would eventually have to surpass. In a speech at the General als Paris.

003
Paris through enemy eyes: the Wehrmacht in
Paris 1940-1944
MELANIE GORDON KROB*
On 14 June 1940, the Wehrmacht marched into
evacuated Paris,
has ever known.
While for the French the Occupation still evokes memories of food
shortages, curfews and other deprivations, many German soldiers
remembered it as a brief and enchanting intermission from the
horrors of the Russian front.’ For Adolf Hitler, Paris was a constant
point of comparison and an ever-present reality that his dream Berlin
would eventually have to surpass. In a speech at the General
Headquarters in Berlin, Hitler explained to his cabinet: ’Ich hatte die
ganzen Jahre schon alle meine Manner nach Paris geschickt, damit
sie nicht staunen, wenn wir an den Neubau von Berlin herangehen.
Berlin ist darin jetzt miserabel, Berlin wird aber einmal schoner sein
als Paris.’2 Despite Hitler’s grandiose plans for the capital of his
thousand-year Reich, he would not be able to diminish the strong
impressions that the ’Stadt von 2000 Jahren’ left on his men.’ The
German military and occupying forces in France in 1940-4 saw Paris
as much more than a conquered capital; Paris was an experience, one
which touched every German personally and transformed many
politically and culturally as well. As reported by Major Heinz Lorenz
a member of the occupying forces of Greater-Paris and later coeditor of the bimonthly Deutscher We~leiter fiir Paris magazine - many
German soldiers stationed on the Eastern front wrote to him, not for
photographs or news from Germany, but rather for subscriptions to
Deutscher Wegleiter because it offered a daily listing of all tours and
cultural happenings in the distant city of lights.~ Even if these
German soldiers, suffering the frigid temperatures of the Russian
winter, could not experience the magic of Paris firsthand, thanks to
the magazine’s stories, photographs and event listings, they could, at
least, imagine they were there. If Hitler had been successful, Berlin
ushering
in four of the darkest years that the
an
city
-
*
Address for
correspondence: Dr Melanie Gordon Krob,
[email protected]
LA 70118, USA. E-mail:
0047-2441/01/3101-0003 $5.00 © 2001 Richard Sadler Ltd
1603 Fern St, New Orleans,
4
might indeed have become the capital of a thousand-year German
Empire. For the German soldiers in Russia and throughout Europe,
however,. this future Germany remained nothing more than an
intangible dream, while Paris continued to provide an almost
mystical link between Europe’s past, present and future that neither
politics, ideology nor their own conquest of the city could erase.
In the present article, I will examine the German perception of
Paris in the years of the Second World War as expressed in the
writings and photographs of German officers, soldiers and
government personnel. What was it exactly that so impressed the
Germans about this city of lights? What qualities did they find in
Paris that they believed were lacking in their own capital city and,
indeed, in their o~n~n nation? In the following pages I will explore the
images and impressions of Occupied Paris in the diaries, memoirs,
travel brochures, fiction, essays and speeches of German military and
diplomatic personnel, and offer an explanation for their shared
admiration for the people and culture of the conquered city.
Of the literary work produced by members of the German
occupying forces in Paris to document their experiences there, by far
the most common literary genre was war diaries or memoirs. These
diaries and memoirs were penned in a variety of forms, ranging from
the day-by-day account of a journalist’s first impressions of the
recently conquered city such as Kurt Lothar Tank’s Pariser Tagebiicher
1938, 1939, 1940 to memoirs and diaries edited and published as
many as forty years after the war’s end such as Gerhard Heller’s Un
Allemand à Paris, Lothar-Giinther Buchheim’s Mein Paris and Albert
Speer’s Eri1l11enmgen. Whether the diaries were published during or
after the war or whether the author claimed to be a Nazi sympathizer
or an enemy of the Reich, one element remains constant in the
extraordinarily vast corpus of German descriptions of the invasion
and occupation of Paris: the authors’ unmistakable appreciation for
the culture and people of Paris.
In the diary pages that Kurt Lothar Tank, the editor-in-chief of the
Propaganda Ministry’s Zeitschriften-Dienst who accompanied the
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) into Paris and who was a
direct subordinate of Josef Goebbels, devoted to the Occupation, one
cannot help but sense the author’s surprise in the speed of the
German invasion and conquest of France. In his diary, Tank describes
his horror in witnessing the destruction of war as he passed through
the devastated countries of Luxemburg and Belgium and rode into
northern France, these horrible images catapulting him into a world
’wie eine[n] Traum unter Elementen des Unwirklichen’ that, he
feared, ’vielleicht nicht einmal nach dem Wiederaufbau ganz verschwinden [wiirdej’.’ Upon his arrival in Paris, however, Tank
5
his spirits quickly improved, for in Paris he was immediately
confronted with the city’s architectural beauty, a feeling of belonging
and ’jene[m] fur Paris kennzeichnenden Rhythmus, der dem
Schreiben alle Schwere der Arbeit nimmt und den Strom der Bilder
nicht als uniaflbare, sondern als deutlich abhebbare Elemente
empfinden läíSt’.6 Despite his joy in re-entering the city of his studies
Tank had spent two years before the war in Paris studying Georges
Clemenceau - he could not avoid the presence of war, noting on 1
November 1940, for instance: ’Die Wagen der deutschen Wehrmacht
beherrschen das Straflenbild, zumal in der Mitte von Paris, in der
Nahe der Oper, wo wir Zimmer im Grand Hotel angewiesen
erhalten.’7 For Tank, however, even the ubiquitous German army
could not destroy the city’s mystique, for what was unique to Paris
was intangible and could not be altered, even with German
military
might. As Tank explains: ’Der Zauber von Paris ist schwer
auszuloschen. Er nimmt auch den weniger Aufnahmebereiten, ja
selbst den Widerstrebenden gefangen. Ich konnte dies schon vor zwei
Jahren feststellen und finde es nun bestatigt.’8 For Tank, part of
Paris’s magic was its atmosphere, for despite his unheated
accommodation, he felt at home in ’d[em] riesig[en] zweifenstrig[en]
Zimmer mit der Aussicht zur Oper,
schone[n] Teppiche[n],
ein[em] Renaissance-Schreibtisch, ein[em] mit ovalen Spiegeln
versehener Toilettentisch, ein[em] Recamier-Sofa und viel Platz zum
freien Auslauf’.y The true secret to Paris in Tank’s opinion, however,
was the Parisians themselves, for despite the invasion and
occupation,
the spirit of the city did not appear to be broken. ’Die meisten Laden
sind geoffnet, den Bewegungen und Gesichtern der Menschen ist
keine Verdndertmg anzumerken. Ich fragte mich manchmal: Ist dies
nun Gleichmut, Gleichgiiltigkeit, oder ist es Lebenskraft?’’°
Unlike Tank, who first arrived in Occupied France almost four
months after the German invasion in October 1940 and entered Paris
a couple of weeks later, the
twenty-four-year-old infantryman Hans
Joachim Kitzing took part in the Battle of France and entered Paris
with the invading forces on 14 June 1940. Kitzing recorded his
experiences in Paris in June and July in a diary which he edited the
following September and published as a collection of short autobiographical essays entitled Wir liegen in Paris in 1941. As Kitzing
reports, he and his fellow soldiers were, like Tank; enchanted by
Paris’s magic: ’War es auch nicht das Paris der Vorkriegszeit, es war
Paris, dessen Zauber auch auf den fremden Sieger wirkte’.&dquo; Kitzing
begins his memoirs with a discussion of his visits to the Tomb of the
Unknown Soldier, to the Chateaux of Fontainebleau and Saint-Cloud
and to the Eiffel Tower. In his discussions, his focus is on what he
believes to be the Parisians’ opinion of the German soldiers: their
reports,
-
...
6
admiration of the Germans’ politeness, their appreciation for German
music and their awe of the rapid and efficient German victory.
In tlle twenty-first essay (out of twenty-seven), however, Kitzing
shifts his focus away from the French people’s attitudes towards the
Germans to the Germans’ attitudes towards the French. To distance
himself from what might be perceived as an illicit attraction to Paris,
Kitzing, instead of providing a personal account of his own
experiences as he did in the earlier essays, now limits himself to
discussing the general attitudes of the German victors towards the
conquered city, general attitudes which, presumably, he may or may
not share. Although appalled by the people of Paris - particularly the
large population of blacks and the ’painted’ women - the ’German
soldiers’, Kitzing tells us, unwittingly find themselves trying to blend
into Parisian society. Many of his fellow soldiers, he reports, do not
spend their time in Paris in the Soldatenkinos with the other
Germans, but rather strolling through the streets as the Parisians do
themselves. Kitzing observes: ’Wenn man den Pariser vor die Wahl
stellte, entweder auf den Bummel oder auf Kino, Theater und
sonstige Vergnugungen zu verzichten, er wurde bitten, bummeln zu
diirfen.’ He then adds: ’Sogar die deutschen Soldaten fanden
Gefallen daran. So sah man denn an Sonntag-Nachmittagen in dem
dichten Menschenstrom, der sich auf dem Boulevard des Italiens,
dem Boulevard de Montmartre, dem Boulevard Clichy (um nur
einige zu nennen) gemachlich bewegte, viele deutsche Uniformen.1B2
Kitzing, however, does not want the reader to believe that the
German soldiers had irrevocably adopted the Parisian way of life:
Und daB
den deutschen Soldaten trotz all’ dieser Sensationen
eine straffe Ehrenbezeugung erwiesen
wurde, das h6rten die Pariser nicht auf zu bewundern. Das war
iiberfluflig, denn ein deutscher Soldat bleibt, was er ist, selbst auf dem
Bummel von Paris.’3
einem
von
jeden Vorgesetzten
Throughout the next several chapters, Kitzing continues this
generalized approach, explaining how the ’German soldiers’ amused
themselves by browsing the shelves of the book stands along the
Seine, sipping coffee on cafe terraces and reading the Frenchlanguage newspapers Le Matin and Paris-Soir.
