The Ice Museum (20 page)

‘Could someone have attended meetings without realizing what the Thule Society was really about?' I asked.

‘Unlikely,' she said, briskly. ‘Sebottendorff used to give lectures blaming the Jews for the revolution in Bavaria. He spoke like this: “Our order is a German order. . . . Our God is Walvater; his rune is the Ar-rune. The Ar-rune means Aryan, primal fire, the sun, the eagle.” A few years later this was the sort of language used by the SS. And later there was an element of planning that went on at these meetings.'

After Eisner's death the elected government fled, replaced for a short time by a collection of anarchists and afterwards by Communists, who declared Bavaria a Soviet republic. There were skirmishes between Freikorps soldiers and the Bavarian Soviets, and the Thule Society had links with the Freikorps. Their offices were raided, and some Thule Society members were captured and shot by the Communists in April 1919. Sebottendorff hailed them as martyrs; he later claimed they were the first people to die in the cause of Nazism.

The Thule Society began to decline, even as its members prospered. One of the founders of the German Workers' Party, Karl Harrer, was a Thule Society member, but once he created his own group he left the Sebottendorff circle. By the late 1920s Thule Society members were a mere handful, and by 1930 the society had disintegrated entirely. Sebottendorff lost influence over the Thule
Leute
, and was dropped by his own members. He disappeared in the 1920s, roaming around the world again, as he had done as a younger man. He was bitter about their betrayal even in 1933, when he published his autobiographical account,
Before Hitler Came,
long after the Thule Society had become irrelevant. I had read his autobiography in the Bavarian State Library, a book printed in a typescript so Gothic the words seem to be trying to contort themselves off the pages. Sebottendorff's writing style was littered with archaisms, sudden explosions into ranting and blatant exaggeration. ‘The Thule People died as the first sacrifices for the Swastika,' he wrote. ‘The Thule people were those to whom Hitler first came, and the Thule People were those with whom Hitler first allied himself.' Sebottendorff struggled to prove he had created Nazism, listing the key Nazis who had formerly been Thule
Leute
. In Sebottendorff's version of history the Thule Society had been cruelly cast aside as the German Workers' Party became more powerful. With his self-hagiography, Sebottendorff tried to airbrush himself into history.

Sebottendorff's insistence on the origin of all things Nazi in the Thule Society was an unwise political move by 1933. The second edition of his book was confiscated by the Nazis; he was arrested by the SS, and encouraged to leave Germany. He disappeared on another global tour, arriving in Turkey, where he stayed.

‘Sebottendorff lived out the war in Istanbul,' said Ursula. ‘At least that's what I think. He drowned in the Bosphorus on 9 May 1945, shortly after the end of the war. Most likely he had killed himself.' She stubbed out the cigarette. ‘You would, I suppose, if you had supported the Nazis in everything, even after they cast you out. If you believed, really believed, that you had created the movement which had died in the dust of Berlin. And he knew there was nothing for him once Nazism was over. His life was over. Ironically, you might call him one of Hitler's most loyal supporters, though Hitler had discarded him.'

We shook hands in the beer garden, squinting at each other in the brightness. ‘You could go to the Residenz,' said Ursula. ‘The riches are amazing. You see what the Nazis coveted; you see their longing for castles and palaces.' She walked away. As she pushed through into the beer hall, the sound of cheers and roars echoed around the cloisters, then the door swung back again and the sound died.

 
The sun was fading when I reached the Residenz. As the sky became sallow I walked through the Hofgarten, a small palace park. There was a Diana temple in the centre, where a lone busker was playing the violin. I trod on gravel, passing low hedges and pruned trees. There was a fence, its posts shaped like treble clefs, running through the park. The steady sound of footsteps echoed around the cloisters. The Residenz complex was being built as early as the fourteenth century, and a long line of prince-electors and later kings contributed their designs to its shape. After Maximilian IV Joseph declared Bavaria an independent kingdom at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the palace became increasingly opulent. Much of it was the work of Leo von Klenze, working through the nineteenth century, taking his influences from neoclassicism. The Wittelsbachs left it all behind at the end of the First World War. The last Wittelsbach king left Munich even before Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated from the German throne in Berlin. The Wittelsbachs tripped down the stairs of their stone palace, past the stylish trompe l'oeil designs, abandoning rooms of family treasure and luxurious suites furnished with classical statues, moving through their dark courtyards, the stonework casting grotesque shadows. They closed the doors and left the palace to the crowds.

