The Spider's Web

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To appreciate this book, we have to place it in its historical situation, namely, early Weimar Germany. Joseph Roth wrote this book in 1923, perhaps prior to Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch (November 9-11, 1923), and certainly prior to the trial and imprisonment of Hitler, and the writing of Mein Kampf. Interestingly, Roth does make a major point of his characters' involvement in some kind of conspiracy with a target date of early November a point in his book. Was that a foreshadowing of a coming Beer Hall Putsch? Or was Rot simply playing off of the Kapp Putsch of March, 1920?

The story is nothing less than the story of the radical corruption of a human being by the circumstances of history. The central character of the story is Theodore Lohse. Lohse starts out as a decent, if second-rate individual, with a propensity for corruption and opportunism. With the Great War ended, Lohse has been mustered out of the army as a Lieutenant. He lives a withdrawn and alienated life, studying law and working as a tutor for a Jewish family. He lives with his family, but has no real connection with them. In fact, Roth points out that they are ashamed or discomforted by his survival of the War; if he had died, they would have received a pension rather than being forced to accommodate an superannuated survivor.

Lohse gets his first break when he is invited to see the Prince at a reunion of his regiment. He apparently has a homosexual tryst with the Prince, and uses that connection to open certain doors. One door that is opened is a right-wing German secret society, the Bismarck Bundt, that engages in spying, assassination and other crimes under a murderous oath of secrecy. In short order, Lohse progresses through the ranks by opportunistically arranging murders, perjuring himself, betraying friends, oppressing workers and self-promoting himself above even his limited capacities.

It is fair to say that Lohse is an evil man.

However, Roth's treatment of Lohse is strangely dispassionate. Lohse does evil things, but does not reflect on the evil that he does with any particular horror or guilt, albeit there is guilt there, as we see when he has the occasional fit of hysteria at the thought of some of his victims reaching out for him. For the most part, though, Lohse comes across as a foreshadowing of Eichmann, as a person who is playing the game by the rules of the game without being particularly concerned by any transcendent morality (except when he fantasizes that he is being accused by the dead.)

As a literary project, I did not find the book itself to be of much interest. Roth's writing is crisp. Information is conveyed efficiently. Some of his prose is quite elegant. However, we never get below the surface of the character's minds and intentions. The story itself does not have an ending. Lohse has befriended a Jewish agent-provocateur, found that friend spying on him, and is contemplating having that person killed. The erstwhile friend gives money to his brother to leave Germany and indicates that he might also leave Germany.

And, there, the story ends.

There is no come-uppance for Lohse, who is now “Head of Security” of, I think, Prussia. We don't find out what happens to the friend.

Of course, in 1923, this may be a fitting conclusion to this story. The story is about the secret societies that did exist in Germany during the Weimar Republic. These societies were involved in their internecine struggles, sometimes helping this political party or that, thinking that they were using the political parties as pawns, when the opposite was true.

The chronology of the book is unclear. It obviously, opens in 1919, but it is hard to keep track of the years that go by after that. The great “November” conspiracy might have been 1923 or it might have been 1920. I wasn't clear if Lohse's promotion to Head of Security was supposed to happen in the mid-to-late 1920s.

I am assuming that Roth's had experience with the nebulous political underground as a leftwing reporter in Berlin at this time. There are two interesting aspects to this book. The first is the number of Jews who are wrapped up on this nationalist German secret society. Lohse is a conventional anti-semite, but his early mentor in the secret society, Dr. Trebisch, is Jewish as are his associates when he is Head of Security.

Another interesting feature is the injection of an example of nationalistic anti-Catholicism:

“It hurt him that all his activities must remain anonymous. And as the strength of his convictions diminished, so he widened the scope of his artificial hatreds: he now spoke not only against the workers and the Jews and the French, but also against the Catholics, those Romans. His gang raided the hall in which the Catholic writer, Lambrecht, was speaking.Theodor sat in the front row. Over his head flew sentences from some lien, incomprehensible language. But one word registred, the word “Talmud”. It impinged on Theodor's half-dormant conscience. He whistled, and forty large members of his mob dived into the audience. Theodor screamed “Jew! Roman! at Lambrecht.” (p. 41.)

Another passage:

“Self important men spoke in Parliament, Ministers yielded to their civil servants and became their prisoners. Public prosecutors drilled with the storm troopers. Judges broke up public meetings. Wandering nationalist speakers hawked thunderous platitudes. Cunning Jews counted money, poor Jews were persecuted. Pastors preached murder, priests swung cudgels, Catholics became suspect, parties lost supporters. Foreign tongues were hated.” (p. 72.)

This seems authentic in light of the fact that the bishops of Germany were excommunicating member of the National Socialist Party at the time. Likewise, there was a long tradition of political anti-Catholicism in Germany. In addition, Ludendorff is a personality in this book. He is mentioned as an off-stage personality, Lohse writes him a letter, and he actually comes into the book as a character. Ludendorff was, of course, virulently anti-Catholic.

On the other hand, there are perhaps two mentions of the Nazis. Hitler gets mentioned in one paragraph:

“He went to the recruiting offices. how they poured in! Young labourers, office workers. Different material from Theodor's schoolboys. Therw were more trusting, more easily worked on, afire before they came and white-hot if they were accepted. Hitler was a menace. Was Theodor Lohse a menace? The newspapers spoke of Hitler every day. When did one see Theodor's name.” (p. 53.)

Before I learned that Roth wrote the Spider's Web in 1923, I thought this might have been a scene from 1930. Now, I think it must have been referring to 1922, before the ban on the Nazi party.

A final point has to do with Lohse's corruption. On the one hand, Roth implies that Lohse's initial problem is the stifling of his limited ambition when he is mustered out of the army in 1919. Lohse feels the loss of the dignity and respect he was given as an officer. On the other hand, it seems that Lohse was always corrupt. He always envied the Jewish student who did better than him. We also learn later in the book that as a student he had embezzled money raised to buy a wreath, something which Lohse extolls as evidence of his ability to save money. We also learn early about his looting something during the war. So, it seems that he had a propensity to be the man he became, but that the circumstances of the time played to those characteristics.

I liked the book as a glimpse of life during the Weimar republic. I would recommend it on that basis.