by Michael Dean
Glaser looked at him. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I have. One day you will stand where I stand now. And may the souls of the coming dead forgive you.’
‘Take him away!’
*
Glaser was led out and driven back to Stadelheim in the police van. There, he was taken to a small ante-room. A dread came over him.
‘What’s this?’ he asked a guard. ‘When is the sentence?’
‘In half an hour’s time.’
Glaser gasped. He retched, but stopped himself from vomiting. He sat heavily on a hard wooden chair. The guard left but quickly returned. ‘Visitors,’ he said.
‘Visitors?’
Glaser was led out, to a bare, whitewashed room containing only a table and chairs. Seated at the table were Lotte and Kaspar. They stood as he came in. Glaser embraced Lotte. She buried her face in his shoulder. Then she disengaged, to let Kaspar hug his father. The youth was red in the face with the effort of not crying, but suddenly the dam burst. He broke his hug with Glaser, to wipe away his tears, furious with himself. Then he spoke, blurting out what was in his heart:
‘I am so proud of you. I am proud to have you as my father. No man ever had a better.’
‘I wish that were true,’ Glaser muttered. ‘Lotte ...’
‘I love you, Gerhard,’ Lotte said, ‘until I too leave this earth. They cannot take my soul, Gerhard. And they cannot take my love. And if my soul and my love is all I have left, then so be it.’
Glaser had tears in his eyes. ‘Magda ...?’
‘She’s ... with Katya.’
‘Tell Magda I sent my love.’
*
The guards gently but firmly led Glaser away. His pipe had been brought to the ante-room, along with his tobacco and matches. He packed and smoked a pipe. The prison chaplain entered. Glaser unprotestingly let him give blessing. The chaplain was still there when three men in black, with black top hats, came for him
They handcuffed him again, and led him outside, to an executioner’s block in a small stone courtyard. He was lifted bodily, then lowered into position, lying with his neck on the block. A wooden yoke was lowered, fitting above his neck, stretching it. The executioner, with a sharpened axe, appeared behind him.
Glaser had planned, over the last pipe he smoked, to cry out ‘Freedom lives’ as his last words on earth. In the event, he tried to say ‘I love you, Lotte, Kaspar, Magda.’ But the first swing of the axe caught him at an angle, smashing his throat. He said only ‘I love’, before he choked to death in his own blood.
Because of the visit, he died believing his family were safe.
Afterword – November 1988
The Ceremony of Remembrance, on the fiftieth anniversary of the destruction of the town’s synagogue, was led by the Mayor of Ludwigsburg, Hans-Jochen Henke. Lotte Glaser was a guest of honour. As she sat watching the ceremony, she conjured images of her long-dead family. Kaspar’s face floated in front of her eyes.
As she had always feared, Kaspar’s defiance had cost him dear. Six months into his sentence at Dachau, the guards had been making him hop from foot to foot, shouting ‘I am the shit-head Glaser, and my father was a traitor.’ The youth had stood it for nearly an hour, then smashed one of them in the face. They whipped and beat him to death, over five days, rubbing salt in his wounds overnight.
Now in her early nineties, and frail, Lotte was muffled against the November cold. She was sitting in the front row of a temporary stand, erected in what was now called Synagogenplatz. Beno Elsas, old Max Elsas’s son, was next to her. Beno had marched into Ludwigsburg as part of the American army freeing the town at the end of World War II. He was ferociously attentive to Lotte’s needs – bristling combatively if anyone else tried to take care of her.
Lotte Glaser watched through rheumy eyes as the handsome figure of Herr Henke placed flowers on the memorial stone on the site of the destroyed synagogue, and bowed his head. There was a moment’s silence, broken only by Beno fiercely whispering in Lotte’s ear every detail of the wide-ranging Programme of Restitution, and the links established between the town’s teacher training college and equivalent institutions in Israel. To Beno, and to Lotte, every word was a hammer blow at the Nazis, and their twelve-year Reich.
There followed a talk on the history of Ludwigsburg’s Jews by Dr Albert Sting. Lotte, with Beno’s arm tightly round her, began to cry when Max Elsas and Dr Pintus were remembered. She heard Gerhard’s voice again, telling her about them. Old Max had been murdered in Theresienstadt. Dr Pintus had died as he approached Dachau, either from a heart attack or suicide. Dr Sting was announcing that streets in Ludwigsburg were to be named in honour of Max Elsas and Walter Pintus.
