Эрнст Юнгер - A German Officer in Occupied Paris - The War Journals, 1941-1945

I visited Monsieur Groult on Avenue Foch with Baumgart and Fräulein Lampe. After you cross through the courtyard, his house reminds you of Aladdin’s enchanted castle or Ali Baba’s treasure cave. Gardens with fountains and pools of water where swans and exotic ducks paddle on the surface, pergolas with statues and reflecting surfaces, Pompeiian galleries, terraces with parrots and ringneck doves are protected from view by high trellises covered with ivy and wild grapevines.

The Goncourts amassed their collections with the advice of Groult’s father, and these surpass the disbelieving accounts that Balzac delights in. They unite well over a hundred paintings and drawings by Fragonard and more by Turner than can be found in the British Isles. The formidable galleries are lined with one masterpiece after another. What is more, over a thousand of the best pieces have already been distributed to distant châteaux. The collections are barely known; a catalogue has never been published. Furthermore, only friends or people brought by friends are allowed to enter these rooms.

We spoke with the owner about the unparalleled treasures and about their security as well as their value. He considers best to leave these things in Paris. Transporting them could damage them, and they could also be shelled in the process. Furthermore, the fate of all other places in France is almost less certain than that of this city, which—one hopes—like Rome will be protected by its aura. During the air attacks, falling shrapnel sometimes breaks panes in the skylights. If that ever happens during wet weather, rain pours into the rooms, causing damage. We examined a pastel by Watteau with damaged velour and discolored by little green spots, as if mold were growing on it. The damage had affected this picture in an unusual way, less in a purely mechanical way than by distorting its features, rather like illness in a human being. The portrait of Dorian Gray changed along similar lines.

The coal shortage is a nuisance. The household requires a staff of more than twenty.

On the subject of value, Herr Groult maintained that this consideration did not exist for him, for he was never going to part with any of the pictures. Hence the question was irrelevant. How oppressive ownership has become, especially in this inferno. To shoulder a responsibility like this nowadays demands the courage of a swimmer who is laden with gold, like the soldiers of Cortez in that Sad Night. [165] Reference to La Noche Triste on 30 June 1520 when the conquistadors were expelled from the Mexican capital at Tenochtitlan.

Current reading: Léon Bloy, Méditations d’un Solitaire [ Meditations of a Solitary Man ]. The book was written in 1916 under conditions similar to today’s and reflects all the author’s virtues and vices—even his shockingly powerful hatred, which can vie with Kniébolo’s own. Yet I find reading this to be not only entertaining but also downright bracing. It contains a true Arcanum aimed at our age and its debilities. When he lifts himself from his foul debasement to such heights, this Christian puts on an exceptional show, and the tops of his towers achieve rarified heights. This must be linked to the death wish that he often expresses with such power: desire to embody the philosopher’s stone emerges from base, dark, seething turmoil as it strives for lofty sublimation.

In the afternoon at La Roche-Guyon to see Speidel, who hosted us in his small study in the oldest part of the chateau below the Norman parapets. He had to make frequent phone calls. Kniébolo, who fears a new landing, wants to take command of two tank battalions after having made a personal assessment; he wants to give orders that differ from what the situation requires. Conversations included the topic of how much more time the Germans are going to take before they get this carnival huckster off their backs. Fate has started his countdown. This made me think of an expression of my father’s: “A terrible misfortune has to happen before anything changes.” And yet the general seemed to be in good spirits because he observed, “the essay on peace will soon be appearing.”

I then drove with Podewils and Horst to Giverny. We called on Monet’s daughter-in-law, who gave us the key to his garden. At the waterlily pond with its weeping willows, black poplars, bamboo borders, and half-derelict Chinese wooden bridges—there is magic in this place. Every wet pastureland contains these shallow pools filled with green water, edged with rushes and irises. Yet none seems more succulent, more suggestive, more colorful. A piece of nature like thousands of others made all the more distinguished by intellectual and creative vitality. Nineteenth-century scholarship is also at home on this island, from which the artist took his astonishing colors as if from a retort, heated by the fire of the sun and cooled with water. Like our eyes, each little pool catches a universe of light. In the large studio in front of the waterlily cycle that Monet began working on when he was seventy-five. Here we can observe the creative rhythm of crystallization and dissolution that brings a spectacular convergence with the blue void and with Rimbaud’s primeval azure slime. On one of the great panels a bundle of blue waterlilies takes shape at the edge of the pure wavering radiance like a tangle of tangible beams of light. Another picture shows only the sky with clouds reflected in the water in a way that makes one dizzy. The eye senses the daring nature of this gesture as well as the powerful visual achievement of the sublime disintegration and its agonies amid the cascading light. The final canvas in the series has been vandalized by knife gashes.

Yesterday news spread of the assassination attempt. I found out details from the president when I returned from Saint-Cloud toward evening. This aggravates our extremely precarious situation. The plotter is said to be a certain Count Stauffenberg. I had already heard the name from Hofacker. This would confirm my opinion that at pivotal points the old aristocracy comes to the fore. Everything predicts that this act will generate appalling reprisals. It is getting more and more difficult to continue the masquerade. This led me to an exchange of words with a comrade this morning who called the event an “outrageous disgrace.” And yet I’ve been convinced for a long time that assassinations change little and improve nothing. I implied as much in a description of Sunmyra in The Marble Cliffs .

By the afternoon, the news had circulated among the insiders that the commander-in-chief had been relieved of his duties and ordered to Berlin. As soon as the news came from the Bendlerstrasse, [166] Bendlerstrasse: address of the German ministry of war in Berlin. he had all the SS and the intelligence officers arrested and then had to free them again after he had reported to Kluge in La Roche-Guyon and there was no longer any doubt that the assassination had failed. “Had the huge snake in a sack and then let it out again,” as the president put it in a state of high agitation when we were consulting behind closed doors. The dry businesslike nature of the act is astonishing—the basis for his arrest was a simple phone call to the commander of Greater Paris. He was probably concerned that no more heads should roll than absolutely necessary, but that makes no difference to authorities like these. On top of that there was the completely incompetent Colonel von Linstow as chief of staff—a man with stomach problems who had been clued in shortly beforehand and was invaluable for his technical abilities; now he is seen slinking around the Raphael like a ghost before he disappears. If only my old NCO Kossmann were still in charge; at least he would have done what is expected of an officer on the General Staff, namely, verified the reliability of the reports. In addition there is Rommel’s accident on 17 July, [167] Although Berlin issued a report of Rommel’s supposed automobile accident in Normandy, the field marshal actually sustained severe wounds and a concussion from a fighter attack. which removed the only pillar that could have provided meaningful support for such an effort.