Kitzing’s understanding of what he believed to be the true magic
of Paris only becomes apparent, however, in the penultimate chapter,
’Zwei Feldpostbriefe’, the only chapter in which Kitzing attempts to
distance himself completely from the content, presenting the
information in a voice other than his own. This chapter consists of the
reproduction of two apparently anonymous letters, one from a
German mother to her
son
in
Paris, the other the son’s response. In
7
the first letter the mother expresses her
letter from her son in Paris:
concern
after
having received
a
Mein lieber
Junge, nun endlich kam Dein lang erwarteter, viel zu
kurzer Brief. Du schreibst von dem Schonen und Herrlichen, was Du
dort in Paris siehst, ich gonne Dir das alles von Herzen. Wirst Du Dich
aber bei uns wieder wohl fiihlen, wenn das alles vorbei ist?
Ich
schreibe heute nicht viel, weil ich den Kuchen noch zur Post bringen
will, damit Du ihn recht frisch hast. Lag ihn Dir nur schmecken. Und
vergif3 uber das groBe und schone Paris nicht Deine Heimat! 14
...
In his response, the son, identified solely as ’Gerhart’, assures his
mother that: ’Wenn ich mir hier auch schone Tage mache, ich weiB,
daB ich nicht hierher gehore und mich wirklich wohl nur dort fiihlen
kann, wo ich zu Hause bin. Paris ist herrlich, aber fremd. Und darauf
kommt es doch an.1B5 Kitzing’s ’Gerhart’, who is most likely Kitzing
himself, experiences a profound disquiet when confronted by a
beautiful, solid and persistent presentation of French history and
culture in the form of France’s capital city, Paris. Although he finds
Paris beautiful and wondrous, there remains a sense of not belonging, a
feeling of otherness and a painful reminder of his nation’s newness
and lack of established sense of self. While the Parisians had their
city with its magnificent historical monuments, its rich cultural
tradition and its lively and colourful people to anchor their identities
as Frenchmen, the Germans in Paris
only had uniforms and beer hall
to
their
identities
as
Germans.
The longer the Germans
songs
display
were in Paris, the more difficult it became for them to define the
notion of Germanness. Even their homeland’s capital city Berlin was
incapable of providing a satisfactory concept of Germanness, for
Berlin’s history as the capital of Prussia rendered it more Prussian
than German. As for the future, Paris was still Paris and apparently
would never change. Berlin’s future, represented by a stack of
blueprints in the Fiihrer’s office, in contrast, was still nothing more
than a dream.
In the final essay of the collection, ’Abschied von Paris’, Kitzing
re-emerges as the commentator and describes his conflicting emotions
as he and his fellow Germans are forced to leave the city of lights:
Natürlich tut es uns leid, Paris verlassen zu miissen. Aber wenn auch
das eine Auge weint, das andere lacht dem Neuen und der Zukunft
entgegen. Gropes steht uns noch bevor, denn noch ist der Krieg nicht
zu Ende
Erst wenn wir wieder einmal in Ruhe liegen, denken wir
an Paris und sagen, dal3 es doch sehr schon dort war. 16
...
In this passage, Kitzing summarizes the German soldiers’ attitude
towards Paris. For the German soldiers, Paris remained a fixed point
of reference while Germany and the concept of Germanness continued
8
Kitzing and his fellow German soldiers
even the promise that true Germanness
understood, however,
would be achieved through total victory would in the end not replace
Paris nor efface their wondrous experiences there. They knew that
long after the war’s end, they would continue to reflect on their time
in Paris and remember it as a positive experience steeped in the
history and culture of France, a well-established history and culture
that even a total German victory could not replace.
Like Kitzing, Ernst Junger, a Wehrmacht Officer, actively
participated in the Battle of France. Unlike Kitzing, however, Junger
arrived in Paris only in the Autumn of 1941 and remained there until
August 1944, excluding a three-month tour on the Eastern Front from
October 1942 to January 1943. Although a member of General von
Stulpnagel’s staff in the army headquarters in Paris, he increasingly
distanced himself from the National Socialist cause, by, as William
Cloonan observes, using ’the past as a barrier and protection against
the present’.&dquo; Junger’s passive attitudes of the 1940s seem ironic,
however, given the belligerent, far-right political convictions of his
younger days. As a soldier in the First World War, like many young
Germans of his generation, Junger had been an ardent supporter of
the German nationalist movement, believing that action, particularly
war, was the solution for combating the impotence of interwar
German society. After two decades of writing and study, Junger was
remobilized in 1940, and his regiment took part in the campaign of
France. His highly stylized diary Garteri icnd Strassen - which as
Wolfgang Brandes observes is not really a diary at all, but rather a
literary text based on a series of notes that Jiinger took during the
war - covers the period from October 1939 to July 1940 and describes
Junger’s march through the devastated Low Countries and into
France.&dquo; Like Tank, Junger’s observations of the destruction and
devastation provoked him to re-evaluate his earlier attitudes towards
war. Three years later, in a diary entry dated 24 October 1943, he
reflected on this profound change:
to form in
battle after battle.
that
Im Ersten Weltkrieg war ich allein und frei; durch diesen zweiten gehe
ich mit allen Lieben und mit aller Habe hindurch. Doch traumte ich
zuweilen im Ersten Weltkrieg von diesem zweiten; ahnlich wie
wahrend des Vormarches durch Frankreich 1940 mich weniger die
Bilder der Gegenwart erschrecken als die Vorschau auf kunftige
Vemichtungswelten, die ich im menschenleeren Raum erriet.19
In
Jimger’s
wartime
writings,
the attitudes he
expressed towards
more generally are
literary counterpart, the polite and
Paris, towards French culture and towards France
often reminiscent of those of his
well-educated German officer in Vercors’s Le Silence de la mer.2o
9
Junger’ s diaries from the period 1940-4 and grouped under the title
Strafiliingeii depict him as a solitary wanderer and a bibliophile, out
of place among soldiers and battles. Although believing: ’Zugleich
gehore ich zur deutschen Nation und bin in meiner Bildung
Europder, ja Weltburger’, he was forced by events to re-evaluate the
identity of his nation and his own relationship to it, both as a human
being and as a German: ’Ich bdmte leider, daB die Kenntnis solcher
Dinge [atrocities] auf mein Verhaltnis, zwar nicht zum Vaterland,
wohl aber zu den Deutschen, einzuwirken beginnt.’’’ Despite his
moral opposition to the events unfolding in Europe, particularly the
deportation of the Jews, Junger remained a detached observer,
distancing himself more and more from the political world and
enclosing himself in the private world of reflection and the cultural
world of Paris.
Like Tank, Jiinger felt secure in Paris, for there he could be a part
of a long, continuous and unbroken thread of history. While in Paris,
he could experience centuries of culture and history, and in his mind,
he could reconjure up the fabulous literary and historical events
which had stimulated his intellect for years:
Gedanke: Auch ich gehore nun zu den ungezdhlten Millionen, die
dieser Stadt von ihrem Lebensstoff gegeben haben, von ihren
Gedanken und Gefuhlen, die das Steinmeer einsaugt, um sich im
Laufe der Jahrhunderte geheimnisvoll zu wandeln und aufzubauen zu
einem Schicksal-Korallenstock. Wenn ich bedenke, das ich auf diesem
Wege an der Kirche von Saint-Roch voruberkam, auf deren Stufen
Cesar Birotteau verwundet wurde, und an der Ecke der Rue des
Prouvaires, an der die schone Strumpfhandlerin Baret im Hinterstubchen ihres Ladens Casanova das Mag nahm, und daB das nur zwei
winzige Daten in einem Meer phantastischer und realer Vorgdnge sind
dann ergreift mich eine Art von freudiger Wehmut, von
schmerzhaften Lust.22
-
satisfy the historical curiosity aroused by the city of Paris, he spent
many hours wandering through its cemeteries in search of the tombs
of his favourite writers, artists, musicians and historical figures.
For Junger the role of Paris as a transmitter of culture was its most
important one. Sensing Germany’s approaching defeat as early as
1943, as did many members of the German military in France, Junger
expressed his hope that Paris and its culture would be spared:
To
Wieder empfand ich ein starkes Gefuhl der Freude, der Dankbarkeit,
daB diese Stadt der Stddte die Katastrophe noch unversehrt bestand.