The Residenz swiftly became a museum. The National Socialists left it alone even as they began the building of ‘temples' and monuments throughout Munich. But the war destroyed the place; in 1944 the Residenz was gutted by fire after a bombing raid on the city.

Inside, the restored rooms were vast treasure chambers. The ceilings gaped. There was a grotto with thousands of seashells stuck into the stone and a bronze statue of Mercury at the centre. The vaulting of the hall showed faded paintings, traces of past finery, fragmented scenes from Ovid. The windows were scratched and ancient, twisting the light, warping the view of the courtyards. There was a lot of fine wood in the place: beautiful cabinets in rose-wood with a dozen secret compartments and tables decorated with intricate carvings and enamel pictures of Venice. In the Antiquarium, a long tunnel-like room, looking like an underground station with arched windows, there were classical busts lining the walls. The colours on the ceiling were subdued, because of damage during the Second World War, said a guide. But there were grotesque pairs of putti cavorting on the ceiling, and sketchy portraits of Bavarian cities and castles. The busts were of old Romans—a chronological series of imperial families. There were the wives, daughters and ancestors of Augustus, Gaius Julius Caesar's women, Nero's wives, the wives of Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian. Then there were the emperors, from Julius Caesar to Valerian, some of them with the names mixed up, a few losses sustained to the series. It was a grandiose piece of cataloguing, a decorative triumph for ambitious regional rulers. Among the emperors were random classical statues—a Hellenistic torso, a head of Hermes, a Diana with a broken nose, and an Aphrodite. There was a wooden fireplace, with the date of completion of the room carved onto it—1600—and the name of the man who finished it all, Duke Maximilian I.

There were rooms leading into further rooms, opulently decorated with trompe l'oeil ceilings, and pictures of Napoleonic battles. There was a portrait of Ludwig I, staring benevolently at his riches. There were rooms filled with plates, plates with Roman heads on them, plates with rustic scenes of girls under bowers and cherubs, plates with Bavarian views on them. Rooms full of gold and silver in cabinets, candlesticks and serving dishes, everything slightly tarnished. There were rooms decked in tapestries, showing hunting scenes in forests. There was an audience room, with its walls coated in portraits of worthy peasant labourers, scything crops and tending cattle like virtuous subjects. There were stone rooms, with their floors coated in marble and everything else in muted shades of grey and blue and dark red. There were painted allegories—of the four seasons, of the elements, of the universe, of the church. There had been a painted allegory showing man as the conqueror of nature, but it was destroyed in 1944. There were great empty tables, cold fireplaces, everything sealed off, guarded by figures in uniforms.

There were rooms kept in semi-darkness, covered with faded tapestries showing battles and high points in the history of the Wittelsbach family. There were rooms which were almost empty, their furniture lost, except for a single sumptuous object, like a table with carved lion paws and a bestiary of mythical winged creatures for decoration. There were suites full of tortoiseshell cabinets, there were rooms plastered with gold paint, their ceilings lavished with pictures of putti riding horses, putti riding lions, putti holding onto other putti, putti playing with hearts, putti gambolling in every florid way available. The quantity of treasure was hard to absorb; I found myself walking swiftly past jewel-encrusted cabinets and delicately restored furnishings, simply because it was impossible to stand solemnly in front of everything. In the family gallery the Wittelsbachs stared from their portraits, ringed around with gold paint. Straight-backed men in fur-lined robes, sporting hats and beards as fashions required, and their wives, staring out at the empty room.

