Jews Queers Germans Read online

  JEWS

  QUEERS

  GERMANS

  a novel/history

  MARTIN

  DUBERMAN

  Seven Stories Press

  New York • Oakland • London

  Copyright © 2017 by Martin Duberman

  A Seven Stories Press First Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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  Book design by Jon Gilbert

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Duberman, Martin B., author.

  Title: Jews, Queers, Germans / Martin Duberman.

  Description: Seven Stories Press first edition. | New York ; Oakland : Seven Stories Press, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016048510 (print) | LCCN 2016056395 (ebook) |

  ISBN 9781609807382 (softcover) | ISBN 9781609807399 (E-book)

  Subjects: LCSH: William II, German Emperor, 1859-1941--Fiction. | Kessler,

  Harry, Graf, 1868-1937--Fiction. | Hirschfeld, Magnus, 1868-1935--Fiction.

  | Germany--Politics and government--20th century--Fiction. |

  Germany--Social life and customs--20th century--Fiction. | Upper

  class--Germany--Fiction. | Intellectuals--Germany--Fiction. |

  Homosexuality--Germany--Fiction. | Trials--Germany--Fiction. | BISAC:

  FICTION / Historical. | GSAFD: Biographical fiction. | Historical fiction.

  | Legal stories.

  Classification: LCC PS3554.U25 J49 2017 (print) | LCC PS3554.U25 (ebook) |

  DDC 813/.54--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016048510

  Printed in the USA.

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  FOR BETH BLUMENTHAL AND RON CORWIN

  much more than cousins

  PROLOGUE

  The strong-willed Margarethe Krupp has decided to take her complaint directly to the Kaiser. She’s aware that Wilhelm dislikes outspoken women, but in the face of the calamitous charges against her husband Fritz, who’s been declared incapacitated, she’s placed the family’s huge steelworks at Essen in the hands of a management team, and she needs the Kaiser’s approval. Marga intends to tell Wilhelm that she has made those decisions in order to avoid catastrophe for Germany itself. Given the central importance of the Krupp works to the Reich’s growing power, she feels confident the Kaiser will grant her an audience. After all, she tells herself huffily, we’ve spent a fortune hosting his damn hunting parties at Villa Hügel, not to mention the preposterous preparations when His Highness attends the Meppen weaponry site.

  Still, Marga feels uneasy. In the past the Kaiser has treated her with civility, but never warmth. Nor does she much care for him. She finds him bombastic and self-absorbed, and has laughed with friends about his preening wardrobe of 200 uniforms—and the 12 valets needed to ensure that his ermine cape is fluffed to perfection and his chestful of medals properly aligned. Wilhelm’s love of ceremonial display has led one indiscreet friend to claim that the Kaiser prefers unveiling a monument to reading a book. Their merriment, Marga remembers, had alarmed her husband Fritz, and she’d made fun of his anxiety: “The Kaiser should be afraid of you!” she’d nearly shouted at him. “Let him turn out steel-armored battleships, if he’s so clever and powerful!”

  Wilhelm does grant Marga an interview, but when she refers to His Highness “doubtless” having heard the rumors regarding Fritz’s “predilections,” the Kaiser bellows, “What rumors? What are you talking about, woman?!” (He has in fact not only heard the rumors, but personally counseled Krupp not to return to Capri—none of which is he about to acknowledge to Marga).

  “Capri?” Marga tentatively offers. “The Italian newspapers and . . . Capri?”

  “Yes, yes . . . Fritz’s amateur archeology . . . I know all about that . . . That yacht of his, the, the . . . what’s it called?”

  “The Maya. He’s refitted it for expeditions to collect aquatic specimens.”

  “Damned nonsense . . . dilettantism . . . shirking his duties to Kaiser and country.”

  Contrary to her intentions, Marga reflexively defends her husband. “He enjoys it . . . it’s harmless enough.” Then she adds with a smirk, “He has discovered five new species of worms.” Despite herself, Marga laughs.

  “What’s worms got to do with weaponry?”

  “I don’t begrudge him his hobby, your Highness. It’s the other, er, hobby, that concerns me—concerns me for Germany.”

