Mann concludes:
Life then—at any rate, significant life—was in ancient times the reconstitution of the myth in flesh and blood; it referred to and appealed to the myth; only through it, through reference to the past, could it approve itself as genuine and significant. The myth is the legitimization of life; only through and in it does life find self-awareness, sanction, consecration.18
One of the key words in this passage is ‘legitimization’. By invoking and identifying with illustrious precedents or antecedents, an aura of ‘legitimacy’ was acquired for oneself and one’s actions. Thus, for example, did Jesus in the New Testament acquire ‘legitimacy’ by modelling his behaviour on Old Testament prophecies. Thus, in a rather more sinister fashion, did Hitler augment his personal charisma by encouraging the German people to see him as everything from a biblical Messiah to a modern avatar of the old Hohenstauffen emperors; and thus was his régime called the Third Reich. Thus, in our own era, did Margaret Thatcher profit from mythic identifications with Churchill, with Elizabeth I and with Boadicea. And thus did Bill Clinton in the United States attempt to foster a mythic identification with John F. Kennedy. Such identifications exercise authority because, whether validly or not, they seem to have a ‘legitimacy’ behind them—the ‘legitimacy’ of the past, of history and tradition through which, as Mann says, life finds ‘self-awareness, sanction, consecration’. The leader who fosters no mythic identification—John Major, for example, or George Bush Snr, or Jimmy Carter—seems to lack authority precisely because he lacks the semblance of ‘legitimacy’.
For a figure like Claus von Stauffenberg, ‘mythic consciousness’ as defined by Mann involves something even more: a pervasive awareness of oneself not only as an individual, but also as the temporary manifestation, or embodiment, of an age-old and ongoing continuity. Individual life is part of a greater continuum: the transient incarnation of a sequence of ghostlike selves, antecedents and descendants, extending back into the past and forward into the future. One is part of a process, or procession; and it is to this, not to its particular ephemeral form at any given moment, that one’s obligation lies. And from such a perspective, death is almost incidental. Indeed, death—and especially death through noble self-sacrifice—is less an end than an integral phase of the process.
From his subsequent letters and statements, from his behaviour, his attitudes and actions, it is clear that Stauffenberg regarded himself with precisely the kind of ‘mythic consciousness’ Mann describes. Thus, too, did he regard his relationship to his family and to German history. As Napoleon, in Mann’s example, saw himself as the nineteenth-century avatar of Charlemagne, so Stauffenberg in boyhood saw himself as a twentieth-century avatar of Gneisenau, of Yorck von Wartenburg, ultimately of the Schenk von Stauffenberg knights who served the Hohenstauffen emperors of the high Middle Ages. In adulthood, this attitude would become less simplistic, more tempered and sophisticated, but it would continue—encouraged by Stefan George—to operate as a determining principle throughout his life. The impulse to see oneself, either in the present or potentially, as ‘a man of importance’ can, of course, readily be ascribed to ‘delusions of grandeur’, but the final word on the matter is perhaps best left to the great Austrian novelist Robert Musil:
It is true that such an urge may be a sign of vanity and stupidity; it is no less true, however, that it is a very fine and proper desire, without which there would probably not be many men of importance.19
During his boyhood, Stauffenberg was imbued with an ideal of aristocratic service and responsibility that motivated him throughout his career—through his service in the Reichswehr and the Wehrmacht, through his activities during the war and his leadership of the German resistance. It was during his boyhood, too, that he began to cultivate another characteristic that would be manifested dramatically throughout his life. Even before he was able to read philosophical theories about such matters, much less formulate his own, he instinctively developed a sense of determination and resolve, verging on a kind of ‘cult of willpower’. He refused to be immobilised by his recurring illnesses and constant throat infections. With a fierce single-mindedness, he seems in fact to have willed himself into health. The once-feeble boy contrived to turn himself into an impressive athlete, noted for stamina and resilience. At Lautlingen, he would revel in helping the local peasants with the harvest, taking particular pride in being able to scythe hay—uphill, as well as on level ground—no less energetically than the village boys. This may in part have been dictated by a simple adolescent desire for acceptance, but it also reflects a remarkable capacity to surmount physical disability, to assert the supremacy of spirit, mind and will. The same qualities would later turn him into a candidate for Germany’s Olympic equestrian team. They would enable him to display an indefatigable energy and aptitude for physical exertion that would strike his colleagues as one of his most extraordinary traits, and impel him, during his convalescence from the wounds incurred in North Africa, to refuse all pain-killing drugs. In his tenacious unwillingness to be handicapped, Stauffenberg is reminiscent of Nelson.
