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CHAPTER IX

THE STUDENT MICHAELIS

PROTECTIVE arrest" had thrown the student Michaelis overnight among these workers, whose lives and interests were alien to him. Here in the concentration camp, where they communicated with each other only through signs and monosyllables, he felt more than ever a stranger. He was lonely. He could not share their little daily cares. His miseries were of another kind.

Michaelis belonged to the enlightened bourgeois intellectuals of the early postwar period. They were convinced pacifists and abhorred war as barbarism. They believed in the progress of mankind through modern methods of education. They also abhorred dogma and were tolerant of other people's opinions. They spoke appreciatively of the cleanliness of Italian hotels since Mussolini took the helm, and at the same time defended in conversation the new Russia. They demanded a more social distribution of taxes and profits and greater politeness from the police and postoffice employees toward the public. All they knew about the labor movement was party gossip. Every time they read Helmut von Gerlach or Ivan Katz, they spoke of the insane policies of the Communist Party or of the Moscow's betrayal of the world revolution.

The young savant Michaelis was a typical representative of such opinions. At bottom, everything which was not connected with his specialty was for him a matter of second- or third-rate importance. He gladly left to others the problems of public life. He despised "politics." They were "too dirty" for him. When the workers in the camp tried to make it clear to him that their whole life was an element of "politics," he would say, "You people manage to find the class struggle everywhere!"

At first the workers treated him with good-natured banter. With the gentle friendliness of a man who understood that from the loneliness of his soul there was no bridge to the dull masses, he allowed them to call him "doctor," "professor," and "intellectual heavyweight "

Under prison conditions the student's sense of superiority crumbled slowly to pieces. Physical labor caused him the most acute suffering. It was hard for him to lug heavy tree trunks, to keep up with the workers' rhythm in driving piles into the earth, not to lag behind in trench digging. Thc swamps converted the Olympian into an illiterate ditch digger who turned to the experienced proletarians for advice and help.

In other practical matters, too, Michaelis had to admit the superiority of the workers. He was dependent on their help in the technique of bed building, procuring tobacco, and getting around Schinderknecht's orders. Since camp life consisted of such mundane matters the student, whether he liked or not, was compelled to realize that at least during his imprisonment the interests of the workers were also his and that it was good to follow their advice and example. Good, he said to himself-for the period of imprisonment. One must howl with the wolves.

That was the beginning. Once he submitted to the leadership of the workers in regard to the technique of camp life he also began to interest himself in their ideas and mental processes. The better he got to know them the more he abandoned his old prejudice that they were stupid, boring, and spiritually dull. He began to admire their dexterity and shrewdness. The undifferentiated mass of workers was dissolved into many individual personalities. They taught him that his fate was not exceptional. In regard to their lack of understanding, of their inability to consider life from a "higher plane," he gave up his Weltschmerz, so dear to the heart of the German intellectual.

With me he often talked about things which he did not dare to discuss with the others for fear they would make fun of him. He said that with me, at least, one could talk as to a "normal person." I was not as "fanatical" as Dick and most other Communists. The opinions which he expressed in conversations with me I have put down as literally as possible in the following pages of this chapter.

Five months today--and still no information as to why I was arrested, nor any prospect of release. History's playing me a trick; it is beating me with my own argument--freedom from party affiliations. If the Communists had triumphed I should probably have been thrown into prison too--with as much justice or injustice. Both sides suspect me because I belong to neither.

The other prisoners know at least why they're in prison. They knew in advance what lay in store for them if their opponents should win. My situation is like that of the small neutral countries in war time, that are buffeted by their neighbors till they make up their minds to join one side or the other. There's apparently no longer such a thing as neutrality in civil war either.

And yet--better to sit here innocent than to have any part in these inhuman proceedings. One section of humanity kills another, deprives it of freedom, tortures it--and they find arguments to prove that they're "in the right" and are acting "for the right." Gruesome how these people can produce their thinkers and poets overnight to justify any atrocity.

