Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman (13 page)

In 1932, Otto Albert Hirschmann graduated from the Collège. His gymnasium degree was a major accomplishment and an index of status, especially coming from one of Germany’s best schools. With his grades, Otto Albert had a ticket to pursue further studies. The question was,
where and what? Medicine was ruled out; Carl may have wanted his son to follow in his footsteps, but he could see in his preference for courses at the gymnasium that Otto Albert’s passions lay elsewhere. It is likely that Ehrmann helped shape his choices, if only by example. He had studied law and economics. What Hirschmann could not count on, for the first time in his life, was parental approval. The decision to study economics was not greeted with much enthusiasm. They explained that it was “a breadless art”—to which their son replied, with his tongue already in cheek, that it was precisely the power to explain shortages and abundances of bread that made it such an important discipline. For the time being, the conflict could be muted, for economics was taught within the law faculty of the University of Berlin, and Carl and Hedwig could hope that their son would emerge a talented and successful lawyer.
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Moreover, the Depression was on Hirschmann’s mind; it was hard to avoid, and Otto Albert was, if nothing else, already a fine observer. Not only did the jobless rate hit one-third when he graduated, but his family’s own finances, while not ruined, were crippled. The buoyancy of the 1920s, admittedly floating on an influx of American dollars and bank lending, gave way to a profound slump and thus destroyed the legitimacy of the republic. To Hirschmann, economics had the appeal of explaining the crisis around him while offering a more analytical distance from politics; he preferred to keep his politics contained to his, admittedly demanding, involvements with the SAJ. If economics was his inclination, where to pursue this interest was beyond doubt: the University of Berlin. Eventually renamed the Humboldt University of Berlin in 1949, partly to give it a new lease after years of complicity with the Third Reich, it had been the paragon of Enlightenment pursuit from Hegel and Schiller to Einstein and Max Planck. Its large buildings with classical façades, open squares, and stacked libraries captivated the young Hirschmann, and its peerless status removed some of his parents’ reservations. That students could wander past the windows from which Hegel once gazed only added to the institution’s aura.

But by the time he started his new pursuits, the university was roiled by conflict. Already, universities around Germany were becoming hot-beds
of support for Hitler, with fascist students harassing liberal and leftist professors, and not a few faculty heralded them. The German Student Association (Deutsche Studentenschaft) rampaged against signs of “un-German spirit” and welcomed Nazi speakers to their rallies. It was these students who stormed the University of Berlin’s magnificent library in May 1933 and proceeded to ignite tens of thousands of volumes at the Opernplatz, in front of the law faculty and around the corner from Hegel’s old office. It is hard to say how much actual “studying” Otto Albert conducted during his sojourn at the University of Berlin. It was extremely brief, affiliated with the Institute for Political Science and Statistics under the wing of the School of Law and Political Science for one semester, the winter of 1932–33. This was, to be sure, a fairly esoteric and probably quite isolated unit within the university’s general focus on law, the humanities, and the natural sciences. Still, Hirschmann sought it out. His courses focused on classical political economy, under the aegis of “Political Science Tutorial.” He was applauded for his oral and written reports, “The Critique of Smith’s Doctrine of Money and Capital through Marx” and “The Limits and Scope of Ricardo’s Labor Theory of Value.” Beyond this, we know little of his studies, which appear to have focused on deep background readings in classical political economy and on the pamphlets he was reading in the SAJ study groups.
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Whatever career he initiated at the University of Berlin was overwhelmed by the demise of the republic. The underlying compromise that held the Weimar regime together did not just collapse. It was destroyed by those who never believed in it and those who lost faith in it. The Hirschmanns could not be counted in either camp.