Wie Unerh6rtes blelbe uns erhalten, wenn sie gleich einer mit alter und
reicher Fracht bis an die Borde beladenen Arche nach dieser Sintflut
den Friedensport erreichte und uns verbliebe fiir neue SAkula. 2-3
10
In 1944, anticipating the Allied advance, he returned to his favourite
view over the city to say his goodbye to it: ’Noch einmal auf der
Plattform von Sacr6-Coeur, um einen Abschiedsblick auf die grof3e
Stadt zu tun. Ich sah die Steine in der heiflen Sonne zittern wie in der
Erwartung neuer historischer Umarmungen. Die Stddte sind weiblich
und nur dem Sieger hold.&dquo;’
Gerhard Heller, like Jiinger, was also a reluctant member of the
German occupying forces. A Francophile and French literary expert,
Heller was hired by the Ministry of Propaganda to censor French
publications for the Third Reich. Despite his official duties, Heller,
like Jiinger, remained an enthusiastic admirer of French culture and
the city which represented it for the remainder of his life. Unlike
Junger, however, Heller did not record his impressions of Paris in a
diary. Instead, he recorded them almost forty years later in his
memoirs entitled Un Allemand à Paris (1981). Although there is some
controversy regarding the veracity of some of Heller’s accounts in
these memoirs, particularly those that describe his heroism in saving
certain works of French literature, his descriptions of his attitudes
towards Paris and his love of French culture appear to reflect
accurately his wartime sentiments.&dquo; For Heller, even during the war,
Paris was not a conquered city, it was home:
Que
ce
soit a la
Com6die-Franqaise pour
revoir Les Femmes savantes, Le
Misrrnthrope ou découvrir Renaud et Armide de Cocteau, que ce soit à la
place du Tertre, a la Brasserie lorraine, a la place des Ternes ou dans la
rue Mouffetard, que ce soit au P~re Lachaise ou dans le petit cimetere
pres du Trocadero, dans le jardin du Palais-Royal ou a Bagatelle, Paris
fut pour nous [Junger and Heller] comme une seconde patrie
nous avons conserve
spirituelle, l’image la plus parfaite de tous ce que
6
de pr6cieux des vieilles civilisations
disparues.
often in the cultural life offered by this ’ville des
and theatres and frequenting the literary
villes’, visiting
salons which still flourished there. Although he admired the beauty
of the city, his torment and anguish as a German in Paris continued
to grow. Like Jiinger, he became a loner, a solitary wanderer: ’Que de
fois marcherai-je ainsi, seul, dans cette ville, pendant quatre ann6es.
Pi6ton de Paris, ruminant sans cesse, dans une joie et une angoisse
Heller
participated
museums
melees, mon 6trange situations. 27
For another member of the occupying forces in Paris, the historian
and writer Felix Hartlaub, field service in Paris alternated with
assignments as a military historian in the Fuhrer’s headquarters in
Berlin. Like Junger’s war diary, Hartlaub’s Tagebllch atis dem Kriege
(1941) consists not in reports of historical events but rather in
personal impressions of images and scenes.&dquo; In his diary, Hartlaub
11
describes his feelings of extreme isolation, a ’desolation, an emptiness, a
distress’ more profound than any he had ever experienced. Unlike
his compatriots Heller and Junger, Hartlaub renounced the social life
available to the conquerors while in Paris, preferring to pass his time
strolling the streets and visiting the antiquarian book sellers of the
Latin Quarter.’9 In sharp contrast to Junger, who sought protection
from the present by ensconcing himself in Paris’s past, Hartlaub,
although a trained historian, felt severed from the city’s history. In
spite of being a historian, Hartlaub makes no allusion to Paris’s rich
cultural heritage, for, tossed into the throes of war, the conquered
monuments seemed to him to have been stripped of their splendid
histories and reclothed in a vulgar and meaningless present
Military and bureaucratic personnel like Hartlaub, Jiinger, Heller,
Kitzing and Tank were not the only participants in Hitler’s massive
war machine in France; artists also played a significant role in Third
Reich policy in the occupied countries. After the Fall of France, two
of the first National Socialist visitors to the newly conquered nation
were Hitler’s architect Albert Speer (later the Minister of Armaments
and Munitions) and the Reich sculptor Arnold Breker, who served as
Hitler’s personal tour guide on his official tour of defeated Paris. Like
the German soldiers and government officials discussed above, Speer
and Breker also described their impressions of their wartime visits to
Paris in their memoirs.31 Breker’s familiarity with Paris (he had spent
much of his youth in the city) made him an obvious choice to guide
Hitler and Speer on a tour through the newly conquered architectural
wonders of Paris. In his memoirs, entitled stralzlwlgsfelde der
Ereignisse, Breker, despite his open admiration of Hitler, describes his
reservations about arriving in Paris as a conqueror. In a diary
fragment dated 23 June 1940, Breker reminisces: ’Paris war fur mich
und meine Frau immer ein Stuck Heimat gewesen, entscheidende
Jahre meines Lebens hatte ich dort verbracht, hatte gearbeitet,
Freunde gewonnen.’32 As he rode through Paris with Hitler and
approached the Paris Opera House, he found the city transformed:
Paris ist
tot - keine menschliche Seele ist zu sehen. Wie
vom Leben abgetrennt wirken die Hauserblocks.
ausgestorben,
Phantome, wie
Welches Leben herrschte ehemals hier im
stadt ; ein unendliches Stromen in allen
Vitalitat und der Freude am Dasein.33
Brennpunkt der MillionenRichtungen, stotzend von
Even Hitler, Breker admitted, seemed disappointed by the macabre
appearance of the normally spectacular city, but Hitler did not allow
the sinister atmosphere of Paris to impinge upon the enjoyment of his
visit. Hitler was still very much interested in seeing the rest of the
architectural wonders of the great French capital, for he intended his
12
Germania
Hitler never
(the recreated Berlin)
to surpass Paris’s
his
admiration
for the recently
greatness
disguised
’War
to
Paris
nicht
schon? Aber
conquered city, commenting Speer:
Berlin muf3 viel schoner werden! Ich habe mir fruher oft uberlegt, ob
man Paris nicht zerstoren miisse
aber wenn wir in Berlin fertig
sind, wird Paris nur noch ein Schatten sein. Warum sollen wir es
zerst6ren? 15 After his tour of the city, Hitler commanded Speer to
draw up a decree ordering full-scale resumption of work on the
Berlin buildings, instructing Speer to measure the width of the
Champs-Elys6es and to make Berlin’s equivalent twice as wide.
Although diaries and memoirs like those discussed above offer
insight into the personal attitudes of individual members of the
German occupying forces towards Paris, they were not the only form
in which such individuals chose to record their impressions of the
conquered French capital. Many Germans in France, particularly
those in the military, also documented their Parisian experiences
using the medium of photography. The German soldiers in France
indeed were strongly urged by the military leadership to document
their stays in the vanquished France with photographs, even though
each and every soldier and sailor in France had already been issued
an official copy of Fritz Sablatnig’s photo journal of the French
capital’s architectural highlights by the Amt Deutsches Volksbildungswerk. The soldiers’ photo diaries would serve, the military’s
propaganda department believed, as the Germans’ ultimate
retribution for their disgrace at the hands of the French in 1918.
Images of the monumental size of the architectural spoils of war
resulting from the rapid and efficient conquest of France in 1940 - the
Eiffel Tower, the Invalides, Notre-Dame and Versailles Palace
would, they hoped, reinforce in the minds of the German people
the greatness of the German nation. To ensure that the soldiers took
home photographs of the most impressive examples of their victory,
however, all Germans soldiers in France were required to take an
official guided tour of Occupied Paris, a tour which included a
number of obligatory photo opportunities, the most important of
which was the Hall of Mirrors, the room in which the disgraceful
Versailles treaty was signed.&dquo;
As a result of the German photo mania in Occupied Paris, most
members of the German military returned to Germany with
photographic souvenirs of the defeated city. However, one member
of the German forces was not so easily impressed by the official
German images of Paris that he was obliged to record. LotharGimther Buchheim, a naval officer during the Second World War and
later the author of the best-selling novel Das Boot, managed to avoid
the mandatory tours of Paris and to photograph wartime Paris as he
new
capital
...
-
13
wished to remember it. For Buchheim, Paris was neither the German
war machine nor a
spoil of war; rather, it was architecture, culture,
and most importantly, the Parisians themselves. Like Tank, Buchheim
was impressed by the Parisians’ strength: ’Wer sind hier die
Sieger?
Die Muschkoten etwa, die Gestiefelten in Keulenhosen und masgeschneiderten Waffenrocken? Oder das Volk von Paris?’37 The way
the Parisians seemed to accept the occupation of their city, their
apparent lack of fear and concern amazed him. For Buchheim, the
Parisians appeared unmoved, and their daily lives seemed to
continue uninterrupted. This aloof attitude towards the German
invasion so impressed Buchheim that he decided to keep a photo
diary of his visits to Paris, not an officially approved photo diary, but
one that reflected the Paris that he saw. Because his photos did not
conform to the National Socialist vision of Paris, he hid the film in a
trunk, leaving it undeveloped for more than thirty years, until he
collected, developed and published the pictures in a book entitled
Mein Paris (1977). In the introduction, Buchheim explains why he felt
obliged to wait so long:
Ich habe diese alten Filme jahrzehntelang niemandem gezeigt. Die
Kameraden von ehedem hatten wohl nur ein Kopfschiitteln far meine
tristen StraBen gehabt. Solche Fotos waren nicht zeitgemäJ3: ich hatte
Paraden, Glanz und Gloria der Okkupanten und ’Les Monuments’
fotographieren miissen.m
In his photographs Buchheim attempted to capture what he wanted
to remember of wartime Paris. The majority of Buchheim’s photos
centre on the people of Paris, and in these pictures the Parisians
appear happy, active and full of life. Despite the meagre food rations
and the lack of clothing and coal which characterized daily life in
France during the Occupation, there is no evidence in Buchheim’s
photographs that the French were suffering deprivation. Although in
the accompanying text, Buchheim admits: ’[Swastika flags] wehen
auf allen offentlichen Gebduden und auf den beschlagnahmten
Hotels und Wohnungshdusern&dquo; 31 in his photographs, not a single
German soldier or even a single German flag is visible. For
Buchheim, as for many a German soldier, ’war Paris die funkelnde
Stadt zwischen den Kriegsfronten, zwischen der Seefront Atlantik
und der Bombenfront Deutschland. &dquo;Paris&dquo; - Synonym fur Hoffnung
auf Uberleben. &dquo;Paris&dquo; - the spice of life’.&dquo; This was the Paris
Buchheim wanted to remember; this is the Paris he photographed;
this was the Paris he called ’Mein Paris’.
