Deleted scene I

Buchner and Lange have made conflicting offers to force Frau Ballat - the murdered art dealer Weintraub's sister - to sell the art gallery, the paintings and her home to them.  As a Jewess in Munich in 1933, Frau Ballat is  under pressure  to accept one of these offers and leave Germany.  Glaser, Rudi and Ello are helping her.  This scene shows Frau Ballat boarding a train to leave Germany for the last time.  The paper she has to sign was, in reality, presented to a Jewish journalist called Bella Fromm.  when she left Nazi  Germany.  Like my fictional Frau Ballat, she had to sign or she would not have been allowed to leave.

 

With Buchner withdrawing from the sale, there was no obstacle to Lange buying Frau Ballat out.  Rudi went to see him, alone. The meeting was frosty, but Rudi persuaded Lange to revert to the original purchasing price, with no punitive reductions for delay.  Sale of the Weintraub Gallery, the paintings and the villa was agreed.

    The money was paid into an account set up in Glaser's name.  Frau Ballat intended to live in England, with a second cousin.  Glaser would send her 200 Reichsmarks a month from the account - the maximum allowed. 

    But first there were the emigration formalities.  Glaser established with the authorities that the Jewish emigrant was leaving for an approved destination.  Next, he arranged for Frau Ballat's relative in England to provide an affidavit, confirming her intention to receive the emigrant.  Frau Ballat then had to register with the police twice a day.  Glaser arranged police registration at the Main Police Station, at Ett Strasse. 

    The next steps in the procedure left him baffled and splenetic with rage:  'I'm one of the leading lawyers in Munich,' he bellowed at Lotte, over the dinner table. 'And I'm damned if I can work out how she pays the Jewish Assets Levy, or gets a Clearance Certificate.'

    The Clearance Certificate, confirming that Frau Ballat currently owed the authorities nothing in the way of state taxes, surcharges, fines, fees and expenses, was finally obtained after payment of a hefty bribe.  Rudi paid it - Frau Ballat never knew.  Reich Flight Tax of 20,259 Reichsmarks was paid, plus a Jewish Assets Levy of 26, 738 Reichsmarks.  Every item of value to be taken to England had to have a separate permit from the Foreign Exchange Office.

    The last delay was the Foreign Stamp, to be marked in Frau Ballat's passport.  It was finally produced after another bribe, again paid without Frau Ballat's knowledge by Rudi. 

    One raw frosty day, the formalities were finally complete. Glaser, Rudi and Ello were seeing Frau Ballat off at the Main Station, along with her friend, Elsa Marx, from Franz-Josef Strasse.  Noticing the Jewish appearance of the two older women, a train official demanded to see Frau Ballat's passport, as she was about to board.  He turned to the Foreign Stamp in it, and summoned two policemen, standing nearby. 

    'Emigrant's Passport,' the train official said, nodding at Frau Ballat. 

    The police searched some of her luggage and found items of jewellery.

    'Jewish bitch!' One of the policemen yelled at Frau Ballat. 'Trying to smuggle  jewellery out of Germany!'

    Glaser politely pointed out that Frau Ballat had the necessary permit to take the jewellery out, arranged by the Foreign Exchange Office.  Frau Ballat produced the permit.

    'We'll have to check that with Berlin,' said one of the police, taking the document.  'Go home and we'll let you know.'

    Any delay would mean the Foreign Stamp would expire, and they would have to start all over again.  A heated discussion started up, on the platform, as Frau Ballat's train belched steam.  Rudi evoked the von Hessert name, but even that failed to move the officials.  Glaser then lost his temper, inveighing against bureaucracy and haranguing the two policemen.  Ello pulled him away.

  'Leave the platform,'  the train official said to Frau Ballat.  'Go on. Now. Push off..'

  'You do know she's a war widow, don't you?'  Ello said, mildly, to the train official. 'Isn't there anything you can do?  I'm sure there must be something'

  The train official hesitated.  Ello smiled at him.

  'Well ... I'll have to have a think.'

    Elsa Marx, white with fear at all the screaming and yelling, started to shake and then to cry.  Rudi put a comforting arm round her, enveloping the tiny woman.  Murmuring in her ear, he gently persuaded her to go home.  'Come on, look, I'll come with you,' he said, pleased enough to be away from the screaming hubbub. 

    Elsa Marx nodded agreement and thanks through her tears.  After a long hug with Zipporah Ballat, Rudi led her away.  He kept his arm protectively round the old lady as they walked to the end of the platform. 

    The porters, who had waited until now, leaning on their trolleys, dispassionately watching events unfold, finally lost patience.  They dumped Frau Ballat's luggage at the carriage steps, and walked off.

    The police and the train official withdrew 'for consultation'. They came back with a typed form for Frau Ballat to sign.  It was a prepared Pro-Forma with only the word 'jewels'  written in.  Ello and Glaser looked at each other.  It was clear that the whole charade had been put on solely to raise the sixty Reichsmark fine the policemen now demanded.  This would be split three ways - the train official getting his share - as soon as Frau Ballat and her party were out of sight.

