Kurt Tucholsky (1890-1935)

Walter Hasenclever (1890-1940)

Letter from Kurt Tucholsky to Walter Hasenclever

[Translated by Otto Hinckelmann. To see the original German text click here.]

March 4, 1933, Zurich, Florhof Lane

Translator's Note: Tucholsky and Hasenclever were both popular and prolific writers during the Weimar period. Both were moderate leftists, but strongly anti-war and anti-militarist. Both had been soldiers in the German Army in the First World War. Tucholsky tended to write socially critical and satirical prose and poetry while Hasenclever leaned more toward drama. Both became political exiles after the Nazis came to power and both were among the more than 39,000 German emigrés who had their citizenship revoked by the Nazi Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick.

It is an extreme tragedy that both these men took their own lives when things looked darkest. Had they hung on they would have been proven right, rather than dying thinking they had failed in their mission of warning the German people of the dangers ahead.

As a footnote to this tragic history, Walter Hasenclever worked briefly in Hollywood as a screenwriter in 1930 where he wrote the screenplay for the German version of Anna Christie which was filmed consecutively with the English version on the same set. Greta Garbo starred in both versions and in the English version she spoke her first lines in a sound movie, "Give me a whiskey, ginger ale on the side. And don't be stingy."

On the date of this letter:
It was

1. 33 days since Hitler's appointment as Chancellor (30 January 1933).
2. 5 days since the Reichstag Fire (27 February 1933).
3. 1 day since the arrest of Ernst Thaelmann, the Chairman of Germany's Communist Party (3 March 1933).

To events in the future it was

1. 1 day to the German elections which gave the Nazi Party 43.7% of the popular vote.
2. 19 days to the passage of the Enabling Act which suspended the democratic provisions of the Weimar Constitution.
3. 2 years and 10 months to Tucholsky's suicide (21 December 1935, Göteborg, Sweden).
4. 7 years and 4 months to Hasenclever's suicide (22 June 1940, Aix-en-Provence, France).
5. 6 years and 6 months to the start of World War 2 (1 September 1939)
6. 12 years and 2 months to Germany's capitulation in Karlshorst, Berlin (8 May 1945).

Note: Most explanatory notes, except the very short ones, will be in this format. Items in the letter with associated explanations will be asterisked.

Throughout this letter Tucholsky refers to Walter Hasenclever as Max. This is Tucholsky's typical looseness with respect to the names of persons, including his own. He wrote under four pseudonyms.

Dear Max,

Many thanks for both of your letters of February 28 and March 2. Please excuse my recently dictated one. I was feeling very bad and had such an earache. That's why it was so impersonal.

Item:
My illness isn't too bad, thanks for asking. I'm still taking inhalation treatments that are very cheap, but one needs a lot of patience. Again, if I were to go out amongst people, weak and handicapped as I am, then I'd ruin everything. It's better to wait, there aren't any golden flowers growing anywhere else either. But I still hope that we'll be able to greet each other once more somewhere in central Europe. I wasn't able to read exactly where you are going after Paris. Southern France? Mentone? Naturally, Switzerland is not a pleasing country. The East Swiss are like the Bosch, very arrogant, disgustingly sated, horrible.

At this point, out of a deeply felt emotion, I need to digress.

Dear Max, your offer to help me in these difficult times has deeply moved me. It won't be necessary for me to take advantage of it, but that you even offered it is something that I will not forget. A handshake, old pal.

I still have the house in Sweden and I'd like, even if it's only a faint possibility, to go back there and work.

Weltbühne*…
Mrs. J* is in Vienna discussing whether it's to be Vienna or Zurich.

Weltbühne, meaning World Stage is the magazine, founded by Siegfried Jacobsohn, for which Tucholsky was a regular contributor beginning in January 1919. After Jacobsohn's death on Dec 3, 1926, ownership of the magazine passed to Jacobsohn's wife, Edith. Tucholsky assumed its management from then until May 1927, at which time Carl von Ossietzky took over. In preparation for its inevitable suppression by the Nazis, Mrs. J(acobsohn) was making arrangements for it to be relocated out of Germany, but within a metropolitan, German-speaking milieu.