Although memoirs, diaries and photojournalism accounted for the
majority of the cultural artifacts produced by the German occupiers
of France during and after the war, the Germans found many other
14
forms of cultural expression to document their stays in Paris. Perhaps
the most curious were the Wehrmacht art exhibitions of Autumn 1941
and Spring 1942, entitled respectively ’Kunstaustellung der deutschen
Wehrmacht in Paris’ and ’Soldaten fotografieren und filmen’. These
exhibitions were organized by Captain (later Major) Heinz Lorenz on
the initiative of General Ernst von Schaumburg, the Commandant of
Greater-Paris from August 1940 through September 1943. Lorenz,
who, as mentioned above, later served as a co-editor of the tourist
magazine Deutscher Wegleiter fiir Paris, was in 1941 the Director of the
Wehrmacht’s Truppenbetreuungsburo (Department of Housing and
Recreation) in Paris. As General Schaumburg explained in his
Foreword to Frankreich : Ein Erlebllis des deutschen Soldatell, the
purpose of both art exhibitions was to document the German
soldiers’ impressions of France, particularly of Paris, and to allow
expression, either written or pictorial, of ’was der deutsche Soldat in
Frankreich in seiner Gesamtheit erlebt’.&dquo; Many of the paintings and
photographs shown in these exhibitions were collected and published
in two volumes, both edited by Lorenz. The first book, Frallkreich: Ein
Erlebnis des deiitscfieii Soldateii (1942), includes not only reproductions
of many of the paintings from the 1941 Wehrmacht art show in Paris
but also a number of articles and essays written by Wehrmacht
members. The second book, Soldaten fotografieren Frmlkreich (1942),
contains over 150 photographs from the second Wehrmacht art show
and is accompanied by five short stories written presumably by
Lorenz himself - they are all clearly based on the experiences or
reflect the attitudes of a high-ranking German officer in the
Truppenbetreuungsburo in Paris. Both books were designed not only
to provide the reader with pictures of the conquered France, but also
to reflect the entire German experience there, particularly their
cultural experience in Paris. In Soldateii fotografieren Frankreicfi, for
instance, Lorenz
explains:
DaB dem Buch einige Erzdhlungen beigegeben wurden ist nicht ohne
eine bestimmte Absicht geschehen: man soll das Buch nicht einfach im
fluchtigen Betrachten durchblättem, um schon sehr bald von der
Vielheit ermudet zu werden. Beim Lesen verweilt das Auge, es
gewinnt die Ruhe zuruck, um zwischendurch immer wieder mit neuer
MuBe das nachste Bild betrachten zu konnen.’’2
The soldiers reading Lorenz’s book were expected to rest and relax,
to enjoy the images and atmosphere of the city of lights. Paris was to
be a German soldier’s dream vacation. 43 However, when one
examines Lorenz’s books, one sees that not only was Paris a vacation
from the battles of war, it was also a vacation from the strict social
and cultural rules of the Nazi regime. Although all the contributors
15
to this exhibition were Wehrmacht soldiers stationed in
France, what
of
the
they expressed
displays nothing
military or political
the
German
that
ideology promulgated by
regime
they represented.
In fact, the photographs and paintings exhibited at the two
Wehrmacht shows in Paris contained none of the themes or motifs
which typified the highly regulated Nazi art: the glories of the
German military, the athleticism and virility of the Aryan race, the
mother as the guardian of life, heroic workers at the glowing forge.
Although ostensibly intended to make soldiers appreciate the riches
of their conquest and the glories of the German nation, the
Wehrmacht’s Parisian art shows also reflected the true German
attitudes toward Paris. Paris was a form of a escape, and the German
soldiers were eager to immerse themselves in the art and atmosphere
of the conquered city. Although in their paintings and photographs,
one sees, of course, the requisite depictions the architectural wonders
of Paris that Hitler urged his soldiers to study - Notre-Dame
Cathedral, the Ile de la Cite and the Pont-Marie - one also senses the
soldiers’ intense appreciation of the city. Not only do the soldiers’
whimsical paintings and photographs depict sidewalk cafes, street
artists and Seine fishermen and photographs of smiling Parisian cafe
owners, shopkeepers and children, they also offer countless examples
of Impressionist-style art, a style of painting unacceptable in the new
German Reich. Unlike the paintings exhibited in art shows in
Germany, which were designed to ’mirror German life in its manifold
riches’, the landscape paintings of the Paris show were not disguised
by references to the fatherland or to the Nazi virtues of hard work
and comradeship.&dquo; As the National Socialist Art Historian Kurt Karl
Eberlein explained in his 1933 book, Was ist delltsclz in der delltscfleil
Kiiiist?, ’German art represents homeland and longing for the home.
In landscape painting the soul is expressed. It is the language of the
homeland which speaks even in an alien atmosphere or in foreign
lands.&dquo;’ The styles and subjects of the paintings exhibited at the
Wehrmacht Paris art show were curiously not ’German’ at all. They
were instead reminiscent of the works of French Impressionist
painters (such as Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Edgar
Degas), which the National Socialists had officially dismissed as
’entartet’. Professor Winfried Wendland, curator at the Academy of
Applied Arts and director of the Department of National Socialist
Cultural Policies for the Ministry of Culture, perhaps best expressed
the ideals of the new German art: ’We have overcome Impressionism,
Expressionism, and new Realism and whatever other names there are
and attained clear images.’ He proudly added: ’For the first time in
150 years, culture no longer takes its orders from Paris. The forceful
cultural renaissance comes from Germany and influences other
in their art
16
countries.’46 If the goal of German
art was to surpass French
and
to
from
distance
itself
Paris, the 1941 and 1942
Impressionism
Wehrmacht art exhibits blatantly undermined its efforts.
The most illustrative examples of the individual soldier’s attitudes
towards Paris, however, appear not in the paintings or photographs
included in the Wehrmacht art shows, but rather in the essays and
fiction published in the two books that later commemorated these
shows. Both books, edited by Lorenz, include a number of written
works that were intended to express the experience of a typical
German soldier in Paris. Lorenz himself contributed one essay to the
first book, Frnttkreiclt. Ein Erlebllis des deittsclietz sold17tell; and in the
second book, Soldateii fotogri7fiercii Frmzkreich, all of the prose is
anonymous, but presumably his.’ In reading the prose selections,
one immediately senses the intense admiration and affection that
many German military officials in Paris had for the Parisian people.
In Lorenz’s short essay ’Der Rythmus von Paris’ in Frankreich. Ein
Erlebnis des delltsclzell Soldateii, the Parisians themselves are portrayed
as the city’s secret; they are, for Lorenz, what animated the city of
lights, not the German occupants. For Lorenz, the Parisians were not
only residents of Paris; they somehow seemed to be a living part of it.
Lorenz observes, for instance: ’Paris ist ohne den Pariser weniger
denkbar als etwa Berlin ohne den Berliner. Der Pariser mag aber auch
ohne Paris nur ein halber Mensch sein und viel heimatloser sein, als
etwa der Berliner ohne Berlin.&dquo;’ What impressed Lorenz most,
however, was the same Parisian Sunday custom that had so impressed
his nineteenth-century compatriots Heinrich Heine and Friedrich
Hebbel: the Sunday walk.&dquo; Again Lorenz compares Paris with Berlin.
Whereas Berlin became a ghost town (allsgestorben) every Sunday
afternoon, as the Berliner population headed to the countryside, Paris
seemed to be alive and even more vibrant than usual. Parisians,
unlike Berliners, were content to spend their Sundays at home,
sightseeing in their own city. Lorenz notes that this tradition was not
limited to just a certain group; all Parisians partook in such ’harmlose
Vergnügen und billige Freuden’, those young and old, those rich and
poor.5°
The German military’s admiration and affection for the Parisian
people become most clear, however, in Lorenz’s second book, which
was published by the Swiss-owned Wegleiter Press in 1942.5’ In
soldaten fotographierell Frallkrelclz, Lorenz includes five short stories by
an author whose identity is unclear - although one can assume it was
Lorenz himself. Although each of the stories focuses on the unique
charm of the Parisian people (particularly the women), the magic of
the city of lights, and shared experience of war, two of the stories
offer particular insight into the German military’s attitudes towards
17
Paris, the Parisians, and the
war:
’Wir holen den
Dampfer’
and ’Die
Spieldose’.
