It Cannot be Stormed

by Ernst von Salomon

  ‘I did nothing more than turn round a bit and say: “I am waiting for the tram.”’

  However, he felt that he ought to add that probably he would not have fallen except that he had an old war wound. But in any case, apart from that, the blow had been no joke. While he was lying on the ground the officer had come up and had said to him in a loud voice: ‘Get out of this unless you want to get some more stingers.’

  ‘That is what he said; then he waited until I had scrambled up and collected my tools and had gone into the entrance of a house.’

  The prosecutor asked whether he had not, in his dazed state after the blow, perhaps misunderstood the officer?

  No, he said, he had understood him perfectly. He particularly recalled the expression ‘stingers.’

  ‘You told us, comrade,’ said the prosecutor, ‘that you knew the officer by sight. Who was he?’

  ‘It was Lieutenant Schweinebacke,’ said the witness.

  The prosecutor told him to sit down, and called upon Witness No. 2 to come forward and give evidence.

  Witness No. 2 was a pale, thin young man. He was a clerk by profession, had been without a job for three years, was married, had two children and was twenty-six years of age. He spoke in a low voice, hesitatingly.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, not ‘comrades.’

  Yes, he had been evicted from his flat. He could not pay the rent out of the dole. He had hoped that the Friendly Society would pay the rent, because his wife was ill. But he had only had the same as the others. Yes, she was consumptive, and that was the reason he had not wanted to move. Yes, he had written to the estate agents.

  ‘Who owns the house?’ asked the prosecutor.

  A foreign company who were the owners of several blocks of houses. The estate manager had said he could do nothing and had told him to clear out. He had not worried about this, however, as he had not believed that he could be turned out into the street like that, with his sick wife and the two children.

  The prosecutor kept on questioning him.

  The witness told him that he had said to the men who were removing his furniture:

  ‘Why are you doing this, comrades?’

  Then the policeman had told him to be good enough to keep his mouth shut.

  ‘But where on earth am I to go with my sick wife and the two children?’

  The policeman said that had nothing to do with him, and the removers carried his furniture out. Then he had gone to the restaurant to telephone to the police station. An officer had answered. He did not know who the officer was. It was not the district Superintendent. He knew him well because he had often had to go to the police station about signing documents.

  He had said: ‘Where on earth am I to go with my wife and the two children?’

  He should have thought about that sooner, was the answer. The eviction order would be carried out; there was no appeal. And then the officer had rung off. Then he had just told the story to his friends in the restaurant, and they had all come with him to his flat. The furniture was already standing outside the door. Inside his wife was screaming terribly and the children as well. His wife was in bed. No, he had gone into the flat alone; his friends waited outside. Then the policeman had gone up to the bed and said he knew all about it, it was all put on. At this his wife had screamed still louder, and then the policeman had shouted, but more at him than at his wife. Then he had run out and called the people who were outside; there was quite a crowd by now, some of them people he did not know. And they carried the furniture in again, and even one of the removers had helped. They were not real removers, but unemployed men. Then the constable had become threatening and, when no one took any notice of him, had rushed off to the restaurant and telephoned for reinforcements. And the reinforcements had come in a car. Yes, the officer was with them. And they set about the people in the room and on the stairs with their rubber truncheons and dispersed the crowd. Then the policemen had completely cleared the flat, putting everything out into the street. The bed, too, with his wife in it. He had gone up to the officer and had wept, and the officer had said to him that the way he was going on he would have to be reported for obstruction and incitement. In the end a car had come from the Friendly Society and his wife had had to be taken to hospital at once.

  The prosecutor asked if the voice on the telephone and that of the officer at the eviction had been the same.

  Yes, it had been the same voice.

  And had he still not known who the officer was?

  Yes, one of his comrades had told him that it was Lieutenant Schweinebacke, said the witness.

  The prosecutor told him to sit down, and called upon Witness No. 3 to come forward and give evidence.

  Witness No. 3 was a young fellow, sturdy and bronzed, a handsome boy, as the woman next to Ive said. He greeted them not with the word ‘comrades,’ but with a hearty ‘Red Front.’ He was twenty-two years old and had never had regular work in his life. He gave the prosecutor no time to put questions, and told his story as though he had often told it before, in a lively manner and interspersed with obscene remarks. During the metal-workers’ strike he had been at Siemenstadt, just by chance, of course, because picketing was forbidden, and he never did anything that was forbidden, on principle.

  ‘When I got there I could hardly believe my eyes to see every one idle.’

  ‘Is it a public holiday today?’ he had asked one of the constables in quite a friendly way.

  ‘Clear out of this.’

  He said he hadn’t known that taking a walk was forbidden; perhaps Mr. Constable could tell him of some better way of passing his time?

  ‘If you don’t clear out of this at once. . .’

  Then he had gone into a pub to have a drink to get over the shock. The bar was full, but nobody wanted to stand a round. His pal Paul had been there, too, and had told him that there were some comrades there who thought things weren’t so bad after all. So then he had stood up and asked if it was true that any of the worthy gentlemen present had joined the traitors to the working class? Heavens above, the fat was in the fire then. Yellows, every one of them!

