Homage to a Broken Man: The Life of J. Heinrich Arnold - Plough

Revolution16One weekend the family arrived to see laundry waving from a line thatsomeone had erected above their garden. Eberhard strode to the shed andknocked. The door opened and Max, an anarchist acquaintance who sometimescame to his lectures, appeared.“What a surprise to find you here!” said Eberhard, slightly taken aback, butextending a hand.“But Dr. Arnold, everyone knows you are opposed to private property. Andso…we’ve moved in!”Eberhard smiled and did not object. But since Max had brought along ayoung woman who was not his wife, the children were forbidden to visit thegarden plot as long as the squatters continued to live there.Meanwhile the Arnold’s own home looked less and less like a respectabletown house. Open evenings ceased as a once-a-week event and became a wayof life. Now the black-clad pious people rarely came. Replacing them were anew kind of guest: homeless war veterans and former prostitutes trying to gettheir lives back together. And, of course, Wandervögel, or “birds of passage,”as Youth Movement hikers were known. Hand-kissing and formal titles weregone; everyone simply used first names. When the weather was good, theguests took over the front lawn. Sometimes they danced; sometimes they invitedHeiner, Hardy and Emi-Margret to play circle games with them. Best ofall, they often stayed the night, sleeping on dining room chairs or on the sofasin the drawing room.Street fighting flared up again in March 1920 during the Kapp Putsch, acoup by rightist factions in the army. The workers’ parties responded witha general strike, and soldiers and paramilitaries traded fire. One day duringthe worst of the violence, Lieutenant Helmut von Macke, a highly decoratedmarine officer, telephoned to say he was coming to visit. He appeared at thedoor shortly afterward and, over coffee, asked Eberhard to take on the newDepartment of Youth that the rebel government planned to establish. Eberharddeclined: “My calling is a different one.” Then, as the crisis played out,Homage to a Broken Man