The old questionings about the meaning of life seem to be gaining mastery over me once more. Idiotic-to start traveling through that vicious circle again. Else wrote me that her sister had died and that, once I'm free, we can live together. What that prospect would have meant to me a short six months ago!--study, love, congenial friends, a world opening before me. Now what? Science and thought muzzled-religion profaned by the worst of the bullies of power, the army chaplain-philosophy in the service of militarisrn-and the education of the young in the hands of the soldiery. What's waiting for me out there, when I'm "free"? The whole of Germany one huge concentration camp, destructive of mind and conscience, and a thousand times more hopeless than this camp because of the presence of "converted" opponents and the enthusiasm of the poor in spirit. Go abroad? Where? Are there any oases of liberty left? The whole world is full of violence and tyranny.

What is it that still binds me to life-me and others like me who haven't sold themselves?

Had a talk with F. It started with a discussion of Remarque. He conceded the literary quality of the book, but maintained that its content was a complete flop; it failed to point the way to a new life. He contends that to show people the crime and senselessness of war isn't enough to prevent new wars, and called me an idealist-which, to his mind, is synonymous with a Utopian, a star gazer, and a potential agent of the bourgeoisie. I told him that if what he said were true he was pronouncing sentence of death on the human mind, on reason, on philosophy-on everything, in brief, which makes man human and differentiates him from the beast. But he's one of those Communists who answers every argument with a sacred citation. The prevailing ideas of any epoch, he says, have always been merely the ideas of the ruling class, all philosophy class philosophy, all science class science. When I objected that Marxism was a class science too in that case, he assented proudly. Yes, but the proletariat was the rising class, and therefore its science was the most progressive of our times. I replied that the proletariat had risen in one country so far, and had suffered defeat after defeat in the others. Nor could I see wherein the scientific theories practiced in that one country had proven themselves so vastly superior. But he had only contempt for my "idealistic" notion that the task of science was the investigation of those truths which were pure truths-true for all classes of society.

The camp is an inexhaustible mine for a psychologist. You can study the real worker here, not the colorless ideal figure of the "proletarian" novels.

Last Friday they brought in the owner of a brick factory, arrested ostensibly for paying his workers less than the tariff wage. Some of the prisoners whose homes arc in the neighborhood know the man, and his reputation as a notorious cutthroat and blood sucker is apparently well earned. The SS officers egged the prisoners on to beat up the "capitalist" and some of the workers promptly fell for their provocation. They stripped the man of his good suit and proceeded to play their crude tricks on him in the presence of the Black Shirts. Regardless of why this man was arrested (he himself says that his wife is having an affair with the local Nazi groupleader and they both want to be rid of him for a while), here in camp he's a prisoner like everyone else, and the "class struggle" between him and the workers is merely the outcome of the cheap piece of demagogy of the SS officers in charge. How quick the workers are to respond to provocation!

There's no doubt that the working class is more fervently interested in social progress than any other. They were the sole force which, for a time at least, retarded the advance of fascism. Granted. But how disheartening to note the disruption within their ranks! There seems to be no lessening of the gulf between the two parties. The united front seems farther from realization today than in pre-fascist days. It's difficult to reconcile all this with any faith in the "historic role" of the working class.

F. would undoubtedly break in at this point with the argument of "class consciousness." But isn't the Social-Democratic worker class conscious too? He's organized, he's aware of the significance of the workers' party and of trade unions. Which class consciousness is the right one? And how can one and the same class produce a true and a false class consciousness? How is all this compatible with historic materialism?

What is man? Take the case of the SS leader, Kall He's traveled literally all over the world, he fought in the war, he speaks five or six languages. Now he sits here in camp, steals sausages-intended for the guards under his command-from the kitchen, revels in the platitudes of the Angriff, and has the prisoners address him as sergeant, although he is only a corporal. The sum of his life's experience has prepared him for nothing better than contentment with the role of a petty officer who embezzles camp funds and engages in the most infamous occupation a man can have the destruction of opponents delivered defenseless into his hands. How can he so forget, so dishonor his entire past? Can it really be for the sake of the few marks he receives from the camp? Appalling as it seems, I can find no other explanation.

