Darkness into Light Box Set Page 4

  They went into the first of the rooms, all of which were adjacent to each other, all

  at the back of the building, facing away from Wilhelmstrasse. Rathenau looked out of the grubby window, down into a courtyard where a sentry was pacing past two old French cannons, captured during the Franco-Prussian war.

  He thought back to his own national service in the army. His family name had got him into a Guards Regiment, but Jews weren’t allowed to be senior officers. Rathenau had often written about this injustice. Some, like Harry Kessler in his memoir of Rathenau, thought he made too much of it, knowing the situation perfectly well when he joined up.

  ‘We can give you more room if you need it.’ Falkenhayn was now sounding brisk. ‘We’ll see how it goes, shall we?’

  A look of acuity came into the general’s eyes. They stared at each other. Rathenau almost asked how long he had got to prove himself, but thought better of it.

  Chapter Six

  Walther’s dealings with his servant, Josef Prozeller , were becoming increasingly fractious, but dipped to a new low during the early part of that fateful month, August 1914. The spat took place in the spacious kitchen of the Rathenau villa at Königsallee, with the parkland of the Grunewald visible behind them.

  It concerned food, which Walther equated with fuel for a car but in which the servant discerned a source of interest and even pleasure:

  The initial effects of the British blockade may not have been the deepest but they were certainly the most dramatic. Shop keepers were caught unawares by sudden interruptions in the supply chain. You could walk down Leipzigerstrasse from Potsdamer Platz to the Spittelmarkt and pass nothing but empty shop window after empty shop window, save for cardboard boxes and shop-window dummies.

  Oranges were not be had anywhere, sugar only with difficulty.

  Walther’s reaction was characteristic: ‘We must spend less,’ he told his servant, waving an arm round the kitchen as if the room itself were evidence of shameful excess.

  Josef Prozeller was in his chauffeur’s outfit, as they had just come in from a spin in the car. ‘How can we possibly spend less,’ expostulated the servant. ‘You don’t give me nearly enough as it is.’ His usually hang-dog expression was transformed to frustration-fuelled aggression, his jaw jutting up at Walther.

  Walther recoiled, taken aback. ‘I’ve drawn up a new expenditure schedule,’ he said

  mildly. He was aware that he sounded like Emil, who he was soon to be visiting. The father was notorious for being careful with very small and very large sums but somewhat freer with amounts in between.

  ‘We have to economise,’ the son added, mildly.

  ‘WHY!’ shouted Josef Prozeller .

  ‘We must show solidarity with our fellow Germans. We must make our contribution to the war effort.’

  Josef Prozeller ’s face twisted into a snarl. He had not volunteered, at the outbreak of war. The subject had not been mentioned between him and his master. But he took Walther’s remark to be a reflection on his patriotism, at this febrile time, as he was of fighting age, although only just.

  Walther had, in fact, not meant it that way at all, but the damage had been done.

  Josef Prozeller drove Walther to the family home in Viktoriastrasse in heavy protesting speechlessness. He needed no words. He could sulk for weeks.

  Walther studied his KRA brief in the back of the car, pretending not to notice his servant’s feelings and mood.

  Back in the family parlour in Viktoriastrasse, he resisted becoming once more the giant toddler with thick, wavy upright hair, wearing a formal velvet suit, knickerbockers and cute velvet jacket. The little boy who was always second choice to a younger brother who had died.

  This younger brother, an invalid all his short life, was a sweet creature, so sweet he was known as ‘Gold.’ . Their mother, Mathilde, a highly-strung neurotic with a

  cleaning fetish, had never got over Gold’s death. Her father had committed suicide, following financial losses and her husband Emil and son Walther feared she might go the same way.

  A factor in Walther’s attempt on his own life as a teenager was this suicide of his grandfather – Mathilde’s father. Walther had been a toddler when a hysterical Mathilde told him her father’s story:

  Herr Nachmann did not deal with the financial vicissitudes of the time as well as Emil had in his. He was declared bankrupt in 1870 when his shares crashed as a result of the Franco-Prussian war – which no doubt influenced Emil’s later liquidisation of his assets and tendency to avoid stocks and shares whenever he could.

