for Germans were being closed down. The King of the Belgians has made his entry into Brussels, and the French have moved into Saarbrücken. Baku^lxvii has been ransacked by the Turks, and then abandoned. Russians … and the English are moving in there. The oil attracts them. Jew-baiting throughout Galicia, it will follow in other places besides. Arrival in Cologne of the first of the German storm-troops on their march back. German auxiliary forces leave Finland, which they liberated. The Germans are always bringing freedom to others, and then being given their orders to get out; the Poles and the Lithuanians are particularly ungrateful. Estonia has declared itself a republic.

*

"Amsterdam, November 1918"

Letter from Baden from my step-mother, telling me that my father is still in good health, given the circumstances. German soldiers are selling weapons and bicycles, in exchange for which the Belgians shoot them when they leave in troop transporters. Went to probably the last farewell meal at the Mynssens; there was roast hare, but the mood was very depressed.

*

[p. 360]

"23rd November"

Today I saw the entry of the Queen in Amsterdam, they had taken the horses out of their shafts. The Queen stood for hours on end with her German prince consort^lxviii on the castle balcony. The crowd sang the Dutch Prayer of Thanksgiving. It was difficult to recognise the town; it was gripped in ecstasy. Everybody linked arms and marched along, shouting "bang, bang, whang, whang!"^lxix through the streets. … …

*

"Bremen, 2nd December 1918"

Here I am, a solitary guest In Hillmann"s Hotel, with a solitary candle in my room, on the wall a picture of Frederick the Great at the camp fire. I cannot as yet collect my thoughts, a pressure is lying on me, paralysing me, it is the incomprehensibility of all things, and their sadness that tortures me. It is as if the guidance of fate has been lost, as if one were standing in an eddy current which blows everything into a heap, like dry leaves, only to snatch them off with it, into places unknown and distant. My dear old Bremen, where I was baptised, where my grandparents and great-grandparents used to live, to which the most beautiful of my youthful memories are tied; it is still there, but unrecognisably so. I roamed in the dawn of the morning through the streets and stopped still in front of the houses in which I had lived. Shivers of homecoming come with me. The stones and the trees spoke and told tales, everything seemed to have returned once more to how it was, and looked at me silently, full of affirmation. It was, however, self-delusion, and strangers were living there. Cold hostility was suddenly gazing on me; the people who would have been able to remove the unfriendliness from the places of memory were no longer alive, or else flung away, far and wide; things estranged from life poured out from everything and there was a heart-compressing sadness. Slowly I turned back into the town centre, past neglected houses and gardens. [p. 361] Unkempt juveniles, who down to the littlest kid, were smoking cigarettes and creating rowdy mischief, met me at every corner. The Red Flag waved from the public buildings, but in the bar in the town-hall basement a scene of stupendously great merriment was flickering back and forth. Were people still hoping to get something from the future; were people trying to drown past times in bad beer and wine; is it desperation, or are they expecting the Bremen Regiment, which gets back tomorrow from the Front, to set Red Rule back on its ears?

Holland lies far behind me; as if on another star.

The command to leave that country had come unexpectedly, from one day to the next. We had to disband our small home and take away only the most absolutely necessary items with us. After an interminable period of waiting on the platform, the special train was allowed to make a move, and was boarded by storm. The passageways and compartments were so full that even a needle could not have found space to fall to the floor. Many people had got drunk and were singing wild songs of liberty, and the Socialist Internationale. Clattering and rattling, the train set off out into the gathering gloom. It travelled slowly, and it was not until midnight that it reached the border and disgorged its contents, like tipper truck unloading rubble on to the unknown ground. We were standing in a snow-blue starry night on German soil. Most of us kept silent, some were jeering, all of us were freezing in the frost and cold. In a hut, kind-hearted ladies set out some kind of lentil soup for us. A notice on the wall read, "Welcome back to your homeland", garlanded round with some colourful paper frills. It got me in the throat, and I felt my eyes welling up. It was not until a few hours later that we could make a start on continuing our journey. The German train consisted of fourth-class coaches, all with broken windows, and a raging coldness whistled through the jam-packed compartments; no lights were on. It was truly moving to see how courageously the women in their worn-out uniforms were carrying out men's work as train drivers and [p. 362] train guards. The whistles of the little locomotive jarred on everybody's nerves, the wheels pulsated, and the worn-out sleepers thumped rhythmically into your brain. I had a seat at the open window, next to Herr von Beyerheim.