  “Stop talking in riddles, Marga! My patience is limited.”

  “Very well, Majesty. Someone clipped an article from the Neapolitan scandal sheet, Mattino, and sent it to me anonymously.”

  “Yes, yes—so?”

  “It describes what it calls the ‘immoral’ festivities that have been taking place on Capri. Other Italian newspapers have picked up the Mattino story. Those clippings as well were sent to me.”

  “Immoral? What does any of this have to do with me?!”

  “It has to do with Fritz and . . . and teenage boys . . . Not that the news surprised me.”

  “What news?! Damn it, woman, I have three ministers waiting outside! Did you expect to spend the day?!”

  “My apologies, Majesty. To come directly to the point: Fritz’s beautiful home on Capri . . . the renowned gardens . . . In recognition, the governing council of Capri has made him an honorary citizen and—”

  “—damn it, Marga! You’ve got two minutes!”

  She swallows hard: “Fritz is accused of impropriety with teenage boys. His special favorite is an eighteen-year-old barber named Adolfo Schiano. Should I go on?”

  Wilhelm stops pacing. “Who accuses him?” His expression is solemn.

  “Last week it was the Social Democratic Party paper, Vorwärts. It accuses Fritz of ‘corrupting youth.’ He’s said to exemplify capitalist culture at its grossest. The SPD calls for his arrest and trial under Paragraph 175 of the German penal code.”

  “—the what?” Wilhelm loudly interrupts.

  “Paragraph 175, Majesty . . . it criminalizes sexual intercourse between men. Fritz has initiated libel proceedings against the paper.”

  The Kaiser scowls. “Socialist scum . . . Who gives a damn what Vorwärts thinks?!”

  “I do, your Majesty. Fritz and I have not shared a bed for years.” She’s frightened at her own boldness.

  “You think such matters interest me?! Have you lost your senses, madame?”

  Marga is cowed but defiant. “There have been orgies, Your Highness. Fritz invited the Grand Duke of Hesse and Prince Aribert of Anhalt as his guests to—”

  “—stop it! Stop it this minute!” Wilhelm thunders. “You’re a hysterical woman! Leave me at once!” He turns and marches off to an adjoining room.

  That same day Kaiser Wilhelm orders the Berlin police to ransack the offices of Vorwärts, to break into the private lockers of Social Democratic members of the Reichstag, and to enter the homes of subscribers to seize copies of the issue containing the accusations against Fritz Krupp. He fails to intimidate the socialist editors of Vorwärts. They denounce the Kaiser in print for passing sentence before a pending trial has even commenced, thus placing the court in the invidious position either of contradict
ing the Kaiser or of creating the dreadful impression that his opinion has influenced its judgment. Soon after, to the Kaiser’s embarrassment, chief prosecutor Hugo Isenbiel announces that he’s dropping the libel case against the editors of Vorwärts—the implication is that Krupp is guilty as charged.

  Undaunted, the Kaiser has Marga Krupp arrested on charges of maligning her blameless husband and soiling the good name of the house of Krupp. He further declares that she’s unbalanced—the result of meddling in political affairs and overtaxing her brain with too much reading—a conclusion the Kaiser reaches based on Krupp’s insistence that his wife’s “symptoms of illness” have been increasing of late. Wilhelm orders Marga carried by force to the lunatic asylum at Jena for “an extended rest.” Krupp assures the Kaiser that Marga “has agreed to submit herself willingly to a thorough treatment” for an undefined period of time, and he thanks Wilhelm “for the kind and gentle way in which Your Majesty has intervened on behalf of my person and my interests.”

  But the intervention backfires. Krupp, it turns out, has made little effort to conceal his activities on Capri—or, for that matter, in Berlin. Commissioner Hans von Tresckow, head of the police unit that reports on the city’s homosexual scene, has learned, among much else, that Fritz Krupp regularly watches near-nude wrestling matches in one of Berlin’s theaters, and that he’s seen to it that the city’s fashionable Hotel Bristol, where he often stays, employs as waiters a number of young men he’s imported from Capri. Von Tresckow also discovers that from 1898 on, Krupp has spent several months a year in the Hotel Quisisana on Capri, spending lavishly on his favorites and holding “boisterous” parties.