The life of action and physical exertion for which Stauffenberg took pains and pride in qualifying was not his sole, or even his primary, sphere of activity. Swabia’s humanist tradition dictated that Germany’s—and the West’s—cultural heritage be an integral part of a young aristocrat’s training, and Gräfin Karoline von Stauffenberg’s passionate devotion to the arts made them more vital and immediate to her sons than any mere academic chore. She herself was one of the numerous patrician ladies who comprised Rainer Maria Rilke’s doting fan club, and, like others, took pride in her acquaintance and correspondence with the great poet. It is therefore not surprising that the three Stauffenberg brothers were steeped in aesthetic matters.
All three immersed themselves enthusiastically in poetry, philosophy, history, painting and music. Musical evenings were a regular feature of the Stauffenberg household, with Claus playing the cello, Berthold the piano and Alexander the violin. While still at school, Claus expressed a desire to become a professional musician, possibly a composer. He also began to develop an interest in architecture, and, until the age of eighteen or so, dreamed of becoming an architect. After the Great War, Graf Alfred, the brothers’ father, refused to attend the former Royal Theatre because it was in republican hands, but the brothers remained devoted theatre-goers. They also threw themselves into school theatricals. In a production of Julius Caesar, Claus played the part of Lucius, while Alexander played Brutus and Berthold Caesar’s ghost. Claus also took the part of the revolutionary anti-establishment Stauffacher in a production of Schiller’s inflammatory Wilhelm Tell, as if rehearsing the rôle he would later play in reality and history.
Yes! There’s a limit to the tyrants’ power!
When man, oppressed, has cried in vain for justice
And knows his burden is too great to bear,
With bold resolve he reaches up to heaven
To seize those rights which are forever his20
One of the most influential trends among German youth during the 1920s was the Wandervögel movement (to be translated literally as ‘Wandering Birds’ or, more lyrically, ‘Birds of Passage’).21 The movement owed something to the Boy Scouts created some years before by Robert Baden-Powell, but, unlike the scouts, the Wandervögel philosophy had less to do with the conventional social virtues than with something more metaphysical, a form of simplistic pantheism. Although later stigmatised because of the ease with which it was taken over and shaped to sinister ends by the fledgling National Socialist Party, during the first two and a half decades of the twentieth century the movement was innocent enough.
Despite their father’s disapprobation, Claus and Berthold joined a youth group of Wandervögel ‘pioneers’, the so-called ‘New Pathfinders’.22 In this capacity, they embarked on camping trips, practised spear-throwing, sang folk songs around campfires and recited from Stefan George’s poetry. At the time, George’s reputation in Germa
ny eclipsed even Rilke’s. And while Rilke was of Bohemian-Austrian background, George was German, a native of the lands along the Rhine. It was natural enough that his symbol-laden mythic verse, his archetypal orientation and mystically pantheistic vision should endear him to the young.
Another contemporary author of significance to the Stauffenbergs was Hermann Hesse, also a Swabian and thus a ‘kindred soul’. Hesse’s early novel Peter Camenzind (1904) offers perhaps the supreme prose evocation of the Swabian landscape the Stauffenbergs so loved. Demian, published in 1919, became a bible for German youth of the Stauffenbergs’ generation. Among more traditionally established figures, the most esteemed by the Stauffenbergs were Goethe and Friedrich Hölderlin. Hölderlin, whom many would rank above Novalis, Heine and perhaps even Goethe in the pantheon of nineteenth-century German poets, was a major influence on Stefan George. Like Hesse, he was a Swabian, and his fusion of uniquely Germanic material with the most lofty elements of classical Greek myth and tradition endowed him with a special significance for the Stauffenbergs. At Christmas 1922, Claus decorated his schoolroom and, by the light of the tree, recited from Hölderlin—and, in an unintentionally heretical juxtaposition, St Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians.