After the ceremony, there was a civic lunch at Ludwigsburg’s Ratskeller, at which Lotte ate Gerhard’s favourite Swabian specialties and drank a small glass of the Goldberg wine he loved so much.
In the afternoon, she was again a guest of honour, this time at Ludwigsburg’s famous Centre for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes. Beno told her that the Centre, on the main Schorndorferstrasse, had once been a women’s prison, which the Nazis had built using smashed grave-stones from the Jewish cemetery.
Lotte met many of the lawyers involved in gathering evidence of Nazi crimes, which they then handed to the prosecuting authorities. She marvelled at how young they all seemed, and how many of them were not from Swabia. One lawyer, a bright-as-a-button young lady, smilingly told her that the incomers liked Ludwigsburg, as a place to live, and found the work worthwhile and fulfilling.
Lotte said she was pleased. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.
‘Weisshaupt, Frau Glaser. Magda Weisshaupt. I’m originally from North Rhine-Westphalia.’
‘Magda! That was my daughter’s name.’
Lotte told her about her Magda: Even in Dachau, she refused to acknowledge her brother – a fellow prisoner. After he was killed, she retreated into a secret place in her mind. Lotte visited her in a sanatorium after the war, every week for twenty years, until she died. But Magda never knew who she was.
‘Oh, that’s so sad,’ Magda Weisshaupt said.
‘Yes,’ said Lotte. ‘But I’m glad I told you.’
‘I’m glad, too. We must face sad events. And overcome them.’
‘Yes.’
Lotte unveiled a plaque at the opening of the Gerhard Glaser Room, at the Centre. This room was to be the base of a small team of lawyers, led by Magda Weisshaupt. They would find and document German acts of opposition and resistance during the Nazi period – so these brave men and women were not forgotten.
Lotte had been asked to make a speech, after she unveiled the plaque bearing Gerhard’s name. She told the assembled lawyers that Gerhard would have been among their number, working here, had he lived.
‘My husband,’ she said, ‘lived for the law, and died fighting criminals. He would have been delighted to see the law triumphant, here today. He would have been happy to see West Germany become what it has become – a country to be proud of, a state under the law. He would love to have seen the return of at least a few of the Jews to his beloved Ludwigsburg. On his behalf, I hope that one day as many Jews will return as once lived here. That will be, if I may take the Nazi phrase from them, the Final Solution. Our Final Solution. Then we will have won. And then my Gerhard can rest in peace.’
On her way out, escorted by Magda Weisshaupt, and on the arm of Beno Elsas, she noticed a small room, full of paintings, and asked to be shown it. The paintings were by Fritz Ketz, an artist who had made Ludwigsburg his home.
Lotte stopped in front of Ketz’s drawing of Ahaseurus – the Eternal Jew. It showed an old rabbinical figure below Christ on the cross. He was being tormented, beaten and abused by the crowd. Ketz’s compassion for the Jew shone through the brutal drawing.
‘Gerhard would have liked that,’ Lotte said.
The last painting she saw, before she left, was Ketz’s Spring Landscape Near Erlenhof. In a simple composition, its Expressionist treatment show
ed the yellow of spring rising, as wind bent the trees.
‘He would have liked that, too,’ she said. ‘What happened to the artist, Fritz Ketz? Did he survive the Nazis?’
‘He had to destroy a lot of his paintings,’ said Magda. ‘At one point, he kept all his drawings packed in a bag, in case he had to flee. But, yes, he survived.’
‘I’m glad,’ Lotte said. ‘I’m glad he survived.’
Did Hitler Kill Geli Raubal?
Michael Dean
First published Autumn 2010 in Copperfield Review
On the morning of Saturday 19 September 1931, the body of Hitler’s twenty-three year old half-niece, Geli Raubal, was found on the floor of her bedroom, in the Munich apartment she shared with Hitler. She had been killed by a single shot from Hitler’s pistol, a Walther 6.35.