  After the Vorwärts article appears, the local authorities on the island appoint a commission of inquiry to investigate further; it has no trouble locating witnesses to confirm the industrialist’s “unclean” activities. King Victor Emmanuel III promptly orders Krupp banished from Italy, never to return. On November 22, 1902, the German News Agency announces—to widespread incredulity—that Fritz Krupp has unexpectedly died of a stroke. He has in fact taken the course followed by many homosexuals of the time when threatened with exposure or blackmail—he takes his own life.

  The rightwing press immediately blames the SPD and Vorwärts for “hounding” the great industrialist to his death. Marga is abruptly declared entirely well and released from the Jena asylum. She refuses to attend her husband’s funeral at Essen. Given that the rumors about Krupp’s proclivities have not been disproved, the Kaiser’s entourage urges him not to attend either, but he does so nonetheless—bedecked in full battle gear. Arriving at Essen, he seeks assurances from several of Krupp’s associates that the munitions king was not homosexual. Anything to please the monarch: “Of course not, your Majesty! He had an exceptionally soft, gentle, sensitive nature—which is sometimes confused with homosexuality.” “Just as I thought!” the Kaiser thunders. “Vorwärts has hounded my exemplary friend to a needless death.”

  Appeased, Wilhelm marches behind the closed casket to the cemetery and delivers the funeral oration, telling the assembled crowd that the Socialists—“men unworthy of the name of German”—have “murdered” Krupp, and he dismisses as groundless (though he knows better) the “false and ignominious” attacks that have been made on “this great German’s” honor. Have no fear, the Kaiser concludes—henceforth, he will “raise the shield of the German Emperor over the house and memory of Krupp.”

  And he does, though the house of Krupp comes to regret his protection. Fritz Krupp’s teenage daughter Bertha inherits the company, but the Kaiser declares it unthinkable for a woman to be in charge of a firm so vital to the interests of the Reich. He personally chooses Gustav von Bohlen, a Prussian nobleman, as her husband and at their wedding awards him, by imperial proclamation, the surname Krupp. Marga is allowed to return to Villa Hügel, the family estate, but on condition she remain out of sight.

  PART I

  THE BELLE ÉPOQUE

  1890–1910

  IT’S AS IF NAMING it brought it into being. During the uproar over the Krupp scandal, Wilhelm is startled to learn that the Berlin police have for several years been compiling extensive files, the so-called Criminal Album, listing those who flaunt Paragraph 175 of the German penal code by engaging in homosexual acts (whether proven or rumored). The Album cites many who hold high office: the King of Württemberg is said to be in love with a mechanic, the King of Bavaria with a coachman, and Archduke Ludwig Viktor, brother of the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph, with a masseur.

  The incriminating Album is sent under seal to the head of the Kaiser’s Civil Cabinet, with the implication that the material will be shown to the Kaiser. The mere suggestion that such “filth” could possibly interest him, outrages Wilhelm. He refuses to break the seal, announcing that it is “all lies” anyway, and orders the Album returned to the Police Commissioner. But Wilhelm knows more than he’s publicly admitting. He’s already been informed that the marriage of his cousin, the Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse-Darmstadt, has been “a failure from the beginning” and he is divorcing his young wife. Why? Because, the Kaiser is told, the Grand Duke has “homosexual tendencies.”

  Wilhelm, just past 40, is somewhat older than the Grand Duke, but both were grandchildren of the recently deceased Queen Victoria and often played together when young. Those memories soften him; he writes his cousin a long letter that expresses some empathy—but embedded in the moralistic posturing more typical of him. Avoiding any mention of the Grand Duke’s “tendencies,” Wilhelm focuses instead on the need for the Duke to come to an “understanding” with his wife that will allow their marriage to continue. “That will mean,” Wilhelm writes, “sacrifices, perhaps very difficult ones . . . I know many a marriage in which things are just the same as with you, but which have not ended in divorce.” Whether Wilhelm is advocating celibacy outside the marriage bond as well as within, the Grand Duke declines the “sacrifice.”

