Albert Speer

by David Edgar

  Slight pause.

  Well, of course, it’s terrible. When was it?

  FIFTH QUESTIONER. 6th of October 1943.

  SPEER. I’m sorry, when?

  FIFTH QUESTIONER. 6th of October 1943. A meeting of Gauleiters, and some others, at Posen Castle in the Warthegau.

  SPEER looks at him aghast.

  Yes. You were there.

  He takes the transcript and finds the next bit he needs.

  Later Himmler talks of war production. How people tried to stop them liquidating the Warsaw ghetto because of the war production there.

  CHAIR. Now, please . . .

  FIFTH QUESTIONER. Then he says this: ‘Of course, this has nothing to do with party comrade Speer: it wasn’t your doing. It is precisely this kind of so-called war production enter­prise which party comrade Speer and I will clean out together over the next weeks. We will do this just as unsentimentally as all things must be done in the fifth year of the war: unsentimentally but from the bottom of our hearts’.

  SPEER. I wasn’t there.

  CHAIR. Please, this is enough –

  FIFTH QUESTIONER. You’re saying you weren’t there?

  CHAIR. Guard, will you ask this man to leave.

  FIFTH QUESTIONER. But Himmler says: ‘it’s not your doing’. You were there.

  SPEER. I wasn’t there. I was there at the meeting in the morning, but I wasn’t there.

  The SECURITY MAN takes the FIFTH QUESTIONER by the arm.

  FIFTH QUESTIONER. Take note please, everyone!

  SPEER. I must have left. I needed to consult . . .

  SECOND QUESTIONER. Let him speak!

  CHAIR. I must insist . . .

  SIEDLER. Now, Albert, it’s all right.

  FIFTH QUESTIONER. Don’t you understand? Himmler’s saying, Speer is here.

  A SECONDSECURITY MAN comes up to help pull the FIFTH QUESTIONER out.

  CHAIR. Herr Speer, I must apologise . . .

  FIFTH QUESTIONER (as he goes). It’s the whole case, torn to shreds. He didn’t know. But he did know. Himmler speaks to him. ‘It’s not your doing’. In the middle of a speech in which he says of course we all know don’t we that we’re murdering the Jews . . . It makes it crystal clear . . . he’s lying as he lied at Nuremberg and he’s lied for thirty years . . .

  He’s gone.

  CHAIR. Herr Speer, I’m sorry. Everybody, please . . .

  SIEDLER. Come on, now, Albert.

  SPEER. I was not. I cannot recollect. I wasn’t there.

  2.6.1  A synagogue, Dusseldorf, mid-1970s

  Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony is playing in the backgroud. An older CASALIS enters with Rabbi Rudolf GEIS. Both men wear skull-caps.

  CASALIS. I’m afraid I don’t think that this is a good idea.

  GEIS. So why are you –

  CASALIS. It’s what he wants.

  GEIS. So he always gets what he wants?

  CASALIS. What he thinks he wants.

  GEIS. Why does he want to meet death camp survivors now?

  CASALIS. Something has happened. Some exposure by an academic, accusing him of being at a meeting where Himmler openly discussed the killing of the Jews. I gather from his wife he’s spent weeks in the Federal Archives, checking dates and times.

  GEIS. He didn’t come to you?

  CASALIS. No. But he wrote about it.

  GEIS. I’m sorry.

  CASALIS. Why?

  GEIS. I thought that you were close.

  CASALIS. We were. But under rather different circumstances. It’s difficult to go on knowing someone one has got to know quite deeply in a time of crisis.

  GEIS. Ah, that would explain it.

  CASALIS. What?

  GEIS. Why, in his books, he hardly mentions you.

  Pause.

  CASALIS. Yes I noticed that. I think . . . I have decided . . . I don’t mind.

  Slight pause.

  GEIS. I’m sorry. I’m behaving like a prosecutor.

  CASALIS. And we know our job is not to judge, to probe or to interrogate.

  GEIS. Speak for yourself. Would you be surprised if he had lied about – whatever?

  CASALIS. Well, he lied to me. I think. But then all prisoners do. It’s a way of hanging on to the little of themselves they’re left with.

  GEIS. That surprises me. From his books, it seems Herr Speer is in complete command.

