round as four furniture-men manhandled the piano indoors. Joseph rapidly mastered
the instrument. He also developed a talent for play-acting and mime. At age
thirteen he saw Richard Wagner’s majestic opera ‘Tannhäuser’ and was inspired by
the romantic dive and sweep of the master’s music.14 But what was to become of him
now? The priesthood? Goebbels inclined briefly toward medicine, but Voss, his teacher,
persuaded him that his real talents lay in literature. Whichever the subject, the university
at Bonn it would be.
JOSEPH Goebbels reaches puberty at about thirteen. But given his later reputation is it
worth emphasising that he will be thirty-three before he first has sexual intercourse
with a woman.15 For the intervening twenty years this brilliant but celibate cripple’s
life will be a trail of temptations, near-seductions, and sexual rebuffs etched into his
memory. At thirteen he and his pal Herbert Beines have a grubby mudlark of a friend,
Herbert Harperscheidt, whose stepmother Therese always wears crisp, clean skirts;
so Joseph Goebbels recalls fourteen years later. The sexual arousal that he first detects
towards this mature female returns when he is fifteen. He harbours secret crushes
on women like Frau Lennartz, the factory owner’s wife. Evidently another passionobject,
his brother Hans’s girlfriend Maria Liffers, does not return his feelings because
his teachers and her parents protest and Goebbels has a frightful scene with his
father. All of his pals have girlfriends—Hompesch has one enticingly called Maria
Jungbluth. Goebbels however senses only a ‘dark yearning’ as Eros awakes in him.
‘My libido is sick,’ he will write aged twenty-six. ‘In affairs of the heart we humans
are all scandalously selfish. For the phallus we sacrifice hecatombs of immortal souls.’16
Basking in what he sees as one woman’s love he will reflect, ‘I am everything to
her.Ê .Ê . Or am I allowed to savour life’s treasures more intensely because I am doomed
to depart it early on? Now and again I have this premonition!’17
At age eighteen, in 1915, he begins a three year infatuation with a local girl, Lene
Krage. He calls it love, and will long recall their first chaste kiss in Garten Strasse.
26 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
But she is capricious and flighty, and his tormented soul drives him to the timehonoured
refuge of writing a private diary. At Christmas 1916 he sends her a book of
his own poetry. Leaving Rheydt for Bonn university in March 1917 he says farewell
to Lene. They find themselves locked in Kaiser Park that night, and he kisses her
breast for the first time: characterizing this milestone event seven years later he
writes coyly, ‘She becomes a loving woman for the first time.’ It will become clear
that he means this only in the broadest sense.
HE was to study philology, Latin, and history. Desperately lonely, he lodged in a cold
bare room. His aspirations were overshadowed by hunger, cold, fatigue, and ill-health.
He had made one good friend in the law student Karlheinz Kölsch however and
fagged for him as the Leibfuchs (freshman valet) in the tradition of all mediæval universities.
‘Pille’ Kölsch, as he was known, remained his foppish, loud-voiced, jovial,
staunch friend and rival long after their careers had drifted apart. With his modish
headgear and yellow gloves, Kölsch became his first role-model.18 He roped Goebbels
into the tiny Bonn chapter (‘Sigfridia’) of the Catholic fraternity Unitas on May 22,
1917.19 Its half-dozen members spent the weekly meetings solemnly debating religion
and quaffing beer in the local hostelry, The Cockerel. A record of the fraternity’s
get-together on June 24, 1917 shows them all partaking of Holy Communion,
then listening while Goebbels—who had chosen the classical name of Ulex for himself
—delivered a well-received speech on “Wilhelm Raabe and us.”20 The fraternity
bulletin refers to Ulex as one of their ‘splendid foxes’ (freshmen) and ‘determined to
do honour to the principles of Unitas.’21
His funds ran out, which scarcely mattered as at the end of July 1917 he was briefly
inducted into war service, and absolved his obligations by pushing a pen for a few
weeks in a home auxiliary service (he wrote an excellent copperplate script). He
was keen to continue at university, but his father could put up only fifty marks per
month; Joseph earned a little more by tutoring. He frittered away that summer with
Lene on vacation, spending at least one chaste night with her on her sofa at
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 27
Rheindahlen, and committing to his memory that she ‘stayed pure’. He left a number
of unpaid bills at Bonn, which his father settled.