  Matters go no better when the next scandal hits the Hohenzollern drawing rooms. This time it’s Prince Friedrich Heinrich of Prussia, eldest son of Wilhelm’s uncle, Prince Albrecht. Rumors about Friedrich have been circulating for years; at one point the President of the Berlin police even feels the need to warn Friedrich to rein in his indiscretions—not the sort of advice Princes of the Realm welcome or take to heart, sexual indiscretion being something of an assumed prerogative. Prince Friedrich is fond of his prerogatives—and the result is that his imprudent behavior becomes a matter for open discussion in the Reichstag; but given the reluctance of all but the Socialist deputies to bring “discredit” on the Hohenzollern dynasty, the debate is stillborn.

  Maximilian Harden, the most famous journalist in Germany, is far less respectful of the Imperial family. In his weekly paper, Die Zukunft, Harden, characteristically, minces no words. Prince Friedrich Heinrich, Harden bluntly writes, suffers from “hereditary perversion of the sexual drive.” He further reveals that the Kaiser has pressured Prince Friedrich to renounce his election as Grand Master of the august Order of St. John of Jerusalem. The Kaiser—having regained his reflexive rectitude—proceeds to banish the Prince from court. Since no one in Berlin will receive him, the Prince is advised to live abroad. Any number of Berlin’s luminaries scatter to the underbrush.

  But the elephant is now decidedly in the room. Within a mere two to three years, a far greater scandal bursts over the head of Prince Philipp of Eulenburg—the man who’d been closest to the Kaiser throughout the 1890s. For some time, the Prince’s “moral conduct” has been tut-tutted over in the drawing rooms. Eager to discredit the regime, Max Harden prepares to fan the flames still higher. Catching wind of Harden’s intentions, Eulenburg abruptly resigns his post as ambassador to Vienna and retreats to his estate at Liebenberg. “Grief over my mother’s recent death,” he explains in a letter to the Kaiser, “has affected my already frail health and I have become a burden to Your Majesty.”

  “You must receive trustworthy care,” the Kaiser l
oftily responds. “Such episodes don’t mean much.”

  The words alarm rather than comfort Philipp. Is the Kaiser slyly suggesting that he, Philipp, is exaggerating his symptoms, feigning incapacity in order to keep hidden a quite different source of anguish?

  “I am bed-ridden with fever,” Philipp hastily replies. “For the time being I’m only a ghastly parcel. There is absolutely nothing more to be expected from my wretched body. But I don’t complain.”

  If Philipp is magnifying his symptoms, the grief he feels over the death of his mother, Alexandrine Hertefeld, is very real. From early childhood she’s been his sympathetic confidant, his model of true womanhood—selfless in her devotion to her emotionally extravagant, artistically inclined son. She’d steadfastly mediated between him and his militaristic father, Philipp Konrad, who’s disparaged his son’s interest in music and literature, scowled at his charm and sense of humor—so unsuitable in a truly manly person—and denounced his professional ambivalence.

  “You wish to do—what?!” Philipp Konrad had thundered when Philipp suggested, after graduating from the War Academy at Kassel, that he wished to abandon a military career and enter the civil service.

  “Why work at all?!” his father shouts. “Why not loll about in the garden reciting verse?!”

  Alexandrine softly interjects her view that a person of many gifts might do well to sample them.

  “By all means! Why not try needlework? Or perhaps become a fisherman?!” Philipp Konrad storms from the room.

  Half fearful that his father’s view of him is accurate, Philipp had gone on to earn a doctorate in law from the University of Giessen in 1875—the same year he married Augusta Sandels, daughter of the last Swedish Count Sandels. In the first 10 years of their marriage, she gave birth to eight children, the last born in 1886, the year Philipp meets Crown Prince Wilhelm, the future Kaiser. Most observers believe that from the beginning of his marriage Philipp has treated Augusta indifferently, though he’s a loving father toward his children and suffers greatly when two die in infancy.