Regarding the whole situation:
Now as before I don't believe in extremely bloody events in Germany. Communist putsches could flare up and they will be bloodily suppressed, 80 killed, and 80 senseless deaths. But then it will be deathly quiet. And then something much, much worse will set in: after the game of "The people have no right to do that!" the next game will be "I have no idea what they want — things aren't all that bad!" I'd rather not be involved in that and I won't be involved in it.

Under no circumstances should one take part in the German emigré literature which is just getting started. Dear Max, in the first place, there won't be a big emigration because, contrary to the way it was with the Russian emigration* in 1917, Europe is not able to absorb such people.

This is a reference to the massive emigration of the Russian aristocracy after the Russian revolution in November 1917, most of whom wound up in Berlin.

I am unable to identify Eckner.

This is Tucholsky's way of insulting Adolf Hitler. My guess is that, by dropping the "L" Hitler's first name is made to approximate the German word doof, which means stupid.

Alexander Kerensky (1881-1970), Francesco Saverio Nitti (1868–1953), and Count Mihály Károlyi (1875-1955) were leaders of short-lived governments in Russia, Italy, and Hungary, respectively, which came to power as a result of crises caused by World War I.

My dear Max, I don't have to tell you that I still haven't discovered the "willing forces of reconstruction in National Socialism." I'll never change my mind one iota about this. But I don't have to spend my time and effort on something which, even for the purpose of negating it, isn't worth the effort it takes to look at it. I hardly have any relation to it any more; it could happen that I'll starve, but that I should concern myself with the convulsions of a bunch of African port laborers, that's not for me. Of course, the people want it that way, basically. The last act of the Reichsbanner* was essentially an advertising campaign for the sport of self-defense, to this day the SPD assures everyone it is indeed patriotic and is willing to fight for the Ruhr*, almost all recognize the catogories set by Adof (sic) and they just argue with each other about where they fit in, no one has the courage to say: The value of a person does not depend on the size of his paycheck.

The Reichsbanner was an armed group created in Germany in 1918 by the Social Democratic Party (SPD) for the purpose of defending the Weimar Republic from the forces of the political left and right.

Tucholsky's reference to the Ruhr is a reference to the French/Belgian occupation of the industrial belt of Germany from January 1923 to August 1925 in response to Germany's slowness in the reparations payments dictated by the Versailles Treaty which ended World War I.

The day before yesterday we had a radio installed here and we listened to Adof (sic). Dear Max, that was really something. First there was Goering, a nasty, bloodthirsty woman that screeched and really goaded the people to murder. Then came Goebbels with the glowing eyes, speaking to the people, then heil and bellowing, commands and music, a huge pause, and then the Fuehrer has the platform. After all that, now it's his turn to speak, he who… I stood a couple of yards away from the radio and I admit I listened with my whole body. And then something quite remarkable happened.

Then there was actually nothing at all. His voice isn't quite so unappealing as you would think (…) but nevertheless acceptable. Sometimes he yells too loud, then he throws up. But otherwise: nothing, nothing, nothing. No tension, no high points, he doesn't grab me, I'm too much of an artist myself not to be able to admire the artifice in such characters, if there is any. Nothing. No humor, no warmth, no fire, nothing. And he doesn't say anything but the dumbest banalities, conclusions which aren't any — nothing.

Ceterum censeo [In any case, in my opinion]: This doesn't concern me at all.

