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Chapter 1: From Patriot to Outcast: 1909–1937
- Fordham University Press
- Chapter
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1 From Patriot to Outcast: 1909–1937 In November 1907 a very extravagant wedding took place in Berlin. The bride was Margarete Mossner, daughter of the prestigious publisher Curt Mossner, and the groom was Franz Korf, an inspector with the royal postal service. The reception took place in the posh Savoy Hotel, where guests enjoyed a twelve-course meal and were entertained by an orchestra playing melodies of Strauss, Handel and Mendelssohn. A year later, the couple welcomed a daughter, Hildegarde. Their second child was born on 19 November 1909. He was named Kurt Friedrich Franz Korf. Korf’s family background was distinguished on both sides. His father’s family traced its roots to the twelfth century, when King Louis VI of France knighted Heinricus Korfus for his role during the Crusades. The king gave the family permission to use the royal symbol, the fleur-de-lis, as the Korf coat of arms. The Korf family remained loyal to the French royal family. When Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette fled Paris during the French Revolution, the queen left under the name of her friend Baroness von Korf, and she was taken to the Bastille under that name. Another branch of the Korf family migrated to Eastern Europe. In the fourteenth century a member of the family became grandmaster of the Order of the Teutonic Knights, which governed Latvia. Some Korfs served in the Russian government as governors of Finland and Warsaw. Another member of the Korf family became a military governor of Alsace and Lorraine during the late nineteenth century.1 2 | ‘‘i must be a part of this war’’ On his mother’s side, Korf was descended from a prosperous family of bankers, the Mossners, who settled in Berlin in the eighteenth century. Their Jewish background did not prevent them from establishing business connections with the Prussian royal family. They also lent the monarchy critical support when it was threatened by the Revolution of 1848. During the revolution, Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia found himself in danger of being arrested by revolutionaries after his troops fired on demonstrators. The prince decided to escape the country incognito, and sought out the Mossners for help. The Mossners gave him a generous letter of credit from a London bank and a coach with four horses to get him out of the country. After the revolution was defeated, Wilhelm returned to Prussia and became emperor of Germany in 1871. The emperor expressed his gratitude to the Mossners by officially receiving them at court.2 Korf’s maternal grandfather, Curt Mossner, played an important part in Kurt’s life. As a young man, Curt Mossner defied family tradition and attended a Protestant preparatory school called the Pädagogium Ostrow bei Filehne in Ostrow, East Prussia. A vast majority of the students were sons of major Prussian Junker families; Curt Mossner was the only Jewish student.3 The fact that he was a member of the ‘‘religion of Moses’’ was indicated on his report card. In 1876, when Curt was sixteen, he traveled to Berlin to visit his father, Julius Mossner, who was depressed over the loss of his fortune in the wake of the Depression of 1873. To make matters worse, Jews were unfairly blamed for the crash. The pressure may have been too much for the elder Mossner. Although he appeared calm during his son’s visit, his appearance was deceptive. After putting his son on a train to send him back to school, Julius Mossner donned a formal tuxedo and white gloves, stood in front of a mirror, put pistols against each of his temples, and shot himself to death.4 Curt Mossner never revealed his feelings about the tragedy. It is possible that he responded to it by removing himself even further from his Jewish background. He married a Protestant, Käthchen [34.228.213.183] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 10:00 GMT) From Patriot to Outcast: 1909–1937 | 3 Lampe, converted to Protestantism, and raised his children in the Protestant faith. Kurt’s mother, Margarete, later converted to Catholicism to marry Franz Korf, a Catholic, and their children, Hildegarde and Kurt, were brought up in that faith.5 The Korf children were raised wanting for nothing; they lived in a beautiful apartment and enjoyed the privileges of members of the upper class. But tragedy struck the family in 1912, when Franz Korf died. Although Kurt was only two and a half years old at the time...