The winter semester began on October 1, 1917. He submitted a formal application
for aid to the Diocese in Cologne. The Albertus Magnus Society there provided
aid to promising young Catholics. The documents22 supporting his application show
that his father now earned 3,800 to 4,000 marks per annum, and had no liquid
assets. His scripture teacher Mollen testified:
“Herr Goebbels comes from decent Catholic parents and deserves commendation
for his religious fervour and his general moral demeanour.“
Father Mollen, his mentor and spiritual benefactor, would explain years later that
he furnished this testimonial with the clearest conscience: ‘He was a very promising
scholar. For nine years he had taken scripture lessons from me and had always shown
much interest, comprehension, and devotion. He regularly attended school church
services and the monthly Communion. His attitude to me was confident, proper,
and reverential.’ The parish priest at Rheydt seconded him. Backed by these documents,
Goebbels humbly submitted on September 5, 1917, his application to the
Diocesan Committee of the Albertus Magnus Society for financial support for the
winter term 1917-18.
“Because of a lame foot I am exempt from military service, and I should dearly
like to continue my studies next term. For this however I am entirely thrown
upon the mercy of the charity of my Catholic fellow-believers.“
The charity evidently asked him to produce an attendance certificate from Bonn
university. He explained on September 14 that he had not been able to complete the
term. Convinced that his was a worthy cause, the Society sent him 185 marks as a
first interest-free instalment of a loan finally totalling 964 marks—about three months
of his father’s pay. His address was now given as No.18 Post Strasse in Bonn; he
would return there in October 1917.
28 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
BY the time of his final Ph.D. examination in November 1921 he would have attended
five different universities; this was not unusual in Germany. The reasons are obscure:
sometimes he was pursuing a particular girl, sometimes a certain professor, sometimes
a special course; frequently the lack of lodging space in one city decided that
he should study elsewhere that term instead.
His speaking talents were already developed. Hompesch told him he was a born
orator. ‘Motor mouth!’ joked Kölsch’s brother Hermann in one letter, ‘There you
go, shooting it off again. Well, there’s nobody
can touch you on that score.’ ‘We really
ought to open a stall,’ Hermann joked in a letter two weeks later, ‘and do the rounds
of the church fêtes displaying you as the Man with the All-Round Mouth.’23
Goebbels and ‘Pille’ Kölsch were inseparable. They arranged for Jesuits like Father
Rembold to lecture to the students, and once Goebbels proudly invited his old scripture
teacher, Father Mollen, to lecture too. At Bonn he studied under Adolf Dyroff,
professor of philosophy. He attended the literary seminars of Professor Berthold
Lietzmann, and wrote well-regarded essays for Professor Carl Enders on the youthful
drama fragments of Johann Wolfgang Goethe. He stayed on in Bonn after term
ended on February 1, and moved into Kölsch’s lodgings in Wessel Strasse. The April
1918 issue of the Unitas journal reported that the two friends had decided to study
next in Berlin.
AT CHRISTMAS Goebbels discovers his pal’s sister Agnes Kölsch and his yearning for
Lene turns to aversion. Agnes visits him one day and they exchange one passionless
kiss on his sofa. She foolishly introduces him to her sister Liesel, and an informal
triangle develops lasting well into the new year. Agnes visits him in Bonn, and they
spend the night together—‘Ulex’ kisses her breasts; as he recalls it, she is all over
him. After this he spends weekends at the Kölsch family home at Werl except once
when Liesel her sister comes to Bonn: Agnes is all but forgotten.24 Goebbels recalls
having been considerate to her, but he congratulates himself, with a certain smugness,
‘She is all over me.’ Agnes’ mother encourages Goebbels’ relationship with
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 29
Agnes although his immaturity is painfully evident.25 ‘She is still a child,’ he adds in
his own writings. ‘We are both children.’
Writing six years later, he recalls these amorous forays in far greater detail than his
more academic pursuits. ‘Barely went to university,’ he confesses. ‘Pille’ Kölsch meanwhile
has opted for Freiburg in south-western Germany; Ulex sets off in his comrade’s
footsteps for the summer term beginning in May 1918.
At Freiburg Pille embraces him, his eyes gleaming. ‘Ulex!’, he announces, ‘I’ve
already found this great girl. Anka Stalherm. She’s a student—you’ve got to meet
her.” (“And how deeply and completely I have done just that!’, writes Goebbels six
years later, still besotted with Anka.)
