It Cannot be Stormed

by Ernst von Salomon

  But what about the machinery of administration; was it asleep? It was not asleep. It repeatedly took action, and repeatedly arrested anybody it could get hold of—for instance Farmer Hamkens, who was travelling about the country making speeches. The fact that he never mentioned the bombs seemed all the more suspicious, and since they could not find much to bring up against him in regard to the bombs, Hamkens had to go into quod for a month to serve an old sentence. But the farmers marched up and down in front of his prison and caused a public disturbance in the town. So they removed Hamkens to another prison in another town, and other farmers marched up and down, and Hamkens wandered from one cell to another and quite enjoyed himself. But the farmers decided to hold a great demonstration on the day of his release. Not so much to celebrate the release of Farmer Hamkens, as to show the townspeople their power and their unity and to state their demands on the spot; for though the townspeople knew a lot about the farmers’ struggle, they did not know the truth, and they still did not grasp how much they were involved in the struggle.

  On the day of his release Hamkens was to have been in Neumünster, which was the most important fair-sized town of the province, was of some industrial standing and had an excellent burgomaster. The excellent burgomaster wanted to have peace and order and, as he understood the farmers and also understood the machinery of administration, he did three things: he arranged for Hamkens to be removed on the last night to the prison at Rendsburg, he gave his sanction to the farmers’ demonstration, and he kept the company of State police, which had been sent to him, outside the town. He thought that thus, in the interests, of the town, he had played a trick on everyone. The burgomaster of Neumünster was an excellent man. But he did not know what had long since become evident to the farmers: namely, that every measure, prompted by the spirit of a declining era, must of necessity have a completely contrary reaction to that intended. This was to be proved by the incident of the flag.

  For the farmers the elastic, almost anonymous Movement represented a political weapon, and the intangible boycott an economic one, and the bomb an inarticulate argument, but they still lacked a visible sign, a pictorial and emotional symbol. Here as usual Hinnerk, with his natural and uninhibited delight in inspiring effects, immediately struck the right note. A flag! A marching movement must have a flag, which would head the procession, which could be waved, which could be hoisted, and—not least important--for which one could, with complete justification, do battle. The flag was black, with a white plough and a red sword; the great undulating sheet was not attached to a simple pole, but to a scythe which had been hammered straight! The scythe-flag had been the battle-standard of the Dithmarsch men in the Danish wars; it flew in the old colours, black white, red, which still meant so much to many of them, but with new symbols: everything was there. And Hinnerk bore it in front of the procession.

  ‘Well, well, a flag,’ said the farmers, and smiled a little, as they saw it fluttering—it was nothing but a piece of coloured bunting, but, quite pretty.

  For the police-superintendent in Neumünster, too, it was only a piece of coloured bunting; but when two people think the same thing, they do not necessarily mean the same thing. The police-superintendent of Neumünster regarded the flag with disfavour; it did not bear the colours of the republic. The procession began to move towards the prison, where Hamkens no longer was; the farmers set out, a solid mass of big, strong figures, each of whom had his tough stick in his hand (for a farmer never leaves the house without his stick); the close-formed column threaded its way through the almost empty streets. From the windows of the houses the heads of the townspeople were peering curiously, and the townspeople were calling jokes to each other across the streets, and even saying spiteful things, for Neumünster was a stronghold of social democracy. Suddenly the police-superintendent of Neumünster bethought himself, of the by-law of 1842, which laid down that it was unlawful to carry an unprotected scythe through the streets of the town, and the by-law in the Defence of the Republic Act prohibiting the carrying of arms, and the by-law of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior by which in demonstrations, walking-sticks were to be regarded as arms, and a whole lot of other by-laws, and the Article of the Service Regulations concerning the behaviour of the police in cases of provocation. Then the police-superintendent of Neumünster pushed his way through the farmers’ procession and seized Hinnerk by the sleeve:

  ‘The flag,’ he gasped, ‘the flag!’

  Hinnerk did not even look at the man; with a simple movement of his arm, he shook himself free. The farmers shoved aside the uniformed obstacle to their march, and the police-superintendent discovered himself several ranks behind the wide-spreading black flag, pressed up against the walls of a house. That was resisting the executive power of the State. It was no longer merely the breach of a by-law; it was an offence against the law! He trotted along the procession to the front; he took a deep breath, for there, a little way off in front of the marching column, stood his superior officers.

