The Ice Museum (19 page)

It made me recall the Chorus of Seneca's play, with their ambiguous talk about Thule. It was affecting to stand by this portrait in the museum bombed in the war, surrounded by the stark bricks of Nazi buildings. This mottled museum, pieced back together again, with this portrait of Seneca preserved through wars. There was something continuous about Seneca writing about Thule, Rubens painting Seneca, and Ludwig I building his neo-classical buildings and collecting ancient statues in the nineteenth century. They were part of the same tradition, a Western classical tradition. Then there were the Nazis crafting their brutal pillars, thinking they continued the line of influence and creation. They had tried to manufacture their own mysticism, a deathly religion. They had built amphitheatres in forests, enjoying a rustic setting for their sites. And outside stood Königsplatz, where the trees were now growing on the plinths of the Nazi ‘temples.'

The Thule Society had been a part of the climate that engendered Hitler, rather than a dynamic force in his rise. By spring 1918, Sebottendorff claimed the Thule Society had 200 members, and by autumn there were 1,500 members in Bavaria, with 250 in Munich, he claimed. During 1918 the Thule Society began meeting in rooms at the Four Seasons Hotel, which still stands in central Munich, on an imperial boulevard called Maximilianstrasse.

The hotel has a fine façade, with flags fluttering from poles, and tall hooded windows. The hotel lobby is bright orange, the effect of a glass roof stained in bright colours. The walls are wood-panelled; the stairs are marble. There is a large silver tea urn and a collection of armchairs placed around antique tables. The gold trimmings glint in the brightness. When I arrive, the lobby is full of tourists taking tea: a blonde woman in designer sunglasses and the easy casual clothes of the truly rich; a group of Japanese people waiting at reception, with suitcases lined up behind them. There are bright orange flowers on the reception desk, and on the wall hangs a tapestry showing a hunting scene. It makes for a glowing lobby at the Four Seasons Hotel, though the bar in the next room is dark, with heavy tables, creaking old doors and a few waiters wiping glasses.

I sit in the hotel lobby for a while, drinking tea, until the reception clears. Then I walk over and ask the concierges if they know anything about the history of the hotel. A book is produced and handed over. It's a hardback, crammed with photographs of famous guests and adverts for luxury goods. The hotel was founded by Maximilian II, who established a competition in 1858 for a new boulevard, which was named after him. ‘There are a whole array of readily appreciable reasons for the outstanding status of this establishment in the hotel landscape of the Bavarian capital,' says the book. ‘They lie both in the present and the past.' They lie in the princely origins of the hotel, in the long list of guests, a list including Queen

Elizabeth II, Prince Charles, George Bush Senior, Jimmy Carter, quantities of media celebrities, pop stars, tennis players, film stars from Woody Allen to Elizabeth Taylor. A roll call of the rich and famous, listed with pride by the hotel in its official history. But there is no mention of the Thule Society.

I find a senior concierge, who is serious and polite. He has a wide smile, revealing gaps in his teeth. He's immaculately dressed. He's greeted queens and princes and presidents. He's been photographed handing them over to the head chef; he's waved them off in their limousines. He tells me he knows a little about the history of the hotel. ‘But you have seen our book; our book tells you everything you need to know,' he says, smiling. He's polite, but I imagine he's thinking that he has a thousand things to do, that there will soon be another wave of guests. The book is meant as the hotel's corporate reply to questions about its history, its prominent status in the upper echelons of Munich society over more than a century and its fortunes during World War Two.

‘It's a fine book,' I say. ‘But, and of course there are very understandable reasons for this, it says nothing about the Thule Society.' He has been very serious, and suddenly he laughs. Embarrassed, perhaps, or reluctant. Perhaps he suspects me of an indecent enthusiasm. He says, ‘Oh, them. Well you know they are perhaps not my kind of people. Let us say there are different religions, you know, different beliefs, and those people had a very different religion indeed. A religion thankfully no longer observed by many people today. You know there are all sorts of people, unpleasant people, and they were here once, in the past. It is for that reason we don't mention them,' he says.

