Jakob worked on the furnace floor of a foundry just outside the city, and had been there since the age of seventeen. He was a member of the union—of course—and hoped to make shop steward in the next few years. They desperately needed the pay raise that would come with it.
As they talked, Hans studied Jakob’s face, wondering if he was one of those who fit the pattern of Emilee’s father, but he saw no signs of it. His eyes were clear, his nose was not pink and bulbous—a typical sign of a heavy drinker—and his hands were steady. He did have a persistent cough, which he said was from the effects of working in the smoke and dust around the furnaces, but he clearly was not a drinker. Nor did he smoke, it seemed.
This was a revelation to Hans. Emilee and her mother had been wrong. Yes, there was a pattern among the poor working-class men that led them down the path to alcoholism, but it was not a given. It wasn’t inevitable or inescapable. They still had a choice. Hans made a note of that in his mind. He wanted to discuss it with Emilee.
To his surprise, Hans found himself being drawn more and more to these simple people. When Anna spoke of her family, her whole countenance changed. Jakob and Anna had five other children—Nattie being the oldest. The others were home with their Oma, Anna’s mother, who also lived with them. And again Hans marveled.
He had seen workers’ tenements before. Usually they filled a whole street, sometimes whole blocks. They were typically two stories high, but only one room wide and two rooms deep—so four rooms to a flat. The buildings were inevitably black with the soot and ashes of the factories that sustained them. Row after row of outhouses lined the narrow alleys behind each street, and raw sewage ran down the middle of them.
So, if there were nine people in the Litzser family, counting Oma, that meant they slept three to a bedroom. Hans guessed they had only one bed, or maybe two, between the nine of them. And he could not fathom how they could purchase enough food for nine people on Jakob’s salary. Maybe, like so many women of the working class, Anna took in washing or did housecleaning.
“So, did your foreman let you have the day off to come in for the rally?” he asked Jakob.
Jakob and Anna exchanged quick glances, and Anna uttered a soft “Ha!”
He shot her a look but then decided it required an explanation. “We were told to come.”
“Told to come? I don’t understand.”
“By the union.” Jakob seemed surprised that Hans didn’t understand this. “The new Communist Party of Germany, formerly called the Spartacans, sent word to all the union shops around Berlin. Everyone who could be spared by their employers was encouraged to come in to hear Liebknecht.”
“Not encouraged,” Anna muttered. “Commanded.”
“Anna,” her husband warned softly.
“Well, it’s true.” She looked at Hans. “If you refuse to come, you are not paid, even if you work that day. And Jakob would probably have lost his job.”
Hans gaped at her. “And how do the factory owners feel about that?”
“They don’t dare say anything,” Jakob said. “Not now, especially.”
“Why not now?”
“Because the unions and the workers are seizing factories and plants all across the country. Even the big industrialists don’t dare stand up to them.”
Hans was astounded. “How many from your plant were told to be here today?”
Jakob shrugged. “I don’t know. Hundreds maybe.”
“We had to leave at six o’clock this morning,” Anna explained. “If we return before six tonight, the union will withhold our pay for the day.”
Hans was outraged. “How can they do that?”
Jakob gave him an incredulous look.
“In my brother’s factory,” Anna said, “a soap factory not far from us—”
“Anna!” Her husband showed genuine alarm. Anna glanced at Hans and shrugged.
Hans lowered his voice. “Look, I’m all for change, and our government hasn’t done much for people like you and me, but sometimes I think the Socialists go too far. I . . .” He lowered his voice even more, looking around furtively. “I even wonder if sometimes, in spite of all their glowing promises, they’re not more concerned about taking power for themselves than helping people like us.”
“Indeed,” Jakob muttered, clearly embittered.
Hans looked at Anna. “So what happened to your brother?”
She looked at her husband. After a moment, he nodded.
She moved in closer and spoke in a low voice. “He told his shop foreman that he had already been here all day yesterday for the Eichhorn march. So he said he wasn’t coming today. The man was furious. He told him that he’d lose a day’s pay.” She smiled briefly. “My brother’s got a hot temper, so he told him he didn’t care.” She stopped, her eyes angry.