Ever since then the world has, more or less unquestioningly, accepted that Geli took her own life. Hitler, it is widely held, had an alibi. There are, it seems to me, strong reasons to doubt both these assumptions. But before examining them, let us set out the the version of Geli’s death that has gained such uncritical acceptance:
According to the initial report of the police doctor, Dr Müller, Geli shot herself during the evening of Friday 18 September. At some time during the Friday afternoon, Hitler had left Munich for Nuremberg in the company of his close companion, the Nazi Party photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann. They were driven in Hitler’s Mercedes by his chauffeur, Julius Schreck. Hitler, Hoffmann and Schreck spent the night at Nuremberg’s Hotel Deutscher Hof.
The next morning, the Saturday, Hess telephoned the hotel from Hitler’s Munich apartment to say that Georg Winter, Hitler’s valet-cum-butler, had broken into Geli’s locked room and found her dead on the floor. Hitler’s party had already left to continue their onward journey to Hamburg, where Hitler had a long-standing Party engagement.
A page was sent in a taxi by the hotel to pursue Hitler’s Mercedes and give him the bad news. The Mercedes headed back to Munich so quickly it was stopped by police and a speeding ticket was issued. When he got back to Munich, on the afternoon of the Saturday, Hitler was interviewed by Kriminaloberkommissar Sauer from Munich Police Department 5. His staff had been interviewed earlier that morning by Sauer and Kriminalkommissar Forster.
Dr Müller completed his examination of the body at around 11.30 on the Saturday morning. It was then taken to Munich’s East Cemetery. On Monday 21 September, it was released for burial in Vienna. Geli’s body was accompanied back to her homeland by her mother, Hitler’s half-sister Angela Raubal. On 23 September, at three in the afternoon, Geli was buried at the Central Cemetery in Vienna.
On 24 September, Hitler spoke at a Party rally in Hamburg. He then travelled to Vienna, and at ten o’ clock on the morning of 26 September, he spent twenty-five minutes at Geli’s grave.
***
So, what, then, is suspicious about the apparent suicide of Geli Raubal?
THE LACK OF A POST-MORTEM
There was no post-mortem on Geli’s body, let alone an inquest. Even Nazi commentators admitted that in a death by shooting this was ‘highly improper.’[1]
According to Otto Strasser, a Hitler intimate at the time, though an enemy later, a Munich Public Prosecutor wanted Hitler charged with murder.[2] Ronald Hayman gives the Prosecutor’s name as ‘Glaser’ – no first name.[3]
The man who had authorised the speedy release of Geli’s unexamined body was the Bavarian Minister of Justice, Franz Gürtner. Gürtner lived down the road from Hitler, at 10 Äussere Prinzregentenstrasse. He was a political ally – a member of the far-right Nationalist Party. Gürtner’s previous service to the Nazi cause was to have the trial of those arrested for the Munich Putsch moved from the High Court in Leipzig to a more sympathetic lower State Court in Munich.
THE WITNESS STATEMENTS
Statements were taken from Annie Winter, who ran the household; her husband Georg Winter – Hitler’s valet-cum-butler Anna Kirmair, who did the cleaning ; and Maria Reichert, a house servant. No statements were taken from Reichert’s mother, Gerda Dachs, who was also a live-in servant, or from Heinrich Hoffmann, who was sitting next to Hitler when he set off for Nuremberg in the Mercedes, or from the chauffeur, Julius Schreck.
The four statements are all brief, far briefer than most witness statements to a death by shooting, then and now. The longest of them is from Georg Winter. Here it is in full:
‘I was employed to supervise the running of Hitler’s household. First thing this morning, at nine-thirty, my wife informed me that something must have happened to Raubal, because nobody could get into her room and Hitler’s pistol, which was kept in an unlocked cupboard next door, was no longer there. So I knocked on the door of her room again and again but got no answer. It was looking suspicious to me, so I forced the locked double-doors, at ten o’ clock, with a screwdriver. The doors were locked from the inside with the key still in the lock. When I opened the door, my wife, Frau Reichert and Anna Kirmair were there. As soon as I had got the door open, I went into the room and found Raubal lying on the floor dead. She had shot herself. I can give no reason why she should have shot herself.’[4]
Both Anni Winter and Maria Reichert’s statements have Geli going into her room at three o’ clock on the Friday afternoon. Anni Winter has Geli coming out of Hitler’s room – where she presumably fetched the pistol – and going into her own at that time. Reichert says she heard a noise ‘a short time after’ three o’ clock[5] - a noise consistent with a small-calibre gun firing.
