HINDENBURG.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 15, 18 January 1930, Page 15 (Supplement)

HINDENBURG.

LEGEND WOVEN ROUND HIM. MAN WHO HAS LIVED THREE LIVES. SAGA OF GERMANY'S PRESIDENT. Paul von Hindenburg, Commander-in-Chief of Germany's armies in the World War, is now two-thirds of the way through his seven-year term as President of the German Republic. Though more than 82, he is still hale and upstanding. He shows himself again and again in public, bowing—with a blend of dignity and severity all his own—to right and left of him. He unveils monuments, lays cornerstones, allows himself to be photographed. In short, he is very much alive, writes T. R. Ybarra in the New York "Times."

Yet, dlbspite tMs fact, a Hindenburg legend is growing up around liim—or, to put it better, since "legend" may connote untruthfulness —he is becoming, day by day, the centre of a Hindenburg saga. Usually heroes, of sagas have either not existed at all or they have had to die before sagas were woven around them. Not so Hindenburg. One can, literally, see and feel the Hindenburg saga as it takes shape, before the very eyes of Germans gazing at him—as if he were a legendary Siegfried moving through a romantic Nibelungen-Licil, instead of a stern old man, acting, as President of a republic as unromantically real as that presided over by Herbert Hoover.

Every (lay the Hindenburg saga i 9 encroaching upon the reality of its hero; every day it continues stealthily to weave itself into the cold exactness of Hindenburg's life-history, touching it with glamour, tinting whatever is drab with bright colour—not falsifying fact, but endowing it with the alluring qualities of fiction. , An Extraordinary Career. A glance at Hindenburg's extraordinary career makes one realise wliy there is a Hindenburg saga. It is by no means too far-fetched to say that he is a man who has lived three lives—surely sufficient justification to be classed as a legendary figure. Most men are born, choose a career, follow it, become supeiannuated, retire—and die. Hmdenbuig, on the other hand, has rounded out two lives gone into retirement and pitched back' into activity. The last time this occurred he was nearly an octogenarian, yet he answered the call of put aside his leisure, went iuto lmvness without a murmur. And to-day more than three vr*rs later, he is still at work and still healthy, although he is more than 82 years old! . . No wonder people are beginning to look uponhim - as something super-:

human! No wonder they crane their necks for a glimpse of him whenever he goes out of the Presidential Palace on the Wilhelmstrasse! No wonder stories are growing up about him, some utterly absurd, yet eagerly credited by thousands ! "The Man Who Has Lived Three Lives I" It sounds like the title of a story by G. K. Chesterton 1 No wonder the Hindenburg saga flourishes like the bay tree! Hindenburg's three lives may be apportioned thus: Life No. I.—Hindenburg the typical German Army officer of pre-war days. From his early youth, back in the '60s of last century,' until his retifement from active service in 1911. Life No. 2.—Hindenburg, the world famous warrior. From his resumption of active military service in the summer of 1914 to his return to retirement, after the collapse of Imperial Germany, in the autumn of 1918. Life No. 3.—Hindenburg, President of the German Republic. From his inauguration in May, 1925, to the present. Is he not entitled now to cry "Hold! Enough!"? Will he not be justified if —at the age of 85 or more—he should tell his fellow-countrymen to break themselves of the habit of summoning him to get them out of the military and political messes into which they have plunged themselves? And yet—if ever they should call upon. • him again and insist that, despite his advanced age, he should get back into harness, Paul von. Hindenburg will have none but himself to blame.

The reason why he has not |>een left in peace at the end of each of his "lives' —the reason why the Hindenburg saga has arisen—is that in each he has shown himself possessed of qualities which have not only marked him out as a leader but caught the imagination of the multitude. In Hindenburg there is something big, something constructive, something— above all else —inspiring. Twice - this something has made futile his dream of being allowed to eild his days in peace. If ever a man seemed to be on the shelf, it was Hindenburg in August, 1914 —smoking cigarettes, drinking beer with cronies, at Hanover, grumbling with them about the good old times, shaking his head,at tlie'way things were going—a typical old military has-been! Yet suddenly—when he was was called upon to drive the Russians out of East "Prussia; and, having done so, it was he who was singled out, among all Germany's generals, for the supreme command of her embattled armies. Again—if ever a man seemed "down and out," beyond hope of coming back, it .was Hindenburg after the Armistice of 1918. The armies under his command had been utterly defeated. His imperial master,* Wilhelm Hohenzollern, 'had fled to Holland; he himself, branded as next to Wilhelm on the list of Germany's war criminals, was liable to trial and, possibly, execution, if the victorious Allies should lay hands on him. This crisis lie weathered; but the retirement into which he went, after 'he had weathered it, seemed a mere prelude to oblivion and death. Silent and seemingly forgotten, he sat and smoked and drank beer in his villa at Hanover from 1618 to 1925—from bis seventy-first to lus seventy-eighth year.