‘What reason?' I ask.

‘The reason,' he says, laughing nervously again. ‘You know. There is a country with the Star of David on its flag, and these people would not really have got along with the people of that country. You understand what I mean now? I don't want to say what they were, but you know they were not pleasant people.'

‘So you feel it is best they are forgotten?'

He is silent for a few seconds, then he says: ‘A few years ago a production company from America wanted to come here, to make a film which included scenes about those meetings of the Thule Society. They wanted to film in our hotel, in the place where the society met. There was some debate about it, whether it was a good thing; you know, there is always the argument for talking about these things, to make sure people know the things that happened. But we said no in the end.'

‘Where were they going to film?'

‘Well, this society met in the Old Bar. That's where they met,' he says. ‘So I suppose they might have filmed there. But we decided it is not something we want the hotel to be associated with.' He is still laughing, in a slightly odd way, as if I have opened a conversation that
is
slightly unacceptable, made something of a faux pas, but he is trying to help me out of the embarrassment.

He's employed to help, to answer enquiries, and he knows a lot about the history of the hotel. But he is in a difficult position. He's eager that I shouldn't push the questions further. He is hardly going to take me off to the Old Bar and show me where the proto-Nazis sat. He smiles and laughs as I thank him for his help. We move on to other subjects—afternoon tea, the weather outside. He stands politely, attentively, while we discuss the tapestry behind the bar. Then, he says uneasily: ‘You say you knew about the Thule Society, somehow, meeting here. How did you know?' he asks. When I explain, he laughs with something like relief, a full-throated laugh this time, no trace of nerves.

Hotels, bars, restaurants are neutral places, where anyone can eat or sleep without being asked whether they are a potent force for evil or an innocuous passer-by. The Thule Society had sat in the hotel, talking bitterly about the supremacy of the Germanic race, and then they had vanished, to be replaced by other guests. Munich was full of places where unsavoury figures had sat, eating, drinking and plotting national resurgence. Places still trading, still serving up food and drink without asking questions of their customers. Practical necessity had extended the lives of many of these buildings after the war. As well as the Führer Building, there was the Haus der Kunst, another Nazi complex of columns and slabs, which was still standing by the river and was used for exhibitions and theatre productions. Many of the restaurants and inns where Hitler ranted and hectored were still serving up beer and noodles to their customers. The Four Seasons was still standing in central Munich, available for use. The Thule Society members had faded into obscurity, and no one was more eager to forget them than the polite concierge.

The concierge smiles as I wander off. He knows where I'm going, but he doesn't try to stop me. I walk along an opulent corridor with mirrors on the ceiling and pillars at intervals. It runs through the older part of the hotel, behind the reception. There are Maximilian salons in pale cream and white, with teacups and wine glasses ready in the corner, the curtains drawn against the damp day. Everything is bright and well washed, cleanly painted in light shades, except for the Old Bar, which has wooden panels and dark leather armchairs, with glass cabinets full of antique plates and cups and sculptures of birds. There's a portrait on the far wall of a woman riding side-saddle in long skirts. There's a round table set with a white cloth, surrounded by red-backed chairs. With an effort of the imagination, I could summon a collection of anti-Semites to the place; I could imagine them finding the close confines a pleasant place to conspire, to worship the ancient heritage of the ‘Aryan' tribes. I could imagine their absurd evenings of Nordic song and dance, the high ceremony of a self-appointed elite. But in the intervening years the place has been bombed and rebuilt, renovated and restored. The room has no eerie atmosphere, no trace of the polemical vileness of the Thule Society. It's just a neatly restored room, in a luxury hotel, with a table set for tea.

