But during all this time he was poor, supporting himself on the meagre grants from his family (and particularly from his mother), on the money from his scholarships and on such small sums as he could earn as a tutor and part-time secretary. As we have seen, at most of the universities he was excused the payment of fees, but a young man of his pride, not to say vanity, must have felt bitterly the social stigma of poverty.
He had also to learn to deal with his physical infirmity. He was very slight in build and his shoulders sloped steeply. He was little more than five feet tall and his weight was in the region of a hundred pounds. He walked with an unmistakable limp, but had become adept at disguising it. He had little money for either food or clothes, so he had to develop his social assets through the conscious development of his personality. He had two great advantages which he began to exploit very early in his life—his voice, which could be either caressing or powerful as he willed, and a certain magnetism in his looks.
His face was lean and oval, his nose pronounced and long, and his cheek-bones high. He had a wide, volatile mouth, with a charming smile that he used often. He had dark brown eyes that responded readily to emotion, but could be penetrating in their stare. He had beautiful hands, lean, well-veined and mobile, which he also learned to use as part of his self-expression. Coupled with the natural quickness of his intelligence, these assets in his looks were of great importance to him. Later on, as we shall see, many shrewd observers were to attempt to describe his character. In no sense was he either by appearance or mentality the popular conception of an ‘Aryan’ German. He was more Celtic or Romantic in appearance. He seemed a Latin rather than a Saxon in both temperament and mentality, as Professor Trevor-Roper has said. 7 Sir Nevile Henderson compared him to an Irish agitator with a Celtic manner. 8
Friedrich Goebbels
Maria Katherina Goebbels
The house in Rheydt where Goebbels was brought up.
Rheydt Gymnasium, 1916: left, acting in Die Quitzows by Wildenbruch; right, with members of the Sixth Form.
With Else and Alma, who wears a hat.
One of his earliest writings was a short novel called Michael, which he wrote in 1921 shortly after his graduation, but which was rejected by such publishers as Ullstein and Mosse to whom it was submitted until in 1929 Eher Verlag, the Nazi publishing house, found it good policy to print it. 9 Later the Eher Verlag let it run through a few small editions. It is an extraordinary novel from the literary point of view, yet without doubt it reveals to a considerable extent the attitude of Goebbels himself during the period he was a student.
When Michael was eventually published, Goebbels wrote a florid dedication to his college friend Richard Flisges, who had died six years earlier:
1918
Your wounded arm still in a sling, the grey helmet on your head and your chest covered with medals—that's how you faced those staid citizens to pass matriculation. They failed you because you didn't know some figures or other. They said you weren't mature yet.
OUR ANSWER WAS: REVOLUTION!
1920
We were both about to suffer spiritual breakdown and capitulate. But we helped each other up again and hardly faltered.
MY ANSWER WAS: SPITE!
1923
You challenged fate. Do or die! But the time was not yet and you must needs be victimised.
YOUR ANSWER WAS: DEATH!
1927
I stood at your grave. In gleaming sunlight a quiet green hillock. It spelled Mortality.
MY ANSWER WAS: RESURRECTION!
Flisges is to some extent a mysterious influence in Goebbels' life. He was a sick man who had been badly wounded in the war and decorated for his bravery. Yet he emerged from the struggle an anarchist unable to find a satisfactory way of life for himself. As the dedication to Michael shows, he failed his university matriculation in 1918. He turned to Marx and Engels, to Communism, to pacifism, to any