Authors: Heinrich Fraenkel,Roger Manvell
I herewith most humbly beg
(untertänigst)
to appeal to the Diocesan Committee of the Albertus Magnus Society for some financial support for the winter term 1917-18. I passed my matriculation at Easter in the Rheydt Gymnasium (I attach the report) and I then went to Bonn University so as to study Philology (German and Latin) and History. During this one term I managed to make do with some savings which I was fortunate enough to make while a schoolboy by tutoring smaller children. However, I had to break off my studies prematurely since my means were so little and so soon exhausted.
My father works as a clerk, and what small balance may be left from his salary in view of the increased cost of living must be used to support my two brothers, of whom the elder is at the Western Front, while the other is a prisoner-of-war in France.
Unfortunately the holidays did not give me much opportunity for earning money, and all my efforts to obtain some short-term employment were in vain. On account of my handicapped leg, I am exempt from military service and I would dearly like to continue my studies during the next term. This, however, entirely depends on the charity of my Catholic fellow-believers.
I would most humbly ask you to listen to my sincere request, and I earnestly look forward to your early reply.
I am confident that my former religious teacher, Herr Oberlehrer Johannes Mollen, will confirm my statements to be correct.
In deep devotion, with deep respect,
Josef Goebbels (Stud. Phil.)
8
A second letter followed on 14th September, and was even more formal in its appeal:
As I begged to inform you in my last letter, I was not able, owing to financial difficulties, to complete the last term. Moreover, at the end of June, I was conscripted for military office work, but I am now quite free of that. In the circumstances, I am not in a position to provide a testimonial of diligence with regard to my first term. Would you very kindly let me know whether, in the circumstances, I can do without it, the more so since without your kind and gracious help I would be greatly distressed to have to give up further studies.
I attach the questionnaire, and as soon as I have your kind answer, I will send in the other papers.
In a further letter dated 18th September he is more explicit. The style is still very formal, and he refers to himself in the third person:
The father of the under-signed applicant is a clerk employed by the firm W. H. Lennartz in Rheydt. His income amounts to between 3,800 and 4,000 marks per annum. There are no appreciable savings or funds. The applicant's mother is also still alive. Of the three sons, the applicant is the youngest. His eldest brother (24) is a gunner on the Western Front. The other brother (22) is a P.O.W. in France. The only surviving sister is eight years old.
In view of the increased cost of living and the need for supporting the other two sons (their priority is due to their being soldiers), the parents are not in a position to give financial support to the applicant's studies.
On the same sheet of paper there is a notable commendation of Goebbels written by Prelate Mollen:
Herr Goebbels comes from decent Catholic parents and can be recommended on account of his religious attitude and his general moral demeanour.
Two other officials added their recommendations of the candidate.
Goebbels' application to the Society for assistance was accompanied by a school report on his progress in studies, his conduct and his character. It represents him as an outstanding pupil. His behaviour, attendance, neatness, diligence and handwriting are all marked in the highest grade, ‘very good’; in his studies Religion, German, Latin are also marked ‘very good’, and his Greek, French, History, Geography, Mathematics and Physics are marked ‘good’. Goebbels' appeal was successful. The Society decided to make him a grant in the form of a series of interest-free loans. After a third appeal, dated 8th October, in which he very respectfully asks for immediate payment to help him with the cost of books and fees, he received his first loan of 185 marks
*
. In all between 1917 and 1920 the Albertus Magnus Society lent Goebbels a total of just 964 marks. Had they known the difficulty they were eventually to experience in getting the repayments out of him, they would undoubtedly never have lent him a single mark. They had in the end to resort to legal pressure and they did not achieve a final settlement of the debt until 1930, when Goebbels was already a member of the Reichstag and a notorious anti-Catholic. The complete documentation of this long struggle survives in the Society's archives.
4
In addition to these loans, his father allowed him fifty marks a month, and at times his mother managed to send him small presents of money.
