Lisa Chaney - Coco Chanel - An Intimate Life

The stock market crash of 1929 saw him lose his partnership in the textile firm and, in 1930, he was describing himself as “an independent merchant” who had acquired a post in Sanary overseeing transport. 5In early 1933, von Dincklage became the national representative for a French cash register firm, and traveled regularly to Germany, ostensibly to study the cash register’s manufacture. These trips were in fact a cover for what had become the other source of his employment: the new German government. 6

Having helped Catsy go through her considerable inheritance, after Hitler’s rise to absolute power, at the beginning of 1933, von Dincklage had “placed his hopes in National Socialism.” As a result, in May of that year, he was resident in Paris with his wife for “the purpose of making contacts.” 7One is drawn to contrast this particular polo player with that other polo-playing lover of Gabrielle’s during the previous war. Arthur Capel had suffered from the ennui of his times and had been capable of emotional carelessness. Yet, drawn into the war and finding himself torn between Gabrielle Chanel and Diana Wyndham, despite his ultimate failure, he was a man who appeared to have grown in emotional and moral stature. Capel and von Dincklage could not have been more different.

With Hitler’s increased hold over Germany, a number of distinguished German Jews made their escape from the Gestapo to Sanary, where they took up exile. Soon the resort became something of an artistic German colony, acquiring the sobriquet “capital of German literature.” Among its illustrious refugees were Mahler’s widow, Alma; Bertholt Brecht; Arnold Zweig; Ludwig Marcuse and the magisterial Thomas Mann and his extended family. A small contingent of English émigrés included Aldous and Maria Huxley, Julian Huxley and his wife, and D. H. Lawrence and his German wife, Frieda.

Catsy’s mother (a hopeless morphine addict) had taken up residence in Sanary with her new Italian husband sometime before, and they had befriended a number of important local German figures, including Ute von Stöhrer, whose husband was then German ambassador in Cairo. Unbeknownst to anyone in Sanary, including Thomas Mann and his family, who were staying in the von Stöhrers’ villa, von Stöhrer was also in the employ of the German intelligence service. 8

In the summer of 1933, von Dincklage was appointed to the post of cultural attaché at the German embassy in Paris. A notoriously vague position, this frequently involved undercover activities. Indeed, by this time, the French Deuxième Bureau, the country’s external military intelligence agency, was constructing a file on von Dincklage. By August 1933, he in turn had sent a propaganda report back to his Nazi superiors in Germany. 9

At around this time, Catsy’s younger sister, Sybille, was made party to a conversation that left her deeply shocked. Sitting with her friend Aldous Huxley in Barcelona, awaiting takeoff in a plane bound for Sanary, they were directly behind a well-groomed German couple. After a few moments, Sybille realized they were talking about her sister and von Dincklage. The woman said:

“Maybe they owe him now… there always was that rumor of his having been mixed up with some extreme right-wing students’ gang during our Revolution, so called… Gave a hand when they put down the Communist putsch, some say he was in at the Rosa Luxemburg murder [in 1919].”

“Too young,” he said. “He may have been there — standing guard by the wall…?”

“When the woman tried to get away through the window,” she said. “You make me shiver… He’s very decorative… international polish… adds up to a reassuring presence for the French. But aren’t we forgetting that his wife’s Jewish?”…

“You know, I think I hear that the von Dincklages are divorcing. No one outside Germany is supposed to know.”

“Ah… that would square it. Racial purity at home, liberal attitudes abroad. A quick, quiet divorce arranged by our authorities…”

[Young Sybille looked at Huxley.] I knew he had understood… He put his hand inside his coat and pulled out… the leather-bound traveling flask… he unscrewed the cap and held it over to me. 10

Meanwhile, when von Dincklage officially left his post at the embassy in June 1934, 11he told friends that he had been ejected from his position as cultural attaché because he was married to a Jew. Assuring Catsy that there was nothing personal in his departure, von Dincklage now left her. Catsy loved her husband and was forgiving. She believed von Dincklage’s stories and hoped he would return to her. Meanwhile, she moved back to Sanary, where her mother and stepfather still lived.

Von Dincklage now traveled widely, performing various missions for Hitler’s government in Athens and various Balkan states. He happened to be in Marseille just one day before the assassination of King Alexander of Yugoslavia and Foreign Minister Barthou of France. He happened to be in Tunis at a time when systematic and violent anti-French agitation was in progress. 12He also went to stay periodically at Sanary with Catsy. He liked her well enough; he also needed her to keep their separation secret, not wanting her distinguished, and useful, Parisian friends to think ill of him. 13Von Dincklage had been suspected of being an agent in diplomat’s disguise by some at Sanary for a while, 14suspicions eventually to be confirmed. While von Dincklage kept an eye on the activities and whereabouts of the important Jewish émigré community, he was simultaneously collecting information on the nearby port of Toulon, the most important naval base in France.

But von Dincklage had to be seen to have a job. A Russian émigré friend, Alex Liberman — a future friend of Gabrielle’s and eventually editorial director of Condé Nast Publications in New York — found von Dincklage employment as a journalist. 15Then, in 1935, von Dincklage suffered a serious setback in his propaganda work for Hitler’s government. In January of that year, a book entitled Das Braune Netz ( The Brown Network ) was published in Paris. 16Its subtitle was How Hitler’s Agents Abroad Are Working to Prepare the War , and its aim was to alert the West to the potential “Nazi espionage and fifth column activities outside Germany.” The book contained a list of all known Nazi agents, country by country, and the French list was headed by Otto Abetz (future ambassador). But one of the most prominent on the list of agents for France was von Dincklage.

A series of reports for his superiors had been stolen from von Dincklage and used as one of the central pieces of evidence for the book’s claims. Printing a selection of von Dincklage’s weekly reports back to Berlin, the book exposed his activities and showed “the many channels used by Goebbels and the Gestapo in common for the execution of their work abroad.” A letter from von Dincklage to the Paris correspondent of a major German newspaper alerts one to his nickname: “Kofink visited me today, I will probably be able to use him. He will phone you soon and have news for Mr. Spatz. I am Mr. Spatz. When this is the case, would you please inform me immediately by telephone .” 17Spatz, meaning a sparrow garrulously hopping from one place to another, was the name von Dincklage jokingly gave himself with French friends.

The Brown Network goes on to say that “every legation has its Dincklage. Gangster, profiteer, Gestapo agent — this admixture characterizes Hitler’s diplomats… His reports show the many lines along which foreign propagandist activity is conducted, and how these lines converge at one common point: espionage.” 18In page after page, von Dincklage details observations, connections and suggestions for his Nazi masters. He talks of his “large French circle” and says that “day by day this circle grows” and, through it, he hopes to be able to carry out his “social mission most satisfactorily.” 19