Accounts of Claus von Stauffenberg during his late teens and early twenties portray him as more than a little bohemian. He already displayed the cavalier insouciance about protocol and etiquette that would characterise his later career. He was lazy about shaving. He paid scant attention to the cut of his hair or the correct fit of his school uniform. And he was equally indifferent to such matters in other people. Photographs of the time show a youth with a face that appears narrow in profile but wider when viewed head-on, with symmetrical features, broad cheekbones, a strong and slightly cleft chin. His hair was dark, slightly wavy and, when he bothered to have it cut, fairly closecropped. His eyes, of a dark metallic blue, were described as among his most striking physical traits. By his late teens, he was already, as General Halder was later to say of him, ‘accustomed to making up his own mind and having his views accepted—to taking the lead or feeling an obligation to do so, which in his eyes amounted to the same thing.’23
His attitude towards others was dictated largely by his assessment of their inherent qualities rather than by anything stemming from convention. He would keep coldly aloof from certain flamboyant ‘personalities’, despite their overtures to him. He often displayed indulgence towards people’s weaknesses, but could be uncompromising—to the point of harshness, even brutality—when confronted with subterfuge, deviousness or underhand behaviour. According to Ludwig Thormaehlen, a member of Stefan George’s circle who met him in 1924, he was temperamentally very different from his twin brothers and ‘gave, by his open ready cheerfulness, the image and impression of a steadfast dependability’.24 Thormaehlen continues, in the somewhat florid style of the time and with more than a little effusiveness:
Young though he was, his radiant energy, which he was ready to turn to everything around him, produced an impression of absolute reliability ... Quickness of intellect, rapidity of action, determination to do fully and at once whatever his emotions, his brain or the circumstances indicated should be done—all this Claus had in full measure. With him there was neither differentiation nor interval of time between thinking and doing, between realisation and action. He did not perhaps possess the enigmatic depths of Berthold, the versatility and fullness of Alexander, but he was moulded without inhibitions and he was pure and strong ... endowed with a complete and totally balanced unity of being, the embodiment of a courageous, awake, living manliness ... One did not just like or admire Claus—he awoke enthusiasm and delight immediately and everywhere he went. His joie de vivre, his affirmation of himself and of every worthwhile value whenever he came across it were so infectious that they swept everybody along ...25
On 5 March 1926, Claus von Stauffenberg passed his Abitur, a public examination administered by the state to determine eligibility for higher education. By this time, he had relinquished ideas of becoming a musician or an architect and decided on a career in the military. The decision was made so abruptly as to startle his family and friends. It also provoked objections from his father, Graf Alfred. Ordinarily, of course, the old man might have approved, a military career being appropriate enough to the dignity of the family name, but he despised the politicians of Weimar as ‘lumpen-proletariats who could not serve a decent human being’. For a son to serve in the army of any republic—and especially a republic governed by such people—was an alarming prospect.26
Claus remained firm, however, and displayed a characteristic self-confidence verging on arrogance. By the Treaty of Versailles which ended the First World War, the Reichswehr—the army of the Weimar Republic—had been denied all aircraft and tanks and was limited to 100,000 men, a diminutive force compared to that of other European powers. (Even the British Army, always small, was appreciably larger. The French Army numbered some 600,000 men.) The Reichswehr’s restricted size inevitably meant there were far fewer officers’ commissions available than there were candidates (more than seven applicants for each vacancy). Nevertheless, and despite the chronic illnesses of his youth, Stauffenberg seems to have had no doubts about his own qualifications—or about his ability to obtain one of the limited number of places. When asked why he had abandoned his commitment to architecture, he replied that it now seemed to him too much focused on ‘things’ and too little on people. The army, he explained, would provide him with opportunities for planning, for the management of men, for assuming responsibility and for service to the community.