The German universities at the beginning of the century had only four faculties—Theology, Medicine, Law and Philosophy. Philosophy was something of an academic miscellany incorporating every subject not regarded as part of the first three faculties. It included subjects as diverse as Literature, Mathematics, Politics, Economics and the History of Art. It was the faculty proper to the student who intended to become a fully qualified teacher. Students in the Faculty of Philosophy took a
Staatsexamen,
or final examination which entitled them to become masters in the Gymnasia. Taking a doctorate (or Ph.D.) was not obligatory, but most students did so for the sake of the prestige the title brought them. Most educated people in Germany liked to have the title Herr Doktor. The doctorate required some three years' study at a university, after which the student presented a short thesis or dissertation on a subject chosen by his professor, and followed this by submitting himself to an oral examination.
At Bonn Goebbels was reading History and Literature and specialising at this early stage in his academic career in the study of Goethe's dramatic works. He had joined the Catholic Students' Union known as Unitas, membership of which was considered desirable by the Catholic authorities, and, judging from the records held by the Albertus Magnus Society, he appeared to be a good student. Then begins the unsettling movement from one university centre to another. Although it was customary for students to study in two or three universities, Goebbels' peripatetic career during his four years of study shows abnormal restlessness. For the summer term of 1918 he went to the University of Freiburg, where he was excused payment of any fees and studied the writings of Winckelmann, the eighteenth-century Catholic archæologist and student of classical art, and the influence of Ancient Rome and Greece on the Middle Ages. In the winter he moved on to Würzburg University, where he continued his studies of ancient and modern history.
Some letters survive written in October and November 1918 by Goebbels to his school friend Fritz Prang in Rheydt and to the Prang family. They are particularly revealing of the way his character was developing now that he was fully established as a student and was living in rooms away from his family. They are written from Würzburg. The first of them, dated 2nd October and addressed to Fritz, is an interesting comment on conditions affecting the attendance of students in German universities during the last months and weeks of the war. Goebbels had to attend university in a town where he could find a lodging rather than go to the university of his choice:
My dear Fritz,
Accept my sincere greetings, first of all, as well as my considerable displeasure in having to tell you right away that my long-cherished dream has not come true: for this term, alas, I have to forget about Munich once again. In the whole city there were no rooms to be had and the food situation, also, seems to be pretty bad. No, I
didn't
sit down in front of the station to cry my eyes out. I simply packed my belongings and beat what you might call a strategic retreat. Now here in Würzburg I have been very lucky indeed. A wonderful room right beside the river. Very good food and—well, what more can one expect these days? As for Munich, I hope to have another go during the Christmas break.
He then goes on to describe the beauties of the ancient city of Würzburg in the flowery terms of a guide-book, supported by literary quotations and a reference to himself as “a young son of the Muses”:
The University is good. For this term I am concentrating again on the History of Art and recent German literature. I hope this winter to make some good headway
in artibus liberalibus
. And you, my dear fellow? Well, I should hope that in the course of the next few weeks you will find your way to this beautiful seat of the Muses. You will certainly never regret it. What about breaking your present sojourn by a short visit here? It would really delight me. Tonight I mean to read Rabindranath Tagore's ‘Gardener’, a wonderful collection of love songs which I can commend to you most heartily. Do not forget, please, to send me the small Christmas sketch as soon as possible. And do remember me, please, to your esteemed Frau mother and your Herr father, and accept the most sincere greetings of your ULEX.
By now it was clear that Goebbels fancied himself as a literary man, and was prepared to use his letters to his friends as opportunities for stylistic display. This reached its height when he heard the following month of the death of Fritz's brother Hans in the very last days of the war. He wrote a stiffly formal letter on 13th October to the whole family in which he tried to match correctness of feeling with a suitably heroic style of writing:
I have just heard from Fritz the shocking news of the heroic death of your dear son and brother Hans, and I feel the urge to offer my most sincere condolence in your grief about this too, too sad loss. Considering that for a while I was very close to Hans and that I have spent many a quiet hour with him, you will allow me to devote a few words of reminiscence to the young hero.
