The Nazi's Wife by Peter Watson

Author:Peter Watson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504046862
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2017-06-19T04:00:00+00:00

4

I read a few letters but nothing very significant happened for a while. I did learn that Konstanze’s favorite character in the Bible was Paul and her favorite story the one about his conversion. Again, I believe she found parallels with her own situation; in a way she was being converted also, from not loving Rudolf to loving him. And I found out that she had a sweet tooth for chocolate as well as nougat. These things meant little to me at the time; it was only later that I was able to make crucial use of facts like these.

The next thing of real importance to be reported in the letters occurred in early 1938, when Konstanze found that she was pregnant. The child was very welcome, not least among their friends, who, I gathered, found a great deal of amusement in the couple’s behavior during Konstanze’s confinement. Instead of spending the usual amount of time that ordinary parents devote to the names they will give to their son or daughter, the von Zells expended their energy trying to decide what instrument he or she should play. Konstanze favored the oboe, whose creamy murmur probably satisfied some final vestige of the melancholic hidden inside her. Rudi preferred the cello, which, he said forthrightly in his letters, offered greater satisfaction, being a sensual instrument to play, using most of the body, with a broad range and producing the most “composed” of tones. That was the word he had used and, later, I was to pick it out as the word which best described his wife. Composed, Rudolf said in one of his lyrical sections, meant the best possible combination of independence and understanding for others. And that was why I applied it to Konstanze. But I am running ahead.

Before Konstanze could give birth, their happy period of anticipation was roughly disturbed. Rudolf was promoted again, to full colonel. This meant a large pay raise but, more important, it also followed that he was admitted to an inner circle of men with great influence. It was 1938 and the world was preparing for war.

He had to leave Munich, and his pregnant wife, for Berlin. Someone on Martin Bormann’s staff, an old friend of Rudolf’s from Worms, had recommended him. It meant an exciting life for Rudolf: power, prestige, fame even, if Germany were to win the coming war. But it also meant of course that he had to embrace the aims and ideals, if you can call them that, of the Nazi Party.

Again, I had to reconstruct all this from later letters. This part was particularly difficult since Konstanze and Rudolf never discussed politics in their letters so I never had any real idea what sort of Nazi Rudolf was. I never knew whether he was an enthusiastic brute, someone who ran with the crowd, or a reluctant convert, though, I suppose, as a colonel, he couldn’t have been that.

In the later letters Konstanze was also to describe their rending farewell at Munich’s hauptbahnhof.

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