  ‘The flag,’ he cried out to them and, drawing his sword, advanced, a body of constables behind him, towards Hinnerk.

  Hinnerk was proudly bearing the flag, holding it aloft with both hands, his chest thrown out, blinking up beneath his fair hair to the windows where the pretty girls were to be seen. When the police-superintendent tried to seize the flag, he refused to let go, shaking the staff vigorously to rid himself of the useless appendage. A sword flashed and gave him a deep gash in the hand. The farmers in the rear, who had not seen what was going on in front, pressed forward with their even, steady tread. They pushed the front ranks against the body of police and, while Hinnerk was struggling with the superintendent, tenaciously clutching the flag-staff with his bleeding hands, the farmers’ sticks were raised and directed against the constables. Hinnerk clung to the flagstaff, blows fell on his head, shoulders and arms, he stumbled, fell, still clinging to the flag, staggered up again, biting and kicking; swords flashed up and down, the flag-staff was broken, arms seized hold of Hinnerk, blows rattled down on him, feet trampled him. Enveloped in the black cloth, Hinnerk reeled, was thrown on one side, staggered to his feet and, after being knocked down again and again, lost consciousness, but not the flag. The whole street resounded with the noise, swords clashed against sticks, a blinding flash clapped Farmer Helmann in the face and sliced off his nose, solid wood thudded heavily on the skull of the policeman, cries re-echoed along the ranks of farmers:

  ‘What has happened in front?’ and ‘Halt—the police.’

  Claus Heim shouted a command:

  ‘To the Agricultural Show!’

  Slowly the procession broke up. Hinnerk lay, under arrest and still unconscious, the flag at his side, in the entrance hall of a house; the echoes of the slowly ebbing fight resounded in the neighbouring streets. Singly and in groups, the farmers advanced on their new objective; but the superintendent had given the alarm to the police waiting outside the town and, as the farmers arrived, they found the armed force; drawn up in line, before the entrance to the Agricultural Show. As the farmers entered one after another, their sticks were taken from them.

  In the immense hall the farmers seethed up and down:

  ‘What’s this about the flag?’ they shouted.

  ‘They have taken our flag!’ and ‘Hinnerk stuck to the flag!’

  The thing that lay beside Hinnerk in the passage was no longer a piece of coloured bunting: the very honour and self-respect of the farmers, consecrated by their blood, lay there, stained and torn by shameless, desecrating hands. From now on the name of Neumünster would be used as a curse in the farmhouses. Suddenly the word went round that Hamkens was no longer in the prison, and that the burgomaster had provoked the police against the farmers, after enticing them into the town with a hypocritical sanction of their demonstration. For this there could only be one answer! In the midst of the confusion Claus Heim formulated the terms of expiation. The flag must be returned to the farmers by the foremost of the town authorities with
solemn ceremony and apologies. The guilty superintendent must be dismissed immediately. The town was to undertake to pay to every one of the farmers injured by this breach of hospitality, an adequate compensation, the amount to be decided by the farmers in each case.

  ‘The meeting is dismissed,’ cried the police-officer to the seething mob, and the farmers left the town, not to set foot in it again for over a year. The excellent burgomaster of Neumünster was an astute man; but all his clever foresight had failed; the very thing he most wanted to avoid had occurred; not only the farmers, but also the machinery of administration, and the loyal citizens of the town, believed it to have been a preconcerted plot. Everything that he had done strengthened the ugly suspicion and, since there had to be one, he was selected as the scapegoat. He did, whatever might be thought, the only thing that he could do as an upright man: he defended the superintendent’s action, in spite of the fact that it was contrary to his own intentions. That was the second great mistake that the burgomaster of Neumünster made (if he hadn’t defended the superintendent it would equally have been a mistake); he refused to accede to the demands of the farmers. And the farmers boycotted the town! Neumünster, a fair-sized town of some industrial standing, was not entirely dependent on the country and, although in hard times, in every budget, public or private, every penny counted, it was nevertheless the town which stood the better chance of holding out in the struggle. The burgomaster relied on his town, and he relied on all the help which must be afforded him by the authorities, and he relied on the eventual good sense of the farmers, whom he knew to be quiet people of apt intelligence who believed in guarding their own interests. What point was there in this petty revenge for the sake of a torn flag, for the sake of a stupid incident, which was likely to occur at any time if I there was a clash between an excited crowd and disconcerted officials? But the farmers were not concerned with revenge; they were concerned with their cause, which was at a critical juncture. No farmer was to set foot in the town where the desecrated flag lay; not so much as a button was to be bought in the town; not even a glass of beer to be drunk: the young farmers left the Agricultural College, the market was deserted, no more cattle shows, no more gymkhanas! The town was despised and everything that came out of it; the friend in the town was no longer a friend, the girls in the town no longer found sweethearts among the young farmers. Not a single egg, nor a pound of butter for the wives in the town; no petrol or help for a car bearing a town number.