  CASALIS. By then.

  GEIS. Was that your work?

  CASALIS. He never lied about his inner life. Let’s say, he built a path on which we could walk together for a while.

  GEIS. Both figuratively and literally.

  CASALIS. A path – a rhythm, or a discipline – on which when I had left he could proceed.

  GEIS. To become a different man?

  CASALIS. That, and his writing.

  Slight pause.

  GEIS. Yes. I know a brilliant man, completely organised and disciplined, a lover of the arts and all the higher things . . . and yet. Not only incapable of abstract thought, but also of romantic love. I often ask myself, what happened to him as a child.

  CASALIS. Then you know Albert Speer.

  GEIS. So was he at this meeting?

  CASALIS. His case is that Himmler was notoriously short-sighted, that the room was dark, and that he couldn’t have been there. Which rests on not being able to fly in to Hitler’s east headquarters, so he had to go by road, and a gap in Hitler’s calendar in which they could have met that evening.

  GEIS. And does it sound convincing?

  During this, SPEER enters in his overcoat, carrying his hat.

  CASALIS. Rabbi, I have a fear. That the only way he could admit what he admitted was by denying what he has denied. I taught him to confront as much of what he knew as he could deal with and remain alive. That to save his life he had to sacrifice his soul.

  SPEER. Herr Pastor.

  CASALIS. Why, my dear Herr Speer.

  GEIS (SPEER’s head’s uncovered). Uh . . .

  CASALIS. Oh yes, you need a skull-cap.

  SPEER goes to get a skull cap from the pile by the door.

  GEIS. In fact, your own hat is perfectly acceptable –

  CASALIS returning with skull-cap.

  SPEER. No, no, this will do.

  As SPEER puts on the skull-cap.

  CASALIS. This is Rabbi Geis.

  SPEER and GEIS shake hands.

  SPEER. I am very grateful.

  GEIS. They’ll be here directly.

  SPEER. Isn’t that the Bruckner Fourth?

  GEIS. Yes, it’s my assistant.

  SPEER. We had them play it at the last concert of the Berlin Phil.

  GEIS. As you say in your reminiscences.

  SPEER. I’m complimented. And your synagogue survived everything?

  GEIS. With an occasional judicious change of role.

  SPEER. Ah, yes.

  GEIS. In fact, it may change role again. Unhappily, what was the ghetto is now prime downtown real estate.

  SPEER. Oh but you mustn’t sell it. It’s so beautiful.

  GEIS. Yes. Like the romantic symphony.

  Slight pause.

  SPEER. What do you mean?

  GEIS. I have a theory, that there is a risk, that people – sometimes people who have found it hard to find love in their real lives – seek beauty in great works of art not as a supplement to personal love but as a substitute. That some­how, they can feel – feel deeply, passionately, soulfully . . . but not directly. So they feel through art.

  CASALIS (fearful that GEIS may have gone too far). I think . . .

  GEIS notices his assistant DAVID, in his late teens, appproaching from his office.

  GEIS. This is I fear true of my assistant.

  DAVID. Herr Geis, your guests are here.

  GEIS. David, this is Albert Speer.

  SPEER. How do you do?

  DAVID. I’ve read your books.

  SPEER. I’m glad.

  DAVID. I have a question.

  SPEER. Ple
ase.

  DAVID. What are you proudest of designing, as an architect?

  GEIS and CASALIS are relieved.

  SPEER. The piece I feel about most – deeply and most passionately is a chair. It was very simple, rather unobtrusive. But for me . . . complete.

  Pause.

  DAVID. A chair.

  GEIS. We’ll meet them in my office.

  SPEER. Oh, can we not talk in here?

  CASALIS. I think it would be better –

  GEIS. If it’s what you want.

  GEIS raises a finger, to indicate to DAVID that he should wait a moment.

  But first I must ask you seriously if this is really what you want. I must put it to you that there might be something fundamentally unhealthy about living so intensely in the past. I have read your books. I know that you are now confronting other accusations. But surely – now – it is time to face the future.

  SPEER. You have heard about this meeting I am supposed to have attended.

  CASALIS. Yes.

  GEIS. Did you attend it?