“And what did the foreman do?” Hans asked softly.
“He put a pistol to his head and gave him two choices. Go or die.”
9:35 a.m. Pariser Plaza
As they joined the main crowd, Hans saw that he was right. This would be where the speakers harangued them. There were three folding chairs and a microphone in the back of the small farm truck, and three or four dozen soldiers were loitering nearby. A cloth banner had been raised over the cab of the truck. Large red letters on a white background trumpeted the words DIE REVOLUTION IST HIER: GENOSSEN VEREINEN!
Hans felt a touch on his shoulder and turned to see Anna looking at him. She pointed. “What does that sign say?” she asked in a timid voice.
So she couldn’t read, Hans thought. Probably not Jakob either.
Nattie moved up. “It says, ‘The revolution is here.’ Then something about ‘unite.’”
“The word is Genossen,” Hans explained, pleased to know that Nattie was getting some schooling. “It means comrades, friends, brothers.”
“I don’t understand,” Anna said.
Jakob answered, lowering his voice and leaning in closer. “It refers to the brotherhood of the people. The Socialists say that all of us are brothers, and that means we must stand together.”
“Ah.” And that seemed to satisfy her.
Hans continued looking around. Now he saw that other men carrying rifles or pistols were also working their way through the crowd. The party goons, he decided. They were men with hulking bodies and faces that you didn’t want to meet up with in a dark alley. Hans was a little curious and watched for a moment. In their wake, people were suddenly lifting posters, placards, and an occasional small banner. Things like DOWN WITH EBERT AND SCHEIDEMANN. They were the two chief ministers of the government.
STOP THE BLOODHOUND! Hans assumed that referred to Gustav Noske.
LONG LIVE THE GENOSSEN!
CHEERS FOR EICHHORN, OUR BELOVED POLICE PRESIDENT!
BURY THOSE WHO WOULD BURY THE REVOLUTION!
UP WITH THE PROLETARIAT! DOWN WITH THE BOURGEOISIE! That one was just a few feet away from them.
This time Nattie tapped Hans on the shoulder. “What does that mean?” she asked, pointing.
Anna and Jakob both moved closer to hear his answer. “The proletariat is just a fancy word for the working classes, for the poor of the world. People like—” He almost said “like you,” but caught himself. “People like us.”
“Oh.” Nattie seemed genuinely surprised by that, almost pleased.
“And the bur-zhwa-zee”—he pronounced it slowly for them—“just means the middle classes, like merchants and bankers, business and factory owners, doctors, lawyers.”
Jakob was listening too, and they all nodded. “And are they bad people?” Nattie asked.
It was an innocent question, but he saw now that several of the people around them were listening to their conversation. One man was staring at Hans with open hostility.
“Well,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “the problem is that the bourgeoisie tend to be very materialistic. Uh . . . that means they care more about things than they do about people.”
“They’re the one
s who keep us poor people locked in poverty,” the man snarled. “Until the bourgeoisie are put down, the proletariat cannot and will not rise.”
Hans could feel the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. This was more attention than he wanted. “And the proletariat,” he said, giving the man a curt nod, “have certainly suffered long enough.” Taking Nattie by the arm, he moved away, with Jakob and Anna following.
How ironic! Hans thought. The Socialists were encouraging the people to revolt with language they didn’t even understand. He glanced over at the speaker’s platform. Take the two leaders there. The colonel had told the men a little about them last night. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were both handsome people, very impressive. But Liebknecht wore a Sunday suit, white shirt, and bowtie and an overcoat of thick wool. Tens of thousands of his listeners were shivering in the cold, and he wore an expensive overcoat.
Luxemburg was not richly dressed, but she was miles away from looking like the women who had come to hear her. She wore shoes with thick soles and heels and also had on a warm winter coat. A hat was perched on her head, probably held in place by hat pins. Did Anna own a hat of any kind? Did she even know what a hat pin was? Both of them held doctorates from prestigious universities. No wonder they used words like proletariat and bourgeoisie and Genossen. The irony was so heavy that it made Hans sick to his stomach.