  Mathilde, naturally, was deeply shaken by the loss of a father who was only fifty-four years of age – a father she had adored. Sobbing, her voice even higher than usual, she pressed Walther to her bosom and told him a memory of his newly deceased Grandpapa Nachmann:

  One day, he had shown her a cupboard full of papers. ‘There was everything in it,’ Mathilde had sobbed. ‘All his good works. Everything he had done. I started to read it all. So proud of him. Then he took the papers away and burned them all, right there in front of me. Burned them!’

  Walther had torn himself from her bosom and wallowed face-down in this very armchair, a soft one surrounded by the mish-mash clutter of over-large Biedermeier and Empire pieces, old-fashioned even when they were bought but heavy, solid, and reminiscent of the permanence and stillness of Wilhelmine Germany.

  The toddler Walther suffered when his mother was unhappy. It was Mathilde who understood his artistic sensibility, who played piano duets with him, who spoke foreign languages to him when they went for walks in the forest.

  He howled into this armchair at her pain. But then she seemed to disappear from his life, as he grew older. He forgot her as he wallowed in the same armchair every week, while Papa Emil told him and the sickly Gold stories of the family firm. Of how difficult it was to run a company known to all as ‘a Jewish concern.’ But how, nevertheless, AEG was lighting up Berlin, then powering the world. All the while he talked he did not even try to hide his disappointment at his older son.

  For Walther, brilliant Walther, industrial chemist, political economist, philosopher, poet, artist and pianist was a duffer at school. Only his marks in German were even satisfactory. The speaker of three modern languages; near bilingual in English and French, fluent in Italian, not to mention capable in the ancient languages of Greek, Latin and Hebrew; the boy who read Macbeth by candlelight in English in his bed at twelve, struggled in the language classroom at school. He was also dully average at science at school.

  Why was that? Walther didn’t know; though he knew it was not for lack of trying. Emil also didn’t know. There had been times when Emil wanted Walther to go off and be a painter in Paris, or a writer in a cottage somewhere; he wanted it even more than Walther did. He would have been pleased to be shot of the troublesome giant. Not now, though. Oh, no. Not now.

  Now, Walther was a success. His visiting card at this time said RATHENAU – PRESIDENT OF THE AEG. The German word Präsident was a foreign borrowing by the multilingual Rathenau; it had monarchical connotations.

  With fifty in sight on the horizon, it would have been difficult to say whether Walther or old man Emil was more important to the world conglomerate AEG had become. Technically the answer was Walther, he had been made chairman of the supervisory board when old man Emil first succumbed to diabetes, in 1912. Emil was chief executive officer of the supervisory board, so (technically) reporting to his son.

  But more significantly, what of operationally? What of day-to-day? All the AEG high-ups would have given the same answer: Carl Fürstenberg, the finance man, or Walther’s deputy at AEG, Felix Deutsch, or Klingenberg or the young rising genius von Moellendorf. They would have said, all of them, if we have to lose one of them let it be Emil. The son had outstripped the father.

  Right now, the old man was looking decidedly ropey. The man once called ‘the Bismarck of Germany’s industrial empire’ had lost a foot to his diabetes a couple of years ago.
Now shrunken and lean-faced he slumped in an armchair. The mutilated leg was up, the bandaged stump buried in a soft cushion which in turn balanced on a leather pouffée.

  He was shrunken into himself, yellow round the gills. There was evidence of a lack

  of care, even a lack of pride in himself: stains down his frock-coat, his trousers shiny, his mouth foam-flecked.

  And by way of contrast, what of Walther in AEG at this time?

  He was currently engaged in negotiations with the regional authorities in south-west Germany to take over the monopolistic diamond purchasing authority. He was arranging credit for the building of an elevated railway between the Neukölln and Gesundbrunnen areas of Berlin. He had even resumed control of the plant at Bitterfeld, which had finally been turned into a success.

  He spent most of his evenings at the Automobile Club – now in Leipziger Platz, not that it had moved, the name was changed from the less patriotic Pariser Platz - or at the Hotel Adlon amid gleaming American luxury. Or at exclusive private clubs like the Deutsche Gesellschaft.