Nor did they see the catastrophe coming. There has been a debate among historians about just how predictable the Third Reich was. The current thought is that Hitler’s triumph and consolidation depended as much on the shrewdness with which he played the political system as on the haplessness and denial of his democratic opposition before then. To be sure, there were plenty of explanations for the crisis of both the economy and the political system, but few could anticipate the brutality of what came later. Increasingly, the votes went to the extremes. The Communists
inched into Socialist support. Germans went to the polls in a flurry of chaotic and highly mobilized elections that did less and less to resolve the impasse and more and more to convince onlookers that the old order was beyond repair. In 1932, with Hirschmann in his final year of study, Germany endured two Reichstag elections, two presidential runoffs, and a welter of local elections and watched three chancellors come and go. In July of that year, when the young Hirschmann had graduated and was devoting himself to full-time militancy and left-wing study, the Nazis took 37 percent of the vote to become the largest party, with 230 delegates, in the Reichstag. This was a staggering blow to democrats. It heightened the internal feuding among Socialists and crippled the resistance to martial law.

In the spiral that swept Otto Albert into political life, the family also had to grapple with undeniable signs of rising right-wing intolerance. Still, there was an effort to buoy the faith of assimilated Jews who were committed to the republic’s pluralism. Hitler may have invented nothing in his reactionary ideology, but for the Hirschmanns, poring over their newspaper, listening to the news, or gossiping among friends, his performance at the polls was seen as ephemeral. Everything was happening so fast. Seen from the sanctuary of home, the Nazis were, if anything, risible. The rotund Hermann Goering, covered with medals, was called “roly-poly.” The shifty, promiscuous, club-footed Josef Goebbels was a favored butt of jokes. But hopes that this would all pass became even stronger after January 1933.
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Behind the scenes, the manipulation and posturing between factions on the Right brought to the fore persistent doubts about whether Germany should be a tolerant meritocratic nation as well as the reserve of hatred for the reforming republic. Socialists were paralyzed by the pace of events and the cynicism with which conservatives abandoned republican principles; to Communists this merely confirmed the fundamentally autocratic nature of capitalism, so now steps should be taken to prepare the proletariat for revolution. On January 30, Paul von Hindenburg, the president and World War I hero whose own commitment to Weimar constitutionalism was little more than a formality, brokered the creation of
a new cabinet of conservatives with Hitler to serve as chancellor; while the coalition members despised each other, they did agree to collude in the demolition of the republican state. Hitler rushed to his headquarters and told Goebbels with tears in his eyes, “Now we are on our way.” The accelerated collapse of the Weimar era only compounded the confusion for a young militant trying to keep his bearings. Upon hearing the news of Hitler’s ascent to the chancellorship, Otto Albert put on his uncle’s old green suit, grabbed his bicycle, and rode into the rainy Berlin night. Desperate to find out what the left-wing parties were doing to shore up the republic, he raced to the main SPD and Communist headquarters. Was there going to be a general strike? Would the Social Democrats abandon the policy of “tolerance?” Ursula caught up with him at the Communist headquarters, the Karl Liebknecht Haus, and remembered the look on his face as he leaned on his bicycle looking up at the brightly lit top floor of the building where the central committee was gathering: “He looked at the imposing building hoping for a sign of what to do next, and I was there, watching him, and now loved him more than any other person in the world. I understood that he suffered and that he had a more profound sense than me of the seriousness of the moment.”
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What the teenagers witnessed were shock and paralysis. The vaunted Red Berlin was a paper tiger. That night, the new era came upon them with massive torchlight parades down Berlin’s avenues, huge rallies of triumphant fascists, and the throb of Nazi chants. Troopers in their brown shirts and Schutzstaffel (SS) men in their black leather marched through the very heart of the Tiergarten itself to the Brandenburg Gate and stopped before the Reichstag, where Hitler greeted them from a balcony.