  ‘He’s a Red,’ someone in a brown shirt had yelled, and then everything was in a uproar. ‘I ran behind the bar, Paul rushed to the empties and washing-up counter—five minutes later somebody went off to fetch the greencoats, and then we had all the colours of the rainbow.’

  But honour to whom honour is due; the greencoats had been very kind. They had said to him at once:

  ‘We’ve had our eyes on you for a long time.’

  And then, like the grand fellows they were, they had invited him to take a seat in their car, but being a sociable fellow, he asked them to allow the young gentleman in the brown shirt to participate in the pleasure of a little drive. This, however, they refused to do. On the contrary, they pushed him and Paul into the van; then about twenty constables got in and an officer, ‘all of them fine fellows, a couple of heads taller than me. Then we drove off with a regretful look at the pub where there wasn’t a glass or a chair left intact. But Paul would not keep quiet. “Comrades,” he said, “this is unjust. . .” “Shut your mouth,” said the constable beside him, “we’re not your comrades.” I said: “Paul, be quiet, you don’t know these gentlemen, you mustn’t talk in that familiar way.” “Shut your filthy mouths,” said the constable beside me, and I made a sign to Paul to keep quiet, for I did know the gentlemen.’

  At the station they were searched for a second time, and he had taken all his clothes off immediately and bent over to show that he hadn’t a cannon concealed up his arse. For even though he was a natural child, he knew how to behave in polite society. But Paul, in spite of the signs he kept making to him, began getting argumentative again. Ten of them fell upon him. They came from the adjoining rooms and dragged Paul out of his corner. Then they set to work with their rubber truncheons and belt straps.

  ‘Long live Liebknecht!’ Paul had called out, and by that time he was down on the floor, and the
fellows all round him, and they had pummelled until he spat blood. Naturally, the witness said, he had rushed forward to help Paul, but four men held him back, and turning on him with their rubber truncheons, had hit him over the mouth, knocking out three teeth. He opened his mouth wide and pointed to the black gaps in his jaw.

  ‘Give it him hot, there’s still some breath in his body,’ one of the constables had cried out, when the others had wanted to leave off pummelling Paul. One of Paul’s arms was broken, and his face looked like a piece of raw meat. So then they took Paul off to the police-infirmary and himself to the Alexander-prison, where he had found himself in decent company once more. At the end of three weeks they had had to release him, for he was a prudent man and had provided himself with a shooting licence four years previously. But Paul was still in the infirmary, and there were to be legal proceedings. And that’s what came of making such queer friends; not a soul would admit to having had anything to do with it. Naturally Paul could do nothing, for one by one they would come forward and take their oath and give evidence that it was in Siemenstadt that Paul had been so badly treated, and that everything he said was a lie, and he himself could not be called as a witness in accordance with Section 51. So Paul would not be able to tell the true story and could sing in the delightful words of the poet:

  ‘And if should break the ship’s proud mast

  The sails be torn to ribbons

  Our bark we’ll take and steer it fast

  To Plötzensee and Tegel.’

  The prosecutor asked:

  ‘And the officer; what was the officer doing while they were beating him?’

  Oh, the officer, he had been present the whole time and had turned his back and studied the guard-room inventory thoroughly.

  Did he know who the officer was?

  Most certainly, he had had the pleasure of meeting him several times. It was Lieutenant Schweinebacke, said the boy.

  The prosecutor told him to sit down and called upon Witness No. 4 to come forward and give evidence.

  Hinnerk made a note of the name of Witness No. 3, which he got from one of his neighbours.

  ‘A grand lad,’ he said. ‘I must get to know him.’

  The man whose turn it was to speak now was the typical hard worker, grown grey in honest, service; the treasurer of the Workers’ Choral Society, an engine-driver, pensioned off a year ago; a widower, in a long black coat. He said that he could not agree with everything that the previous speaker had said, and he would like to point out that he was not a Communist; he did not belong to any party. When he had agreed to speak here it was merely as an act of friendship. For he could not allow that such circumstances should prevail with impunity in the world today, as those to which his friend had fallen a victim. For five years he and his stoker had driven the same engine every day, and he had found him a loyal, good, industrious, quiet man, of whom he could make a friend and upon whom he could always rely to do his duty. Even after he had been pensioned off, his stoker had often visited him. So that when one day the stoker was dismissed from the State Railways without notice on the grounds of undesirable propaganda, he had still had faith in him and had even given him a home. They had lived together exactly opposite the Employment Bureau. Every day the stoker had gone over to the Employment Bureau to ask if there was a job going, but he had always been disappointed. It is true that the stoker had often discussed things with the other men over there, but he had been a quiet man and had always made excuses for the officials, who after all could do no more than their duty, things being so uncertain in these terrible times, and so many necessary regulations having been made. Even on the day when the unemployed raided the office, the stoker had been against it, and had come back to him and said that it was very stupid destroying everything like that, and it would do no one any good. Often he used to bring a man in with him whom he had got to know over there.