The sex question came up while we were at work yesterday. The little machinist started it when he blurted out in his fresh fashion, "I don't know-it doesn't stand up any more." Everyone declared he'd had the same experience, and it's an undeniable fact that the sex problem has never presented itself here in any serious form Amazing, after all I've read of prison psychoses. The reasons were debated at length; and the workers, being practical-minded, sought and were satisfied with the most obvious of explanations. They attributed the state of affairs to the wretched food and the hard labor. They argued whether or not saltpeter was mixed with the food-again a materialistic approach. It never occurred to any of them that the heavy spiritual burden laid upon us might play an important, if not a determining, role in the situation.

The workers are thoroughly materialistic, their minds centered wholly on the practical and the realistic. They listen to psychological discussions in bewildered silence-when they don't simply burst into laughter.

They attend camp services in order to get tobacco. Not that they're venal or corrupt-not at all. They kid the pastors who think they can be lured on with tobacco. But when I tell them that such conduct isn't worthy of the honor of a freethinker they scoff at my "sensitive soul." "Let the parsons go ahead and buy tobacco for us," they tell me, laughing. "Who cares?"

Admirable the equanimity of the workers under months of imprisonment. Never in all this time have I heard them utter a word of complaint. When one or another of them is released he packs his cardboard box deliberately and with outward composure, never giving vent to extravagant expressions of joy.

"You might stop by at my house and give them my greetings." That's the usual formula when a worker entrusts a homegoing comrade with a message. They're extremely shy when it comes to their personal affairs. A few who find writing difficult have asked me to write their monthly letters for them. They dictate some such note as the following:

Dear Wife: I am well and hope you are the same. Did you get the relief money this month? Have father send a petition to the relief board to pay the back rent. I got the package

with the two shirts and the tobacco. August Heckmann was released last week. Think it will be my turn soon. That's all for today. Greet the children.-With greetings to you…

I was surprised by the attitude of the married workers toward their wives. They're proud of their women and like to show me family photographs, especially when there are small children. They speak more tenderly of their little daughters than they do of their boys, and they're as practical and materialistic in their personal lives as elsewhere. Their pride, for example, will be expressed in incidents like the following.

A couple of prisoners were washing their dirty shirts in the cold water of the spring.

"You'll never be able to get them clean that way," called another one, passing by. "Why don't you send them home?"

"Yeah? And what about the postage?" one of the washers retorted. "My wife gets six marks relief a week."

"Well," the other replied, "mine doesn't get more than that, either. But she sends me a package of clean linen and two packs of cigarettes every month."

On another occasion a prisoner was mending a torn woolen jacket. "That's something I don't have to do," his neighbor remarked. "Mother does it for me at home."

There's undoubtedly an element of middle-class smugness in their pride; yet I should say it is chiefly expressive of the feeling: "I can count on my wife; she'll manage even if I can't help her."

What's been a burning question to me during the last few years--the relationship, that is, between society and the individual--doesn't exist for the worker. He feels himself to be part of a vast multitude, and it never occurs to him that the situation may present problems of far greater importance to the intellectual than the matter of his daily bread. The worker sees his strength multiplied many times over. To him, the class is merely the worker raised to the millionth power. What possible conflict can there be here? The more highly developed the individual the more he has to contribute to the common cause. The thing that's so essential to me-my personality, my individuality--is of secondary importance to them. Well enough--if it can be turned to account--otherwise, an ornament, a caprice.

They don't understand when I tell them that thousands of intellectuals have hesitated to join them lest they be called on to sacrifice everything which, for them, makes life worth living: science, art, literature, freedom of thought, a certain standard of living. The uniformity, the monotony, the grayness of mass life terrifies us. To which they reply that that's the same old twaddle; there's nothing in it but the petit bourgeois' lack of imagination, his belief that the existing mold is thc only one possible and will last forever, and his fear of identifying himself with the revolutionary movement. No worker would bother his head about what I read, whether or not I went to theaters and concerts, what I studied--that is my own business. The one essential is that I should be a loyal comrade, using my knowledge and ability not for myself alone but for the cause of the workers as well.