  SPEER. I have proved – to my own satisfaction – I did not.

  GEIS. To ‘your own satisfaction’.

  SPEER. The timing is quite clear. I had to leave the meeting early, and I drove to Rastenberg and met with Hitler. I have affidavits proving where I was and who with and how long. I have proved, yes, that I wasn’t there.

  Pause. GEIS says nothing.

  For what is the alternative? That I was there and I don’t remember? That I blocked it out?

  Slight pause.

  GEIS. As you say, you have your affidavits.

  CASALIS. And now perhaps we ought to go and see –

  SPEER. Rabbi. It has been nearly thirty years. Nobody could go on asserting his own guilt at full volume all that time and remain sincere. I wake with it, I spend my days with it, I dream of it. But what I say about it has inevitably grown routine. And now that I have proved – to my own satis­faction, yes – my innocence of yet another charge . . . the danger is that in considerable relief at that I say – well if that’s all right, then there’s no guilt at all. So if you will forgive me, sir, I need this meeting. Because I need to know.

  CASALIS. What do you need to know?

  SPEER. What it was like, to be on the receiving end of me.

  (To DAVID). So will you bring them?

  DAVID goes out, SPEER moves away to look at the synagogue.

  GEIS speaks out front.

  GEIS. And of course it was very hard for him. One of the women was from Prague, and had been first at Theresiensdadt and then in Auschwitz where she’d been the victim of experiments.

  CASALIS speaks out front.

  CASALIS. He told me, once, that on his way to work he could see the crowds of people waiting for evacuation on the platform of the Nikolassee railway station. But he’d never speculated what would happen to them at the other end. Well, now he knew.

  GEIS. The other was in hiding, and had spent her time since trying to find out how and where her parents, uncles, cousins, husband and two children died.

  CASALIS (to GEIS). My understanding is, that Hitler’s calendar wasn’t an appointments book. It was a record of everyone who met with him. And on the evening of Himmler’s speech, Speer’s name isn’t there.

  2.6.2  Germany, late 1970s

  The images of what was at the end are projected on the set. Vast, unmanagable, inescapable. The Dora sounds: the cement mixer and the saw. SPEER walks through the images, forming weird shapes on his body and his face.

  SPEER. And so they told me what I’d turned away from.

  Pause.

  So, yes, of course. That is the question I must answer now.

  Not whether I was at a meeting. But whether, meeting or no meeting, I still knew.

  And you were bound to ask eventually. Everybody does. And it is always the same answer.

  Because if I knew, and if I knew I knew, then everything becomes a lie.

  What I said to Georges Casalis, what I wrote, what I told my children, what I tell myself. My life becomes a lie to me.

  And so I have always said. I should have known, I could have known, I didn’t know. I turned away.

  Pause.

  Yes, that’s right. Turned away.

  Pause.

  I’m sorry. I can never speak of this to you again.

  He turns. It is his study.

  2.7.1  Speer’s study in Heidelberg, late 1970s

  MARGRET enters.

  MARGRET. Albert, there’s someone here to see you.

  SPEER looks round.

  It’s a woman. She claims she has an appointment.

  SPEER. Um . . .

  MARGRET. She’s German speaking, with an English accent. She’s clutching all your books and articles. She’s obviously more than diligent.

  SPEER. Ah. Yes.

  MARGRET comes over to SPEER, gives him a letter.

  MARGRET. Albert, do tidy yourself up. You look worse than you looked in Spandau.

  MARGRET goes out. A knock.

  SPEER. Come in.

  The door opens. MRS WINTERINGHAM is in her mid-to-late 30s, fair and attractive. She does indeed carry a small Speer library. SPEER glances at the letter to remind himself.

  Mrs – Winteringham?

  MRS WINTERINGHAM. Herr Speer, I am so pleased to meet you.

  She comes over to shake his hand. Some confusion with her books.

  I’m sorry . . .

  SPEER. Please sit down.

  They sit.

  You have an English name.

  MRS WINTERINGHAM. My husband’s British. I live there, you see.

  SPEER. I have always admired the British.

  MRS WINTERINGHAM. Yes, I know. In fact, Herr Speer, we’ve met before.

  SPEER. We have?

  MRS WINTERINGHAM. You signed one of my books for me.