  ‘Heinrich,’ he had said to him, ‘don’t make a friend of that man; I don’t trust his face.’

  But Heinrich thought he was a fine fellow with the right ideas, who had the workers’ interests at heart, and that one could speak freely to him. But time had shown how much this friend was worth. It was this man who had finally incited the others to action.

  ‘When Heinrich came in, he said: “This won’t do, I must go over again, and speak to the man.” And he went over again. But everything was in full swing by then. They were singing the International and breaking the windows; I could see it all quite clearly from my room. My stoker wasn’t there. He was looking for the man, who had disappeared. When the police arrived the man was suddenly there again, and was speaking to the officer, and they arrested Heinrich. I hurried over at once to help Heinrich, but when I went up to the officer and began to explain everything to him, he simply turned round and went away. So they took Heinrich to the car. Just then the others came rushing out of the Employment Bureau, the police after them, and when they saw that they had got Heinrich in custody they picked up stones and threw them at the police and made a rush for the car. And Heinrich broke loose and tried to run away. Then the officer whistled and his men, who were still in the house, ran out with their carbines in their hands and fired on the workers. Heinrich had got a little distance away; they aimed at him. I called out: “Ah, no, no!” but they gave me a push, and then the shots sounded, and all at once Heinrich fell down. They wouldn’t let me get to him where he lay and there was a terrible uproar. Then I heard that Heinrich was dead, and in the police report they said he was one of the chief ringleaders and had assaulted the police, and that in the confusion they had fired. But I know who was the ringleader, and how everything happened, and I went to the police, but they told me that I was suspected of being an agitator and I had better be thankful that they were not proceeding against me yet. And so I come to you and ask: “Is it just that a man’s life should be of no account, and that the truth should be suppressed? And is it necessary to shoot right away, bang, like that, as though it was nothing? And is it right to believe a spy like that before an honest man?”’

  The prosecutor asked him if he knew the officer. No, he didn’t know him.

  ‘Is that the officer,’ asked the prosecutor, showing him a photograph.

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘It is Lieutenant Schweinebacke,’ said the prosecutor, and told the man to sit down, calling upon the woman to come forward and give evidence.

  She spoke in a low voice and turned towards the prosecutor all the time, so that he often had to repeat what she had said and to keep asking her questions. She must have been sixty, and looked almost as though she were pregnant again, with her thin body and protruding belly.

  Ive who had always regarded the posterlike drawings of Kate Kollwitz with some suspicion, realised how strong was the influence of satirical art, since the living model immediately transformed intended pity into indignation.

  She said her boy had been seventeen years old and had not been able to find a job after finishing his apprenticeship. But he didn’t like hanging about at home, so he had joined the young Communists and every Sunday he was off to the lakes with his tent, and she had always been afraid he would be getting into bad company, but he had always been so eager that she hadn’t interfered with him. His father had been killed in the war, of course, and he was the youngest and hadn’t had much fun in his childhood. She had enough to live on. It was difficult, but she had the pension, and if she was careful she could manage. But the boy had not been satisfied. He had made enquiries everywhere for a job, but there was nothing to be had. She had always been afraid he might be going to the public house, but no, he had never done that; he did all the housework and the shopping and the washing up, but that wasn’t the sort of work for a boy. So he had gone out more and more with his friends, and once she had found a revolver in his drawer. She had been horrified and had asked him about it, and he said it was for the day of reckoning, and had looked very fierce. Then she had been frightened and had taken the revolver and given it to her bro
ther-in-law. But he had laughed and said the boy couldn’t even kill a sparrow with the thing, it was quite rusty and the spring was broken, and he gave it back to the boy and told him not to talk nonsense. She had often asked the boy whether he wasn’t getting up to mischief with his friends, and he had looked at her frankly and said, ‘No,’ and she had believed him because he always spoke the truth. She had had four sons; one had been killed in an accident at his work, two were married and gone away, and then the youngest. She and the boy had lived alone. He had always been obedient, but restless. On the day of the shooting she had forbidden him to leave the house, and he had said: ‘Mother, I must go to my friends, I cannot leave them in the lurch.’

  But she had said that they were not good friends and had implored him, and told him that she didn’t want to lose him on top of all her other troubles. For she had a presentiment of evil all the time and did not let the boy out of her sight the whole day. He was very restless and kept running to the window, and had wanted to hang a red flag out, but she had locked up all the red stuff. Then he had got into a temper and screamed, and she had said to him:

  ‘That’s right, turn against your own mother.’

  Then he had burst into tears and gone into his room. She had not dared go to sleep that night; but the next day he was gone. Her neighbour told her that she had seen him going off very early and had told her of such terrible things going on that she had cried and had not known what to do and had only hoped that everything was over, and that he wouldn’t find his friends. So she had run downstairs and out into the street, and it had all started again. The people were terribly excited and had said the police ought to be shot down like dogs. That was the way they were raging, and they told her she should shut all her windows because they would soon be shooting in at the open windows. At the corner of the street shots could be heard already. Then the people all ran on and some men had come up and told her that the police were firing at the Communist guard on the roof, and that her son was up there.