Remembering why he was there, he glanced up at the sky and then turned to his new friends. “Jakob, I need to go. My chest is really hurting me, and I need to find a place to sit down.”
Instantly concerned, Jakob looked around. “I’ll go with you.”
“No. Stay here with your family. I’ll try to catch up with you when they start to march.” As he said it, Hans felt a stab of guilt. He wasn’t going to march with them. He was headed off to link up with his battalion. What would Natalee say if she knew that he was the enemy?
“Do you have to go?” Natalee asked. The look on her face nearly broke his heart. Hans laid a hand on her shoulder. “I do, Nattie. Auf Wiedersehen. It was my pleasure meeting you.” He leaned in closer. “You have a grand curiosity about life,” he whispered. “Never lose that.”
“I won’t,” she exclaimed, both blushing and beaming at the same time.
Anna came up and briefly touched his hand. “We’ll watch for you.”
And with those words came an idea that startled him. He turned. “Jakob, would you be offended if I asked you for your address?”
His jaw dropped a little.
Hans rushed on. “I would very much like to meet you again. I . . . I am hoping to get married when all of this is over. I would like to bring my fiancée to meet your family.”
“Of course,” Jakob said, clearly honored by the request. Then his face fell. “But I have nothing to write with.”
“I have a paper, Vati,” Nattie sang out. She took a small, soiled piece of paper from her dress pocket. Then her face fell as well. “But nothing to write with.”
Feeling in his jacket, Hans withdrew a pencil. “I do.” He started to hand it to Jakob, but Jakob quickly motioned to his daughter. “Nattie, I will tell you, and you write it down for him.”
Kicking himself for not remembering Jakob and Anna very likely could neither read nor write, Hans handed the pencil to Nattie. Dictating slowly, Jakob gave her the information. Finished, Nattie proudly handed the paper and pencil back to Hans. He took the paper, folded it up, and put it in his pocket, but refused to take the pencil. “It’s yours, Nattie.”
Wide-eyed, she gazed at him for a moment, and then turned to her father. “May I, Vati?”
He nodded. Hans turned to him. “I have only been in Berlin a few days, so I have no permanent address yet. But I promise that as soon as I get one, I shall write to you. And. . . .”
He turned to Anna. “There is much turmoil and upheaval in the Fatherland right now, so I can’t say when it will be, but someday, somehow, I promise I will come and meet the rest of your family, if you will have me.”
Tears sprang to her eyes, and then, to his surprise, she stepped forward, went up on tiptoes, and kissed him softly on the cheek. “We would be honored.”
Barely able to speak, Hans nodded, impulsively kissed Nattie on the cheek, and then lumbered away, blinking rapidly as he pushed his way through the crowd.
9:45 a.m.—Brandenburg Gate
As he cleared the last of the crowd and limped across the plaza toward the Brandenburg Gate, Hans was in emotional turmoil. His so-called “recon patrol” had turned out to be an experience that had affected him deeply. Now he realized that the picture Noske had painted for them last night was not as simple as he had made it sound. The Litzsers were not just innocents, they were victims. Pawns in the power play between the left and the right. They weren’t here because they were on fire with ideological fervor. They were here because their jobs—and therefore their very existence—depended on it.
So what if they were moved by the fiery sermons of Liebknecht and Luxemburg to the point that they picked up a club or a stone or a bottle of petrol with a lighted wick? They were poor, hapless, miserable, suffering human beings looking for any glimmer of light in a world of endless hopelessness.
The guilt tore at Hans like a knife. Which was irrational, in a way. He knew that. He wasn’t to blame for their plight. Nor was he sympathetic to the government that was oppressing them. But that didn’t make the guilt go away.