But at what time did Hitler and his party leave the apartment for Nuremberg? The police appear not to have put this crucial question to anybody. In his account of these events in his 1955 autobiography, Hoffmann gives no time for the departure. Hitler’s statement to Sauer simply says he left on ‘Friday afternoon’ and Geli said goodbye to him ‘quite calmly’ - ganz ruhig.[6]
None of the witness statements give a time for Hitler leaving the apartment. They also show a remarkable similarity of phrasing. (All of them, for example, refer to Geli as ‘Raubal’ which in 1930s Munich is rude to the point of contempt). We do not have to look far for a source of influence on the witnesses: At some time on the morning of Saturday 19 September, a high level conference of Munich Nazis took place in Hitler’s flat. Present were Hess, Gregor Strasser, Max Amann, Franz Xaver Schwarz and Baldur von Schirach.[7]
The ‘witness statements’ were co-ordinated, if not dictated, by Hess. We know from Hitler intimate Emil Maurice, of whom more below, that Georg Winter had phoned Hess first, when he found Geli’s body. Only much later – 10.15 on the Saturday morning – Maurice continued, did Winter telephone the police, by which time the servants were coached in the party line.[8] They were even introduced to the police – Sauer and Forster – by the Nazi Finance Director and eminence gris Franz Xaver Schwarz.
In September 1931, the Nazis had already just weathered one sex scandal, one of the many homosexual sex-orgies involving the SA head Ernst Röhm. This had been seized on by the Social Democrat and Communist press, especially the Munich Post, the official Social Democrat newspaper. The Nazis could ill-afford another sex-scandal, and one involving Hitler himself could have finished them.
So news-management was the priority of the gathering of the Munich Nazi hierarchy in Hitler’s flat on the morning of Saturday 19 September 1931, with Geli lying dead in her bedroom.
Baldur von Schirach telephoned Adolf Dresler, head of the press department at the Brown House, Nazi Party headquarters. He told Dresler to say that Hitler had gone into mourning after the suicide of his niece. Twenty-five minutes later von Schirach phoned Dresler again. This time he told him to release the story that Geli’s death had been an accident. ‘But by then it was too late.’[9] The Brown House had already released the first, suicide, version.
If von Schirach’s second call had been a few minutes earlier, the accident story may well have become the received wisdom that the suicide story is today. Intriguingly, Hitler was later furious t
hat the suicide story, not the accident story, had been put out to the press: ‘Hitler was apparently furious at Strasser for publishing the fact that it was a suicide and had fallen on Goering’s neck, weeping with gratitude, when Hermann suggested that it was just as likely to have been an accident.’[10]
There can be no doubt at all that the four witness statements given to the police were part of this tightly controlled news management and that they are unreliable. In particular, the two statements attesting that Geli was alive at three o’ clock on the Friday afternoon are not to be trusted.
THE TIME OF GELI’S DEATH
The acceptance of Hitler’s non-complicity in Geli’s death rests on the received wisdom that ‘he had an alibi.’ The alibi, in turn, rests heavily on the time of Geli’s death.
Dr Müller arrived at Hitler’s apartment on the Saturday morning, with, or shortly after, the police. Eye witness reports say he gave Geli’s clothed body a twenty minute examination at the scene. He concluded that Geli died on the evening of Friday 18 September 1931 from inner bleeding following a bullet wound to the lung. At this time he attested only that ‘rigor mortis had set in several hours previously.’[11]
However there was a further investigation. This was a result of reports in the press, especially the Munich Post, which cast doubt on the suicide. Unfortunately, this report, by brave reporters who had fought the Nazis for years, has deflected attention onto two side-issues – whether or not Geli wanted to leave Munich and train as a singer in Vienna, and whether her nose was broken, as one of a number of ‘injuries to her body.’[12]
Geli’s attempt to get away and train as a singer in Vienna is a red herring, as the idea that the possible thwarting of this plan would have caused her to kill herself is absurd.
Geli’s mother confirmed that to the Americans in her CIC hearing in May 1945.[13]
