42 The New York Review
To the Editors:
On the substantive issues relating to the
current Hohenzollern restitution debate,
my former Cambridge colleague David
Motadel and I are largely in agreement.
Neither of us wants to see castles and
parklands disappear from public owner-
ship into the hands of the former reigning
family. But I must object to his glib mis-
representations of my role in this dispute
[“What Do the Hohenzollerns Deserve?,”
NYR, March 26]. The report I wrote on the
political comportment of “Crown Prince”
Wilhelm early in 2011 did not provide
“clear endorsement of the Hohenzollern
claims” on which this controversy centers,
and neither could it have done, because
these claims did not exist when the report
was written. I have never supported these
claims and I do not do so now.
My report of 2011 described “Crown
Prince” Wilhelm as a man of violent ultra-
rightist temperament who repeatedly called
for a “final reckoning” with the German
left, sympathized with Hitler, offered to
help him into power, wrote publicly in his
support, claimed to have won him two mil-
lion extra votes with just one newspaper
article, and, after the seizure of power, ap-
peared at ceremonies designed to project
the identity of the new regime. However, I
concluded that the “crown prince,” though
willing to help the Nazis and convinced
that he had, was in fact too marginal to
the centers of real political power to make
a “substantial contribution” to the install-
ment of Hitler as chancellor. His appalling
personal reputation, his silliness and low in-
telligence, his lack of any formal office from
which to exert political traction, and his iso-
lation, even from the monarchist networks
that might have been expected to support
him, meant that he was in a poor position
to contribute significantly to the disaster
that befell Germany in 1933. He was among
those many senior conservatives who lent a
helping hand, but he was not within the first
or even the second or third circle of Hitler’s
many conservative helpers.
This finding did not fly, as Motadel claims,
in the face of a historiographical consensus
that had been established “for decades.”
On the contrary, it corresponded precisely
with the consensus expressed in the most
recent literature on the seizure of power,
in which the deposed prince appeared, not-
withstanding his Nazi sympathies, as a mar-
ginal figure, a “parade- pony” who lacked
his “own ideas, will, or leadership qualities”
(in the words of Lothar Machtan). Even
Stephan Malinowski, the leading expert on
this question worldwide, initially agreed
with my assessment. His remarkable study
on the German aristocracy and the Nazis,
Vom König zum Führer (2003), thronged
with aristocratic collaborators but left the
Hohenzollern prince on the margins. Since
then, the picture has changed. Through
painstaking research over the last few
years, Malinowski has unearthed a plethora
of new sources showing beyond doubt that
the crown prince, though never a collabora-
tor of the first rank, was a more proactive
supporter of the Nazis than we thought.
Motadel describes me as a “hero to the
German conservative right” who through-
out his career has catered to the darkest
instincts of German nationalists. No his-
torian can control how arguments are po-
litically construed by readers, of course,
but the claim that my German ones are all
conservative nationalists is laughable, and
I have publicly disassociated myself from
the machinations of the Hohenzollern law-
yers. What Motadel’s account misses, oddly
enough, is the history of the case, which has
evolved since 2011 in unpredictable ways.Christopher Clark
Regius Professor of History
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, EnglandTo the Editors:My late grandfather Salman Schocken was
the owner of a department store chain in
Germany known as Kaufhaus Schocken,
which was confiscated by the Nazis in 1938.
Four German banks—the most important
ones in Germany—appointed directors
to the board to replace the Jewish owner-
directors. They confiscated the company’s
shares and then sold them to the public.
The majority of these shares were bought
by the Hohenzollern family, one can as-
sume at a most convenient price.
The Schocken department store chain
was the fourth-largest in Germany at the
time. Everyone knew that it belonged to
a Jewish family, just like the other main
department store chains (the Hermann
Tietz chain, later called Hertie, the Leon-
hard Tietz chain, later called Kaufhof, and
Wertheim). After the war there were talks
between the representative of the Hohen-
zollern family, Graf Hardenberg, and my
grandfather’s lawyers about the return of
these shares. Finally in 1949 my grandfather
succeeded in getting back only 51 percent
of his old company, which after the war was
in very bad shape compared to when the
Nazis came to power.Therefore even according to this example
of their behavior, the Hohenzollern fam-
ily’s attempt to clear its name from the Nazi
crimes has no foundation.Racheli Edelman
Schocken Publishing House
Tel Aviv, IsraelDavid Motadel replies:Christopher Clark writes that he does not
support the restitution and compensationclaims of the Hohenzollern family. I am
sure that many in Germany will welcome
this statement. There are, however, a few
points in his letter that require a response.
First, Clark says that the report that he
wrote for the House of Hohenzollern in
2011 on the family’s relations with the Nazis
did not endorse their claims for restitution
and compensation because those claims did
not exist at that time. In fact, the first nego-
tiations about the claims had already taken
place in the 1990s. According to the Hohen-
zollern family’s official website, in 2014 the
claims, “after more than twenty years of as-
sessment,” were briefly considered valid by
the state, “also with reference to Professor
Christopher Clark’s report,” before they
were challenged again.
The Hohenzollern family insists that
“Crown Prince” Wilhelm did not lend any
significant support to the Nazi movement.
In his report, Clark clearly endorses this
argument when he concludes that Wil-
helm was politically not important enough
to have done so. For many years now his
report has been used by the Hohenzollern
family in their negotiations with the state.
It has been discussed (and criticized) as anargument in favor of their case in the Ger-
man press and parliament.