  The town was wiped out and existed only as a dirty blot on the landscape. And woe betide the farmer who should dare to break the boycott!,

  But who was it who broke the boycott? Who crept into the town like a thief in the night? Grafenstolz broke the boycott. Grafenstolz crept into the town like a thief in the night. Trembling he stole from shadow to shadow, his back bent and damp with sweat. The package under his arm was a heavy burden. He peered cautiously round every comer, gliding like a fish past the light of the street lamps to dive as quickly as possible into the safety of darkness. The town; was full of enemies; every possible danger gaped out of the dark jaws of the street. Secret dens of the powers of destruction! The work of the devil and his minions come to lure mankind into their sinister realm! But Grafenstolz was on the watch; the stars had foretold victory for him. A leap, a fling, a flash, a report, a rumble and a thunderous din. . .

  Ive sat alone at his desk in the editorial office. The greenish glare of the lamplight gave depth to the large bare room, whose windows looked now like sheets of lead; shed a pale light on the papers lying scattered and in piles all over the room, illuminated brilliantly and with quivering shadows the typewriter on which Ive was morosely thumping away. From the composing room rose the pungent smell of printer’s ink mingled with the sweetish mouldy smell of the glue pot. Ive hated these night vigils, waiting for the last news over the wireless. These hours, which were always filled with the most disagreeable tasks, instead of acting as a preliminary to refreshing sleep after the lively excitements of the day, only led to confused dreams, which eluded memory, and blocked him at the moment of awakening, confusing again the sentences which came rushing into his mind and for the period of a second seemed to be so happily phrased. He rummaged peevishly among the files, which he never succeeded in keeping tidy. One file only was neatly arranged and labelled—the bomb file, which Hinnerk had organised and which contained all the reports and articles, annotated with humorous underlinings and expressive exclamation marks from Hinnerk’s red pencil. Ive turned over the papers in this file, wrote a few sentences, stopped to think, wrote again. It seemed as if in the public mind the Farmers’ Movement had developed into a regular bomb-throwing organisation. This must not be. Hinnerk ought to look for some civil position, thought Ive, but immediately dismissed the absurd idea. Why should this well-constructed piece of care-free life be allowed to dry up? Moreover all the developments which had resulted from Hinnerk’s always disinterested actions had in the end proved useful. It seemed almost as though the complete lack of prejudice is his character had communicated itself to his actions: what ever he did established itself as an expression of the will of the farmers, whose battle he fought, without being in the least concerned in it. But with Grafenstolz it was a different matter. Government buildings and Treasury-offices were not particularly in favour with anyone. But now it was a private individual, Doctor Israel, specialist in internal diseases, half the front of whose house had been blown up. That the public indignation of the citizens should have turned immediately, with unexpected vehemence against the farmers, did not seem particularly worthy of note; what was more dangerous was that this incident had provided much grist to the mills of undesirable friends. Ive of course was an anti-Semite; but only because it was too much trouble to be anything else. In all his activities he had found only enemies among the Jews. This was remarkable, but did not worry him. For him their inferiority was a fact learned from experience. He found them alien to the spirit of the times in their attitude and unprogressive in their point of view like, say, the French. In the course of many conversations he had discovered that they had no understanding of certain things, no grasp of certain straightforward and material issues; thus, however much he tried, he had never been able to get them to understand the simple problem of the farm; they found it completely incomprehensible. Of course, their undeniable supremacy in certain fields, particularly in business, the arts and journalism, was almost intolerable. But it seemed to him that this was the result of the present order, and it was, therefore, necessary to replace this by a new order which, if it was to be national, by its intrinsic character, must, of necessity, put an end to this unpopular supremacy. For it would be founded on values at any rate completely foreign to the Jewish mentality, values which were making themselves everywhere evident, most particularly in the farmers’ struggle. The case of Israel had not only roused a storm of indignation among the citizens, it had also roused the chattering activity of the mountebank preachers. Up and down the countryside, in every village, the itinerant apostles were to be found expounding the Talmud. Ive had no doubts as to the steady instincts of the farmers, but he did fear disintegration of the front. The Movement was exposed to every kind of ideological attack. In that lay both its strength and its weakness. Competition for the support of the farmers and their votes had been rife for a long time among the parties and federations. The existence of the Movement was enough to make the parties radical in their promises. And they could certainly, if they belonged to the opposition, count on a big increase of votes at the next elections. This state of affairs held no dangers for the Movement until, perhaps, the insistent attitude of the parties forced individuals to take a decisive position. The agricultural federations too had worked strenuously. A peasants’ party had been formed, whose object was to establish its political position purely on the economic interests of the peasants. There was in fact an actual need for independent representation of their interests in the parliaments, and the federations knew this. It might well prove
successful to play a double game, and to set the peasants against the peasants. But if Hamkens and Heim and all the leaders of the Movement were proof against snobbery it would be easy enough for the bureaucrats to act in the name of the Movement, manoeuvre the Movement itself into dependence on them and to set themselves up as dictators! Already the influence of all kinds of different activities was being felt throughout the province, and it was not always easy to distinguish by whose hand and in whose interests the wires were being pulled. The bomb outrages cleared the air: they were a test, just as the boycott of Neumünster had been a test. Not only the farmers, but more particularly the good people who approached the Movement with helpful smiles and always knew best about everything, were faced with the stern task of making a decision. All at once the farmers found themselves alone; in place of the parties the Conventicle hoisted its banner: prophets and quacks came in masses and Grafenstolz was a great man.