At least some part in Stauffenberg’s change of career had been played by the poet Stefan George, whom he and his two brothers had met in 1923, when he was sixteen. This meeting, and the relationship that developed, were to be among the most influential experiences of his youth, and—occurring at a formative age—were to shape his development, his attitudes, his values, his entire Weltanschauung from then on. According to Ludwig Thormaehlen, ‘For Claus von Stauffenberg, George’s environment and his relationship with the poet remained the decisive factor in his life.’27
George’s reputation at the time was ambiguous. While regarded as the greatest German-language poet of the age—a figure who, in his lifetime, enjoyed a literary prestige comparable to, say, Yeats or T. S. Eliot—he was also revered as a prophet and magus, a magisterial ‘guru’ and oracle presiding over an elite hand-picked cadre of intellectual and cultural intiates who ‘stood in awe of him’ as one might of a high priest. In Berlin, Munich and especially Heidelberg, he held court to a small circle of the brightest, most imaginative and dynamic young men in Germany—the hope, as he saw them, of the country’s future. From this cenacle, he issued his often arcane and enigmatic pronouncements, as well as publishing the cryptic verse that became a cultural beacon to a generation.
At the same time, his exalted sense of his own rôle and mission—‘For George, the poet was the appointed keeper of the nation’s inner strength’28—inevitably provoked hostility, and rumours about him were rife. In his book on George, Professor E. K. Bennet stated that: ‘George’s fundamental obsession with power, expressed even in his ideal of a highly disciplined personal life, stands openly revealed.’29 His lofty patrician aloofness, and his insistence on a ‘spiritual aristocracy’ or ‘aristocracy of the spirit’, were hardly calculated to endear him to the left-wing intelligentsia of the period—adherents of socialism such as Ernst Toller, Alfred Döblin, Heinrich Mann and the young Berthold Brecht. Among devotees of more popular, more accessible and more traditional literature, he was considered too rarefied, too exclusive, too impenetrable. For adherents of the ‘egalitarian esotericism’ exemplified by Rudolf Steiner, George was too overpowering: ‘the creator of his own intellectual empire’. They respected him, but kept their distance. According to a member of the Steiner organisation in London, George and Steiner met on a number of occasions. Steiner is said to have sympathised with much of the poet’s thi
nking, but to have found him personally too arrogantly Olympian. This is hardly surprising. Steiner, by then, had begun to practise a disarming candour and meekness, a gentleness that found an artistic echo of sorts in Rilke. George would unquestionably have seemed too assertive, too aggressive, too forbidding. These qualities are apparent, almost to the point of self-parody, in photographs of George. Among the great artist-magi of the last two centuries, it would be difficult to find one who so impressively looked the part.
Even more detrimental to George’s personal reputation were allegations of homosexuality. He was generally assumed to be a practising homosexual, and this belief persists even today. Certainly the few women admitted to his circle were relegated to subordinate rôles. There were what seemed to be flagrantly homosexual references in his poetry, and rumours abounded about homosexual orgies, often linked with lurid secret ceremonies involving rituals, incense, incantations, elaborate robes and regalia. The popular image was that of something resembling a specifically homosexual version of the Order of the Golden Dawn in England (the coven of would-be magi which included such figures as Yeats, Conan Doyle, Arthur Machen and, at the beginning of his garish career, the young Aleister Crowley).
George himself made no attempt to dispel or correct this image. If anything, he actively encouraged certain aspects of it. He ran his circle as a cult, demanding a binding oath of allegiance from his disciples, who regarded him as their autocratic ‘Master’. He sometimes interfered in their personal lives, pronounced peremptory judgement on their private affairs and presumed to make decisions for them. He swore his entourage to secrecy about his teachings. He turned the reading and writing of poetry into an almost religious ritual, a solemn hieratical ceremony accompanied by the burning of incense. George would sit ‘at the head of a long table, at the sides of which sat a number of young males who in succession arose and read one or another of his poems in a sonorous but expressionless voice’.30
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