Horst Goltz - My Adventures as a German Secret Service Agent

DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND

I impersonate a Russian Prince and steal a Treaty What the Treaty contained and how Germany made use of the knowledge.

GROSS LICHTERFELDE! As I write, it all comes back to me clearly, in spite of the full years that have passed this, my first home in Berlin. A huge pile of buildings set in a suburb of the city, grim and military in appearance; and in fact, as I soon discovered.

I was to become a cadet, it seems; and where in Germany could one receive better training than in this same Gross Lichterf elde?

At home I had had some small experience with the exactions of the gymnasium; but now I found that this was so much child's play in comparison with the life at Gross Lichterf elde. We were drilled and dragooned from morning till night: mathematics, history, the languages they were not taught us, they were literally pounded into us. And the military training! I am not unfamiliar with the curricula of Sandhurst, of St. Cyr, even of West Point, but I honestly believe that the training we had to undergo was fully as arduous and as technical as at any of those schools. And we were only boys.

Military strategy and tactics; sanitation; engineering; chemistry; in fact, any and every study that could conceivably be of use to the future officers of the German Army; to all of these must we apply ourselves with the utmost diligence. And woe to the student who shirked!

Then there was the endless drilling, that left us with sore muscles and minds so worn with the monotony of it that we turned even to our studies with relief. And the supervision! Our very play was regulated.

Can you wonder that we hated it and likened the Cadet School to a prison? And can you imagine how galling it was to me, who had come to Berlin seeking romance and found drudgery?

But we learned. Oh, yes! The war has shown how well we learned.

There was one relief from the constant study which was highly prized by all the cadets at Gross Lichterfelde. It was the custom to select from our school a number of youths to act as pages at the Imperial Court; and lucky were the ones who were detailed to this service. It meant a vacation, at the very least, to say nothing of a change from the Spartan fare of the school.

I must have been a student for a full three months before my turn came; long enough, at any rate, for me to receive the news of my selection with the utmost delight. But I had not been on service at the Imperial Palace for more than a few days when a State dinner was given in honour of a guest at Court. He was a young prince of a certain grand-ducal house, which by blood was half Russian and half German. I recall the appearance of myself and the other pages, as we were dressed for the function. Ordinarily we wore a simple undress cadet uniform, but that evening a striking costume was provided: nothing less than a replica of the garb of a mediaeval herald tabard and all for Wilhelm II. has a flair for the feudal. From my belt hung a capacious pouch, which, pages of longer standing than I assured me, was the most important part of my equipment; since by custom the ladies were expected to keep these pouches comfortably filled with sweetmeats. Candy for a cadet! No wonder every boy welcomed his turn at page duty, and went back reluctantly to the asceticism of Gross Lichterfelde.

That was my first sight of an Imperial dinner. The great banquet hall that overlooks the square on the Ufer was ablaze with lights. The guests the men in their uniforms even more than the women made a brilliant spectacle to the eyes of a youngster from the provinces; but most brilliant of all was Wilhelm II., resplendent in the full dress uniform of a field-marshal. I can recall him as he sat there, lordly, arrogant, yet friendly, but never seeming to forget the monarch in the host. It seemed to me that he loved to disconcert a guest with his remarks; it delighted him to set the table laughing at someone else's expense.

By chance, during the banquet, it fell to me to render service to the young Emperor. Once, as I moved behind his chair, a German Princess exclaimed, "Oh, doesn't the page resemble his Highness?"

The Kaiser looked at me sharply.

"Yes," he agreed , "they might well be twins." Then, impulsively lifting up his glass, he flourished it towards the Russo-German prince and drank to him.

That was all there was to the incident then. I returned to Gross Lichterfelde the next morning, and proceeded to think no more of the matter. Nor did it come to my mind when a few weeks later, I was suddenly summoned to Berlin, and driven, with one of my instructors, to a private house in a street I did not know. (It was the Wilhelmstrasse, and the residence stood next to Number 75, the Foreign Office. It was the house Berlin speaks of as Samuel Meyer's Bude in other words, the private offices of the Chancellor and His Imperial Majesty.)

We entered a room, bare save for a desk or two and a portrait of Wilhelm I., where my escort surrendered me to an official, who silently surveyed me, comparing his observations with a paper he held, which apparently contained my personal measurements. Later a photograph was taken of me, and then I was bidden to wait. I waited for several hours, it seemed to me, before a second official appeared a large, round-faced man, soldierly despite his stoutness who greeted my escort politely and, taking a photograph from his pocket, proceeded to scrutinise me carefully. After a moment he turned to my escort.

"Has he any identifying marks on his body?" he asked.

My escort assured him that there was none.

"Good!" he exclaimed; and a moment later we were driving back towards Gross Lichterfelde I quite at sea about the whole affair, but not daring to ask questions about it. Idle curiosity was not encouraged among cadets.

I was not to remain in ignorance for long, however. A few days later I was ordered to pack my clothing, and with it was transferred to a quiet hotel in the Dorotheenstrasse. The hotel was not far from the War Academy, and there I was placed under the charge of an exasperatingly exacting tutor, who strove to perfect me on but three points. He insisted that my French should be impeccable; he made me study the private and detailed history of a certain Russian house; and he was most particular about the way I walked and ate, about my knowledge of Russian ceremonies and customs in a word, about my deportment in general.

The weeks passed. At last, by dint of much hard work, I became sufficiently expert in my studies to satisfy my tutor. I was taken back to the house in the Wilhelmstrasse, where the roundfaced man again inspected me. He talked with me at length in French, made me walk before him and asked me innumerable questions about the family history of the house I had been studying. Finally he drew a photograph from his pocket the same, I fancy, which had figured in our previous interview.

"Do you recognise this face?" he inquired, offering me the picture.

I started. It might have been my own likeness. But no! That uniform was never mine. Then in a moment I realised the truth and with the realisation the whole mystery of the last few weeks began to be clear to me. The photograph was a portrait of the young Prince Z, my double, whom I had served at the banquet.

"It is a very remarkable likeness," said the round-faced man. "And it will be of good service to the Fatherland."

He eyed me for a moment impressively before continuing.

"You are to go to Russia," he told me. "Prince Z has been invited to visit his family in St. Petersburg, and he has accepted the invitation. But unfortunately Prince Z has discovered that he cannot go. You will, therefore, become the Prince for the time being. You will visit your family, note everything that is said to you and report to your tutor, Herr, who will accompany you and give you further instructions.