Heinrich Himmler : A Life (7 page)

In July 1919 Heinrich Himmler, in accordance with a further special ruling for those who had done war service, received his school-leaving certificate, without ever having had to undergo the actual examination. In most subjects his mark was ‘very good’ and only in maths and physics did he have to make do with ‘good’.
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As a military career in the Reichswehr seemed increasingly improbable, he made the surprising decision to study agriculture at the Technical University in Munich. At first sight this choice of career is hard to reconcile with the status-conscious, socially ambitious Himmlers and their aspirations as members of the professional middle class, the more so because the family was based in the town and had no links to landowners who might have offered their son a post such as steward of an estate. On the contrary, the imminent and extensive dissolution of the old officer corps made it likely that numerous disbanded officers, as well as the new generation of sons of the nobility who would in the past have gone into the army, would now enter agriculture.

Precisely this circumstance most likely accounts for Himmler’s decision, however: at the agricultural faculty he hoped he would be in the company of former officers, who, although forced to prepare for a means of earning a living, regarded their studies first and foremost as a way of filling in the time with like-minded people until the outbreak of a fresh war or a civil war. Here Heinrich could immerse himself fully in the milieu of reserve officers and paramilitary activities, in order if possible still to realize his actual aim,
namely a career in the military. The general uncertainty that prevailed in the immediate post-war period may have encouraged Himmler’s parents to judge his decision pragmatically. They did, after all, also accept the decision of Gebhard and Ernst to study engineering.

In the summer of 1919 Himmler’s father was appointed headmaster of the grammar school in Ingolstadt, and the family managed to find a small estate nearby where Himmler was to gain the one-year’s practical experience he needed for acceptance on his course of study. On 1 August 1919 he began the one-year placement on the estate of Economic Councillor Winter in Oberhaunstadt. Work on the farm consisted of a twelve-hour day, six days a week; Himmler had Sunday off but still had to work early in the morning with the livestock. From his letters to his parents
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and the ‘work diary’ he immediately began it is clear that he found the unaccustomed hard physical labour difficult, but that ‘Heinrich agricola’, as he signed one of his letters, was also proud of what he achieved. Thus he noted on 26 August: ‘Morning, swept the grain drying-floor, unloaded 3½ loads of barley on my own.’ And on 29 August he recorded: ‘Afternoon loaded sacks of rye onto a wagon. 105 sacks weighing 2 hundredweight each. 3 loads of barley.’ As during his time with the military he was still provided with extra rations, clean clothes, and various other things by his parents.

His hope that his exertions would strengthen his weak constitution
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was, however, soon dashed: on the second weekend he was already ill in bed, and after less than five weeks of his placement he became seriously ill. In the Ingolstadt hospital he was suspected of having paratyphoid fever and he was kept there for three weeks. During that time his family moved to Ingolstadt.
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On 25 September he travelled to Munich to see the former family doctor, Dr Quenstedt, who according to Heinrich came to the following diagnosis: ‘Enlarged heart. Not significant, but he should take a break for a year and study.’
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During the idleness forced on him by his illness Heinrich read voraciously. While still in hospital he began to compile a list of books he intended to read, noting for the months of September and October (after leaving hospital he went back to live with his parents) a total of twenty-eight works.
¹²

He devoured half-a-dozen volumes of Jules Verne along with predominantly historical fiction, for example three books by Maximilian Schmidt, the writer of popular Bavarian tales. Goethe’s
Faust
formed part of his reading, also Thomas Mann’s novel
Royal Highness
, the only work of
modern German literature in this period that was to be found on his list and one that he immediately disliked.
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On the other hand, he found the two volumes of
Ossian
, a collection of ancient Celtic bardic poetry edited by the teacher and writer James Macpherson in 1762/3, to be ‘interesting’. Allegedly collected in the Scottish highlands, the songs were in fact a forgery, the work of the editor himself. Whether Himmler was aware of this when reading must remain a mystery; whatever the case, this type of romantic heroic saga suited his taste exactly.
¹⁴