The morning eventually began to dawn; leaden-grey, icy mist came in through the remnants of the window pane; my eyes followed the home landscape, which the train traversed with jolts and crunching of ice. Everything was buried in snow: fields, woods, the lonely farmsteads, they seemed to be dreaming of better times; in snow-covered meditation. The winter's sun had risen cold and ruddy, when we pulled up in Oldenburg. Paper garlands and words of welcome here, too. Another few hours, and the train pulled into the majestic hall of the Bremen main railway station. A band welcomed us blaringly with the German national anthem, and it was then that for the first time in years that tears rans down my cheeks. Here, too, was a tender welcome by ladies of all the circles of Bremen, who paid buy attention to us in the new Lloyd's concourse hall. A volunteer medical orderly, an upper-fifth-former, courteously offered to take our luggage to the hotel, since we intended to stay the night in Bremen. We came through halls packed deep with Russian prisoners; they crouched unemotionally on the floor, and waited for their transportation home. Once the police with red armbands had inspected our passports and given us a few coupons for bread, we went on foot to the hotel. On the way, the upper-fifth-former told us of the scenes which had been playing out in Bremen for a month, and he told us that people were hoping that soldiers coming back from the Front would soon free the town of the Red Scum.

For an evening meal, we solitary guests sitting in the very dimly lit dining hall were served weak barley-tea as our coffee; instead of sugar, we had a saccharine tablet; the table-cloth and the one serviette was made of paper; milk there was none, nor any margarine; instead of that we had a spoonful of thin marmalade and [p. 363] with it two slices of bread, which tasted of bran. To such austerity has the shameful, still forever-lasting, hunger blockade brought down the German nation, used as we were to a good life; how must it just look like, in millions of German families! The ages-old waiter sourly remarked that anyone who did not need to count his pennies and knew the secrets of the Black Market could still get butter today, eggs and fancy foods. Jews and war profiteers were skinning the whole country down to the bone, and buying everything they could from the farmers, price immaterial. … Since we were still hungry, we stuffed the bowls of our pipes with what we had left of the Dutch tobacco. We offered some of it to the waiter as well, which made him open his eyes wide. Acting cautiously, as though it were matter of something most precious, he drew out his Maracaibo pipe, and assured us he would not smoke the tobacco until Christmas Eve.

The following morning, Herr von Beyerheim went off to Munich; he thought it would be a journey lasting more than one day. … That being the case, I wandered round the familiar, yet so much disfigured, town. Tomorrow my journey goes on to my final destination, which is Berlin; that is, if there are still any trains at all going there. … The hotel portier could remember that during the war with France of 1870/71, railway traffic had not experienced any such interruptions.

*

"Berlin, 3rd December 1918"

On my way to the railway station, I came across the old Hansa town regiment coming back home; they were the first German soldiers from the Front that I had seen, and as they marched past, I took off my hat with a deep gesture of respect. The people of Bremen came up cheering to them as their liberators, since the Reds had not dared to take their weapons away from them. Their rifles were decorated with sprigs of fir, their uniforms faded, their beards framed their weather-beaten faces. They still marched in step with one another, earnest and weary, but unconquered by [p. 364] external enemies — the embodiment of everlasting Germany!

