Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

Otherwise the new Consul was a fine fellow. The Führer handed him a billy club for “monitoring” the Germans on the island — I’ll say it in Nietzsche’s words — with a blast of trumpets and with the connivance of the sheep, the jackass, the goose and everything else that was incurably stupid and loud-mouthed and ripe for the booby hatch of the Great Modern Idea.

Meanwhile, Martin Heidegger had added a new dimension of “submission to the fate” of his “being on hand” of existence by genuflecting before the Führer . And Thomas Mann, who had left Germany for good, sat in his villa on the shore of Lac Léman, taking good care of both of his aspects, as ter Braak put it: that of the artist and that of the bourgeois. There was quite a stir over the fact that he let his newest books appear in the S. Fischer publishing house in Berlin. With Heidegger we at least knew what the man was about. But with Thomas Mann? Few people understood, and nor did I.

Dr. ter Braak had given up his university chair to accept an appointment in The Hague as Henri Borel’s successor as arts-and-literature editor for the prestigious newspaper Het Vaderland . He became one of the sharpest and cleverest opponents of the National Socialist doctrine of rancor, and over time earned a name for himself as a cultural philosopher. His books could no longer appear in Germany, nor could he himself — he would have been put to the sword. Busy with my Patucos and Uluas, I had forgotten that some of my translations from Dutch and Spanish, plus certain other literary jetsam, were languishing in German publishers’ desk drawers. As soon as the Führer blew reveille, the troops mobilized for the Big Clean-Up. Publishers rushed to “coordinate” themselves, and Vigoleis was either returned to the sender or, in the form of manuscript, immolated in the mini-Auschwitz of the editor’s office.

The first volume of Thomas Mann’s Egyptian Tales was published by S. Fischer in Berlin. The book found its way to the Vaderland to be reviewed, and ter Braak sent it over to his local Amsterdam specialist for German literature, Dr. F. M. Huebner. The latter refused to review a book by a writer whose works were still appearing in Germany, but who was complaining about the Führer in foreign lands. Huebner was afraid he would be shot if he took on this prickly assignment. The Nazis gave no quarter. No one wants to get shot.

Ter Braak found a way to get what he wanted. He remembered his German translator on Mallorca, and sent him a telegram: would you be willing to send us reviews of books by German emigrants? I telegraphed back in the affirmative. I soon received a long letter explaining all the technical details of my cooperation. Ter Braak suggested that I choose a pseudonym to avoid getting shot. I agreed. Thus I opened up a little market stand at Het Vaderland under the innocuous name “Leopold Fabrizius.” I wrote down exactly what I thought about every book and author that was sent to me. I didn’t think very much of several of these, and I said so. Writers don’t care a fig for what reviewers have to say, but publishers like to hear praise in superlatives; it makes good copy for blurbs. With certain other authors, I thought to myself, what a shame it was that the German emigration has nothing better to offer, and that some writers were being published simply because they were anti. Again and again I had to deal squarely with the problem of love for the fatherland, the homeland. How ridiculous such a feeling was, and how dangerous! Where does “the fatherland” begin? When is it synonymous with “home”? And when is it synonymous with — us?

Deported and emigrated writers were now everywhere, sharing the fate of a Heinrich Heine, a Ludwig Börne, and a Gracias a Dios. They wrote, and they kept on writing.

Again and again, the books I reviewed presented me with the opportunity for digressions about general human affairs. But what I wrote got interpreted politically. If I wrote that Hitler was guilty of crimes against humanity, the tritest expression of truth imaginable, I was wrong, and the editor scratched it out. Ter Braak then quickly sent me his apologies. He himself would have let it pass, but his Vaderland could not countenance any dishonoring of the head of state of a friendly nation. The Pope, too, was apparently among the infallibles, for when I was sent a novel that provoked me into making certain statements about a Concordat that drove millions of unsuspecting Catholics into the arms of the Führer , this too was excised. I’ll admit that I expressed my opinion not in clever paraphrase, but in clear language: the Holy Father was handling his Divine Lord’s monstrance as if it were a sputino , and acting with authentic Roman grandezza . It was censored out. I was told that I ought to have circumlocuted on this subject, in the style of Loyola — surely I could emulate that kind of prose. This may not have been the way for me to write, but it was definitely the way to act. Today I would no longer make such mistakes. I have learned a few things in the meantime, though not all that much.

Until May 1940, signing on as “Leopold Fabrizius,” I kept open my stand on the Dutch Vaderland market square, sending in chronicles from Spanish, Swiss, French, and Portuguese “soil.” My comments were always edited — apparently the mesh on my muzzle was always too wide. I forgot one thing: the Third Reich was a huge market for Dutch vegetables. Mr. van Beverwijn, the colonist, having got rich on sub-humans, was of the opinion that if Holland made the Führer angry — then what was to be done with all the cauliflower? The editors had no need to censor my final book review — that was taken care of by the friendly Dutch nation itself. And since the nation in question is known for its meticulousness, no one in Holland was surprised that their whole country got censored. Vigoleis-Fabrizius, who never considered himself intelligent, thought to himself: were the Dutchmen really so stupid? No, they were no more stupid than the French or the British. It’s just that their market for vegetables was bigger than they were.

Before Menno ter Braak could be snagged by the Nazis, he took his own life, on the day in May of 1940 when the greatest consumer of Royal Dutch vegetables completely turned the tables on his neighboring country.

The Consul kept picking at me. Our relationship was reciprocal: I was a Leader for his tours, and yet he wanted to lead me. He was dealing with a stubborn guy, one of those who resist their own chances at happiness. He sent observers to my house, and they reported to him that I had no secrets. Everything was displayed out in the open, the poverty as well as the political opinions. So then the Consul decided to issue warnings. He waxed paternal and, while maintaining diplomatic severity, he remained almost friendly. He also outlined certain plans for me. It was a shame, he said, that I was getting nowhere with all my latent talent. My strengths ought to be put to use for the national movement in Germany. After all, the Reich was not shabby in its preferences. Now wouldn’t that be grand, I said. The shabbiest of them all, refusing to be called shabby! My Spanish had become quite fluent, schooled as I was at tertulias , on flour sacks, and in daily converse with the Sureda family. One more reason, the Consul remarked, to place my tongue at the service of the Führer .

Instead, my tongue as well as my pen kept active against the Führer , with the result that our notions of what constituted hunger had to be expanded. In Germany, the Consul said, people would be put in jail for what I was up to, maybe even shot, and here on the island — he was warning me. He himself refrained from taking certain measures, but fellow party members, spies, and murderers were spread over all of Spain to rein in undesirable elements. And people were getting killed.