    The form presented to Frau Ballat ran as follows:  I am a Jewish thief and have tried to rob Germany by taking German wealth out of the country. I hereby confess that the jewels found on me do not belong to me, and that in trying to take them out I wished to inflict injury on Germany. Furthermore, I promise not to try to re-enter Germany.

  Frau Ballat signed.  With Ello and Glaser frantically helping her to load her luggage, she boarded the train with seconds to spare.  As it pulled away, her last words on German soil, as she leaned out the carriage window were:  'Well, at least the train's heated.' 

    Ello and Glaser waved until she was out of sight. 

    'That was quick thinking on your part,'  Glaser said to the young woman. 'How did you know Frau Ballat was a war widow?'

    'I didn't,'  Ello said. 'Is she?  Poor lady.  I just said what I thought would do the trick, in the circumstances.  I'm a pragmatic scientist, Gerhard.  I do what's necessary.'

 

Deleted scene 2

Deleted scene 2 is from a very early draft - written nearly four years before publication of the novel.  At that time the novel was called Blue Horses.  I wanted to write about the heroic political resistance to the Nazis put up by the Social Democrats, in particular, over thirteen years, in the National and the Bavarian Parliaments.  By the summer of 1933 most of them had had to flee their homes and their country.  However, a battle by democratic means, fought by middle-aged men in suits, is inherently unglamorous and undramatic.  It also took me right off the 'line' of the narrative.  The scene is offered here as a tribute to Otto Wels, in the hope that one day his bravery will have wider recognition than it does now. 

 

21  The Politician  - Otto Wels        Berlin, March 1933

 

After the Reichstag Fire, the Berlin Parliament was eventually reconvened in the Kroll Opera House, closed for the last two years for putting on performances by the likes of Schoenberg.  Here, the NSDAP - the Nazi Party -  put forward the Enabling Act, which would give Chancellor Hitler dictatorial powers.  The powers were necessary, Minister of the Interior Frick explained, 'to finally bring the nationwide spiritual renewal of our Racial Community into being.'

    Before the vote on the Enabling Act, Social Democrat Deputies met in an office in the ruins of the burnt-out Reichstag building.  All the Communist Party Reichstag Deputies had been either murdered or driven into hiding, accused of treason. 

  Otto Wels opened the meeting and asked for opinions. Even at this eleventh hour, some Social Democrats spoke out against attending the Reichstag. They were supported by the head of the Reichsbanner, the printer Karl Hoeltermann, who said they were walking into a trap.  Hitler had refused to guarantee the usual Parliamentary immunity. 

    This provoked a furious reaction from Wilhelm Hoegner, who after six years as a Deputy to the Bavarian Parliament, was now a Reichstag Deputy.  Backed by all the women Social Democrats, especially Frau Bohm-Schuh, he was incensed at the suggestion that they should cave in. After a long, rancorous discussion, the leader, Otto Wels insisted on his party speaking out against the Enabling Act, and voting against it, no matter what the danger to themselves.

  The Social Democrats set off for the Opera House in twos and threes.  The wide square in front of the building had been turned into a National Socialist rally. A mob, many of them uniformed, waved flags and chanted.  The SS had cordoned off the area, letting only their own sympathisers through, except for the Social Democrat Deputies, whose presence in Parliament was needed to give proceedings a veneer of legitimacy.  As they entered the square, still discussing parliamentary tactics, the  Social Democrats were cordoned between two narrow lines of jeering and spitting SA, as far as the doors. 

    Inside, they all took their seats inside on the far left, in the absence of the Communist Party Deputies.  Wels saw the bronze busts of four German emporers, hacked off from their plinths, tilting unevenly on the Opera House stage, against the background of a Blood Flag.  The busts were originally in the Reichstag entrance hall.  Wels shifted in his seat, next  to the aisle, looking around at Deputies cupped in red plush theatre seats. The mood was sombre.  The SS were patrolling the aisles, armed to the teeth. 

    Wels had already had to abandon his home in Friedrichshagen;  it had become too dangerous to stay. He had sent his wife, Toni, to Dresden for safety. Goebbels' Berlin-based  newspaper, Angriff, then let it be known that he was 'wanted.' Hoegner had helped him flee, first back to Munich, then Salzburg.  He had returned to Germany to make this speech. 

  Wels was sixty and looked older. His moustache and hair were greying, his skin pasty. Against medical advice, he had discharged himself from Berlin-Lankwitz hospital when Hitler became Chancellor, to lead the opposition.  He had already passed out more than once from high blood pressure. His doctors feared making a speech under these conditions could trigger a heart attack. But he regarded it as his duty to give Hitler 'the answer he deserves' and refused to let anyone else - young Kurt Schumacher had volunteered - speak in his place.  He was aware this might be his last speech;  he had written a farewell letter to Toni. 

    At sixteen minutes past six, dusk outside, the frock-coated figure of Wels, white to the gills, his lips pressed together, made his way to the Speaker's Stand in front of the stage.  The Opera fell silent, except for the yelling of the SA from outside in the square.  Wels stood there a moment, trails of dried SA spittle on his coat and waistcoat, his  shoulders high, head slightly to the left. He had agreed with other leading Party members - Stampfer, Rinner, Crummenerl -  to adopt a conciliatory tone as the best chance of avoiding being howled down.  He had agreed to dampen down his usual combative style.

