Final night with Das Ungeheuer
“The Monster”
Final night with Das Ungeheuer “The Monster”WE THE CURIOUS vol.2 no.10
Peter Drucker put off leaving Germany—“I did hope against hope”—until the dayhe attended the first Nazi-led faculty meeting at the university where he lectured ininternational law. “I went out sick unto death—and I knew that I would leaveGermany within forty-eight hours.”That night, drained, Drucker had just decided to go to bed and begin packing in themorning when he heard his doorbell ring. Outside was someone in the uniform of the Hitler storm troops. “My heart missed a beat,” he says. But it was onlyReinhold Hensch.Drucker didn't know Hensch well. They were both reporters for the samenewspaper, but Drucker was senior editor of foreign and economic news, whileHensch covered local politics. Drucker did know that Hensch had a lovely fiancé—“an outgoing, lively, effervescent young woman”—and that, despite it beingcompromising and subversive for a reporter on a nonpartisan paper, Hensch heldmembership cards in both the Communist and the Nazi parties. He said it was theonly way to get their local news.Hensch had heard about Drucker’s resignation and had stopped by to ask him toreconsider. Hensch now had the power, he said, to make Drucker editor-in-chief of the paper. Drucker remembers Hensch telling him: “I've spent most of the day at ameeting of the Nazi leadership in which I've been appointed adviser on the press tothe new Nazi commissar for Frankfurt…. I shan't keep the editor-in-chief verylong. He's a leftist and married to a Jewish wife who is also the sister of a Socialistdeputy. There would be a great opportunity for someone like you.” Hensch
encouraged Drucker to sleep on it. He then got up as if to go but sat down again.For five minutes Hensch was silent. When he spoke again, it was about his fiancé,Elise. He wanted Drucker's address abroad so that Elise could get in touch withhim when she, too, got out of Germany. “Of course, I had to break it off whenHitler came to power,” he told Drucker. “I moved out of the apartment we hadtogether, back to my parents, but I’ve paid the rent on the apartment until the endof March. I told Elise that she ought to get out of Germany as fast as possible. Butshe doesn’t know anyone abroad.” Drucker gave his parents’ address in Vienna,and Hensch relapsed into silence again.“My God,” he burst out at last, “how I envy you! I only wish I could leave—but Ican't. I get scared when I hear all that talk in the Nazi Party inner councils, and I dosit in now, you know. There are madmen there who talk about killing the Jews andgoing to war, and about jailing and killing anyone who holds a dissenting opinionand questions the Fuehrer's word.“It's all insane. But it frightens me. I know you told me a year ago that the Nazisbelieved these things and that I ought to take them seriously. But I thought it wasthe usual campaign rhetoric and didn't mean a thing. And I still think so. Now thatthey’re in power they’ll have to learn that one can't do such things. After all, this isthe twentieth century. My parents think so too; so does Elise. When I told her thatshe ought to get out of Germany she thought I was mad. And I probably am—theycan't mean these things and get away with them. But I’m beginning to be scared.”“If you feel that way,” Drucker remembers saying, “why don’t you leave? Youaren’t thirty yet and have no family that depends on you. You have a decent degreein economics and won’t have any trouble finding work.”
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Final night with Das Ungeheuer “The Monster” | WE THE CURIOUS vol.2 no.10
"Don’t you understand that I want power and money and to be somebody?"
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