  The farmers laughed at Grafenstolz, but they did not interfere with him. Bombs were arguments, but the things which were seeking expression in the province were not to be formulated by the Grafenstolzes. And the Grafenstolzes must not throw bombs, especially if they could not keep their tongues still afterwards. Ive was angry; for the first time since his activities on The Peasant he was faced with a conflict, a stupid ridiculous one, but still a conflict. In the battle against the System he could spring any mine; but how were these asses to be dealt with, especially as they were asses loaded with a world philosophy? To enter into any sort of discussion with them was ridiculous, and if he used the weapons of irony and satire he would be putting himself in the wrong, placing himself in a line with the common enemy. Anyway, Ive had asked Grafenstolz to come and see him, but Grafenstolz was a great man and kept Ive waiting. If he brings our solidarity into disrepute I will break all his bones, thought Ive. He thought: the bomb-throwing must be put an end to. A joke should not be carried too far. The bombs had done their work: they had put the administration in a fluster, they had shown that the farmers were not to be played with, they had at least drawn a clear line of demarcation between the farmers and the townspeople, between friend and foe. There had been no loss of life in any of the many outrages, which was all to the good. Ive was acquainted with the magic effect of bloodshed, but in this case there was no truth in the hypothesis on which the effect was based. Hinnerk had once, in one of his very rare moments of reflection, drawn a comparison between this Movement and that of the Russian Social-Revolutionaries before the revolution. But this comparison was not apt. The System was not Czarism and the farmers were not an oppressed serfdom. The thing that characterised the farmers’ battle was the absence of any brutal opposition. They were not fighting against a mighty, tyrannical and pitiless master-class but against a senseless, wasteful machine, whose driving oil was already growing rancid. In the struggle there were no ideal-ridden intellectuals, no desperate outlaws, no explosive bundles of nerves, hut men who had to fight for their very life in the stench of putrefying disintegration, men who were not taking action or a theory for a distant exhilarating and glittering goal, but in their homes were steadily carrying out, one by one, the tasks that lay nearest to hand, in the full knowledge that they were doing this for the sake of posterity. Sometimes Ive felt bitter about this; he wished it had been otherwise; but wherever he looked, it seemed to him that the Farmers’ Movement had really reached the highest degree of revolutionary activity possible in Germany at that time.