Outside, the bells chimed across the city, the cars queued at the lights. The crowds were pouring into the Pinakothek, drifting past the Altdorfers and the Cranachs, past the painted landscapes. The crowds were surging onto the trams, travelling through the reconstructed city, stopping for cakes and ices at the cafés. The tarmac gave off a wave of heat as I walked along Maximilianstrasse, and the cars sounded like industrial noise, their tyres clanging on the tram tracks. I walked along lethargic streets, past cafés with their outdoor tables packed with people. In a crowded beer garden I waited for Ursula to come to the table. I'd been sent to see her by a professor at the university, who told me she knew everything about the Thule Society. Ursula, the professor had told me, knew all about interwar Munich, about the faction wars and militias and the seedy conspiracies. The professor thought, though he wasn't sure, that a member of Ursula's family had been in the Thule Society. It was perhaps best, the professor had added, if I didn't ask Ursula too much about this. When I called Ursula, she said she would talk to me, on the condition that she was neither exposed nor named.

The restaurant was filling up, but as Ursula sauntered through the door of the restaurant she looked six feet tall, imposing as she moved in high heels, dropping her coat into the arms of a waiter.

‘Hello.'

‘Hello.'

We nodded, we sat down; there was a curious air to the encounter, as if we were meeting in secret. Without any preamble, without ordering anything to drink or eat, she started talking.

‘Everything is in darkness,' she said. ‘It remains in darkness, it will always remain in darkness,' she said. ‘Sebottendorff was a dubious man. A much-travelled adventurer. He had affairs, he lived in Turkey; he dabbled in Sufism, alchemical and Rosicrucian texts, he took Turkish nationality, he was accused of bigamy and of marrying for money. He was obsessed with the esoteric. The Thule Society had all of his chaos and obscurity.

‘Sebottendorff said Thule was found by Pytheas in around 400 B.C.; Thule was probably Iceland, Sebottendorff thought. He knew Thule had been discussed as a real place. He knew Iceland was where the Sagas were set. The Sagas, he said, had made possible the development of the Germanic religion.'

We were sitting in the Hofbrauhaus, another place where Hitler had delivered speeches. The ceilings were plastered with paintings of pigs and platters, knives and forks. Women in Bavarian costume were moving between the tables, delivering mugs of beer and plates of food. In the beer garden the checked tablecloths were flapping in the breeze and a fountain trickled water. The doors of the restaurant swung open, and the sound of a brass band drifted across the court-yard. Ursula seemed not to notice. She screwed her eyes up against the sun. She fumbled in her bag for sunglasses. Then she spent a long time trying to light a cigarette. Shaking the lighter and inhaling, she said: ‘You said you knew something about Thule. But these Germans, these Thule Society members, they took this idea of a last land in the north and made it the cradle of German history.' She paused briefly, and a waiter approached. ‘Coffee,' she said.

‘The Aryans, they thought, had knowledge of the magical power of the runes. The old runes,' said Ursula. ‘As well as Hitler, Hess and Rosenberg, the other members and associates included Johannes Hering, Hermann Pohl, Theodor Fritsch, all anti-Semites, members of the Münchener Hammer-Gemeinde, the Wotan Lodge; they were all obsessed with the Sagas. All were listed by Sebottendorff as members of the Thule Society,' she said. ‘Hering called the Thule Society “
die Treffpunkt
”—the meeting place. It's even confusing who was a member and who wasn't. Sebottendorff lied about everything. The Nazis Wilhelm Frick and Julius Streicher were named as members, also the publisher Gottfried Feder. In some accounts the chief of police was mentioned, and the
Oberbürgermeister.
Aristocrats, top officials, political agitators, millionaires. But the Thule Society was perhaps one of many small, unpleasant groups they joined.' The coffee came and Ursula drank it down.

‘And a member of your family was also a member?' I asked.

She tapped her fingers on the table, a gesture of irritation, perhaps. ‘We don't know. I said the lists are not reliable. It is possible, unlikely but possible. I don't think it is worth talking too much about,' she said, quietly. ‘An ancestor of mine saw the Thule Society crest among her husband's papers a few times. But after the death of her husband, she went through his effects and never found it. By then it was the late 1920s; he might of course have lost these papers, or burnt them. He might just have been approached by the Thule Society and never actually signed up. I really don't know. It was the sort of society he might have joined, from what we know about this man. You of course understand that if you start rummaging through family histories in Germany you often find compromised figures, figures who allied themselves with all of this.' She said “this” with a curl to her lips.