Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

had a smattering of maternal Dutch.)4 As the communist revolutionswept across the Ruhr, Goebbels decided to make his home run for that Ph.D.degree; he chose Heidelberg to make the attempt.That Christmas he found himself alone in Munich, prevented by the Allied occupationauthorities from joining his family at Rheydt for the festivities. He stayed in theBavarian capital, as Wagner’s ‘Ring’ cycle was to be performed at the National Theatre;he found himself strolling through the cobbled, snowswept streets on Christmaseve, entirely deserted save for a police constable wrapped to the ears against thecold. From somewhere came the sound of children singing; and then of a piano—GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 43Schubert, the melodies borne through the air, he would later write, as though onangels’ hands. ‘I know not how long I stood there,’ he wrote. ‘Only that I sat thatevening in a quiet, dark corner of the church of Our Lady and celebrated Christmasalone, as though in a dream. On December 29 I went to the Tyrol, going up into theeternal mountains satiated with the sounds of Wagner.’5HE and Anka have drifted apart since that Christmas of 1919. As recently as December19 they mooched along the shores of Lake Starnberg and Anka has sketched in hispocket diary a room with two (single) beds. She has given him a gold bracelet. Hehas given her Heinrich Heine’s Book of Ballads with a fulsome dedication. But shebegins to make possessive scenes; he takes refuge in Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace,’ healternately fights with her or forges fantastic plans of marriage, then sees them shipwreckedon her bourgeois attitudes. He ‘runs into’ her in Freiburg and finds that shetoo is making for Heidelberg. He persuades her to study elsewhere—‘What an idiotI am,’ he recalls later, perhaps rationalizing his own failure to hold on to her. Theyhave entered that cruel phase on an overlong affair when each partner derives morepleasure from making the other suffer.When he next sees her it will be Whitsun. He reads from ‘The Seed’ to her, butshe, the wealthy miller’s daughter, is alienated by its leftwing political message. Therift widens. She begins to see his close friend Theo Geitmann.6 Chagrined, he returnsthe bracelet. He offers her formal engagement (‘If you don’t feel strong enoughto say yes,’ he writes, ‘then we must each go our separate ways’); she turns himdown.7 After one unsatisfactory night with him on the chaiselongue and her in bedhe pencils a four-page letter of farewell in which he calls out her name appealinglytwenty-four times, a romantic torrent of pleas to return to his embrace. ‘Is it overreally?Ê .Ê . I have known only you, you were the whole world to me, the most beautifulworld that could ever be conceived, and I have lost it—lost it through my ownfault.’ Perhaps this last night has been a turning point for them both. ‘Do you thinkyou’ll ever find another who can love you so?’ he asks, and conjures up the spirit ofunfaithful Tristan (‘Dying,’ declares Wagner’s murdered heroine Isolde, ‘still I kiss44 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHhim!’) ‘I rest my fortune in your lenient woman’s hand,’ concludes Goebbels. ‘Castthe first stone if you must. May it then dash me to pieces, and may you never come toregret it.’ Satisfied by this literary effort, he leaves the letter unsent.8Spending the autumn break at home he reads Dostoyevsky’s ‘The BrothersKaramazov,’ and suffers a nervous collapse. He pens a testament, dated October 1,1920, in which he allocates his books, his alarm clock, his inkwell and other patheticchattels to his friends: they are to sell off clothing to repay his debts—to his father,Director Cohnen’s wife, a Bonn jeweller and the Albertus Magnus charity. He willshis poetry and novella to Flisges and his mother (in that order). ‘Miss Anka Stalhermis to be urged to burn my letters.Ê .Ê . May she be happy and not brood upon mydeath.’ The final sentences hint unmistakeably at suicide: ‘I depart gladly from a lifewhich has become just hell for me.’9 He folds this into a small envelope, but takes nofurther action.‘Jealousy,’ he will write later, reviewing this period, ‘is the death of love.’ Pocketinghis pride he sends more letters to Anka, now back with her family atRecklinghausen: his brother Hans also pleads with her; neither receives a reply.That autumn of 1920, learning that she is in Munich, he borrows money from hisbrothers and sends his trusty friend Flisges to find out more. Flisges writes that Ankahas been seen escorted by a gentleman in a flashy waistcoat ‘with many gold knobsand pins.’10 Distraught, Goebbels hurries from Heidelberg to Munich, to Anka’s addressin Amalien Strasse; while he waits outside, Flisges stomps upstairs. But she hasleft for Freiburg the day before, ‘with her fiancé.’11 She has fallen for Georg Mumme,a young, stodgy law student five years older, and with better financial prospects, thanthe crippled æsthete Goebbels.12 In a daze, Goebbels writes to her a vile letter whichgives him brief satisfaction. ‘Chin up!’, Flisges maturely advises him. ‘Don’t loseyour head.’ Goebbels writes to Anka in remorse. Her reply is the last for severalyears. She is ‘very unhappy,’ she confesses, as she knows that he is the first and lastman who has ever loved her with such intensity. ‘I will always be your true Anka,’ isher final empty salutation.13 Goebbels responds that he regrets nothing that he hassaid or written her: ‘I had to do it, a devil in me drove me to it.’14GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 45To the interloper Mumme—whom she shortly marries—he writes what he calls a‘rather categorical’ letter. In the new year he will ask her to return all his poems andlove letters. ‘Anka, thou murderess!’ he reproaches her memory, and eight yearslater her betrayal will still fester in his mind. ‘Anka walked out on me,’ he will write.‘And my entire relationship to women has suffered ever since.’15HE had hoped to study for his degree under the distinguished Friedrich Gundolf,professor of literary history at Heidelberg. Gundolf (Gundolfinger) had written thedefinitive biography of Goethe. When Goebbels arrived at the university for thesummer