Marginalia
Ossietzky* inexplicable. I was told that after his release from Tegel* they didn't give him his passport back. I don't know if that's true or not — he doesn't write a single letter. This extraordinary [literary: transl.] stylist, this man of unsurpassed civil courage, has a notably lethargic manner which I have never understood and which probably alienates a lot of people who admire him. It's a real shame for him. Because this sacrifice is entirely senseless. My instinct has always told me that martyrs without effect are senseless. I don't think they will do anything to him at all, he is safer locked up than outside. The only way anything can happen to him is if there is an assassination attempt, even if it fails, against Adof (sic). Then the SA [brownshirts: transl.] will storm the prisons and the guards won't be able to stop them from doing anything they want. Aside from something like that, I think he'll be out in two or three weeks. (If they don't build concentration camps!)

Carl von Ossietzky (1889-1938), editor of Weltbühne, infantryman in the German army in World War I, confirmed pacifist, bitter enemy of militarism. In 1931, as a result of his exposure of German rearmament in violation of the Versailles Treaty in an article in the Weltbühne, he was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment for revealing state secrets. In May 1932 he began to serve his sentence in a prison in Tegel, a northwestern suburb of Berlin. He was released in December 1932 in a general Christmas amnesty. In the night of February 28, 1933, the day following the Reichstag Fire, he was arrested by the Gestapo, tortured, and interned in a concentration camp. He died on May 4, 1938 in a Berlin hospital, still under police guard, as a result of the long term effects of the injuries sustained during his torture and the lack of adequate treatment for tuberculosis.

In Summary
I'm not in any kind of panic. And my pessimism begins precisely where that of others ends, approximately at that point in time where the Center* joins in.

This is a reference to the Catholic Center Party, a large, middle-of-the-road political party without a clear political focus in the Weimar Republic. This absence of a clear political identity enabled the Center Party to enter coalitions with parties of both the Right and the Left to form governments. In the late 1920's, as the Capitalist world slid into depression, the Center Party moved to the right and, in the Hitler government appointed on January 30, 1933, Franz von Papen, a Center Party leader, became the Vice Chancellor.

"It will smooth off their rough edges," say the false prophets.

This was a popular saying as Hitler's chances of forming a government began to improve. It implied that many of Hitler's more extreme proposals would fall by the wayside and that he would increasingly be drawn to a more moderate centrist course as he assumed the burdens of governing. Hitler's first cabinet was also heavily larded with representatives of Germany's financial and business elite and these, it was supposed, would keep Hitler, the class-unconnected, anti-Communist, but popular vote-getter, on a short leash.

Rubbish.

Then and only then will this new government be on a dead solid foundation, then there's nothing more that can be done. And who would or could do something? You can fight for a majority that is suppressed by a tyrannical minority. But you can't preach the opposite of what a majority of the people (including the Jews) want. Many are merely opposed to Hitler's methods, not against the core of his "teachings". And if the Opposition hasn't been able to do it from the inside, we will never be able to do it with a couple of journalistic sheets published in Paris. I won't join in.

Ceterum censeo [In any case, in my opinion]: Your Hindenburg's birthday article should be read out from the pulpits.

Dear Max, I hope they let Rudy* out, he's so nice and fat, we'd still like to get to carry him to the crematorium after he dies, and to drink an apéritif with his corpse.

This is a reference to Rudolf Leonhard (1889 - 1953), a German writer and anti-Nazi activist, who lived in exile in France 1928 - 1950, and from 1950 until he died, in East Berlin. Tucholsky's phrase "…we'd still like to get to carry him to the crematorium… is generally taken to mean that he hopes Leonhard will survive the crises that lie ahead and die a natural death among his friends.

Hello, dear Max, this has become a long letter. No more correschpondanx* (sic).

This is a play on the name of a pacifist organization founded by Tucholsky and Ossietzky in 1919, No More War.

This is the location of Tucholsky's house in Sweden.

[…] in any case be sure to read Voyage au Bout de la Nuit*. It's worthwhile.

Journey at the End of the Night, an anti-militarist, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperialist novel by Louis-Ferdinand Céline published in 1932.

In the firmest loyalty

…Writer of paperback and bound works.
former member of the German Republic
and ceased author.

We are going to suffer bad disappointments from our Berlin friends. Things are going to get very bad.