While walking for an hour backwards and forwards on a crowded railway platform, I thought bitterly to myself: "now here you are, apparently free, and can do or not do whatever you wish; you have grown older by four-and-a-half years, and were looking forward to this day. What will the future bring for Germany and for me?" My heart was heavy, despair hung upon it like lead. The train from Wilhelmshaven rattled in, the engine putting out mighty amounts of steam in the ice-cold air. The train was full of a worse-for-wear, bawling, soldiering rabble, who had nothing in common with those other men who had just marched past me in the street. All the windows were smashed in. The sailors pelted the railway staff and passengers getting in, with icicles, smashing their empty beer bottles and empty wine bottles on the platform. I was struck by the fact that most of this lot were sporting moustaches; which, I think, are in the navy allowed only to men with side-whiskers. They had cut out the S.M.S. from their cap bands. With difficulty, I found standing room in front of a smashed-up first-class compartment. Slowly and creakingly the enormously long train set itself in motion. Behind me the sailors lounged in the torn-off upholstery, smoked, spat and drank wine and schnapps from the necks of bottle, only then to resume bawling out their awful songs. Now and again a bottle they had emptied flew past my head and out into the open air. In Soltau, a high-ranking officer in full uniform got in. Nobody even said hello to him, or made space for him. Abuse and tobacco smoke were directed at him; until he picked up his suitcase and resignedly sat down on it in front of a lavatory door. His stony expression became grey and weary; but he soon had to move to one side, because everyone's favourite place was in high demand. The hours rolled away in dullness, and the atmosphere got thicker, which made breathing difficult, despite the icy incoming draft. I went into the [p. 365] dining car. Beer barrels with a ladder across them were doing the work of seats. There was nothing to eat. A lieutenant with the Iron Cross First Class sat at the window and stared gauntly into the German countryside. It remained unravaged, bravely defended, set upon by no enemy's foot. Cold mist and hoarfrost now covered it in its winter's sleep; but the nation that dwelt there was not asleep; it twisted itself in convulsions. … In Stendal and Rathenow the railway stations were decorated up for Christmas with fir trees, while placards gave us the endearing greeting: "Welcome in the homeland." Day and night the trains with returning soldiers thundered past here: what will they be able to bring back to the homeland, what will the homeland be able to give to them? First war with an outside enemy, then war with an internal one. Would the wretched times that followed the Peace of Westphalia^lxx be coming back again, under whose consequences the German people had to suffer for centuries? … The long train creaked again. Then noise blared out again in the compartments, then the old General stared, a thousand miles away, down at the floor, then a lady dressed in black sobbed and pressed her frightened child closer to herself. For me, under the ashes of deep disappointment, there glowed a small spark of joyous reunion with my family; but at the same time I felt an older days were being crushed pitilessly under the wheels, and saw the sun, too, setting over it in the west.

It had moved to four o'clock in the afternoon: we were approaching Berlin. More and more frequently clattering railway points projected their rattling up into the journey. Giant chimneys rose up, but with no smoke emerging from them; mighty factories, empty and abandoned; a few blood-red flags. The railway continues forking and twisting its way forward, one bend after the other; clouds of steam hiss up, the brakes squeak, and suddenly we stop beneath the wide span of a soot-stained glass roof. I waited until the bustling crowd of freezing passengers died back, and thought of how the prophesy the unseen man at my departure for England had shouted after me, [p. 366], "Never ever see you again", had come to fulfilment. The country I left behind me I shall never see again; the old Germany no longer exists, fate has willed it so. All things on this earth are subordinate to change. The laws of life do not change, e putridine vita,^lxxi "from putrefaction comes life …!"

Slowly, I stepped out of the train. Pandemonium reigned around me, where can one go, when one is preoccupied with an existence, the basic principles of what are in danger?

One place of refuge was still open… my Family!

Final note in German: The personal names occurring in these records have been largely replaced by pseudonyms. The money transfers to the prisoners took place by way of "letters of advice", for which the "London Agency" of the Deutsche Bank in Berlin acted as broker, and indeed did so throughout the entire duration of the World War.

Endnotes

lxxi e putridine vita (Latin): "from putrefaction comes forth life". Goethe has the phrase as "die and become".

Background

There was a mutiny of around 30,000 battle-hardened French troops on the Western Front on 27 May 1917 - having become critical of the High Command's orders for futile attacks they left their trenches and refused to return. The Authorities swiftly responded with mass arrests, some 3,500 trials and 550 death sentences though probably fewer than 50 were actually shot while the rest were jailed.

Any comments, errors or omissions gratefully received The Editor © G Newton , 2018