    First, in a short improvised introduction, he dealt with some of Hitler's lies about the Social Democrats, all of which had become accepted as truth. He denied that Social Democrats had backed the occupation of the Ruhr, that they had sent millions of Marks out of the country, or that they had blackened Germany's name abroad.  In a conciliatory manner, he agreed with Hitler about the damage War Reparations were doing to the world economy.  He re-affirmed his party's support for German honour. 

    He then argued against the core of the Nazi 'revolution', the Volksgemeinschaft - the Racial Community.  But in reasoning against it, Wels was grasping smoke.  The Racial Community was not an idea to Hitler, still less a political programme. It was a series of images: It was a blonde peasant farmer tilling the soil, while his full-breasted blonde wife cooked and nurtured children.  It was a well-built, blonde, blue-eyed soldier.  It was a stylishly-uniformed army of the pure-bloodied going forth to die.  It was a city of immaculate grandiose empty buildings where one day the righteous will dwell, when he was dead.  It was Jews, who looked like the Eastern Jews he had first seen in Vienna, shuffling their exit from society. 

    Wels, however, reasoned on.  He said there could be no true Community without equal rights.  He spoke out against the Enabling Act, struggling to make himself heard against the catcalling and laughter of Nazi Deputies and cries of 'Shut your gob', 'Traitor!' and 'We'll string you up today!' from the SS Hall Guards: 

  'You want the Reichstag dark as the first step of your revolution,' he said. 'But the destruction of what previously existed does not in itself constitute a revolution.  You cannot turn back the wheel of history.  We uphold the democratic state and equality under the law, as laid down in the Constitution. We German Social Democrats stand, at this historical moment, four-square for basic concepts of humanity, legality, feedom and socialism.  No Enabling Act can give you the right to destroy concepts which are timeless and immovable.' He shouted that, his voice breaking.  'German Social Democracy will draw strength even from your persecution of us.  We stand with the persecuted and the oppressed.  We stand with our friends in this country.  Their courage and steadfastness have earned our admiration and will lead us to a better future.'

  He was cheered by the Social Democrats, led by Hoegner.  Laughter from Nazi Deputies and the SS echoed to the ornate Opera House ceiling, as he returned to his place and sat down.  A brown-uniformed Hitler stood and replied with scorn and mockery, roared on by his supporters: 

  'These nice theories, that you have aired here, Mr Representative, have arrived on the stage of world history a little late.  They are pitiful, gentlemen, and irrelevant to our present times - when you speak of persecution. You are confusing us with your bourgeois world.  Everything decadent, old and brittle in the Community is passing and will never be seen again. And that includes you.' He pointed dramatically at the stiff figure of Otto Wels. Then his voice rose to a scream. 'Your time is finished!' 

    Wels did not meet his gaze. His back was bent, his native Berliner wit stamped out of him, his voice squeezed to a croak. But he had spoken.

    They moved to a vote.  Ninety-four Social Democrat Deputies, out of a total of one- hundred-and-twenty, were in the Opera House.  Many of the others had had to flee the country, some had been arrested or attacked.  Deputy Wilhelm Sollmann was beaten so badly by the Nazis he was in hospital.  As was Deputy Maria Jankowska, seized by an SA Storm in her flat, taken to their barracks in a laundry van, stripped, thrown over a table and whipped. 

    But even with the absence of the Communist Deputies, the remaining Social Democrats could still block the Enabling Act, if the Catholic Centre backed them. But the Centre, led by the priest Ludwig Kaas, temporized. They had drawn up a list of demands and guarantees, but in the end did not vote against the Nazis, because Hitler said he would leave the Church alone.  The Enabling Act was therefore passed by 444 votes to 94.  The NSDAP was sole lawmaker and had sole executive power. 

                 ******************************

In the next few weeks, political parties other than the NSDAP were made illegal, their assets seized, their premises raided.  Some Social Democrats, like Hoegner, stayed put. The majority, under Otto Wels' leadership, moved to Prague, chosen for its accessibility to the new Reich.  There, they founded a political party, the Social Democratic Party of Germany - SOPADE ( SOzialdemokratische PArtei DEutschlands). In effect, it was the Social Democrat resistance abroad. 

  The Steering Committe included Wels and other senior Social Democrat Deputies - Hans Vogel, Siegfried Crummenerl, and Friedrich Stampfer. They planned a new weekly newspaper, Neue Vorwarts, and set up an organisational structure to smuggle it and illegal leaflets into the Reich.  Everyone who knew Wels at that time commented on his spirited liveliness; his conviction that the battle would one day be won. 

    Among those who stayed behind in the Reich was one of the younger Social Democrats, Erich Rinner, still in Munich. SOPADE gave him 30,000 Marks to be used for subversive action against the Nazis.  Among the contact addresses he was given was that of Gerhard Glaser.