Female students are in 1918 still rarities at German universities, and Anka is a
rarity among these. She is reading economics. Her eyes glitter blue-green, she wears
her blonde hair hair long with a few strands caught up in a knot on top26; her ankles
are slim, and her legs are rumoured to be equally divine. She is twenty-three, two
years older than Goebbels. With her Ursuline convent education in Germany and
England behind her, she has inherited class, beauty, and wealth as well—her late
father owned a distillery and cornmill in the Rhineland.27
Kölsch and Goebbels become friendly rivals for Anka’s affections. Among her effects
will later be found a faded picture postcard showing Goebbels at some student
revelry wearing a lampshade on his head.28 Pille has penned a fond message on the
back. And yet—let this be made clear in advance—sexually, Goebbels will get nowhere
with her; nor she with him.29
But the pursuit, the pursuit!
Since Anka is a regular at Professor Hermann Thiersch’s seminars on classical
archeology, Goebbels signs on for them too. Glowing reports reach the charity in
Cologne about his interest in these three-hour lectures. And the miracle happens:
Anka Stalherm, this goddess of the mysterious grey-green eyes, she who is coveted
by half the males at Freiburg university, saves her smiles for when he walks in, or so
it seems to him. She is fascinated by this swift intellect. They go out as a threesome
for strolls up Freiburg’s Castle Hill or into the Black Forest. Kölsch suffers torments
30 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
of jealousy, which enhances Goebbels’ sense of triumph. He serenades Anka on a
rented piano, and one precious night he sleeps under the same Black Forest roof as
her. The three students tour the sleepy towns along the shores of Lake Constance,
with Goebbels dreamy-eyed in blissful anticipation. At Ravensburg he plays the huge
cathedral organ for them.
Oppressing him despite these carefree moments are his poverty and his own jealousy
when she spends days away with Kölsch. His uncle Heinrich Cohnen, a wealthy
insurance-director friend of his father’s, twice wires him loans. The Catholics are less
forthcoming. While the Unitas journal reports the unexpected revival of their Freiburg
chapter thanks to Ulex and his pal, after August 1918 Goebbels’ name vanishes from
its pages altogether.
The delicious pursuit of Anka continues. Every detail of her coquettishness remains
implanted in his memory—the cigarettes she deftly filches from him, his letter
of reproach, her silent rapture when Goebbels reads out his latest epic, his private
glee at Pille’s jealous suffering, and their reading of Gerhard Hauptmann’s ‘The
Sunken Bell’ together in her room, where Goebbels serenades her on the piano but
ascertains that she is, alas, ‘chastity itself.’
His first letter to her is dated June 15, 1918, a wordy, Latin-garnished, solemn
epistle addressing her formally as sehr geehrtes Fräulein Stalherm, embellished with
four lines of carefully crafted verse and signing off ‘with quite a lot of greetings,
yours faithfully, J. Goebbels à Ulex.’30 Persistence and intellect are rewarded. Up on
Castle Hill one afternoon—it is June 28, 1918—he kisses her for the first time:31
not on the lips, but on one cheek.32 There is a problem: she is of far higher pedigree.
There is an unholy row when she does not invite him to meet her visiting brother
Willy. And he agonizes over her dalliances with Kölsch: which does she prefer? One
evening she pleads with him on bended knee to declare his love for her, and he realizes
that women too can suffer.
As she leaves Freiburg at the end of July 1918 after one last night of stifled passion,
he visits their old haunts. He sits in the forest hut high above the university city,
listening to the rain beating on its roof, and imagines himself all alone on earth. He
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 31
writes her romantic messages. ‘Love has gone away,’ he writes. ‘The flower has died.’
He begins to compose a five-act play, ‘Judas Iscariot.’33 He misses Anka badly.34 Why
must the most beautiful roses have the sharpest thorns? He reminds her of their first
hour together, reading the poetry of Theodor Storm. He will miss her, with her
dreamy eyes and lustrous golden hair. Their hour of parting comes—”O, avert not
thine eyes…They are glistening and moist. O, do not weep, we are not parting for
ever. Come give me thy dear hand, dost thou feel how the same pulse beats in both
our veins? Tomorrow we sally forth into the world.’ ‘And now, fare well. Come, give
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