Christian is a secondary character in "Cold Peace" but he provides continuity from the earlier novels "Traitors for the Sake of Humanity" and "Where Eagles Never Flew." He personifies those conservative elements in German society that were no less vehemently anti-Nazi than the Social Democrats and just as proud of their traditions. These men were extremely important in shaping the character of the Federal Republic of Germany in the early post-war years. Christian is an amalgamation or synthesis of the survivors of the German Resistance who I had the honour to meet and come to know when researching my dissertation in the 1970s.
Excerpt 1:
“Herr Baron? Is it really you?” Theo Pfalz stood in the doorway of the apartment house on the Maybach Ufer 27 and stared incredulously. The young man opposite exuded health and fitness to an intimidating degree. Pfalz hadn’t seen a German looking this good — or this self-assured — since the end of the war. Christian Freiherr von Feldburg was in his mid-thirties, with rough blond hair and a well-proportioned face. He wore a tailored suit and a cashmere coat that was neither patched, ragged nor worn-thin, although by its cut it dated from the thirties.
“Yes, Pfalz, it’s me. May I come in?”
“Of course, Herr Baron!” Pfalz backed up into the entrance hall still gazing in wonder at the apparition opposite him. Christian stepped inside carrying two large, bulging, leather suitcases. “Do you plan to stay here, Herr Baron?” the concierge asked stunned.
“Where else should I stay in Berlin?” Christian countered with a raised eyebrow. “I own this apartment house.”
“Ah, yes, of course, Herr Baron, but there are refugees in your apartment. Nineteen of them.”
“So I heard. I’ll stay with my cousin, Graefin Walmsdorf. She’s on the top floor?”
“Yes, Herr Baron. On the right.”
“Good.” Christian took his heavy suitcases and started up the stairs. Halfway to the landing, however, he stopped abruptly and looked back. “Pflaz?”
“Yes, Herr Baron?”
“Were you here the night my brother…?”
“Yes, Herr Baron. When I heard the pistol shot, I knew what it was. I rushed upstairs, and since no one answered my knocking and shouting, I got the extra key and let myself in.”
“Then you were the one to find him?”
“Yes, Herr Baron.”
They gazed at one another, but neither seemed to want to go into greater detail. Then Theo added, “I removed his Ritterkreuz and his wedding ring because I thought the Frau Baronin might want them, but she never came back.”
“No, she couldn’t face this house.” Christian let his eyes sweep around the shabby entry hall with its tattered reminders of a better past.
“But she survived the war?” Theo asked hopefully.
“She did, yes. Frl. Moldenauer was able to bring her to a safe house — one of the places where people hid Jews, Communists and others in need of shelter from Nazi persecution.”
“Frl. Moldenauer? How did such an innocent young girl know about places like that?” Theo asked in astonishment.
Christian smiled cynically. “You forget, Pfalz. The young are more likely to have ideals — and be willing to die for them. It’s as we get older that we become jaded. Frl. Moldenauer, I was told, belonged to a clandestine network that provided Jews with forged documents.”
Although his puzzled frown did not fade, Theo nodded and asked, “Would you like your brother’s things? The ones I managed to save? I didn’t dare take many things. I knew the police were on the way and that the Gestapo would want to turn the apartment upside down in a search for evidence and to find the names of accomplices. Many things went missing in the process. It was theft, but there was nothing I could do to stop it.” Theo’s tone mixed indignation with a plea for understanding.
“Thank you for saving whatever you could, Pfalz — and for lying to the Gestapo about my sister-in-law’s whereabouts.”
“How did you know about that, Herr Baron?”
“My brother’s widow is now a prosecutor for the Americans at Nuremberg. She was able to obtain access to my brother’s Gestapo file and it was noted there that you, a staunch and loyal Nazi Party Member and SA man since before the Seizure of Power, had cooperated fully and willingly with the investigation. You were explicitly commended,” Christian emphasised, making Theo squirm, before adding, “except, as Alix noted, you lied about where she was and managed to forget many of my brother’s visitors. You had, she claims, a remarkable memory for the names of those already implicated, arrested or dead. She asked me to thank you for that, and, yes, I would like my brother’s wedding ring and Ritterkreuz — and whatever else you managed to rescue from the claws of the Gestapo. But not now. I’m tired and want to settle in. I’ll stop by sometime tomorrow or the next day.”
“Very good, Herr Baron.” Theo was visibly relieved, and he smiled tentatively. “It’s good to have you here, Herr Baron. It feels right.”
Christian thanked him but could not bring himself to pretend he was glad to be here. He wasn’t. To him, everything felt wrong. This was not the elegant, fashionable house he remembered. It was not warm and bustling with life. He could not imagine running into members of the Reichstag, professors, artists and opera singers on these steps. He could not picture the ladies in evening gowns and tiaras on the arms of men wearing white ties and top hats whom he had watched with childish wonder. Instead, the house felt like a rotting corpse, blood-stained, and soulless.
Readers who read and remember "Where Eagles Never Flew" or "Traitors for the Sake of Humanity" will recognize Christian. He is second son and middle child of Ferdinand and Sophia Maria von Feldburg. Always a little rebellious and unreliable, he was apt to get into scrapes and never quite lived up to expectations. His older brother Philip was the acolyte, the one with good grades in school, the one to enter a prestigious regiment, the one to get recommended for the General Staff. Christian on the other hand tried to sneak out mass, just scraped by in school, and refused to join the army altogether, preferring the newly formed Luftwaffe.