’Wir holen den Dampfer’, the second story in the collection,
recounts the experiences of the Director of the Wehrmacht’s
Truppenbetreuungsbiiro - Lorenz - in obtaining a tour boat for his
troops. In this story, the French are depicted as charming and wellmeaning people and the Germans as ardent Francophiles. The story
centres around the purchase of a steamboat by the German Army’s
Office of Recreation and Housing in Paris. As the narrator (Lorenz)
explains, one day a man appeared in his office, offering to sell the
Germans ’einen hubschen kleinen Dampfer. TOllriste II heiBt er’. The
man, an Alsatian, explained why he believed the Germans would be
interested: ’Wenn Sie einen Dampfer haben, so konnen Sie damit die
Soldaten auf der Seine herumfuhren lassen.’52 The idea of steamboat
tours intrigues the narrator and he quickly makes arrangements to
see the boat. He soon discovers, however, that the ’hubscher kleiner
Dampfer’ is in actuality nothing more than a few rusted piles of steel
sitting on the river bottom, the boat having been dismantled and
sunk by the French in anticipation of the German invasion. The
image of German soldiers leisurely cruising the Seine, however, so
enchants the narrator that he has the Army purchase the boat
anyway, heartily assured by its owner that the boat will be seaworthy
in three to four weeks. The boat is lifted from the river, the work
begins, and the repair costs quickly begin to add up. The promised
’three to four weeks’ turn in to three to four months, and 100,000
francs rapidly grow into hundreds of thousands of marks. Despite
the cost, the dream of taking 5000 German soldiers a month on
steamboat tours of Paris makes all their troubles seem worthwhile.
’Es wurde unser Sorgenkind, der TOllnste II, wir liebten ihn und taten
ihm alles, was sein schwachlicher Zustand und seine krankliche
Natur brauchten.’~3 Finally, the boat is ready to sail:
Jawoll, alles
war so, wie ich es mir vorgestellt hatte: Alle hatten
frohliche Gesichter, ein italienisches Quartett spielte auf franzosischen
Instrumenten Wiener Weisen, die Serviermadchen gingen in hubschen
Matrosenblusen und kurzen Rockchen um her, ganz wie die
Stewardessen der grossen Luxusdampfer, und uber allem spann der
Himmel der Ile de France seine silbem durchwaberte lichtblaue
Seine. 54
More
telling
of the German
however, is the final and
most
military’s attitudes towards war,
poignant story of the collection, ’Die
In this story, a German soldier named Ruch, ’ein ausgezeichneter Kamerad und ein rechter Feldsoldat’, decides to take the
metro on Saturday afternoon to the Paris flea market, because, as his
Spieldose’.
18
fellow soldiers tell him, ’nur wer den Flohmarkt kenne, der kenne
auch Paris’.55 At the flea market, Ruch is impressed by the variety of
linens and other goods displayed in the stands - goods which would
have been impossible for him to buy in Germany - but he finds
himself drawn to one particular object, a music box that plays
Mozart’s melodies.
von dem Klingen, fast gegen seinen Willen, trat er heran
und sah zwischen dem Ehepaar auf das klingende etwas herab. Es war
eine Spieldose, ein schmales, flaches Kastchen aus Edelholz mit
Elfenbeinintarsien, das auf vier zierlichen Fiisschen stand. In den
Deckel war eine ovale Miniaturmalerei auf Porzellan eingelassen.56
Angezogen
Ruch purchases the music box for his young wife as a souvenir of
Paris and brings it back to the barracks, where the music of Mozart
stirs up memories of the soldiers’ German homeland. However, five
days before the scheduled leave during which Ruch planned to
present the gift to his wife, the music box suddenly stops; a small,
yellowish piece of paper has apparently been caught in the box’s
mechanism. On further investigation Ruch and his friends discover
that the paper contains a poem written in French; they have it
translated and read aloud.
Der Kampf ruft mich ins ungewiss Geschick.
Dies heitre Spielzeug lass ich dir zuruck.
Fiihlst du dich einsam, zeih es hurtig auf,
Und gib dem zarten Klingen seinen Lauf.
H6rst du von Schlachten, die mich fern umwittem,
So sollst du nicht in Angsten um mich zittern.
Lass dir von Mozarts Genius ins Herz brennen:
Dass selig-Liebende nicht sterben konnen.
Und h6rst du doch, dass ich da draussen blieb,
Sei stolz auf mich, Madeleine, behalt mich lieb.
Beim Silberklang der zarten Melodie’n
57
Denk’ dass die Rosen wieder fur dich blush’nisi
The poem, they see, was signed by a Frenchman named Raymond
and dated 5 September 1914. Under his signature, they read the
following post-script: ’Raymond ist am 12. September gefallen. Oh,
mein Gott!68 The soldiers quickly realize that they and Raymond
shared far more than a music box; they had shared Paris, Mozart and
the tragic experience of war: ’Es war schon seltsam, das alles! Und
jetzt bekam Ruch die Spieldose. Und auch er hatte eine Braut
daheim, der er sie zum Geschenk mitbringen wollte. Und der Krieg
dauerte noch....&dquo;9 The passion for the French people expressed in
this story and the other stories included in Soldateii fotografieren
Frmlkreich is unmistakable, and for this reason all further publications
19
of the Wegleiter Press and its affiliates were closely monitored by the
Nazi authorities. The reasons for this increased attention were
detailed in an in-house memorandum of the German Embassy in
Paris dated 27 November 1943:
Femer ist mit dem Wegleiter auch ein Buchverlag verbunden, der z. B.
die beiden Bilcher ’Soldaten fotographieren Frankreich’ und ’Kathedralen
in Frankreich’ herausgegeben hat. Diese Buchver6ffentlichungen
haben sicher fur den deutschen Soldaten und seine Angeh6rigen ihren
Nutzen, stellen anderseits jedoch eine Kulturpropaganda fiir
Frankreich dar. Kunftig mug bei jedem neuen Verlagobjekt darauf
geachtet werden, daB Verbffentlichungen, die einseitig franzosische
Kulturpropaganda betreiben, unterbleiben. 60
The ever-increasing censorship on the part of the Nazi authorities in
Paris made the publication of personal war diaries during the war a
very dangerous enterprise, particularly if the diaries revealed an
affinity on the part of its writer towards France, its people and its
cultural traditions. Some writers, like Tank, avoided this problem by
focusing their attention on the conquest of Paris and the pleasures in
benefiting from the spoils of war; others, like Kitzing, chose to veil
any opinions that did not correspond to the Nazi dictates under the
guise of sweeping generalizations and hearsay. Some German
soldiers, like Junger and Hartlaub, however, chose to avoid the
subjects of war and politics altogether, focusing their discussion
instead on apolitical topics such as art, philosophy and science, while
still others, like Heller, Buchheim, Breker and Speer, chose not to
publish their diaries or memoirs until long after the war had ended.
There was yet another possibility, however, for the German
soldiers to express their continued admiration of Paris, its people and
its culture. Like the quasi-anonymous writer in Lorenz’s Soldaten
fotografiereti Frankreich, some Germans found fiction to be the ideal
vehicle for voicing their personal affinities towards Paris without
arousing the ire of the Nazi authorities. Unlike diaries and memoirs,
fiction offered members of the German military and occupation
government a certain amount of freedom from the ideological
constraints of the National Socialist Party. By placing disclaimers
between themselves and the subject matter, authors could effectively
present their personal opinions through the voice of a character in a
story and claim that all views expressed were simply the product of
artistic creation.
The National Socialist soldier and novelist Wilhelm Ehmer, for
instance, prefaced his 1942 novel, Die Naclit par Paris, with the
following disclaimer: ’Die Rahmen dieser Erzahlung gab die Lage
vor Paris am 13. Jimi 1940. Im ubrigen sind Personen, ErwAgungen
20
und Ereignisse in voller künstlerischer Freiheit behandelt worden.’6’
The story of the novel centres on the experiences of a group of
German’ officers who have been billeted at a French chateau just
outside Paris on 13 June 1940, the day before the invasion of Paris.
When the Germans officers arrive in the chateau, they discover that
the house is still occupied by its French owners. The owners, the
Countess de Balcas and her daughter Lucile, have apparently chosen
not to flee to northern France with their compatriots, preferring to
remain near their home and to take their chances with the Germans.
Although from an official standpoint these women are representatives
of the enemy, their Parisian elegance and Mediterranean beauty do
not escape the notice of the German occupiers. The young, handsome
Aryan lieutenant, Hans Donitz, for example, is dazzled by his first
view of the exotic countess:
Diese, eine stattliche Erscheinung Ende der Vierzig, hatte sich mit
vomehmer Eleganz dunkel gekleidet, und dennoch wirkte irgendetwas
an ihr ubertrieben. Waren es die überlangen Ohrgehange mit den
blauen Tfrkisen, ihre grellrot gemalten Lippen oder ihre ringbeladenen Hande, jedenfalls passte sie wohl besser in die Pariser
Gesellschaft als auf das Land.... Im ubrigen war die GrAfin sicherlich
einmal eine schone Frau sudlandischen Typs gewesen, das dunkle
Haar besaB noch seinen ungebleichten Glanz, zwischen den
ausdrucksvollen grauen Augen stand eine feine schmale Nase, fast zu
schmal und klein fur das sonst volle Gesicht, und nur der Mund
sprach deutlich von Launenhaftigkeit und GenuBfreude.62
Although neither the jewel-laden and heavily made-up countess nor
similarly clad daughter corresponded to the National Socialists’
understanding of female beauty, both women are clearly admired by
her
the German victors. Ehmer’s (and his characters’) appreciation of the
Parisian women, however, extends far beyond admiration of their
physical beauty. Their intelligence, articulateness and outright
boldness are emphasized throughout the text and cannot be
described as anything but positive, for as the story proceeds we
discover that, under the noses of the German military, the countess
and her daughter have been secretly involved in coordinating a
resistance operation for the French forces in Paris.