When Hindenburg asked Hitler to form the new government, many thought it would last no more than a year. But History being what it is, Hitler’s maneuver broke the cycle, though only hindsight enables the observer to see that the National Socialists were a very different breed than the hapless reactionaries who had colluded to share power with them. Nazis dominated the screaming headlines, and their thugs patrolled the streets and broke up rallies, keeping Carl and Hedwig up all night fearing for OA and Ursula’s safety. On February 27, the Socialists had called for
a mass rally at the Sportpalast. It was to be the largest—and last—such gathering. Otto Albert and Ursula went and watched as the seams of the Socialist movement came apart: wait or confront, let the government implode or bring it down, let the threat pass or resort to armed resistance? The leadership dug in its heels: Hitler was a mere demagogue, it insisted; he was doomed to fail. More-radical militants jeered and bellowed from the seats: they must take action! When the rally was over, despondent Socialists filed out of the arena only to be greeted by columns of police and storm troopers. By that time it was evening. As Otto Albert, Ursula, and friends made their way home, shouting broke out in the streets, the crowds pushed and yelled. Over Berlin’s rooftops, something lit up the night sky. Otto Albert looked up to see smoke plumes rising against the crimson horizon. Then came the flames, creating dark silhouettes out of the mounted policemen.
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Soon came the riptide of rumors: the Reichstag was burning!

“Things did not change fundamentally,” recalled Hirschman, “until the Reichstag fire, which really marked the beginning of the political horror.”
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The next day, the chancellor, alleging a Red uprising, issued emergency decrees abolishing fundamental rights and promising harsh punishments for anyone threatening the health of the Reich. Four thousand Sturmabteilung (SA) troopers scattered across the city to begin roundups. Eventually, all opposition parties were banned and assemblies forbidden; left-leaning newspapers closed shop. In one night the pretext was laid for abolishing the political culture and institutions in which OA and his mates had immersed themselves. Not surprisingly, such a radical change to the rules of the political game was utterly bewildering to those on the ground, no matter how much “theoretical” reading they had done.

The stage was set for a final campaign by Socialists. With Communists by then out of the chamber and Catholics caving to Hitler, it fell to the hobbled SPD to try to stop the Nazi juggernaut. Hitler proposed a law that would allow him to govern for four years without constitutional constraints, legislation needing a two-thirds majority from the parliament. Socialist activists met in homes, union halls, and universities to debate how to get the message beyond private circles in the absence of
a free press or public assemblies. Duplicating machines were the tool of preference, but they posed an additional question—where to keep them? For Hirschmann’s SAJ group, the solution presented itself in the form of an Italian philosophy student, Eugenio Colorni, who had spotted the attractive Ursula at the library of the University of Berlin. At the time, he was working on a thesis on Leibnitz with a well-known Leibnitz specialist, Erich Auerbach, at the University of Marburg. Ursula and Otto Albert plucked up the courage to ask Colorni to keep a printing machine in his room in a hostel in Charlottenburg. There they could compose their broadsheet; since he was a foreigner, the Nazis would not suspect his involvement. Thus began a formative influence; for a short while, until Colorni returned to Marburg, his hotel room “became a nerve center for antifascist activities and publications” in the final weeks of the new regime’s consolidation.
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Socialist militants fanned out to the streets, their bags full of leaflets, urging people to rally to the opposition of the new bill. Otto Albert joined small cells of activists for safety. They would go the top of apartment buildings and work their way down floor by floor, leaving leaflets under tenants’ doors and talking to whomever they could. Working from top to bottom made it easier to flee in case they were sighted by the police or brownshirts. Amid paranoia about moles and break-ins, Hirschmann’s group worked furiously to embolden the party to resist the legislation, hoping they could spoil the gambit. On March 23, the parliament met in the Kroll Opera House. Outside, storm troopers surrounded the building, taunting and threatening Socialist Deputies who dared enter. The police intercepted and even arrested some of the deputies, one was pummeled, and others started packing their bags in preparation to flee. That night, 448 approved of Hitler’s request; only 94 Socialists were able to stand up and have their negative votes counted as storm troopers patrolled the aisles barking at them.
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In a matter of weeks, fear replaced confusion. Bristling with their laws, the Nazis ravaged the opposition. Arrest campaigns followed. There were so many detained that the government opened its first concentration camp at Oranienburg, 35 kilometers north of Berlin. Nazis seized
Bertolt Brecht’s personal address book and used it as a guide to expand their net. Otto Albert’s rowing partner, schoolmate, and brother to his first amour, Peter Franck, found himself arrested and also had his address book confiscated. One by one, Peter’s friends and associates were rounded up. Everything had now changed for OA.