During the trial we found that the conversations that we were able to have among ourselves during the intervals and during our journeys to and from the court, and the renewed contact with our comrades were far more important and interesting than the trial itself. Even the pronouncement of sentence made little impression on me or my comrades. We left the court in a boisterous mood, shouting and singing our old songs of battle and defiance. Was this just a grim sort of humor? For my part I do not think so. I was simply unable to believe that I would have to serve my sentence.
The bitter awakening came only too soon, after I had been transferred to the prison where I was to begin my term of hard labor.
A new, and up to then unknown, world now opened before me. Serving a sentence in a Prussian prison in those days was no rest cure.
Every aspect of life was strictly regulated down to the smallest details. Discipline was on severe, military lines. The greatest emphasis was placed on the punctilious discharge and most careful execution of the exactly calculated task that was allotted each day. Every offense was severely punished, and the effect of these “house punishments” was increased by the fact that they entailed a refusal of any possible reduction of sentence.
As a political prisoner, found guilty of a “crime of conviction,” I was kept in solitary confinement. At first I was not at all happy about this, for I had just had nine months’ solitary in Leipzig, but later I was only too thankful, in spite of the many small amenities that life in the large communal cells offered. In my cell I had only myself to consider. Once I had completed my allotted task, I could arrange my day as I wished without regard to any fellow prisoner, and I escaped the hideous bullying practiced by the real criminals in the larger cells. I had learned, though at secondhand, a little about such bullying which is directed mercilessly against all who do not belong to the criminal fraternity or who fail to hide their views. Even the strict supervision of a Prussian prison was unable to prevent this terrorism.
At that time I believed I knew all about human nature. I had seen all sorts and types of men of many different nations and classes, and had observed their habits, both the good and even more so the bad. For though I was still young, I had had considerable experience of the world, and had been through a lot.
The criminals who shared my prison made me realize how little I really knew. Even though I lived alone in my cell, I yet came into daily contact with my fellow prisoners during exercise in the courtyard, or on the way to one or another of the prison administration offices, in the washhouses, through contact with the cleaners, or at the barber’s, or with the prisoners who brought or collected the work materials, or in many other ways. Above all, I listened to their talk every evening from my window. From all this I got a fairly good insight into the minds and souls of these people, and an abyss of human aberrations, depravities, and passions was opened before my eyes.
I had hardly begun to serve my sentence before I overheard a prisoner in a neighboring cell tell another about a robbery he had committed at a forester’s house. He had first made sure that the forester was sitting happily in the inn and had then, with an ax, killed first the servant girl and then the man’s wife, who was far advanced in pregnancy. The forester’s four small children began to cry and he seized each of them in turn and dashed their heads against the wall to stop their “hollering.” The filthy, insolent language that he used when recounting the details of this appalling crime made me long to fly at his throat. I could not sleep all that night. Later I was to hear far more terrible stories, but nothing w,as ever again to disturb me as much as what I heard on that day. The man who told this story was a murderer who had been condemned to death many times, but had always been reprieved. Even while I was serving my sentence, he broke out of the dormitory one evening, attacked with a length of iron a guard who was barring his way, and escaped over the prison wall. He was * arrested by the police after he had knocked down an innocent pedestrian in order to steal his clothes, and he then furiously attacked his captors, who immediately shot him dead.
The Brandenburg prison also held the cream of Berlin’s professional criminals. They ranged from international pickpockets to well-known safebreakers, gangsters, cardsharps, skilled confidence men, and men convicted of all kinds of disgusting sexual offenses.
The place was a regular school for criminals. The younger ones, the learners, were enthusiastically initiated into the secrets of their craft, although their instructors kept their personal tricks of the trade a close secret. The old convicts naturally saw to it that they were well paid for their services. Payment was often made in tobacco, which was the most usual form of prison currency. Smoking was strictly forbidden, but every smoker managed to procure tobacco for himself by going fifty-fifty with the junior guards. The provision of services of a sexual nature was also a customary form of payment. Sometimes, too, binding agreements were made for a share in a criminal undertaking planned to take place after release from prison. Many sensational crimes owed their origin to schemes hatched while their perpetrators were serving prison sentences. Homosexuality was widespread. The younger, good-looking prisoners were greatly in demand and were the cause of much bitter rivalry and intrigue. The more crafty of these made a good business out of their popularity.
In my opinion, based on years of experience and observation, the widespread homosexuality found in these prisons is rarely congenital, or in the nature of a disease, but is rather the result of strong sexual desires which cannot be satisfied in any other way. It arises primarily from a search for a stimulating or exciting activity that promises to give the men something out of life, in surroundings where absolutely no form of moral restraint applies.
Among this mass of criminals, who had become so from inclination or propensity, there were to be found a great many who had been driven to swindling and thieving through misery and want during the bad postwar years and the inflation period: men whose character was not sufficiently strong to enable them to withstand the temptation of getting rich quick by illegal means: men who by some unlucky chance had been dragged into a whirlpool of crime. Many of these struggled honorably and bravely to break away from the asocial influence of this criminal atmosphere, so that they might start a decent life once more, after they had served their sentences.
Many, however, were too weak to fight against this interminable, asocial pressure and the incessant terrorization, and they were soon condemned to a lifetime of crime.
In this respect, the prison cell became a confessional box. When I was in Leipzig jail being interrogated before my trial, I heard many window conversations: conversations in which men and women expressed their deeper anxieties and sought consolation from one another; conversations in which accomplices bitterly complained of betrayal, and in which the public prosecutor’s office would have shown great interest, since they threw light on many an unsolved crime.
I used to be amazed at the free and easy way in which prisoners would give utterance through the window to their darkest and best-kept secrets. Was this urge to confide born of the misery of solitary confinement or did it spring from the universal need of all human beings to talk to one another? While we were awaiting trial, these window conversations were extremely brief and were constantly threatened by the permanent watch which the guards kept on the cells. In the prison where we served our sentences, however, the guards only bothered about them if the voices became too loud. There were three types of prisoner in solitary confinement in the Brandenburg prison: 1. Political prisoners found guilty of a “crime of conviction”; these young first offenders were treated with consideration. 2. Violent criminals and troublemakers, who had become intolerable in the large, communal cells. 3. Prisoners who had made themselves disliked because of their refusal to acquiesce in the terrorism practiced by their fellow criminals, or stool pigeons who had betrayed their friends in some way and now feared revenge. For these it was a kind of protective custody.