When I protest that they recognize no freedom of thought or opinion, that they force everyone, for example, to accept dialectical materialism as the only true philosophy, they reply that practice proves the truth of a theory and that the practical conduct of the class struggle will convince me that dialectical materialism is the only effective philosophy in the war of the classes for freedom. They don't see that its efficacy in a class struggle still constitutes no argument for thc truth of a theory. All right, all right, they say, Schopenhauer or Nietzsche may be right on the moon. But here on earth Marx and Lenin are right. And besides, they ask, what am I afraid of ? I can buy my blue silk neckties and wear my pajamas in peace. Nobody's going to criticize my personal taste they're no petty bourgeois moralists. To provoke them, I asked, "And how about silk shirts?" There was a visible struggle between their magnanimity toward me and their proletarian feelings. They were thinking, as I wanted them to, of Brolat. ¹Which tickled me greatly.

For thc rest, I've got to admit that never have I encountered so steadfast a world outlook nor so keen an interest in theory as among these workers. The average university student can't compare with them. They ask me thousands of questions almost all of them intelligent and many so subtle that I have difficulty in answering them. The Communists are far superior to the Social-Democrats in philosophy, economics, and politics. But the Social-Democrats are better acquainted with the history of the workers' movement, particularly that of the past century.

Mother writes proudly that Herrmann is a member of the Hitler youth now and would like nothing better than to wear his uniform day and night. Hopeless. Four of her relatives fell in the war, her only brother among them. And now she's delighted because her youngest is being made ready for the slaughter too. She adds the usual lamentations how could I, etc. When I view the situation unsentimentally I realize that the ties which bound me to my family no longer exist. I find my relatives sickening-the whole pack of them Impoverished, but proud of their past; reactionary, yet content for fourteen years to be pensioners of the "Jewish Republic"; resentful of the rich, yet flattered when a rich man deigns to talk to them; and seething with hatred against the "Reds" who want to take from them the last thing which differentiates them from the proletariat-their culture. Now they're all sniffing the morning breeze. Fresh life's beginning to stir on the carrion pit ¢f history, but it's the life of the carrion pit. I feel no hesitation in giving my whole-hearted support to the cause of the workers as against the putrescent class from which I come.

I wonder if Becker is still alive. I shall certainly have to look him up after I'm released. I've been excessively stupid. How we condescended to him as a good fellow and a friend of the people! And how calmly he took our gibes! Making the rounds Saturday after Saturday with his cheap little pamphlets, his copies of the Fanfare and Rote Hilfe, and the rest of them. And when we did buy them we made it so plain that it was just as a favor to him. I don't believe I once read the things. I never even bothered to wonder what it was that prompted a busy, hard-working man like Becker to sacrifice his time to work of that sort. Just a whim, we thought, and that settled the matter for us.

We lived in different worlds. When he once made the statement that the working class was not only the most progressive in our social system, but the farthest advanced as well, we laughed him to scorn. By what right? What did we know of the workers? Less than we knew of the moon. Of course my sympathy was with him in their struggle for better living conditions. My sympathy! But that was all. Let them worry about their cause themselves. I didn't understand that their cause was the cause of humanity, of every force for progress. Fascism has; hurled me out of my little world into the larger one. I must tell Becker that I've learned many things.

I think the workers like me. They can tell whether a man's honest or not. ...

I was called before Stormleader Nolte today.

"There's no further charge against you, Herr Michaelis," he said. "You're to be released tomorrow. I hope that for the future you'll give your unqualified support to our Leader, Adolf Hitler."

No further charge against me?

There was no charge against me when I was arrested, and that was my crime. In the meantime I had nine months' National Socialist education and lived together with workers. There will be plenty of charges against me from now on, Herr Nolte.

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