Towards the end of his period of illness he turned to political reading-matter. He read a polemic against the Freemasons that was widely read in its day, written by Friedrich Wichtl, a member of the Austrian National Assembly, who set about creating an ethnic (
völkisch
) stereotype out of the negative image of the Freemasons prevalent above all in Catholic circles during the First World War.
¹⁵
Wichtl claimed that, among other things, Freemasonry was strongly influenced by the Jews, was aiming for world revolution, and was overwhelmingly to blame for the World War. Himmler agreed and commented: ‘A book that sheds light on everything and tells us who we have to fight first.’ It remains an open question whether this challenge was directed at the Freemasons or at the Jews allegedly concealed behind them. Shortly before this he had read the first eight volumes of
Pro-Palestine
, publications edited by the German Committee for the Promotion of the Jewish Settlement of Palestine, and thus had engaged with Zionist literature, though he made no comments on this reading.
¹⁶

On 14 October he travelled to Munich for a further examination by Dr Quenstedt. With regard to his heart ‘nothing out of the ordinary’ was discovered.
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There was now nothing to prevent his beginning his studies: on 18 October 1919 he registered at the Technical University.
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Heinrich Himmler was a disciplined and conscientious student, and his health stabilized right away.
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At first he shared a room for a few weeks with his brother Gebhard and then rented a furnished room very close to the Technical University at Amalienstrasse 28.
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He quickly adopted a particular rhythm in his everyday life. He took his meals very close to his lodgings at the home of Frau Loritz, the widow of a professional singer, who together with her two daughters provided meals for students.
²¹
He mostly spent the
evenings there and the rest of his free time he spent with friends, of whom we shall hear more. He also frequently paid formal visits to acquaintances of his parents—apparently not only out of politeness or on his parents’ account but because he enjoyed such social occasions.

He made several visits to Privy Councillor von Lossow, a family friend, who, as Himmler noted, showed himself to be immensely kind.
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On occasion he also visited the home of Professor Rauschmeyer, with whose daughter Mariele he was later to become friends.
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He was a particularly frequent guest at the Hagers, his main interest being their daughter Luisa, whom he had known for years. He visited friends and acquaintances who were ill as a matter of course.
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In November he became a member of the ‘Apollo’ fraternity, in which his father was one of the ‘old boys’. Apollo was a duelling fraternity, in other words, a place where traditional fencing was cultivated. ‘At 2.30 went to the pub, where there were 5 duels. [ . . . ] At least it strengthens the nerves and you learn how to take being wounded.’
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The ‘pub’ (
Kneipe
), as the meetings of the members were known in the fraternity’s jargon,
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was of course linked to increased consumption of alcohol; ‘It was very jolly. I drank 8 glasses of wine. At 12.30 we went home on the train. Most of us were tipsy, so it was very funny. I got a few of the brothers back to their digs. In bed at 2 a.m.’
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While conducting this social life Himmler continued to be a practising Catholic, who went to mass and confession and took communion.
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In his diary we find entries such as: ‘God will come to my aid.’
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The Christmas Eve mass he attended in 1919 with his family in Ingolstadt made a very deep impression on him; ‘We were standing at the front in the choir and the solemn mass was a powerful experience. The church reaches people through its imposing ritual and God through a sweet and simple child.’
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Like many students at the Technical University, Himmler was a member of the League of War Veterans,
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and in addition involved himself in the Territorial army: he joined the 14th Alarm Company of the 21st Rifle Brigade,
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a Reichswehr reserve unit, and took part in practice alerts and shooting exercises. After the defeat of the soviet republic in May, Munich had developed into the centre for counter-revolutionary activities. The Free Corps and paramilitary organizations of the political Right, which arose to resist revolution, were still in existence; they had extensive stockpiles of weapons at their disposal and worked closely with the Reichswehr.

