was grateful to Pauli for bringing him into the battalion, and though Esser could never replace his brother, Peter, in the role of mentor and protector, or Alex Horner as conscience and example, Fritz Esser was the most priceless of companions. Fritz could be outrageously funny, and he had a sharp eye for the sort of cant and humbug that the new socialist government plentifully supplied every day. Fritz was not a committed socialist; nor was he a communist or a Marxist. And whatever was the political creed that bound the Freikorps men together, Fritz Esser had no heartfelt devotion to that, either. Fritz Esser was an anarchist by both conviction and nature, and Pauli found his anarchistic attitude towards life not only amusing but illuminating and instructive, too.
When Freikorps Graf moved out of Berlin, first to Halle and then to Munich, Esser’s role as quartermaster, mother superior, slave-master and general factotum earned the respect of the entire battalion. En route there was always a hot evening meal ready, a dry place to sleep, and some sort of breakfast, too. Every soldier in the battalion had well-repaired boots and fifty rounds of ammunition in a bandolier in case there was trouble with the local populations, who sometimes preferred their communist committees to the freebooting warriors. And if sometimes they had to march too far, then that was because not even the amazing Fritz could keep all the ancient trucks in good enough repair to transport a battalion of men. Besides, soldiers marched – everyone knew that. Freikorpstruppen liked to march and shoot and sleep rough; that was why they were in the Freikorps. People who didn’t like such hardships and the comradeship that went with them remained civilians, and all good Freikorpskämpfer despised civilians of every political creed.
1922
‘Berlin is so far away and I miss you so much’
The Austrian countryside was bleak and cold, and by five o’clock in the afternoon the darkening sky was streaked with the red light of the setting sun. Martha Somló and Harald Winter had skated round and round long after all the other skaters – villagers mostly; the Viennese did not come this far to find ice – had gone.
She loved the hiss of the blades cutting into the ice, and the way her face tingled in the cold wind. She loved the harmony with which they moved together, and she enjoyed Harry’s arm firmly around her waist as they raced across the ice at reckless speed.
The dinner they were served in the private rooms upstairs at the White Horse was simple country food, but there was nothing better than a veal stew on a cold winter evening. They had their warm apple strudel, and tiny glasses of powerful Schwarzbeer schnapps from the nearby farm, while sitting in front of a roaring log fire. The logs were trimmings from the orchard, the smoke smelled of the fruit, and the sap still inside the wood made the fire crack and bang and throw sparks.
‘Must you go back tomorrow?’ she asked. They had been in bed. Now she was sitting on the floor by his feet, naked except for an ornate gypsy-style shawl that she’d wrapped herself into. He’d made her scrub off all the powder, cream, and lipstick. He cared nothing about the new fashions: in Harald Winter’s world only whores and chorus girls painted their faces.
‘I shouldn’t have stayed so long,’ said Harald Winter.
‘Why are you selling the bank?’ Every time she passed the bank in Ringstrasse she felt proud of knowing Harry.
‘Only my share of the bank.’ He stared into the fire as if hoping to see a bright future there.
‘Why?’
‘It will make no difference to us, little one. I will still come to Vienna.’ He touched her hair gently, and she closed her eyes as he stroked her head.
‘But not so often.’
‘I am not rich any more,’ said Winter. He was rich, of course, very rich by the standards that most people employ to measure wealth. But he could not provide Martha with the luxuries – the carriage and servants – that she’d once enjoyed, and he felt humiliated by his economies.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. She turned to look at him by the light of the flames. He looked tired and ill, but she knew now that Harald Winter’s business setbacks affected him in the way that other men are affected by infirmities or disease. ‘I’ll always be here waiting.’
‘I’m setting up a trust fund for you in Switzerland,’ he said. ‘It will be enough to live comfortably whatever happens.’
‘You are a wonderful man, Harry. What would I do without you?’
‘Many people say things will get even worse. Some of the banks might crash. It’s better to sell.’
‘Berlin is so far away, Harry, and I miss you so much.’ He leaned forward and bent over to kiss her. If only it could be like this forever, he thought. But, just as quickly, the thought was gone. Harald Winter would find life like this unendurable after a week or so, and he was sensible enough to know that.
1924
‘Who are those dreadful men?’
The birthday party that Harald and Veronica Winter put on for their younger son, Pauli’s twenty-fourth birthday was the first real birthday party he’d had since he was a child. Although unsaid, it was his parent’s celebration of Pauli Winter’s first term at university, his return to civilian life. The lovely old house was ablaze with lights and noisy with the excited chatter of more than fifty guests and a ten-piece dance band. In a grim sort of joke that was typically berlinerisch, the invitations were overprinted upon billion-mark banknotes. Back before the war, an unskilled worker in one of Harald Winter’s factories earned twenty-five marks a week, but the staggering inflation of the previous year had seen the value of Germany’s paper money plunge to a point where one U.S. dollar bought over two and a half billion marks. Foreigners came across the border from Holland and Czechoslovakia and bought land and mansions with handfuls of hard currency. Then finally the madness ended. The Reichsbank issued its new Rentenmarks, one of which was worth one billion in the old currency. As if in celebration, Aschingers, the famous restaurant near the Friedrichstrasse railway station, offered one main dish, a glass of beer, a dessert, and as many rolls as you cared to eat for just one new mark. Inflation had stopped.
As the smoke cleared, it was apparent that the middle classes had suffered most: in the final few terrible weeks most people’s life savings totalled not enough to buy a postage stamp. But some Germans had not suffered. Harald Winter had almost doubled his fortune. Like many industrialists, he was allowed to borrow from the Reichsbank, which, in the manner of most government departments, reacted very slowly to the events of the day. Thus, even when the Reichsbank was charging its top rate of interest, Harald Winter could continue borrowing and repaying at rates far, far below that of inflation. And by 1924 the five-million-Reichsmark debt due to his father-in-law was nothing like enough to buy a meal in Aschingers. It could be renegotiated to almost anything Harald Winter decided.
But not everyone present at Pauli’s birthday party this evening had been as fortunate and as astute as Winter. Many of them had had at least a part of their money in government securities, and now they were talking about the law of December 8, 1923. The socialist government had decided that their own debts were to be advantageously revalued – for instance, the reparations due to France – but the millions of holders of now worthless government