For the Germans depicted in Ehmer’s text, however, Paris did not
simply consist in articulate, intelligent and elegant women. Paris was
its history, its culture and its architecture. Throughout the story, the
German officers are faced with a dilemma: How could they and their
armies conquer Paris without destroying its beauty and traditions? In
their military schooling, they have been ingrained with the strategic
principles outlined by the great Prussian Chief of General Staff
21
Helmut
von
Moltke, whose
in the Prussian
were clear and
military planning had been instrumental
the French in 1870-1. Moltke’s principles
victory
straightforward
over
and left no room for indecision: ’Der
aus die Eroberung der feindlichen
Feldzugsplan
ins
Hauptstadt
Auge.’63
military leaders in Ehmer’s book,
however, are reticent to destroy centuries of Parisian history. After
considering a plan to bomb Paris’s bridges, Ehmer’s Chief of General
Staff reflects upon what the consequences of such an action may be.
fagte
von
Haus
The
Der Chef des Generalstabes richtete sich auf. Er stand sehr gerade, als
ohne einen seiner Offiziere anzusehen, sagte: ’Die Seine-Brucken
bombardieren, heif3t den Krieg mitten in die Stadt hineintragen, meine
Herren. Daruber miissen wir uns vollig klar sein, einschliet3lich aller
er,
Konsequenzen.’
.
Der Blick des Generals blieb an einem Bilde haften, das uber dem
Kartentisch hing. Der grol3e Stich - er mochte aus dem 18. Jahrhundert
stammen - zeigte die Kathedrale von Notre-Dame.... Der General
kannte den Anblick der Kirche, er kannte ihr inneres, er kannte die
Bauten ringsum, das versteckte Juwel der gotischen Sainte Chapelle,
den strengen Kuppelbau des Pantheon, fluf3abwarts den groQraumigen
Riesentrakt des Louvre, den Invalidendom mit Napoleons Grab und
die weitgestreckte Raumplastik von den Tuilerien hinauf bis zum
Etoile mit dem Arc de Triomphe. Uberall in diesem Bereich wurde die
Seine von Brucken uberspannt, unmittelbar an Notre-Dame vorbei
fiihrten sogar zwei Brucken.6’’
At first glance, that a book which assigns such a francophilic attitude
to a German Chief of Staff could pass Nazi censorship in Germany in
1942 might seem surprising, even if the character is presumably
fictional. At the end of the novel, however, we discover that the Chief
of Staff’s motives for saving Paris were not simply to preserve French
history and tradition, but also, and more importantly, to preserve the
monuments of German history. In the closing pages of the book, as
the German soldiers are approaching an evacuated Paris, the General
and the other officers are awed by the view of Paris that had once
been enjoyed
by German kings and heroic German military leaders:
’Da liegt es! ’sagte der Chef, und seine raumgreifende Armbewegung
schien mit einem einzigen Zupacken von der Beute Besitz zu ergreifen.
’Von hier aus hielten einstmals Kbnlge Ausschau, hier standen Blusher
und Yorck, Bismarck und Moltke.’ Seine Stimme klang tief und ruhig.
’Und nun stehen wir hier!’ rief D6nitz aus. 65
As the Germans marched into Paris, they enjoyed more than a
breathtaking historical vista; they enjoyed a sweet revenge. Now they
were the victors; now they could dictate the terms of peace, and the
embarrassment of 1918 would be erased forever. For Ehmer’s
22
National Socialist contemporaries, the final paragraph, which
describes the ’Marsch von Paris, der Marsch zur Vollendung und
Kronung’des Sieges’, must have seemed to echo this spirit. However,
just before the Germans’ ’crowning’ march of victory down the
Champs-Elys6es, Ehmer’s Chief of Staff stands at the Arc de
Triomphe and contemplates the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Der Generalmajor dachte an das Denkmal gallischen LJbermutes im
Walde von Compiegne, das man gestem mit der Reichskriegsflagge
zugehangt hatte, er dachte an Versailles, wo im Laufe der Geschichte
ein deutscher Sieg und eine deutsche Niederlage besiegelt worden
waren und in das nun binnen weniger Stunden abermals deutsche
Soldaten erziehen wurden. Er las, aufblickend, die in die Wande des
Arc de Triomphe eingemeiBelten Namen napoleonischer Erfolge,
unzahlige Namen deutscher Stadte unter ihnen - und dann sah er im
Geist, durch Qualm und glut des Weltkriegs hindurch, die neue und
letzte Sturmflut, die sich zu dieser Stunde in einer einzigen endlosen
Woge unwiderstehlich durch Frankreichs Fluren ergoJ3. Da straffte sich
seine hagere Gestalt, er legte die Hand an die Mute und griil3te mit
seinen Begleitern schweigend und knapp den Soldaten Frankreichs
zu seinen FiiBen.~6
With his solemn salute, Ehmer’s Chief of Staff is not hailing the
German victory. He is instead acknowledging the shared experience
of war by paying tribute to those soldiers, French and German, who
were forced to pay the ultimate price.
More than thirty years before the publication of Ehmer’s novel, the
German art historian Kurt Scheffler observed:
es, Paris zu lieben. Es zu hassen ware
undeutsch.... Wir kommen als Lernende in diese Wunderreiche Stadt
und gehen dankbar von dannen, reicher geworden, ehrfirchtiger und
somit auch besser im Fuhlen und Meinen. Besser, das aber heiBt
zugleich auch immer: deutscher
Nein, nicht undeutsch ist
history, its art and its people continued even
twentieth
throughout the early
century to leave their mark on all
the
of
Germans who visited
city lights, whether they came as tourists,
artists or soldiers. Even Hitler himself could not deny that Paris
made a lasting impression on him. In October 1941, one year after his
tour of Paris, Hitler admitted to his government associates: ’ich war
doch glucklich, daQ wir Paris nicht zu zerstoren brauchten. Mit
groBen Seelenruhe, als ich an die Vernichtung von Petersburg
[Leningrad] und Moskau herangehe, mit so groflem Schmerz hatte
mich die Vernichtung von Paris erfiillte.&dquo; Like Hitler, those Germans
who arrived in the years 1940-4 were particularly susceptible to
Paris’s charms, for it reminded them of a better time and a better
And, indeed, Paris,
its
23
Because Paris continued to survive the uncertainties of
modern warfare, so did the hope of all Germans, regardless of
political orientation, for the construction of a new and better
Germany. In Paris, members the occupying forces, many of whom
felt increasingly stifled by the political and cultural ideologies of the
Nazi regime, were able to distance themselves from National Socialist
ideology - at least for a short time - and adopt what they understood
to be a carefree ’Parisian’ way of life.
Europe.
END NOTES
For detailed discussions of the French experience in Occupied Paris, see Hervé Le
Boterf, La vie parisienne sous l’occupation (Paris: France-Empire, 1997); Gilles
Perrault and Pierre Azema, Paris under the Occupation, trans. Allison Carter and
Maximilian Vos (New York: Vendome Press, 1989); and David Pryce-Jones, Paris
in the Third Reich. A History of the German Occupation, 1940-1944 (New York: Holt,
Reinhart and Winston, 1981).
2. Adolf Hitler, Monologe im Führerhauptquartier 1941-1944 (Hamburg: Albrecht
Knaus, 1980), 116: I had all my men sent to Paris throughout the past year so that
they will not be surprised once we get started building our new Berlin. Now
Berlin is wretched; Berlin will be twice as beautiful as Paris.’ [All translations are
my own, unless otherwise noted.]
3. For a National Socialist discussion of the ’2000-year-old Paris’, see for example,
Roland Krug von Nidda, ’Stadt von 2000 Jahren’, Marianne 39 (Berlin:
1.
4.
Frundsberg, 1939), 51-95.
Lorenz describes this phenomenon in Soldaten fotographieren Frankreich. Ein
Bilderbuch mit Erzahlungen von Heinz Lorenz (Paris: Wegleiter-Verlag, 1942), 30-6.
At the time of this work’s publication, the Wegleiter Press was still owned by a
named Locher. The press was sold in November 1943 to the German
it was at that time that Lorenz became one of its co-editors.
Given
title of this particular volume edited by Lorenz, I am
wording of
assuming that Lorenz was also the author of the texts. Wolfgang Geiger, however,
does not make this assumption. Geiger, ’L’image de la France dans l’Allemagne
hitlérienne et pendant l’après-guerre immédiat’, diss. U. Nantes (1996), 896, 901.
Kurt Lothar Tank, Pariser Tagebucher 1938, 1939, 1940 (Berlin: S. Fischer, 1941),
104: ’as in a dream among elements of the unreal’; ’[might] not totally disappear,
even after the reconstruction’.
Tank, 108: ’that rhythm so typical of Paris that removes the burden of work from
the writing process and allows one to experience the stream of images, not as an
incomprehensible totality, but rather as a series of clearly distinguishable
elements.’
Tank, 107: ’The Wehrmacht vehicles dominate the street scene even in the middle
of Paris, near the Opera, where we expect to obtain rooms at the Grand Hôtel.’