Hans was suddenly struck with a sense of wonder. Last night, he was supposed to have received his first salary payment from the Freikorps disbursement officer. Two hundred marks for his signing bonus and sixty marks for his first week’s pay. He hadn’t gotten it. By the time he got back from the hotel, the paymaster’s window was closed. And he had left too early this morning. But he suddenly realized that if he had gotten it, that money would now be in Jakob Litzser’s pocket. He knew that. He wouldn’t have hesitated for one moment to give it all to the family.
Ironically, it only made him feel worse. What would that money do for them? Feed them for a week, maybe? There wouldn’t be enough for a new dress for Nattie, or a warmer coat for Anna. Even if he were a millionaire and gave all his fortune to the poor, what difference would that make? It would be one tiny drop in a vast ocean of suffering.
January 16, 1919, 10:40 a.m.—Near the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin
Colonel von Schiller raised one hand and called out. “All right men, gather round.”
Immediately the thirty or so men loitering around the command center started moving in. These were the officers and non-coms of the First Battalion, all of whom were under the colonel’s command. Hans, who had been trying to give his ribs a rest by leaning against the radio wagon—a horse-drawn cart that carried the battalion’s heavy radio equipment—stood up and moved in as well. Colonel von Schiller’s battalion staff consisted of about eight men. The four companies that made up the battalion had a sprinkling of about five or six officers or sergeants in each. Hans had been worried that the other sergeants would resent being led by a master sergeant instead of a commissioned officer, but he should have known better. Amongst themselves they were saying that their company would be the only one led by someone with any real intelligence. That was typical of the “love” enlisted men had for commissioned officers.
“All right,” von Schiller snapped, cutting off the chatter. “We’re waiting for final orders from Brigade, but we expect to move out no later than 1100 hours. So listen up.” He turned and motioned Hans to come forward. “Last night, I ordered Master Sergeant Eckhardt here to undertake a reconnaissance mission for the battalion.”
Hans kept a straight face, not about to contradict him about whose idea it was.
“Sergeant, give us your report.”
“Thank you, sir.” Hans moved up beside him. “I arrived here about six o’clock this morning and have been here ever since. I have watched most of the people come in for the Liebknecht-Luxemburg rally and parade.”
One of the captains raised a
hand. “Liebknecht’s men are bragging that he’s brought in a hundred and fifty thousand people. Is that true?”
Hans shook his head. “You have to remember that the men that Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg have recruited haven’t passed a mathematics class since kindergarten.”
That brought a burst of laughter, and Hans was pleased to hear von Schiller join in.
“Actually,” he went on. “It’s hard to get an accurate count, but I was right down among the crowd for over an hour. I did a rough count going in and coming out. I’m pretty confident that there are no more than twenty thousand there, maybe less.”
Major Rolf Ott, a graduate of the University of Berlin and von Schiller’s adjutant, scoffed openly. “Are you sure of that, Sergeant? From here it looks like a huge crowd to me.”
“Twenty thousand is a huge crowd, sir. But it’s not a hundred and fifty thousand. But I assure you, there are plenty enough to be worried about.”
“How many of those are armed?” another officer called out.
“That’s harder to tell,” Hans said. “Some of the civilians may have small arms under their coats, but that’s not true of the vast majority of the workers. But I did see at least one full company of the Courageous Deserters’ council near the speaker’s stand, and they are armed.”
There were smiles at his sarcasm.
“Also, there are probably at least a hundred of Liebknecht’s followers—civilians who are armed, mostly with pistols—circulating among the crowd. And I think we have to assume that Liebknecht is holding some of his forces back, probably out of sight, that he can call in as needed. Make no mistake about it. His men will fight. They look like rejects from the Sicilian mafia. They’re mean, they’re foul-tempered, and they’re spoiling for battle. They’re definitely not the kind of men you want your sisters dating.”
More laughter.
“Tell them the rest, Eckhardt,” von Schiller said.
“This was a real surprise to me, but it’s important for all of us to understand. I am convinced that the vast majority of that crowd over there is not here to fight. They do not want to fight, and they will not fight unless we back them into a corner and give them no choice.”
Fire and Steel, Volume 2 Page 33