  His most frequent companions were the crowd around Count Harry Kessler, his fellow homosexual whose family motto was Semper adscendens - always ascending. The motto could have been equally applied to Walther, at this time.

  In short, Walther had grown into his own giant skin. He was a fulfilled human being. The time was long gone when Emil, in a scathing reference to his artistic tendencies, could say of Walther: ‘My son is a tree which bears more blossom than fruit.’

  Nevertheless, the moment he sat opposite Emil he was a child again. The child who, as the English poet Wordsworth so trenchantly put it, is father to the man.

  Emil was rubbing his hands together, as if he was cold, which he probably was, as the temperature in the parlour was kept low.

  ‘Now, my boy. Your appointment – congratulations by the way – is a great opportunity for us. What you must not overlook is the navy. We did the electrics on the Helgoland in 1911 and the searchlights on the S-Line ships in 1912. We are already positioned for the full electric installation on the Bayern, which they are currently constructing in Kiel.’

  ‘Yes, Papa.’ Rathenau was instantly annoyed with himself for replying like a twelve-year old.

  ‘So push for us on that. Then there’s the V-class torpedo-boats. We would expect a

  full contract for two of our turbines per boat. We’re already gearing up for that at the Spandau plant. And as for the U-boats, push for the oil motors as well as the electro-motors’

  ‘Papa, as you well know …’

  ‘We’re putting everything on a war footing. So is the competition, of course. I tell you where we’ll be ready first…’ Emil’s eyes were shining. ‘Tell them about Henningsdorf.’ (the AEG aircraft factory) ‘Arrange a visit. Oh, we’ll put on a show!’

  ‘Yes, I suppose that could be…’

  ‘Go for a contract for us for munitions for the 7.7 cannon. We can deliver the army 150,000 cannon balls a month. Finest cast-iron. Guaranteed! Tell them! Tell them!’

  ‘Papa. I am no longer a salesman for AEG. I am in charge of materials for the war effort on behalf of the country.’ Walther winced at how pompous he was sounding.

  ‘Of course, my boy. Naturally. A modicum of discretion. A few bones thrown to the competition. Yes, yes, yes. But what an opportunity, my boy! What an opportunity for AEG!’

  Chapter Seven

  Walther never did tell his father that if the saltpetre shortage was not overcome in the very near future, there would no contracts of any sort for anyone. On the contrary, French troops could be in the Ruhr and the Russians in east Prussia by the turn of the year.

  In order to avoid this fate Walther was taking a stroll along the Grunewald, the very next day, for not only was the Imperial Chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, a near neighbour, so was the industrial chemist, Fritz Haber.

  The Grunewald was a delightful, sylvan place, Berlin’s equivalent of Paris’s Bois de Boulogne. Anybody who knows anything about Berlin has doubtless heard of the Kurfürstendamm, which was newly built in those days, running from the Grunewald to the equally desirable Tifergarten, where the zoo was.

  On the walk through the Grunewald to Haber’s villa Walther was clutching his black briefcase. It was a particularly pretty route, a tour past the Jewish aristocracy of Berlin. The Mendelssohn-Bartholdys had a villa in the Grunewald. As did the Mayerbeers.

  And the Levin dynasty, who were connected to Heine on his mother’s side.

  Many of these exquisite villas, all architecturally dashing and distinct, represented memories of happy social evenings to Walther. This was especially true of the times he spent with Fritz Kreisler, the Austrian maestro-violinist who kept a place in the

  Grunewald, though he was only infrequently there.

  Kreisler’s turreted mock-gothic habitation was furnished with an upright piano. He

  and Walther used to play duets - they cobbled together violin and piano arrangements. They played Elgar of course, and Tartini; Walther’s beloved Brahms, and Beethoven.

  As he passed Kreisler’s currently empty residence, Walther hummed a few bars of the Brahms D-major violin concerto, his face relaxing into artistic dream-like infancy.

  Last stop on the tour of Jews: Walther had sent word ahead via the servant Josef Prozeller , so the chemist was expecting him.

