Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

his watch to a waiter to pay for supper. He has tospend the autumn break at Münster as his identity papers will not get him back intothe occupied Rhineland. Anka phones him every day in the local cafe, but he canbarely afford the obligatory cup of coffee. He begins to write his own life story as anovel, ‘Michael Voorman,’ in which Anka is identifiable as the heroine Hertha Holk.He gets home to Rheydt crossing the frontier illegally in an overflowing train atDüsseldorf. On September 19 he posts to the Albertus Magnus Society a fresh applicationfor funds.Later, heading south to Munich with Anka, they pause briefly at Frankfurt wherehe visits Goethe’s house. But why tarry in this Jewish city, he asks himself, whenMunich beckons from afar? He borrows 1,200 marks from yet another schoolfriendand finds lodgings in Munich on the second floor of Papa Vigier’s at No.2 RomanStrasse, out in Neuhausen. On October 29, his twenty-second birthday, Anka writesGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 37in his diary, ‘National Holiday!’ He sends two more postcards to the Catholic charity;the stamp on one is overprinted with the legend People’s Republic of Bavaria.The charity makes him a final loan of 250 marks. At Munich he studies under theSwiss art historian, Professor Heinrich Wölfflin; he studies music under ProfessorHermann Ludwig Baron von der Pfordten and Catholic theology under ProfessorJoseph Schnitzer. But his real intellectual nourishment is from what he takes in at thegalleries and museums—the paintings of Arnold Böckling, of Carl Spitzweg, and ofAnselm Feuerbach. He reads voraciously, devouring Sophocles’ drama ‘Antigone,’August Strindberg’s ‘The Red Room,’ Thomas Mann’s ‘Death in Venice,’ and assortedworks by Henrik Ibsen and Leo Tolstoy.Again he auctions his suits, sees Anka pawn her own gold watch, hocks his ownwatch for a pittance to—he recalls in 1925—an ‘insolent Jew.’ Such stereotypedreferences are rare in his early letters. On the contrary, he writes to Anka oncegently rebuking her. ‘As you know, I can’t stand this exaggerated antisemitism,’ hewrote, in a reference to their teacher Gerhard Bartels. ‘I can’t claim that many of mybest friends are Jews, but my view is you don’t get rid of them by huffing and puffing,let alone by pogroms—and if you could do so that would be both highly ignoble andunworthy.’75 There is still little trace of the later murderous antisemitism in JosephGoebbels.1 The year is recorded in JG’s 1921 handwritten curriculum vitae appended to his doctoraldissertation (Reuth, 17).2 An article on Flisges is on microfiche in packet 26 of the Goebbels papers (Moscowarchives).3 A one hour interview of Hompesch’s wife taped by Westdeutscher Rundfunk in 1987 isin Mönchen Gladbach city archives.4 JG, ‘Der tote Freund,’ Apr 1912 (Genoud papers; Reuth, 20).5 See his school reports 1912-1916 in BA file NL.118/113.38 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH6 See JG’s eulogy, ‘Gerhardi Bartels Manibus!’ Dec 6, 1919 (BA: NL.188/120).7 Fritz Göbbels to Joseph Goebbels, Nov 9, 1919 (facsimile in Neue Illustrierte, Jun 6,1953; original now in BA file NL.118/112).— According to an article, ‘Studentenbriefe,’ inRuhr Nachrichten, Dortmund, May 12, 1953, JG left a suitcase filled with snapshots, loveletters (including 115 letters from Anka Stalherm and ‘one letter by Joseph Goebbels toGeorg Mumme’), poetry, press clippings and other early documents with his mother forsafekeeping. Worried by a 1943 air raid on Rheydt he phoned his brother Hans to place thecase in safety; Hans deposited it in the lung clinic at Holsterhausen operated by the RhinelandInsurance Fund of which he was president. In about Feb 1945, according to Frau HildegardMeyer, a nurse at that clinic, Hans came to destroy the papers as the Americans approached;she persuaded him to let her take them. She sold them to the Catholic ‘Wort und WerkGmbH’ publishing house, according to an article in Abendzeitung, Aug 31, 1954 (IfZ archives).Alerted by these press items, Swiss lawyer François Genoud acquired title to JG’s writingsfrom the administrator of Goebbels’ estate by contract of Aug 23, 1955, subsequently amendedon Oct 21, 1955 and Mar 12, 1956, and he fought several legal actions against Frau Meyerand others to establish his title to them in 1956, 1963, and 1964 in Germany.—From courtpapers in the author’s possession.8 JG, ‘Wie kann auch der Nichtkämpfer in diesen Tagen dem Vaterland dienen?’, classpaper dated Nov 27, 1914; quoted in ‘Joseph Goebbels bewarb sich beim “Judenblatt”,’ (JGapplied for job with ‘Jewish rag’) in Westdeutsches Tageblatt, Jul 7, 1954; these papers from hisyouth had just been sold in a Berlin auction. They are now in BA file NL.118/117.9 Now in Genoud’s possession.10 Hans served in 160 Inf. Regt., was in French captivity from Jun 16, 1916 to Jan 22,1920 (BDC file).11 BA file NL.118/117.12 Text in BA file NL.118/126.13 Joseph Goebbels, Vom Kaiserhof zur Reichskanzlei (Berlin, 1934): Apr 25, 1933 (cit. hereafteras Kaiserhof).14 Diary, May 8, 1926.15 Ibid., Dec 6, 1930 (Olga Förster).16 Ibid., Jul 28, 1924.17 Ibid.Jul 2, 1924.18 Ibid., Jun 2, 1929.19 See Kölsch’s contribution inUnitas, organ of the association of Unitas Catholic studentfraternities, 57th year, No, 5, June 1917, 227 (BA file NL.118/119)20 The text is in Genoud’s papers (Reuth, 30)21 Programm zum Vereinsfest des Bonner Unitas-Vereins, Jun 24, 1917; Unitas, Jun andAug 1917 (IfZ: F82, Heiber papers and BA: NL.118/119)22 Extracts from 24 of these were published in Echo der Zeit, Jul 21 and 28, 1952. And seethe article ‘Ein feiner Vertreter des Dritten Reiches,’ by Studienrat Karl Klauck (clerk to theSociety since 1914) in Kölnischer Volkszeitung, Jan 31, 1952; also documents in BA file NL.118/113.23 Hermann Kölsch to JG, Nov 10 and 25, 1917 (Mönchengladbach city archives); Bering,119.GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 3924 JG’s correspondence with Agnes Kölsch is in BA file NL.118/111.25 Writing to JG on Nov 16, 1917 Mrs Kölsch called herself his Mütterchen (little mother)number two (BA file NL.118/111).26 Diary, Jul 24, 1924; and Mar 20, 1929: Anka’s son Christian is ‘just like her: blond withblue eyes.’27 Agnes (‘Anka’) Stalherm was born on Oct 8, 1895 in Recklinghausen; died of cancer in1955, and is buried at Horben, above Freiburg.—See the curriculum vitae in Freiburg’sAlbert Ludwig-University archives, 1922, appended to her