On a number of occasions Heinrich had good reasons for believing that ‘actions’ would occur and he urgently wished to be involved. Thus, immediately before 9 November 1919, the first anniversary of the revolution, he expected the military to be deployed but then nothing happened.
³³
In December 1919 a putsch seemed to be in the offing; his unit was put on standby, but again nothing happened: ‘Went at half past 3 with Lu [Ludwig Zahler] to the alarm call. Out to the Pioneers’ barracks. Guns delivered but nothing more was done. Perhaps something more will happen this year.’
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The feeling of being a soldier gave him deep satisfaction: ‘Lectures till 10, then put on the king’s coat again. I am after all a soldier and will remain so.’
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Another entry reads: ‘Today I have another day in uniform. It’s what I enjoy wearing most every time.’
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On 16 January he learned that Count Arco, the former lieutenant who, on 21 February 1919, had murdered the serving Bavarian Prime Minister Kurt Eisner in the street, had been condemned to death.
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The death sentence provoked outrage among those on the political Right. The students at the Technical University took part in the protests—but they did not want to stop there. With support from military circles an initiative was planned to free the prisoner and possibly begin a putsch. Himmler already had a part to play in this. Concerning the day after the verdict he noted in his diary: ‘Put on my uniform. At 8 there was a big meeting of all the students in the university’s main lecture hall to bring about a pardon for Arco. It was a brilliant patriotic meeting. A deputation was sent off. Captain St., Lieutenant St., Lieutenant B., and I were in the Turkish barracks
*
.’ There the deputation was met by like-minded officers. ‘Lieutenant St. arranged everything with a captain. The whole thing would have worked wonderfully. Back at the university at 11, where at 12.30 the news arrived that the sentence had been commuted to imprisonment. However pleased we were, we were equally sorry that the business passed off so uneventfully. Oh well, there will be another time. But people have seen how tremendous Germany’s universities are.’
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In other words, the Technical University in Munich was not just a place for studying. He told his mother: ‘The ministers knew all right why they commuted Arco’s sentence. If they hadn’t they would have had to answer for it. We were all ready and were actually sorry that everything went off so quietly. [ . . . ] But it will happen one of these days.’
³⁹
Letters to his parents reveal that during the Kapp putsch, which was
started by Free Corps units in Berlin, he was alerted and took part at night in a motorized military patrol through Munich.
⁴⁰

When in spring 1920 the Allies compelled the German government to disband the reserve units of the Reichswehr, Himmler immediately transferred to the newly founded Residents’ Reserve (
Einwohnerwehr
), which had been created by the Bavarian government in order to circumvent the Allied ban.
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He also joined the Freiweg Rifle Club, an organization with a similarly paramilitary background.
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His activities in these areas had further practical advantages: he used the discounted rail-tickets reserved for the military that he could claim as a member of the 14th Alarm Company for his weekend visits to his parents.
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All the same, his diaries contain relatively little about the political events of these months. The reason for this may be that at this time his basic political attitudes were established and he moved in a milieu in which these beliefs were largely shared. In the elections for the General Student Committee (AStA), the students’ representative body, he voted for the candidates from the right-wing German National People’s Party.
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He also attended student political meetings.
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The anti-Prussian tirades of one priest at the New Year sermon displeased him
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—Himmler was no Bavarian separatist but saw himself as a German nationalist. An established component of this set of views was also a conventional, as yet not racially based, anti-Semitism.
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At the end of 1919 he was, however, caught up in a serious conflict of conscience. In the circles he belonged to of students who ‘bore arms’ a lively debate was being conducted about whether Jewish students were eligible to fight duels; in other words, whether Jews might be admitted as members of duelling fraternities (in fact at this time basically no fraternity still accepted Jews) or whether, by the same token, it was permissible to duel with Jewish students. It was a question of honour, in essence a question of whether Jewish students were capable of being equally valuable members of the student body, with equal rights.