  Fritz Haber opened the door himself. The head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electro-Chemistry was a slight figure, even by normal standards. He could have set up home in Walther.

  He had a delicate, Jewish face which reflected his family’s Hasidic past. Within months of the same age as Walther, he was already a scientist of world renown, though this encounter took place four years before his Nobel Prize.

  Haber was yet another Jew who had converted out. He was also a fellow homosexual, having a lifelong, tender, gently touching love and friendship with a chemist colleague, Richard Willstaetter.

  Haber’s homosexuality created a bond with Walther, not, in this case, erotic, but rather of mutual sympathy for the hidden life they both must lead – all that was best and most-loved kept under wraps to be brought out only on occasion, like the Sunday-best silver and the bone china tea service.

  Although Walther was painfully aware that Haber’s love was a ‘suitable’ love in that he had much in common with the beloved. It could not have been more different from Walther’s miserable obsessive passion for Hartmut Plaas, who was half his age and with whom he had little or nothing in common.

  ‘I hear we are to save Germany,’ said Haber, cheerfully, ablaze with Jewish irony.

  Walther sighed, holding his briefcase aloft. ‘Estimate the weight of this briefcase.’

  Haber laughed ‘Six septillion kilograms.’

  ‘Clever boy. Weight of the earth?’

  ‘Weight of the earth.’

  They went through to Haber’s cluttered study. Large sheets of paper were already pinned to drawing-boards round the room. Haber had already started work on the problem. They both sat down, moving piles of papers and open and closed books to do so. There was a moment of pure silence, as they both gathered strength and concentration.

  Rathenau’s doctoral supervisor was Josef von Helmholz, known as the Pope of Physics. Max Planck taught him in Munich at that time, too. Planck had introduced Rathenau to Einstein, with whom, even as a young man, he maintained a lengthy correspondence. So when Rathenau got down to work with Fritz Haber that sweltering August day in 1914, although it was not quite as an equal, he was not there merely to make the coffee and sharpen the pencils.

  Fritz Haber had recently finished work with Robert Bosch on the Haber-Bosch process, which was a way of synthesizing ammonia out of nitrogen and hydrogen under high pressure at high temperature. The process can be used to make fertilizer (it still is) and munitions.

  Rathenau and Haber saw immediately that Haber-Bosch could be adapted to synthetically produce saltpetre – potassium nitrate, the essential c
omponent of

  gunpowder and thus all munitions.

  Rathenau’s experience with electrolysis in Bitterfeld was relevant to their work that afternoon, so although the resulting variant on Haber-Bosch was never known as Haber-Rathenau, it could justifiably have been.

  Rathenau went straight to Colonel Oehme with a handful of sketches scribbled out in Haber’s villa. The presentation of his case to Oehme consisted of one sentence:

  ‘I need factories constructed to start production of this process.’

  Oehme, the army’s representative at the KRA, had been told by von Falkenhayn to give Rathenau every assistance. The factories were thrown up in double-quick time (one of them, ironically, in Bitterfeld), before any proof could be offered that the Rathenau-Haber variant of the Haber-Bosch process actually worked. With the threat of silent German rifles and cannon hanging over them, the Prussian War Ministry took the speediest bureaucratic decision by Germanic rulers since Charlemagne.

  Lo and behold, the process worked. New supplies of bullets and cannon balls were reaching the front within weeks, using artificial saltpetre. They were fired by

  German troops. They killed English, French and later American soldiers.

  Walther Rathenau was a thin-skinned man of great emotion and sensibility and a vivid artistic imagination. He did his best for his country like millions of others, but it

  weighed heavily on his heart that he had helped design munitions which had prolonged the war. He never got over it and it broke him.

  That is why he did not care if he lived or died.

  Chapter Eight

  The feeling of soaring success followed by depths of horror which Rathenau experienced over the production of synthetic saltpetre became a miniature of his emotional life throughout his work heading the KRA:

  On the one hand, Germany was living out his socio-economic ideas about the relationship between government and industry through the instrument of a second AEG, a creature he had devised and created – the KRA. He had already altered the course of the war. He was one of the most significant figures on the planet at that time.