The return of a dead baron

In 1876 the body of a dutch nobleman vanished in thin air. In 2015 workers discover a mysterious coffin in the garden of his castle. Is this the baron?

It is the year 1876 in Kessel, a tiny, idyllic village on a rivershore in the south-east Netherlands. Bypassing skippers recognise the town from the recently completed neogothical church and the bold, medieval castle Keverberg, that seem in peaceful coexistence. But reality is quite different. The lord of the castle and the priest are in a conflict that eventually will lead to a mystery that will be told from generation to generation during the upcoming 150 years.

keverberg castle kessel limburg netherlands — Castle Keverberg overlooking the Maas river en the late 18th century.

On Wednesday September 27th, baron Frederick Henry Charles of Keverberg is near death in his house Villa Oeverberg, a few hundred feet upstream of his castle. After only 51 years, illness and alcohol are about to end his turbulent, miserable life. In his last will, written a few days ago, it says that Baron Frits, as villagers tend to call him, blames his mother, brother and daughter for his decay, because they all turned their back on him. As a result of a dispute with the priest he has stated that he shall not be buried according to catholic rituals. Instead, he offers his body for scienific purposes to the University of Leiden, where he once studied. However, the university kindly rejects and the baron never makes it to the cemetery. What does happen to his remains, no-one knows. The body seems to have vanished in the air, those last days of September 1876.

keverberg kessel limburg netherlands castle — Keverberg Castle as it is today.

Who was Baron Frits and what turned him into the lonely, bitter man whose body disappeared during the mid-nineteenth century? Frederick Henry was born July 22th 1825 in Stonor, England, as the second child of the british Mary Lodge and the dutch baron Charles Louis of Keverberg. The father was a political hotshot. He had served under Napoleon during the french occupation and turned to King William 1 after the French were expelled. He died in 1841 and his family moved to Castle Keverberg in Kessel. At that time, Frits was a law student in Leiden and already had his first disputes with the Van Wylick-family, a powerful dynasty that Frits accused of stealing his property. Despite these fights, Frits became town councellor in 1851. Shortly after that, his mother and siblings left Keverberg to move to another castle, Aldenghoor in the nearby village of Haelen. Frits was alone in his castle, but not for long.

1857 he married Louise Villers de Pité, who gave birth to their daughter Mary Mathile a few years later. But the joy of a child could not consolidate the marriage. It was widely known that the castle was the scene to many terrible fights between the couple, eventually resulting in Louise fleading. When little Mary Mathilde was seven years old, she was taken away by her grandmother to never be brought back. The child spend her youth in several boarding schools. She even lived a while under a false name in Duesseldorf, Germany, to keep her hidden from her father. In 1859 Baron Frits lost his position in the town council, but he was not ready to let that happen. The next meeting, half past nine in the morning, he entered the room, obviously drunk, only to insult his successor. During a game of cards with some high placed friends in The Hague, Frits got an argument with a Prussian prince. Only diplomatic intervention could restrain them from a duel with pistols.

In 1869 it was priest Simons’ turn to become subject to baron Frits’ rage. Simons had the old church torn down and replaced by a new and bigger house of God. The old building had stood partly on the castle’s ground and tradition had it that this part was therefore exclusively for the habitants of the castle. This was not the case with the new church and thus the priest considered the tradition to be outdated. For compensation, Simons offered the baron the first row in church, but Frits did not accept that. He attended the first masses outside, on the exact spot where his old, private bench had been.

The priest critisized his default of catholic obligation, but baron Frits replied that he was very capable of getting to peace with God by himself. He never attended a mass again and his separation with the catholic church was definate. This was the reason why Frits did not want to be buried according to catholic tradition and therefore the cause of the mysterious disappearance of his dead body.

Villa Oeverberg Keverberg Kessel Limburg Netherlands — Villa Oeverberg, where baron Keverberg passed away.

Was he buried in the gardens of his house Villa Oeverberg? The castle’s gardens? The family tomb in Haelen? The latter was not very likely, since Frits had disputes with his relatives as well. It is said that on his deathbed he had a loaded revolver standby, just in case his mother and siblings would come to say farewell. True or not, it is a fact that in his last will it can be read that he left serious sums of money to his maid and his servant, under the condition they would succeed to keep his relatives out.

Thus, a myth was born and told from father to son to grandson. Albeid it was not really all that mysterious. The dutch writer and historian Jacobus Craandijk visited the castle in 1880 and wrote about an overgrown grave in a corner of the yard, that was said to contain the castle’s last noble inhabitant. Although that assertion could not stop the myth, it does help a lot when over a century later, June 25th 2015, workers find a lead coffin in the castle’s garden.