Tank, 106-7: ’It is difficult to extinguish Paris’s magic. Those who are less
sensitive and perceptive are also mesmerized by it, even those who try to resist it.
This was my impression two years ago, and nowI see it is confirmed.’
Tank, 108: ’the gigantic room with two windows and a view of the Opera,
beautiful rugs, a Renaissance-style desk, a vanity table with three oval mirrors, a
Récamier sofa, and plenty of space to move about in.’
Tank, 107-8: ’Most stores are open, no change to note in the people’s movement
or faces. I often wondered, is this simply indifference or is it vitality?’
Hans Joachim Kitzing, Wir liegen in Paris (Berlin: E. S. Mittler und Sohn, 1941), x:
’Although Paris was not pre-war Paris, it was still Paris, and its magic had its
effect on the foreign victor.’
Kitzing, 64: ’If you gave a Parisian the choice of either going to the cinema,
Swiss
man
Embassy in Pans, and
the
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
the
...
24
13.
14.
theatre or other amusements, or taking a stroll, he would ask to go on a stroll’;
’Even the German soldiers enjoyed this activity. On Sunday afternoon in the thick
stream of people, who moved down the Boulevard des Italiens, the Boulevard de
Montmartre, the Boulevard Clichy (to name a few), one could see many German
uniforms.’
Kitzing, 65: ’While every German soldier, despite all these sensations, would
always deliver an appropriate salute to his superiors, the Parisians never stopped
admiring the scenery. But, that, of course, goes without saying, because a
German soldier remains what he is, even when on a Parisian stroll.’
Kitzing, 76: ’My dear son, your long-awaited - but much too short - letter finally
arrived. You write about the wonderful and beautiful things you are seeing in
Paris, and I am delighted to hear it. Will you still enjoy being at home when this
I’m not writing much today, because I want to take the cake to the post
over?
office. Enjoy the cake and don’t allow your homeland to be forgotten in the
splendour and beauty of Paris.’
Kitzing, 76. ’Even if I’m having fun here, I know that I don’t really belong...
Paris is magnificent but foreign, and that is the bottom line.
Kitzing, 79: ’Of course, it’s painful to have to leave Paris. But even if one eye is
crying, the other is smiling at what the future holds. Great things lie before us;
the war is not over... Only when we finally have the chance to relax again will
we think about Paris and say that it was actually really nice there.’
William Cloonan, The Writing of War. French and German Fiction and World War II
(Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1999), 31.
Wolfgang Brandes, Der ’Neue Stil’ in Ernst Jungers ’Strahlungen’ (Bonn: Bouvier,
1990), especially 71-86.
Ernst Junger, Strahlungen, Vol. 2 (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1988),
179: ’In the First World War I was alone and free; I go through this second war
with all my loves and possessions. However, during the first war I used to spend
my time dreaming of this second war; similarly during the invasion of France I
was frightened not by the images which surrounded me but by the humanless
and devastated world I imagined for the future.’
Richard Griffiths also makes this comparison. ’A certain idea of France: Ernst
Junger’s Paris diaries 1940-1944’, Journal of European Studies, xxiii (1993), 101.
Vercors (pseud. of Jean Bruller) was a French Resistance writer. In his short novel
Le Silence de la mer (Paris: Minuit, 1942), a German officer is billeted with a French
family. Despite the fact that the German officer is well educated and very polite,
the French family, as an act of resistance against the German occupation, refuses
to speak to him or even acknowledge his presence in their home.
Junger, Strahlungen, Vol. 2, 244: ’German by nation and European by education,
all in all a citizen of the world’; Vol. 2, 137-8: ’The knowledge of such [atrocities]
is beginning to have an effect on my relationship, not to Germany, but rather to
the Germans.
Junger, Strahlungen, Vol. 2, 66: ’Thought: I too belong now to the untold millions
who have given this city something of the substance of their being, of their
thoughts and feelings, which a stone sea absorbs, in order to transform them
mysteriously during the course of centuries and to mould them into a coral reef
of destiny. When I think that on the way here I walked by the Church of SaintRoch, on whose steps César Birotteau was wounded, and by the corner of Rue de
Saint-Prouvaires, where the beautiful stocking-seller Baret measured Casanova in
a back room of her shop, and that these are only two
tiny facts in an ocean of
fictional and real events - then I am gripped by a kind
melancholy, a
kind of painful pleasure.’
Jünger, Strahlungen, Vol. 2, 116: ’Once more I experienced a strong feeling of joy,
of thankfulness, that this city of cities was getting through the catastrophe still
intact. What a marvel it would be, if she, like an Ark laden to the brim with a rich
old cargo, were to reach the port of peace after this deluge, and were to remain
with us for future centuries.’ Gerhard Heller echoes these thoughts in Un
Allemand à Paris (Paris: Seuil, 1981), 165: ’And what joy for us [Junger and Heller],
...
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
of joyous
23.
25
what
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
gratitude
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
thought
that this
city
of cities
was
still escaping catastrophe
there for a reason), until
and would continue to escape, we hoped (Junger was
the end.’
Junger, Strahlungen, Vol. 2, 293: ’Once more on the terrace of the Sacré-Coeur to
have a farewell look at the great city, I saw the stones quiver in the hot sun, as
though awaiting new embraces from history. Cities are like women and gracious
only to the victor.’ For further discussion of Junger’s war diaries, see Cloonan,
31-5.
Heller’s harshest critic is Gérard Loiseaux, who in his book on the Occupation
questions the motives behind Heller’s memoirs. See Loiseaux, La Littérature de la
défaite et de la collaboration (Paris: Université de Paris I, 1984), 470-83. Although
Loiseaux doubts the veracity of many of Heller’s accounts, given that in most
cases Heller is the only witness to his heroic deeds, Loiseaux does not
question
the sincerity of Heller’s love for the city of Paris. Jean Paulhan, to whom Heller
refers as ’Mon Maitre’ in the memoirs, describes Heller in a letter dated January
1945 as an ’amoureux de la France.’ Paulhan, Choix de lettres, ed. Dominique
Aubry and Jean-Claude Zylberstein, vol. 2 (Paris: Gallimard, 1986), 402.
Heller, 164-5: ’Whether we [Junger and I] were at the Comédie Française to see
Molière’s Les Femmes savantes or Le Misanthrope again or to discover Cocteau’s
Renaud et Armide for the first time, whether we were at the Place du Tertre, the
Brasserie Lorraine, the Place des Ternes, or on the Rue Mouffetard, whether we
were in Père Lachaise or in the little
cemetery near the Trocadéro, in the garden
of the Palais-Royal or Bagatelle, Paris was like a second spiritual home for us, the
most perfect picture of that which we have retained of ancient civilizations.’
Heller, 45: ’How many times in those four years would I walk through this city
alone. A pedestrian in Paris, reflecting endlessly about my odd situation with a
mixture of joy and anguish.’
Felix Hartlaub, Tagebuch aus dem Kriege (Paris, 1941), in Das Gesamtwerk, Dichtungen,
Tagebucher (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1955), 59-123.
Quoted in Henri Plard, "’Tout seul." La conscience de la solitude chez Felix
Hartlaub’, Etudes germaniques, xiv (1959), 141.
Peter Seibert, ’Deutsche Ansichten der besetzten Stadt’, in Paris sous l’Occupation
Paris unter deutschen Besatzung, ed. Wolfgang Drost, Géraldi Leroy, Jacqueline
Magnou and Peter Seibert (Heidelberg: Universitatsverlag C. Winter, 1995), 65.
Albert Speer, Erinnerungen (Berlin: Propylaen, 1969), 127-30, 185-8; Arno Breker,
Strahlungsfelde der Ereignisse (Preussischer Oldendorf: Schutz, 1972), 151-73.
Breker, 155: ’Paris has always been a little like home for my wife and me; I had
spent the most decisive years of my life there; I had worked; I had made friends.’
Breker lived in Paris from 1927-34, and he later returned to Paris for the World
Exposition of 1937 where some of his work was shown; see Breker, 27-32.
Breker, 155: ’Paris is dead - not a human soul is to be seen. The residential areas
look like phantoms, as if they were separated from life. What life there used to be
here in the focal point of the metropolis; an endless stream flowing in all
directions, abounding with vitality and joy of life.’
For another account of Hitler’s visit to Paris, see Speer, 185-8.
Speer, 187; trans. as Inside the Third Reich, by Richard and Clara Winston (New
York: Collier, 1970), 172: ’Wasn’t Paris beautiful? But Berlin must be made far
more beautiful. In the past I often considered whether we would have to destroy
Paris.... But when we are finished in Berlin, Paris will be only a shadow. So why
should we destroy it?’; see also Perrault and Azema, 12.
Seibert, 59. See photographs of German soldiers as tourists in Paris and German
military parades in Paris, ’Photos de Paris occupé, tirées de l’album du soldat
Joseph Seibert’, in Paris sous l’Occupation. Paris unter der deutschen Besatzung, 23-6
and Lorenz, Soldaten fotographieren Frankreich, esp. 9, 18, 47, and 83; cf.
photographs and attitudes of the French in which German presence is
emphasized, e.g. Gérard Walter, Paris under the Occupation, trans. Tony White
(New York: Orion, 1960), esp. 14-41; Perrault and Azema, Paris under the
-
31.
at the
Occupation.