I passed through these quiet rooms, past red and gold walls, thrones standing unoccupied, a royal bedroom with the bed sealed off by a golden fence, with a chandelier glinting in the centre, and a craven overload of gilt everywhere on the walls, around the mirrors, around the portraits, splashed across the ceiling. I passed into what had once been the royal apartments of Ludwig I and his queen. There were paintings on the walls of mythical creatures, sphinxes and griffins, and then monarchical battle paraphernalia. History and power, the message was clear from the faded walls of the royal apartments. The command of symbols and former myths. Ludwig I's throne room had been neatly restored, with red curtains suspended around the throne and the ceiling patterned in Greek motifs. The parquet floor was polished. The walls were coated with classical columns and stucco reliefs, showing figures from Homer and Hesiod and Pindaric athletes in competitions.

Ludwig I had established a collection of classical statues in Königsplatz, called the Glyptothek, one of the buildings Hitler took for his backdrop. I was thinking of the Glyptothek as I walked out of the Residenz, passing through a gallery of portraits of the royal house. The Glyptothek is crammed full of Greek and Roman sculptures, originals and copies. I had been there on an earlier trip to Munich, spending an afternoon in the rooms. Everything in the Glyptothek has been mutilated by the passage of time; the statues stand, compelling despite their cracks and broken limbs and the sense of creeping decay hanging over them. There's an almost complete statue of a sleeping faun from the third century B.C., with huge thighs and calves and a hand slung behind its head. One foot has gone, one arm has vanished, but the legs are perfect, delicately fashioned. There's a room filled with statues of headless women—an Aphrodite, an Athena, the folds of their robes still immaculate. In a room surrounded by heads and trunks there's a statue of the dead son of Niobe, from roughly the time Pytheas sailed. The figure lies on its back, footless and handless, frozen in a backwards arch of death.

They were the remnants, fragmented forms of an ancient version of beauty. I was thinking about these fragments as I walked back from the Residenz to my hotel. Shattered parts of the past, somehow preserved, even in this city where everything burned. In the Glyptothek there are the remains of a temple to Athena: the broken stones of a pediment, put back together again. Athena stands in the centre, determining the fate of men, surrounded by headless warriors, warriors sadly deprived of limbs, made up from bits and pieces, some of them nothing but a couple of shins and feet. It is a stark piece of symbolism: these warriors, represented by a few salvaged parts, reduced from portraits of physical perfection to synecdoche. The temple has been tacked together, left in a foreign museum, far from its original site.

 
 
In the kitsch inn by the marketplace, the bar was dark and empty when I arrived back. The cluttered bedroom seemed small and hot. I pushed the embroidered covers off the bed, and stood looking out of the window at the quiet streets. Bells chimed from the church towers. The stalls were packed up for the night, their flowers and fruit under plastic sheeting. I sat up in the hotel room. I was searching around on the Net, surfing through all the contemporary madness about Thule, madness of a Sebottendorff strain. There was a horde of contemporary racist societies lurking on the Internet, peddling a poisoned version of Thule. Typing in “Thule Society” released a wild array of lunatics in love with the past, the Nazi Age, as they saw it. A Thule Net had been set up, to foster cyber clusters of the rabid, struggling with the basics. The Thule Gesselschaft, they frothed on their sites, spelling everything wrong, was founded under the initiative of Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorf. The Thule Gessellschaft, they added, in the same article, beginning to grow more confused, was created by von Sebbotendorf in 1908 one site said, or 1910, said another, or 1919, said a further. The GREAT, the INVINCIBLE Von Sebetondof, they wrote—Sebettenduff was their hero, though they just couldn't quite remember his name—and in the name of the Thule Gessleschaft, they wrote, Sebetendorf bought the newspaper the
Vulkishcer Beabagger
. Thuel Gessollshlock was the mother of Nazism, they concluded, with learned authority. Then, casting aside even a failing attempt at the facts, they would lurch into the violence of desperate fantasy. Hitler could not be dead, they said, wiping their tears away; it was impossible. So, they imagined, at the end of the war, Hitler had escaped in an aeroplane to Thule, a place, they generally seemed to think, a few miles away from the North Pole. On this frozen island, Hitler had been living for fifty years, having evidently become immortal at some stage in his escape-flight, a gatecrasher, an intruder in the classical dreamland. Deprived of the audience he lived off—they seemed to have made a living hell for their hero, without intending it. In their legend, he became a lonely madman on an island, like the hermits the Irish clerics found in the far northern ocean. A tyrant standing on a rock, commanding the clouds.