The building was located next door to Magdeburg's original Freedom Arches, which was still in operation and which still resembled a tavern. The new Freedom Arches, on the other hand…
The first time Melissa Mailey laid eyes on the thing, she'd rolled her eyes. "Oh, swell. It's a cross between Chateau d'If and the Lubyanka. Who was the architect? Frank Lloyd Rack? Mies van der Thumbscrews?"
When informed that the architect had actually been a city employee and one of the mayor's top assistants, she'd been a little dumbfounded. Why would a proper gentleman like Otto Gericke lend his assistance to such a project?
She'd asked Gericke herself, three days later, at one of the soirees hosted by Mary Simpson.
"You see the CoCs as a force for revolution, Melissa. Which you mostly support, albeit with some reservations. But I am in charge of a city-the largest, fastest growing and most dynamic city in the Germanies. In some respects, in the entire world. And from my standpoint, the Magdeburg Committee of Correspondence is a stabilizing force. I hate to think what the situation with disease and crime would be, were it not for the CoC patrols. Not to mention-I am first and foremost a scientist, don't forget-that they have an almost mystical faith in science and invariably support any initiative the city undertakes for scientific education and progress."
She must have had a surprised look on her face. He'd gotten a wry smile. "Melissa, I am often at political loggerheads with the Committees of Correspondence. By and large, however, I think they are a force for good. And regardless of anything else-whatever may be the delusions of the Crown Loyalist party-they cannot be ignored or shuffled aside. That being so, I think it is entirely in my interest to give them institutional validity. Yes, I know that from a purely architectural standpoint that new headquarters of theirs is a blocky monstrosity. But it helps them feel secure, and I find a secure CoC quite a bit easier to deal with than one which is edgy and apprehensive."
Gericke had shaken his head. "However politically radical you Americans may be in some respects, Melissa, you enjoyed a sheltered life as a people. There was nothing in your history equivalent to the aftermath of the Peasant War, when the aristocracy butchered a hundred thousand farmers after their rebellion was defeated. That was only a century ago. Many of those people sitting right now in the CoC headquarters on October 7th Avenue are the direct descendants of those slaughtered folk. If you were to inquire among the members of the Ram Rebellion-some of whose representatives you can now also find in that same building-the number would be even higher. It would not take much of a provocation for the CoC in Magdeburg to launch a violent uprising. That uprising would succeed rapidly here in the city, be sure of it. Whether it would spread across the USE or be crushed is harder to gauge because there are so many variables involved. But either way, it would be a bloody business. I'd just as soon avoid it, if we can."
He hadn't sounded very optimistic.
The meeting room was on the second floor, where most of the smaller meeting rooms were located, as well as the offices of the city's CoC. The big assembly hall was on the first floor, along with the offices of various organizations affiliated to the CoC. Those included the city's trade unions as well as the regional and national trade union federations; the sanitation commission; credit unions; life and health insurance cooperatives; the retirement insurance association. The smallest office held the just-launched employment insurance cooperative.
The building's basement, just as was true of the city's official Rathaus, was given over to a huge tavern. And, just as with the one in the basement of the Rathaus on Hans Richter Strasse-or the now famous Thuringen Gardens in Grantville-that tavern was a social and political center.
German traditions of self-organization were already deeply rooted. The up-time Americans, smugly certain as Americans so often were that their own customs were unique, had been surprised to discover the ubiquitous town and city militias with their accompanying shooting clubs. They'd thought the tradition of armed self-defense-not to mention the National Rifle Association-to be quintessentially American.
The up-timers could claim considerable credit for inspiring some of the rapidly growing voluntary associations, true enough, especially the trade unions and the credit unions. Others seemed to them somewhat outlandish. Americans were certainly familiar with sports clubs, but they were quite unaccustomed to seeing such clubs-as with most of the insurance cooperatives-so closely associated with a political movement. But they would have been perfectly familiar to the German Social Democrats of the nineteenth century who had surrounded their powerful political party with such organizations.
Gretchen herself took the situation for granted, including the informal give-and-take between the CoC headquarters and the Rathaus. At any given time of the day or night, you were just as likely to find a city sanitation official discussing his business with CoC activists in their tavern as you were to find CoC activists in the tavern at the Rathaus wrangling over issues involving the city militias with one of the mayor's deputies.
She'd experienced that sort of informal dual power before, during the siege of Amsterdam. There, too, the CoC she'd organized had been as much the center of authority as the city's official government. And the reason had been much the same: military weakness on the part of the official authorities combined with very real if often informal military strength on the part of the radical plebeians.
When Gretchen entered the meeting room and saw the uncertain and dubious expression on the face of the woman from the Vogtland, it was obvious to her that the Vogtlander did not know what to make of it all. Gretchen was not surprised. The Vogtland, because of its terrain and being under Saxon control, had been isolated from the political developments which had transformed much of the Germanies since the Ring of Fire. The region had shared in those developments, true. In some ways, in fact, the political struggle was even sharper than most places, especially since the Saxon elector had placed Holk in charge of pacifying the region. But the Vogtlander rebels were programmatically limited-"down with the elector!" pretty much summed it up-and were tactically one-sided.
Gretchen took her seat across the table from the Vogtland woman, whose name was Anna Piesel. She was apparently betrothed to Georg Kresse, the recognized leader of the Vogtland rebellion. Tata sat down beside her.
Gretchen had to be careful here. The Committees of Correspondence were the largest and best-known-certainly the best-financed and organized-of Europe's revolutionary organizations. But they were not the only one. In Franconia, for instance, the dominant organization was the Ram movement.
The CoCs were the only revolutionary organization with a national scope, even an international one. So it was inevitable that they would overshadow the other groups, all of whom were regional in character. In times past, overbearing attitudes by CoC activists ignoring local conditions had produced some bad clashes. Gretchen had had to intervene personally in one such conflict, in Suhl, when the local CoC tried to run roughshod over the gun manufacturers who, whatever their political faults, still commanded the loyalty and confidence of the city's population.
The situation in the Vogtland presented a similar problem. There was no question that Kresse's movement had the support and allegiance of most people in the region who were opposed to the elector's rule. Unfortunately, from what Gretchen and the other national CoC leaders could determine, Kresse had a tendency to see political problems through a military lens. That was perhaps inevitable, given the origins of the movement and the conditions in southwestern Saxony. But while that sort of almost-exclusively military approach might work well enough in the mountains of the Vogtland, it was an insufficient basis for establishing a new political regime in the region as a whole.