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struggle with his family for control of the Trust. Koestler tried to stay out
of this fight, but discovered the futility of doing so; his chief in Paris
backed the other side, and Koestler was nearly fired. In the end, however,
Franz Ullstein prevailed and opened a new road for his protege. By the
end of the summer of
1930,
Koestler was offered the coveted job of Sci–
ence Editor of the
Vossische Zeitung-entailing
a move to Berlin-and
the equally prestigious title of Science Advisor to the whole Ullstein chain.
Alternately swept by euphoria and wallowing in self-doubt, Koestler
accepted. He moved to Bedin on September
14, 1930,
the very day of
the Reichstag elections, in which Hitler's seats jumped from
12
to
r07.
It
was the true beginning of the Depression in Germany. The Commu–
nists registered important gains as well.
Berlin, to be sure, was still the stronghold of the liberal and socialist
intelligentsia, and Ullstein journalists occupied the very eye of a hurri–
cane. Their newspapers were the crown jewels of the Weimar Republic,
and the people who worked for them by now joked nervously about the
political forces which, they intuitively sensed, sealed their doom: the
polarization of the political camps, old German provincialism, eco–
nomic chaos, intellectual decadence. Even so, the powerful editors and
media bosses-who were mainly Jews-began bending to the storm's
magnetism. During the summer of
1931,
editorials written over
Koestler's head at
B.
Z.
Am Mittag
took on a mocking tone toward the
Western powers. A year later, a regular column began to appear in the
Vossische Zeitung
that was devoted
to
German ethnic minorities outside
the Reich.
It
is clear from Koestler's memoir that although the Nazis
were not necessarily winning the national debate JUSt yet, they were set–
ting its terms: intellectuals were suddenly forced to take seriously the
fate of "Sudeten-Germans," who had for ten years of Weimar never
even come up in serious conversation.
Once in Berlin, Koestler was himself overwhelmed by the mounting
political crisis, but he turned it to his professional advantage. He deter–
mined to prove his mastery of international affairs in addition to science
journalism.
It
was characteristic of his insecure genius that he could not
commit to anyone area of specialty at a time; every achievement was a
staging ground for a new conquest. And this time his restlessness paid
off. Within a year he became Foreign Editor of
B.
Z.
Am Mittag,
in
addition to Science Editor of
Vossische Zeitung.
This was an impressive
combination of responsibilities for a man not quite twenty-six, and his
combined salary came to something close to
2,000
marks a month, near
the maximum any German journalist could be expected to earn.