A People's Summons. Then —obeying the summons of the country whose soldiers he had led to defeat—he became president of t'he German Republic! All on account of the Hindenburg saga I ' It had been growing up around him all through each of the two separate lives t'hat he had lived. It had become' feo inextricably woven with his real story, his real qualities, his real abilities, that Hindenburg, hero of Germany's new Nibelungen-Lied, had elbowed out of the way Hindenburg, the defeated general of reality, and foiced himself into the foreground, overshadowing ever other living German. So it had been with him when he was ] a typical Prussian army officer—during ' his "first life." He had done 'his duty well. At the age of 19 he had been \ wounded at Koniggratz, when the Prus- : sians defeated the Austrians there in 1806. In the Franco-German war he had distinguished himself at Saint-Privat, and seen the coronation of the first Wil'helm as German Emperor at Versailles in 1871. Tien came hum-drum years of peacetime service—manoeuvres, long discussions on military subjects over tankards of beer, garrison life, hunting expeditions. A most ordinary military We, one being led by hundreds of other German officers—followed, in due course, by a sixty-fourth birthday, a pensionretirement! Life seemed over for Paul von Hindenburg. . And it would have been over hut ior the Hindenburg saga. Already it had •been born. In those long discussions over the beer tankards, he had pounded tables with his fist, fought imaginary campaigns, routed imaginary Russian armies in imaginary battles among the lakes of East Prussia. Unconsciously, comrades began to see him as the hero of shadowy victories; they began to call him "The Old Man of the Lakes. That fierce eye of his, that iron jaw, that superb way of carrying hiinsell J all lodged themselves in men s minds, though men did not know it themselves —in s'hort, the first cantos of the Hmdenburg saga were written -in invisible ink on° the consciousnes sof Germany. And the death' knell of Hindenburg's dream of retirement was rung. "The Old Man of the Lakes." August, 1914, came. The Russians, in ©cores of thousands, poured into East Prussia. Like an electric shock there came to Germans the nlemory of "the Old Man of the Lakes." Appointed to the command of the Germany Army in East Prussia, he fought the Battle of Tannenberg, annihilated 'his Russian foes, and—well, now there was no stopping the Hindenburg saga! Thus began for him Life No. 2. _ From Tannenberg^—as commander-in-chief of the German Eastern front—he marched to other terrific battles against the Russians. From these —as commander-in-chief of all Germany's world war armies —lie went to the Western front to forge, with Ludendorff, the thunderbolts .destined to be launched in vain against the undaunted allied' soldiers barring the road to France's capital. And, throughout the four years of the world war Hindenburg became more and more a legendary hero; < Germans knew that it wa» Ludendorff who shaped the military combinati-oms East

and West; Hindenburg, sneered many, was nothing but a figurehead. But what a figurehead! —one that inspired soldiers to miracles of valour, drove multitudes into frenzies of acclamation, wrung from German civilians their last pfennig in order that more munitions might be manufactured and more devastation wrought. "Already there was no telling the real Hindenburg from the legendary one. The only thing that was clear was that- the blend of the two was a demigod for whom soldiers died willingly, with a cheer, on their lips. The Hindenburg saga was at work!

It -worked when Hindenburg —or was it Ludendorff —won victories; it worked wli'en they suffered reverses; it worked when Imperial Germany crashed the ground, when Wilhelm and Ludendorff ran away to foreign parts,_ terrified at the thought of what sticking to thenposts in Germany might -bring them. But Hindenburg stuck. Almost at the top of the war-criminal list, broken, execrated, liis autJiority flouted by soldiers to whom officers had become a laughing stock, he refused to think for | one moment of his own safety. Men, I he told his soldiers, "1 don't know what terms I can get you, but I'll get you the beet I can, and here I stay!—'with you!" If any one act of Hindenburgs career did more than any other to create the Hindenburg saga, it was that one. • If Hindenburg lives to complete his seven-year term as President of the German Republic he will be in his eighty-fifth year. Then, if ever a man has earned a rest, it will be Paul von Hindenburg. And it is extremely probable that his fellow countrymen will finally grant it to liim and leave him alone to return to Ms Hanover villa, to his beer-mug and his old cronies. Yes, his fellow countrymen will probably bother him no more—unless the Hindenburg saga gets in the way again!