26
37. Lothar-Günther Buchheim, Mein Paris. Eine Stadt vor dreiβig Jahren (Ziirich: Piper,
1977), 49: ’Who really is the victor here? The boot-wearing privates in their
breeches and their made-to-order military jackets? Or the Parisian people?’
38. Buchheim, 10: ’I have not shown these old negatives to anyone for decades. My
friends from back then would only have shaken their heads at my sad streets.
Such photos were not in keeping with the times: I was supposed to have
photographed the parades, the glitz and glory, and the so-called "monuments".
39. Buchheim, 48: ’[Swastika flags] wave from all public buildings and on the
requisitioned hotels and apartment buildings.’
40. Buchheim, 50: ’Paris was the sparkling city between the war fronts, between the
Atlantic Ocean front and the bomb front, Germany. "Paris" - symbol for hope
and survival. "Paris" - the spice of life.’
41. Schaumburg, ’Vorwort’, Frankreich. Erlebnis eines deutschen Soldaten, ed. Lorenz
(Paris: Odé, 1942), 1: ’what each and every German soldier is experiencing in
France.’
42. Lorenz, Soldaten fotografieren Frankreich, 7: ’The short stories have been included
for a specific purpose: one is not supposed to flip carelessly through the pages of
this book in order to exhaust oneself with the multitude of pictures. Through the
act of reading, the eye focuses, rests and intermittently, with a renewed feeling of
leisure, observes the next image.’
43. See also Perrault and Azema, 17-21.
44. Walter Horn, ’Vorbild und Verpflichtung: Die grosse deutsche Kunstausstellung
1939 in Munchen’, Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte (September 1939), quoted in
N. Abrams, Inc., 1992), 96.
Peter Adam, Art of the Third Reich (New York:
See also Wolf Jahn, ’Der Kampf um die Kultur’, Vernissage. Die Zeitschrift zur
Harry
Ausstellung, vi (1996), 8-15.
45. Quoted in Adam, 129.
46. Professor Winfried Wendland, ’Nationalsozialistische Kulturpolitik’, Deutsche
Kultur-Wacht, xxiv (1933), quoted in Adam, 97.
47. See note 4.
48. Heinz Lorenz, ’Der Rhythmus von Paris’, in Frankreich: Ein Erlebnis des deutschen
Soldaten, 31: ’Paris without the Parisians is less conceivable than Berlin without
the Berliners. The Parisian without Paris is only a half-person and definitely
much more estranged than the Berliner without Berlin.’
49. See, e.g., Heinrich Heine, ’Brief an Karl August von Varnhagen, Paris, den 27.6.1831’,
in Hildemarie Vahl, ’Heine uber Paris’, in Heine in Paris 1831-1856 (Diisseldorf:
Droste, 1989), 88-9; Heine, Franzosiche Zustande, ed. Jean-René Derré und Christiane
Giesen, in Samtliche Werke, xii, ed. Manfred Windfuhr (Hamburg: Hoffmann und
Campe, 1980), 103-5; and Friedrich Hebbel ’Erinnerungen an Paris’, in Samtliche
Werke, ed. Richard Maria Werner, Vol. 10 (Berlin: Behr, 1904), 14-6.
50. Lorenz, ’Der Rhythmus von Paris’, 28-31: ’harmless amusements and cheap joys.’
51. Geiger, 901.
52. ’Wir holen den Dampfer’, in Soldaten fotografieren Frankreich, 46: ’adorable little
steamboat called the Touriste II’; ’If you had a steamboat, you could take the
soldiers on boat tours on the Seine.’
53. ’Wir holen den Dampfer’, 60: ’It became our sickly child, the Touriste II ; we loved
her and did everything that her weakened condition and sickly nature required.’
54. ’Wir holen den Dampfer’, 72-3: ’Yes siree! It was exactly as I imagined it: all had
happy faces, an Italian quartet played Viennese tunes on French instruments, the
waitresses went around in sailor blouses and short skirts just like the
stewardesses in the great luxury steamboats, and above everything spun the
silvery-light-blue silk of the Ile de France’s sky.’
55. ’Die Spieldose’, in Soldaten fotografieren Frankreich, 188: ’an excellent comrade and
a great soldier’; 168:
’only those who have been to the flea market have seen the
real Paris.’
56. ’Die Spieldose’, 172: ’Attracted by the sound, almost against his will, he
approached and looked between the husband and wife and saw the thing that
was making the sound. It was a music box, a flat, narrow little box made of
27
57.
precious wood with ivory inlay which stood on four dainty little legs. An ovalshaped piece of porcelain with a miniature painting was set on the box’s cover.’
’Die Spieldose’, 194: ’Since the war calls me off to an uncertain fate,/ I leave
behind for you this cheer in my place/ If ever you are feeling lonely and far
away,/ Pull it towards you quickly and start its play./ If you hear of distant
battles raging about,/Do not shake in fear on my account./Let Mozart’s genius
swell in your heart:/For those whose love is eternal can never truly part./ If you
hear that I’m out there, there to remain,/ Be proud of me, Madeleine, remember
me the same./ By the silvery sound of the tender tunes/ Think of me out there
where the roses bloom.’
58. ’Die Spieldose’, 196: ’Raymond died on 12 September 1914. Oh God!’
59. ’Die Spieldose’, 196: ’How strange all that! And now Ruch owned the music box.
And he too had a bride at home. And the war waged on....’
60. Quoted in Geiger, 901: ’... a publishing house is associated with the Wegleiter
magazine; this press published Soldaten fotografieren Frankreich and Kathedralen in
Frankreich. Of course, these publications have their uses for German soldiers and
their families. On the other hand, however, they represent cultural propaganda
for France. Henceforth, we will need to supervise closely each publishing project
undertaken by the Wegleiter press to ensure that publications that are solely
intended to spread French cultural propaganda no longer appear.’ In fact, after
the publication of Lorenz’s Soldaten fotografieren Frankreich, the German embassy
purchased the Wegleiter Press from its Swiss owner. Curiously, however, Lorenz
was the man chosen to serve as one of the press’s new co-editors. Geiger, 900-1.
61. Wilhelm Ehmer, Die Nacht vor Paris (Stuttgart: Adolf Spemann, 1942), 4: ’The
military location near Paris on 13 June 1940 serves as the frame for this story.
Outside of that, all characters, thoughts and events have been created with full
artistic freedom.’
62. Ehmer, 13-14: ’This stately woman in her late forties was dressed in dark, elegant
clothes, but something seemed a bit excessive. Was it the oversized, dangling
earrings with the turquoise stones, her fire-engine-red lips, or her ring-laden
hands? In any case, she would have fitted in better in Paris than here in the
countryside... The countess had certainly been a beautiful, Mediterranean-type
woman. Her dark hair still possessed its unblemished sheen. Between her
expressive grey eyes stood a small, narrow nose - almost too small for her
otherwise broad face, and her mouth clearly displayed her capriciousness and
enjoyment of life.’
63. Ehmer, 9: ’In a military campaign, the army has its eye focused on conquering the
enemy’s capital city from the moment it departs the homeland.’
64. Ehmer, 28-9. ’The Chief of General Staff stood up. Standing very erect and not
looking at any of his officers, he said: "Bombing the Seine bridges means
bringing the war into the middle of Paris. We must fully understand that,
including the consequences."
The General’s eyes focused on a picture that was hanging above the card table.
The large engraving - it must be from the eighteenth century - displayed the
Notre-Dame Cathedral.... The General recognized this view of the church. He
knew what the inside looked like. He knew all the buildings that surrounded it:
the Pantheon, down
the hidden jewel of the Sainte Chapelle, the strong
river the gigantic Louvre with all of its enormous rooms, the Invalides with
Napoleon’s tomb, and the widely scattered sculptures of the Tuileries all the way
up to the Arc de Triomphe. Everywhere in this area there were bridges over the
Seine, including Notre-Dame where there were actually two of them.’
65. Ehmer, 159: "’There it is," said the Chief, and his immense arms seemed to seize
their new possession in a single gesture. "This was once the view of kings.
Blucher and Yorck, Bismarck and Moltke stood here." His voice was deep and
soft. "And now we are standing here!" cried Donitz...’
66. Ehmer, 162-3: ’The Major-General thought about the monument of Gallic pride
with the French Imperial flag that was hung yesterday in the Compiègne forest;
he thought about Versailles, where during the course of history both a German
domeof
28
67.
victory and a German defeat were signed, and where German soldiers would be
quartered within a few hours. Looking up, he read the names of the Napoleonic
victories engraved in the walls of the Arc de Triomphe, of which countless were
German cities; and then he saw in his mind, through all the smoke and burning
ashes of the First World War, the new and final storm that, in a single wave, was
pouring into France at that time unrestrained. His haggard figure stood erect. He
placed his hand on his cap, and quietly with his compatriots, he delivered a
short, quick salute to the soldier of France at his feet.’
Karl Scheffler, Paris. Notizen von Karl Scheffler (Leipzig: Insel, 1908), 245: ’No, it is
un-German... We arrive as
in this wonderfully rich city, and leave enriched, reverent, and, as such,
better, more sensitive and more thoughtful. Better, one could even say, more
not un-German to love Paris. To hate it would be
pupils
German.’
68. Hitler, 116: ’In fact, I was happy that we did not have to destroy Paris. As much
inner calm as I experienced when I decided to destroy St Petersburg and
Moscow, that is how much pain I would have felt in the destruction of Paris.’