Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

night. The next daythere is a card from her—she still has his roses in her arms. ‘How I envy those roses,’he writes back, the flattery flowing freely from his pen.As the Freiburg term ends he dreams of moving to Munich, but the lack of lodgingsthere thwarts him and he returns home. During the summer vacation he exchangesscores of letters with Anka, sometimes twice a day. His letters to her reveala young man still physically frail and lonely; they suggest that he has elected to enterthe Church. Romancing Anka occupies every other waking hour. His catchword iswahnsinnig—crazy: that is what he is, he confesses, about her. He scrawls that wordin the corner of letters, or leaves it unfinished just as waaa—. He is untroubled bythe wail of rage that comes from Agnes Kölsch: ‘I thought far too highly of you, toonoble and too mature,’ she writes him on August 15, 1918: ‘Fare well, it was notmeant to be.’35 Much ink is expended trying to arrange various trysts, which Goebbelssometimes prudishly cancels because her worried mother (unimpressed by this parvenu)and her sisters disapprove.36 Once she gives him a red rose. It graces his desk atRheydt beneath a carved Black Forest heart she has given him earlier.37 On August 17he is completing Act Three of ‘Judas.’ ‘Good night, dear Anka,’ he writes her teasingly.‘Think of an afternoon at the Waldsee Lake, and how there is one thing’—hedoes not specify what—‘that Ulex always finds so terribly difficult.’38 He recalls toher that first triumphant kiss on Castle Hill. His soldier brother Konrad, home on32 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHleave, jokes to him that he will probably be able to greet him as a cardinal later on.Konrad inquires about the carved heart on the wall. ‘A gift from the Archbishop ofFreiburg?’ he asks ironically. ‘From his lady housekeeper,’ replies Joseph with a salaciouswink.39Joseph beavers away on ‘Judas.’40 Anka incautiously shows it around and in no timethe clergy of Rheydt are asking him angry questions about it.41 On August 27 he issummoned to his former scripture teacher Father Moller, who draws his attention tothe pernicious nature of such writings. ‘I was so furious I would have torn “Judas”into a thousand shreds if I had had it with me,’ writes Goebbels. The priest requireshim to undertake to destroy even his own copy of the script. Has all his toil been fornothing? ‘What shall I do?’ he appeals to Anka. ‘I am in despair.’42 (The play survivesamong his papers.) It marks his first break with the Church. He declines the summonsby Unitas to attend their general assembly in Münster to report on the summersemester at Freiburg. Instead, he carouses with his pals in Düsseldorf. ‘Lastnight,’ he tells Anka, ‘we played music. We listened to two Chopin nocturnes, andBeethoven’s “Pathétique.” I now play a lot of Liszt rhapsodies.Ê .Ê . Afterwards we talkeduntil one A.M. about freemasons. [Fritz] Prang’s father is in a Lodge.’ 43 In a secondletter that day he asks Anka to plant a tender kiss in one corner of her next letter.44He reads from Richard Wagner’s diaries, he plays the Master’s music to his pals, andhe commends to Anka one entry which touches, he says, on one bone of contentionexisting between them.45 Her mother is dismayed that they are still liaising; once,Anka asks if his mother is upset too.46Kölsch has been thrown out of their Catholic fraternity. Goebbels has supportedthe ouster, explaining to Anka: ‘My best friend turned out to be a scoundrel.’ WhenAnka ironically calls him a Puritan he responds that Unitas has principles.47 By thistime he has learned from her that Kölsch has sexually propositioned her.48 To sealtheir friendship, she loyally shows him the letter concerned. Of her solely maternalinterest in him there seems no doubt. ‘Do you know what I should like now?’, shewrites to the pintsized student Goebbels. ‘Just to stroke my fingers through your hairand clasp you so tight that you look quite desperate.’49GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 33Her widowed mother’s disapproval grows. He records in dismay that she regardshim as a homo molestissimus and clearly frowns on any notion of them both attendingthe same university next term. He stiffly asks Anka to inform him where she will bestudying, ‘so that I can cross that university off my own list.’50ON September 3, 1918 Konrad Goebbels returns to the western front. He accuseshis younger brother Joseph of not taking any interest in the war and finally extractsfrom his a promise to read at least the daily war communiqués. Konrad declares thathe is proud to be fighting for his fatherland. ‘As you will realize,’ Joseph drily informsAnka, ‘he is Mother’s darling. While I claim that privilege, remarkably, more of myfather.’ But he adds, ‘I believe my mother is the best at understanding me.’51 Headvises Anka to read his version of the Last Supper, where Judas—with whom hethus identifies—talks about his mother, how he sulks and does not eat, and she justshakes her head and murmurs, ‘Judas, Judas;’ and how bitterly he weeps thereafter.52He hopes that Anka’s mother will relent and agree to them studying together atMunich. His father prefers Bonn or Münster, both nearer to the parental home. ‘Thedecision is in your mother’s hands,’ he writes to Anka.53 A friend tells him that she hasboasted to his fiancée about her last evening with Goebbels at Freiburg.54 Goebbelsscolds her for having so rudely dragged in the dust the memory of these, ‘the mostsacred and beautiful hours of my life.’ In the same letter he repents and asks, ‘May Ito-day for the first time press a tender kiss upon your rosebud lips?’55 In her reply,she mocks his stern morals. She has decided to study that winter at Würzburg. Hetherefore chooses Würzburg too, and finds lodgings on the fourth floor of No.8Blumen Strasse—”A wonderful room right beside the river,’ he describes to Prang.56Ecstatic that she is so close by, he sends her a note as soon as he settles in, perhapsjustifying his lack of physical ardour. ‘If love is only in the mind,’ he explains,