The Weimar Triangle

Critical Acclaim for Eric Koch…

“Eric Koch has been explaining German culture to North America for years.”

-
The Globe and Mail

“It takes a great deal of imagination, background knowledge, psychological understanding and the talent of a born writer to carry it off. Mr. Koch has done so triumphantly.…Mr. Koch’s amazing story, movingly and skilfully told, once again proves that the truth can be stranger than fiction, especially in dark times such as Eurpe during the thirties and forties.”

- Walter Laqueur

“Eric koch’s brilliant, unique, and moving account of two lives has the passion of personal involvement, the clarity of historical observation and the revelation of archetypal drama. It is a remarkable piece of writing.”

- Adrienne Clarkson,
journalist and former
Governor-General of Canada

“His imaginative agility, inventiveness and stylish wit have enabled him to create original and highly entertaining works.”

-
Oxford Companion of
Canadian Literature

“Conceptually intriguing…Koch’s histroical novel…is intelligently written and hiughly informative.”

-
Publishers Weekly

“The Man Who Knew Charlie Chaplin confirms that, at its best, the historical novel brings out the importance of imagination in expanding and deepening our grasp of the past.”

-
Aufbau
, New York

“…a narrative full of colourful topical detail…a spooky elegant political ‘dance macabre’.”

-
The Globe & Mail

“Exciting and suspenseful…”

-
Zurichsee Zeitungen

“…only after the last senetence can one put this down and immediately recommend it to someone else.”

-
Das Stadtemagazin Erfurt

“…many voices..character full portraits…including humour, laconic irony….varied story-telling techniques…always new and surprising…”

-
Frakfurter Rundschau

The Weimar Triangle

F
RANKFURT 1927

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Koch, Eric, 1919-

The Weimar triangle / Eric Koch.

ISBN 978-0-88962-902-8

I. Title.

PS8521.O23W45 2010      C813’.54     C2010-906387-2

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Published by Mosaic Press, offices and warehouse at 1252 Speers Road, Units 1 and 2, Oakville, Ontario, L6L 5N9, Canada and Mosaic Press, PMB 145, 4500 Witmer Industrial Estates, Niagara Falls, NY, 14305-1386, U.S.A.

Copyright © 2010, Eric Koch
Printed and Bound in Canada.
ISBN 978-0-88962-902-8

And the Ontario Media Development Coorporation (OMDC)

www.mosaic-press.com

The Weimar Triangle

F
RANKFURT 1927

Eric Koch

Eric Koch
(photo © Tim Lash)

Other Books by Eric Koch

Fiction

The French Kiss

McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, 1969

The Leisure Riots

Tundra Books, Montreal, 1973

Die Freizei Revoluzzer
*, Heyne Verlag, Munich

The Last Thing You’d Want to Know

Tundra Books, Montreal, 1976

Die Spanne Leben
*, Heyne Verlag, Munich

(*Both German versions were reissued together in 1987

under the title CRUPP.)

Goodnight, Little Spy

Virgo Press, Toronto, and Ram Publishing, London, 1979

Kassandrus

Heyne Verag, Munich 1988

Liebe und Mord auf Xananta

Verlag Eichborn, Frankfurt, 1992

Icon in Love: A Novel about Goethe

Mosaic Press, Oakville, 1998

Nobelpreis für Goethe
, Fischer Tachenbuch, Frankfurt, 1999

The Man Who Knew Charlie Chaplin

Mosaic Press, Oakville, 2000

L’uomo Chi Spliò Hitler
, Barbera Editoré, Siena, 2006

Earrings

Mosaic Press, Oakville, 2002

Arabian Nights 1914: A Novel about Kaiser Wilhelm II

Mosaic Press, Oakville, 2003

Premonitions

Mosaic Press, Oakville, 2008, 2009

Non-Fiction

Deemed Suspect

Methuen, Toronto, 1980

Inside Seven Days

Prentice-Hall, Toronto, 1986

Hilmar and Odette

McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, 1996

Chongqing Publishing House, 1998

The Brothers Hambourg

Robin Brass, Toronto, 1997

I Remember the Location Exactly

Mosaic Press, Oakville, 2007

Die Braut im Zwielicht: Erinnerungen

Weidle Velag, Bonn, 2009

Author’s Note

The views, but not the conduct, of fictional Hermann Geisel resemble those of the Heidelberg statistician and pacifist Emil Julius Gumbel.

Similarly, the fictional Erwin Herzberg has much in common with the film historian Siegfried Kracauer, author of From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film, who in 1927 was feuilleton editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung.

The story about Beethoven’s hair is invented.

Readers who wish to know who among the characters in this novel is real and who is invented are invited to trust their memory.

If they recognize the name the character is real.

Prelude

J
ay was pleased when that strange-looking man in a dark red open shirt and jeans spoke to him. He always seemed to be there when Jay dropped in for a beer between his various errands. The man was usually alone, reading a book. He was short, had a lively, mobile face, a defiant chin and almost no neck. He was probably around his own age, in his early thirties. His face reminded Jay of the Punch in Punch-and-Judy shows.

They were sitting at adjoining tables in the pleasantly rundown Roland Bar on the Kaiserstrasse in Frankfurt.

It was a Wednesday in July and the weather was lovely.

“Do you work at a bank around here?” the man asked. It was a safe question
—
Jay wore a dark grey suit and there were a number of skyscraper-banks in the neighbourhood.

“Well, not exactly.”

It was not the first time Jay had been asked that question. He was in Frankfurt on a confidential mission to scout out the possibility of his Canadian employer, the Bank of Ontario, buying the venerable old Littmann Bank, which had nearly been wiped out by the recession and, if there was such a possibility, to prepare the ground for its acquisition. The bank’s numerous connections with Eastern Europe made it attractive. Of course, he could not reveal all this to a stranger. But his nature was communicative and he was intrigued by the man’s Punch-like qualities.

“I am a Canadian and I’m here to buy the Deutsche Bank,” he declared, his expression deadly serious.

“What a good idea.” Punch nodded thoughtfully. “The chairman of the board told me the other day he was looking for a new owner. A Canadian bank would be just right. Wide open spaces and all that. I am sure such an idea has never occurred to him. He knows the present owner is too old-fashioned, narrow and unimaginative to meet the new challenges we keep hearing about. By the way, would you rather I speak English?”

“Oh no, thank you,” Jay responded “I must practise my German. It is very rusty, I’m afraid. But it’s good of you to ask.”

“Are you enjoying Frankfurt?”

“Too soon to tell,” Jay responded, inspecting his fingernails. “I’ve only been here for a few days. And, incidentally, my name is Jay Gordonson.”

“And mine Hans Kielmann. Unlike most of my friends, I don’t mind bankers.”

“What a relief. So what do you do?”

Hans pointed to his book.

“I sell old books on the internet.
Antiquarisch.
I don’t know how you say that in English. I leave new books to Amazon.”

“You mean you sell second-hand books?”

“Yes. If you’re looking for anything specific, say the early poems by Johann Gottfried Seume, you can ask me and I may be able to find them for you. Somewhere or other.”

“Do you have an office or do you sit at home in front of your computer?”

“I have a little room around the corner in the Weserstrasse because it’s convenient to have a foot in the centre of town. I am also helping a cousin of mine set up a children’s bookstore around the corner on the Elbestrasse. But my real office is a garage in Sachsenhausen. Would you like to see it? Say—on Saturday morning?”