Second, Clark says that at the time he
wrote his report, the historical consensus
was that the crown prince’s support for
the Nazis was unimportant. But Malinow-
ski’s Vom König zum Führer mentions the
“early, clear and intensive support for Na-
tional Socialism” of two members of the
Hohenzollern family, and concludes that
support for Hitler lent by a third, “Crown
Prince” Wilhelm, was “of historical impor-
tance.” Moreover, the fundamental facts re-
garding the “crown prince,” some of which
I laid out at the beginning of my article,
have been known for decades. Among the
early biographical works are Paul Herre’s
Kronprinz Wilhelm: Seine Rolle in der
deutschen Politik (1954) and Klaus Jonas’s
Der Kronprinz Wilhelm (1962). One might
also mention the doctoral dissertation by
Friedrich Wilhelm Prinz von Preußen (an
uncle of Georg Friedrich, the current head
of the family), supervised by Gerhard A.
Ritter and Thomas Nipperdey, on the his-
tory of the Hohenzollern family between
1918 and 1945 (1983; published in 1985 as
Das Haus Hohenzollern 1918–1945). Al-
though biased toward the family in their
conclusions, these earlier works neverthe-
less laid down most of the essential facts.
Finally, Clark rightly says that it would
be “laughable” to claim that all his German
admirers are conservative nationalists. But
I never made any such claim. His books
have justly been huge best sellers appreci-
ated by a wide readership in Germany that
goes far beyond conservative circles. Yet it
was important to point out that they have
also made him a hero to the conservative
right, even if involuntarily, in order to ex-
plain why the Hohenzollern family trusted
him to write the report.
I was touched by Racheli Edelman’s let-
ter. A recent report in Der Spiegel described
a similar case in which the Hohenzollern
family profited from the Nazi persecution
of the Jews: the exiled emperor Wilhelm II,
through his connections in the corporate
world, enriched himself by buying up shares
of companies owned by the Jewish textile
magnate Walter Wolf, who was pressured
into selling under market value.* Corne-
lia Rauh at the University of Hannover
and Andreas Dornheim at the University
of Bamberg are working on this subject. I
hope that we will soon have a full account
of this part of the Hohenzollerns’ history.LETTERS
WORKING-CLASS WOMEN
AND WARREN
To the Editors:
Caroline Fraser was unduly harsh in her as-
sessment of Elizabeth Warren’s candidacy
[“Warren in the Trap,” NYR, March 12].
Invoking the pathos of her working-class
upbringing and gender struggles is no dif-
ferent than Bernie Sanders invoking his
forebear’s immigrant status (a Pole who
knew no English and who arrived penni-
less) as a way to relate (successfully, one
might add) to the Latino experience. She
may seem mawkish but her personal stories
resonate with working-class women. Fraser
accuses Warren of only talking about gen-
der inequity while failing to take action; but
talk is action, on occasion, as evidenced by
her eviscerating Mike Bloomberg on the
debate stage, in tones which may have gone
over the line, affirming alarmingly Bret
Stephens’s negative view of her style. War-
ren’s detailed presentation of her Medi-
care for All plan offered brutal honesty, in
comparison to Sanders’s sloppy vagueness,
and in a manner that affirmed her prom-
ise, in contrast to his, that ordinary citizens
would not be taxed to pay for it. Her roll-
out was a tour de force of political action
incarnate.
Warren’s problem, like Clinton’s before
her, is actually one of perceived authentic-
ity. The claim of Native American heritage,
coupled with the belief that she used it to
advance her academic career (however
much disputed) rancors with the general
public. So too does her claimed support
for public education when she has sent her
children to exclusive private schools. She
may have been a janitor’s daughter, but
today she is a millionaire. Amy Klobuchar’s
working-class roots give the appearance of
still clinging to her person. A Wall Street
Journal opinion writer offered the view
that Klobuchar is a Hillary Clinton without
the “snark” or the “baggage,” suggesting a
comparison with Warren as well, and the
view that in the next presidential round(after serving first as VP) she would indeed
become the first female president.Albion M. Urdank
Emeritus Professor
University of California at Los Angeles
Los Angeles, CaliforniaCaroline Fraser replies:I agree with Professor Urdank’s point about
Warren’s problem with “perceived authentic-
ity,” but the assertion that her “personal sto-
ries resonate[d] with working-class women”
is simply wrong. According to The Washing-
ton Post’s exit polling on Super Tuesday, only
7 percent of those without a college degree
voted for Warren. Sanders, who has invoked
his father’s immigrant status only briefly,
won 33 percent of that vote; Biden, 38.
The subtext of this letter is that Warren
needs to be protected from criticism, it-
self a gendered position, as is the use here
of the term “harsh.” Its synonyms include
“ grating,” “rasping,” “screeching,” “stri-
dent,” and, yes, “shrill.”CORRECTIONNicholas Lemann’s “Can Journalism Be
Saved?” [NYR, February 27] incorrectly
stated that the New Orleans newspaper
The Times-Picayune no longer exists. It was
sold to Georges Media Group last year and
merged with The New Orleans Advocate; it
is now published as The Times-Picayune/
The New Orleans Advocate.Helping Hitler: An Exchange
*Klaus Wiegrefe, “Kumpanei mit den
Nazis könnte für die Hohenzollern teuer
werden,” Der Spiegel, January 24, 2020.Letters to the Editor: [email protected]. All other
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the next issue will be April 23, 2020.‘Crown Prince’ Wilhelm, circa 1920George^ GranthamBain^Collection/Libraryof^ Congress