Yet Christian shares his brother's values. He is appalled by the Nazi's bigotry, corruption, cruelty, and lies. He recognizes no less than Philip that the Nazis are evil and that their policies are dangerous. He simply chooses escapism and mockery over outright resistance. His course was sometimes called "inner immigration" because it entailed not leaving the country physically, but emotionally separating himself from it. Believing there was nothing he could do to curb, much less bring down, the Nazis, he sought to enjoy life as much as possible by simply not thinking about them. He flew fast aeroplanes, he dated fast girls, he partied and drank a lot.
That didn't really change at the start of the war because the victories were intoxicating. But then came the Battle of Victory, the confrontation with what it meant to (as Philip reminds him) have "an idiot running the war." His ability to joke about the Nazis and to run away from reality seeps away. By mid-1943 he has had enough. He takes himself out of the war by landing at an improvised American airfield in the North African desert. His Me109 badly damaged and with a bleeding head wound, it is assumed -- and Christian allows everyone to assume -- that he was confused and made a mistake. In fact, he has made a conscious decision to survive the war.
After sitting out the rest of the war in an American POW camp -- drinking orange juice and eating eggs and bacon for breakfast every morning, he returns to a Germany more devastated than he could have imagined. The first couple of years after his repatriation are spent simply picking up the pieces: tracking down his nephew, who had been given a different name and give out to adoption by an SS couple after his brother's treason, giving refuges to his best-friend's French wife after she has been shaved and humiliated as a collaborator, nursing his mother back to health after her year-long sojourn in a concentration camp, kicking the Americans out of his house and getting the farm working again. Only now, in early 1948, has he turned his attentions to trying to make a living with a wine business.
Excerpt 2 In this excerpt, Christian has taken a sample of his wine to a potential customer, who lives in a large villa on the Wannsee:
Friedebach crossed to a sideboard to get some glasses, while Christian extracted the cork from the bottle. As he finished, he glanced over his shoulder to see where Friedebach was.
His breath caught in his throat.
Over the sideboard from which Friedebach was removing some crystal wine glasses hung a large, post-impressionist oil painting showing a Havel landscape with soft, blue water in the foreground. At the centre of the painting, two fine-boned, willowy, riding horses stretched out their necks to drink while their riders stood dismounted beside them. The riders were both young men in open-necked, white shirts, beige riding breeches and black boots. One of the riders, a handsome blond youth, looked straight at the observer with a faint yet self-confident smile on his lips; the other was dark, and his hair fell over his brow as he looked thoughtfully down at his horse.
Christian could neither move nor breathe.
Friedebach straightened and turned back towards him. He noticed the direction of Christian’s gaze, and remarked, “Nice painting, isn’t it?”
Christian knew he must control himself. He looked away and forced himself to focus on the lovely crystal glasses Friedebach set down on the table. Then letting out his breath slowly so Friedebach would not notice he had been holding it, he remarked as casually as he could, “Very nice indeed. Where did you get it?”
“Oh,” Friedebach waved his hand vaguely. “You know how it was in ’45. The Russians stole everything and anything. When I was given this house, it was completely plundered. I didn’t even have a bed to sleep in or a toilet to sit on. I complained to the SMAD. They had allotted it to me, after all; I felt they had a duty to make it liveable. A few days later they brought over several truckloads of furnishings dumped on top of each other like rubbish. Everything must have been stolen from somewhere else. Much was too badly damaged to be used, but some things were quite astonishing — like that painting. Why?”
“Do you know what the painting is?” Christian asked cautiously.
“Not really. Should I?”
Christian shrugged. “I suppose not, but I’m surprised you like it. It’s by a Jewish artist. Max Liebermann.”
“Really?” Friedebach’s eyebrows went up and he seemed to take a new interest in the painting. Then he asked sceptically, “You’re sure? It’s not what I would have expected of Jewish art.” A frown hovered around his eyebrows, and he looked more critically at his visitor.
“I’m absolutely sure what it is,” Christian answered with a touch too much steel in his voice.
Friedebach’s expression went from sceptical to suspicious. “How do you know?”
“Oh,” Christian gestured vaguely, “Once upon a time before the war and before I served the Fatherland, I moved in certain circles where art was appreciated. You may have forgotten, but Liebermann was once the President of the Preussiche Akademie der Kuenste; his paintings were popular among the upper classes.”
“Before the Fuehrer came to power and threw him out of the Akademie,” Friedebach concluded.
“Exactly. That painting was one of his last works. Painted when he was technically forbidden from working. It was a private commission and that’s why it’s not well known.”
“So how do you know so much about it?” Friedebach pressed him.
“I knew the man who commissioned it. If you don’t believe me, look at the back sometime. The title of the piece is “Watering the Horses,” and it was painted by Liebermann in 1934.” Conscious that if they discussed the painting much longer he might explode, Christian changed the subject. “Time to taste the wine.”
Friedebach sat down and waited while Christian poured his wine into one of the small glasses and handed it over.
Friedebach sipped it and held it in his mouth to taste it thoroughly before swallowing. “Not as bad as I expected,” he remarked condescendingly. Christian didn’t bother responding. He knew the quality of his wine. He smiled cynically and waited. Friedebach took a second sip and then shook his head. “It is too dry for my taste, I’m afraid.” He set the glass down again.
Christian shrugged. “Well, tastes differ.” He took the cork, re-inserted it in the bottle and prepared to pack the bottle away in his briefcase again.
Friedebach leaned back in his chair and shook his head bemused. “I hope you were a better fighter pilot than salesman, Feldburg. Aren’t you going to try to change my mind?”
“No. Why should I? I don’t need your business. I can find other customers, who do recognize quality wine when they taste it.” The bottle was back in his case. Christian stood and reached for his coat.
Friedebach watched, assessing him with sharp suspicious eyes, but Christian managed to maintain a façade of perfect indifference. He held out his hand. “No need to see me out. I can find my way. Have a good day, Herr Dr Friedebach.”
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