From the far reaches of the memorial ground Director Wengler approached at a measured pace, dressed in formal dark suit and top hat. The effect was more dramatic than rising from a table at the front. Rath couldn’t help but grin at the thought of him waiting behind a tree, speech tucked under one arm. Despite the obvious artificiality, the people hailed the owner of the Luisenhöhe estate like a tribune. Rath dutifully joined the applause, but felt uneasy. He didn’t know what to make of Wachsmann’s gushing national pathos, which also featured heavily in Wengler’s speech, the opening lines of which were peppered with terms such as Heimat, Vaterland and Treue. Homeland, Fatherland, Devotion.
The director was the better speaker, which surprised Rath, who had assumed that oratory was the most important weapon in a politician’s armoury. Perhaps Wengler was the better politician too. It seemed as if the entrepreneur were the secret ruler of this town – or perhaps there was no secret about it.
‘We all know what happened twelve years ago,’ Wengler announced. ‘To many of you today it will seem only natural that Masuria should have remained German. In fact, it was anything but. We had to fight. In trying to wrest our homeland away, the Poles did everything they could to sow hatred and discord among us…’
Rath remembered Rammoser’s words: that it had been Wengler and his thugs sowing the hatred and discord. How many of their number would be dressed in brown today? The Treuburg SA had commandeered an entire table for itself, and, in point of fact, its members listened more attentively to Wengler than the rest. As far as Rath could see, the estate owner wore no swastika, not even the little lapel badge Hitler’s party colleagues were so fond of displaying. Perhaps the man didn’t belong to the party, and simply used it for his own ends. Something like Johann Marlow, who presided over the Berolina Ringverein without ever having been a member. In Rath’s eyes the SA were little more than a gang of criminals, at least in Berlin. Here in Treuburg things were different.
‘Their gamble didn’t pay off,’ Wengler continued. ‘We Treuburgers resisted their cunning and trickery and professed our unswerving devotion to the Reich. We did not yield! Even when Polish propaganda and its lies claimed a human life.’ He made a brief, but effective pause. ‘Most of you know what I am talking about. Who I am talking about. A woman from our midst; a woman who gave her life so that she might profess her allegiance to Prussia and Germany. On the day our fate was sealed, the fate of our town and our district, the fate of the whole of Masuria, so too… was her fate sealed.’ He broke off as if overcome by the memory.
Rath looked around at people gazing in silence towards the front, a few women dabbing their eyes with handkerchiefs. The teachers wore looks of reverence, even Rammoser, though the lines around his mouth suggested he didn’t agree with everything Wengler had said. The librarian’s expression was easier to interpret. Maria Cofalka regarded Gustav Wengler with distaste, if not outright revulsion. Rath could understand. He, too, was repelled by the theatricality of Wengler’s act. He looked at the man’s face, unsure if his feelings were genuine, or simply a means of adding emotional authenticity to his yearly address.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Wengler said now. ‘Please be upstanding so that we may commemorate Anna von Mathée’s death with a minute’s silence.’
Chairs scraped, isolated coughs and whispers died, and an almost religious stillness descended. The only sound was the wind rustling in the trees. Rath gazed into serious faces. Anna von Mathée’s death still touched people twelve years after the event.
‘I think that most of you know Anna’s story,’ Wengler continued. ‘Most of you are aware of how she was killed; that it happened on the day of the plebiscite, at the hands of one of those alien elements that sought to rob us of our homeland. Most of you know that Anna was my fiancée. Her death gives me every reason to hate her killer, but today I do not wish to speak of hatred, only love. Nor do I wish to speak of the past, only the future.’
The love Wengler proclaimed was love for the Fatherland, and the future he conjured was music to the ears of the brownshirts alone. Despite his statement to the contrary, the chief of the Homeland Service did not let the past lie. He spoke instead of ‘wounds that refused to heal’, referring to the Corridor as ‘that wedge which has been driven between Prussian body and soul’. Again, the pause was timed to perfection. ‘They have separated us from the Fatherland, but they will never tear our German hearts from our breasts! One day we will be bound with the Reich once more, and the humiliation of Versailles erased.’
Rath was familiar with this rhetoric. When a speaker pulled out the stops in this way, he could count on the approval of his public, irrespective of politics or class. Even so, he had never heard anything like the primal jubilation that erupted from the Treuburgers when Wengler finished. Gradually he began to understand why the Nazis, who played on people’s feelings in a similar way, had met with such a positive response here, despite the Masurians’ Polish roots mitigating against their place in the Nazi world view.
The open-air concert began, so loud it was impossible to hear yourself think. Rath drained his beer and left Kowalski, tapping on his wristwatch as he went. ‘I need those names for one o’clock.’
Strolling across the festival site, he realised he wasn’t the only one opting to give the musical society’s concert a miss. Mothers waited patiently with their offspring by the merry-go-round, while, a few stands along, a group of lads clouted the high striker to impress the lasses. The puck was sent catapulting towards the bell, and the strong man received a kiss from his sweetheart as a reward. Rath made out Hella’s blonde pigtails and the brown uniform of the SA. Her boyfriend wasn’t the only brownshirt here. The younger members mostly stood before the high striker or shooting gallery, none of them older than twenty. Those at the gallery were likewise surrounded by village beauties. Uniforms were still important in Germany, Rath mused, if only to impress the fair sex. It was the same at the marksmen’s festivals in the Rhineland, youthful sharpshooters prancing in their uniforms to dazzle the girls. Only, the lads here didn’t belong to any gun club, but a political goon squad that until recently had been banned.
Rath thought of the Communist posters. Glued under the cover of darkness, here were the boys who’d torn them down.
The scent of roasted almonds and Lebkuchen drove him towards more rustic pleasures, and he ordered a kielbasa at the stand. Polish sausages were still in demand. He bit inside. Not bad.
‘Bon appétit, Inspector.’ Behind him stood Karl Rammoser.
‘Would you like one too?’ Rath asked. ‘It’s on me.’
‘No, thank you. I already have plans.’
‘Perhaps I can repay your hospitality another time.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I’m surprised to see the SA out in uniform.’
‘Klaus Fabeck and his boys? I’d rather they celebrated in uniform than brawled with Communists in plain clothes.’
‘Wouldn’t be much of a fight. There are only two Communists here.’
Rammoser changed topics. ‘Maria mentioned you stopped by the district library?’
‘That’s right. Because of Radlewski.’
‘You still suspect poor Artur?’
‘Not if he could assure me, in person, that he hasn’t set foot outside East Prussia these last few months.’
‘Maria’s worried about Artur; she thinks you have the wrong man. No one knows him better around here.’
‘I can believe that. She was in love with him, wasn’t she?’
‘I’m too young to know the full story. Apparently, she was smitten at school.’