Hans was a true and loyal comrade. What drew me to him particularly and will always make me proud to have known him, was his pure and unspotted character, his truly noble attitude, and his unspoiled way of life, even though in his restrained and yet virile way he was not the type to conquer hearts in a flash. He certainly did something rather more precious: he knew how to win the hearts of his friends for ever in hours of quiet communion … I think that you,
verehrte
family Prang, will find some solace in such thoughts. If indeed it is the lot of him whom the gods love to die young, you must know that Hans was one of those select few.
About a month later, on 11th November 1918, the Armistice was signed in Marshal Foch's private railway coach, which Goebbels was one day to bring back to Compiegne when Germany was able to celebrate her triumph over France. The complex political situation in Germany which had led up to the Armistice naturally excited the students, as it excited the rest of Germany. The High Command, at first in favour of an Armistice, at the last moment turned against it and so shifted the responsibility for proceeding with the acceptance of peace terms solely on to the shoulders of the civil Government. Ludendorff, who was subsequently to endorse Hitler, had resigned from his post in the High Command at the end of October, and had fled abroad in disgrace; faced with the knowledge that the defeat of Germany was being admitted, soldiers, sailors and workers began to mutiny throughout the country demanding peace, and the first Republican Government was set up in Bavaria on 8th November. The Kaiser was forced to abdicate and fled to Holland as soon as it was realised that neither he nor the High Command could rely further on the loyalty of the Services. On 10th November a Socialist revolution was proclaimed in the big cities and a Republican Government founded.
In a letter dated 13th November, a few days after the revolution, and addressed to Fritz Prang, Goebbels gives his comments as a student on these events. They are in startling contrast to his thinking once he had become a National Socialist, particularly in his complete acceptance of the fact of Germany's defeat:
A few days ago in the Auditorium Maximum here we had a big meeting of almost all the Würzburg students who wished to see how they stood vis-à-vis the burning questions of our new political situation. And in the course of the debate, a word was spoken which I would like to send you in answer to your dear and friendly lines. The question was raised as to how German students should face the new powers-that-be, and one of the older students (wounded in the war) had his say: “I think that for the time being the most decent line for us to take is to watch matters calmly. Just now the blind and raw masses seem to be on top. But maybe the time will come again when they will feel the need for an intelligent lead, and then it will be for us to step in with all our strength.”
Don't you also feel that the time will come again when people will yearn for intellectual and spiritual values rather than brutal mass appeal? Let us also wait for that moment, and meanwhile persevere in steeling our brains for the tasks then awaiting us. It is bitter enough to have lived through those dark hours of our Fatherland, but who knows if one day it might not profit us after all. The way I see it, Germany has certainly lost the war, but our Fatherland may well turn out the winner.
After further condolence on the death of Hans, he ends his letter by quoting Horace!
For the summer term of 1919, Goebbels went back to Freiburg. Although he was still let off the payment of fees and was receiving further loans from the Albertus Magnus Society, his devotion to Catholicism had now begun to weaken, for he is no longer recorded as a member of Unitas.
For the winter term of 1919, he transferred to the University at Munich, where he received the last of the loans that he was to get from the Albertus Magnus Society. After this, he failed to keep them informed of his movements or to give them any report of his progress as a student, though he should have done so once a year in view of the support he had received from them during the first two years of his academic career. There can be little doubt that he was by now beginning to sever his connections with the Catholic Church; in any case he was about to come under the stronger influence which was to fire his literary ambitions and persuade him that he could become a professional writer. He was to retain this ambition for the rest of his life, taking the massive fees and royalties he exacted for his published articles, speeches and diaries during the period of his political power as the sign of his literary success.