  SPEER. Ah, yes. And, when . . . ?

  MRS WINTERINGHAM. Herr Speer, I’m very angry.

  Slight pause.

  SPEER. Oh?

  MRS WINTERINGHAM. I have read your books, your articles and interviews, and other people’s articles about you.

  SPEER. Ah . . .

  MRS WINTERINGHAM. And my response is – what gives them the right to carp and sneer at somebody like you?

  SPEER is thrown by this unexpected tack.

  Herr Speer, I think your prison diary is the best, and the most moving book I’ve ever read.

  SPEER demurs at this hyperbole.

  And of course you made mistakes. In stirring times. How could you not? But you were Germany’s chief architect. You did stave off defeat against all odds, and save our industry from destruction at the end. You did serve twenty years in solitary confinement, and transform yourself, and come through to make a new career. And for people to insist on yet more penitence, yet more self-accusation . . . Oh, I think not, Herr Speer.

  SPEER. You’re very kind.

  MRS WINTERINGHAM. I am not being ‘kind’.

  SPEER. Nevertheless . . .

  MRS WINTERINGHAM. There is no nevertheless about it. You did these things. They were of value. And you did them on your own.

  SPEER stands.

  SPEER. Shall we take a walk? You can make your notes when you get back.

  MRS WINTERINGHAM. My notes?

  SPEER. You have not come to interview me?

  MRS WINTERINGHAM. I have come to meet you.

  SPEER (gesturing to the books). So . . .

  MRS WINTERINGHAM. I’d hoped that you might sign my other books for me.

  SPEER. Of course. When we return.

  MRS WINTERINGHAM smiles and stands.

  SPEER (picking up the book he signed). Please ask my wife to lend you some galoshes. I will be down directly.

  MRS WINTERINGHAM turns to go. SPEER reads his inscription in her book.

  SPEER. Your name is Trudi.

  MRS WINTERINGHAM. Yes.

  SPEER. Yes. I think – I do remember you.

 
; He looks at her.

  Do you like music, Mrs Winteringham?

  MRS WINTERINGHAM. Oh, Herr Speer, I am Aquarius. I love things of beauty more than life itself.

  She goes out.

  2.7.2  Germany, 1980–81

  SIEDLER and HILDE, speaking separately out front.

  HILDE. Apparently it was the Spandau Diaries. They ‘made her cry’.

  SIEDLER. I saw Speer in 1980. He’d sent me the manuscript of his new book on the SS, which had considerable problems.

  HILDE. My mother was naturally devastated. After everything she’d done for him.

  SIEDLER. And then he said what he had said to me before: that sometimes a man needs another man in whom he can confide.

  HILDE. What, did she know? He used to ‘report absent’ when he went to meet her.

  SIEDLER. And then he took a snapshot from his wallet.

  He said: ‘I had to be in my 70s to have my first real erotic experience with a woman’.

  HILDE. Of course she knew.

  2.8.1  Bedroom, Park Court Hotel, London,

  1 September 1981

  SPEER in his bedroom. There is wine in an ice-bucket. He telephones.

  SPEER. Hallo? This is room . . .

  He checks his key.

  516. This is to say that there will be . . .

  Pause.

  Ah. She’s on her way.

  He looks round the room, checks his appearance in the mirror. There’s a knock at the door. He goes and admits MRS WINTERINGHAM.

  MRS WINTERINGHAM. Hallo, darling.

  SPEER. Hallo.

  They kiss, passionately.

  MRS WINTERINGHAM. It’s sweltering. How was the BBC?

  SPEER. Oh, fine. They thought I’d done the plans for Hitler’s tomb at Linz.

  MRS WINTERINGHAM. But that was Giesler.

  Pleased that she knows this, SPEER opens wine.

  SPEER. Yes. I had to improvise.

  MRS WINTERINGHAM (enjoying his chutzpah). You told them you did Linz?

  SPEER. I left it open. Do you want some wine?

  MRS WINTERINGHAM (mock shock). Albert.

  SPEER (pouring wine). Being the BBC, they couldn’t resist pointing out all that remains of my work are the ruins of the stadium, two gatehouses now converted into lavatories and a row of streetlamps.