A month later the coffin is opened by forensic antropologue Birgit Berk. She scrutinises the remains to conclude that they belonged to a 44 to 53 year old male, 175 to 179 centimeters tall. That suits with the few things we know about baron Frits. Stains on the inside of the ribs witness of a heavy case of pneumonia, perhaps tuberculosis, which could very well be the disease that killed the baron back in 1876. The lead coffin and hardly worn (i.e. little physical labor) joints make it likely this was a wealthy man.

baron keverberg kessel coffin castle limburg netherlands — Baron Keverberg’s coffin on display in the basement of his castle.

Alltogether it is almost sure that the lost body of baron Frits is back, almost 139 years afte rit vanished. Still, we will probably never be hundred percent sure. That would need a DNA-match, but who to match with? His daughter Mary Mathilde became a nun and was buried in the convent’s cemetery, which was emptied in 1976, with all the bones thrown in a mass grave. Only Frits’ sister Elfrida’s remains can be found in a markes grave in the city of Roermond. Should she be exhumed? Perhaps it is better to spare what’s left of the mystery.

This article was published November 2015 in Quest Historie

Religious homicide at sea: the secret of KW 171

In 1915 the entire crew of a fishing boat gets insane at the middle of the North Sea. 3 men are killed by the others. What drove those men to this cruelty?

Over a century ago, the crew of a dutch fishing boat gets insane on the middle of the North Sea. Three men are cruelly assasinated by their collegues, after which the rest spend the days waiting for the apocalypse, whilst praying and singing psalms. What took posession of the crew of the KW 171, the fishing boat that history would call the fool’s lugger?

Slowly and carefully the norwegian steam vessel Jonas Reis approaches the drifting fishing boat. From the port side, the captain scrutinises the vessel under him. It is sunday September 12th 1915 on the Doggersbank, in the middle of the North Sea, about 130 miles east of Scarborough. The Jonas Reid has left Tyne the day before. Half an hour ago, the fishing boat caught the captain’s eye. It draw his attention because all sails were down at mid sea. But when they got nearer, the captain saw the sails were not just lowered, but torn apart. He immediately ordered the machine room to stop the propellor and now they get closer, the captain gets a sinister premonition.

That turns out to be right. By the time the vessel with registration number KW 171 on the hull is about 50 feet away from the Jonas Reid, the skipper perceives to his dismay a complete chaos on deck. Not only are the sails torn apart, the ship’s rigging is completely dismantled and the hatches and katrols are gone. Five or six men are spreaded on deck, answering the skipper’s look with frightened eyes. On the rear deck, the captain observes dark red spots. Blood? It takes him a while to get himself back together and call all hands on deck.

The KW 171, also known as North Sea 5, was a sailing lugger built in 1906, based in Katwijk. This dutch fishing village with a very closed character did not have its own harbour. In former ages they used tot sail on flatboats that would be pulled on the beach. After these more traditional ships were replaced by faster and therefore more efficient luggers, the Katwijk fleet was forced to divert to neighbouring harbours.

On Tuesday August 3th 1915 the KW 171 set sail from IJmuiden, 15 miles north from it’s hometown Katwijk. It was the second voyage with this 13 men crew under the command of the 39 years old skipper Nicolaas de Haas. Also on board were navigator Pieter van Duijn (28), Jacob Jonker (33), Klaas Kuijt, seaman and cook Reijn Ros, his 13 years old son Arie Ros, brothers Arie (28) and Leen (17) Vlieland, P. v/d Plas (43), P. Heemskerk (29), J. Kuijt (16), W. Huwwaard and 13 years old D. de Mol. The team got along very well and the first voyage had been a very pleasant one, according tot he skippers wife in a newspaper after the cruel event that would soon occur.

Katwijk in these years was a very orthodox religious community. The First World War raged outside and although the Netherlands remained neutral, the war cruelty did not bypass the village. Mines made the North Sea, that was the primary source of income for the fishing village, extremely dangerous to sail on and the dead bodies from submarined allied vessels flushed ashore in high numbers. The pietistic character of the local religion turned these experiences into the most fantastic fantasies. Apocalypse was near, so it was believed by many.

We know little about the five weeks following the departure of the KW 171. The lugger sailed northwest, destination Doggersbank, an area full of fish half way England and Denmark. The days probably passed as many others on Katwijk fishing boats in these days. Long hard work and beans, bacon and rice for dinner. Six days a week, for the compulsory Sunday rest counted at sea as much as at home.

The next sign of life from the KW 171 reaches IJmuiden via the skipper of KW 151 De Hoop. He tells about a meeting that he had a few days earlier on mid sea with the KW 171. A few crew had been on his vessel for a while to hand over letters and ask him to, once back in IJmuiden, send them to Katwijk. The skipper had asked them why, since they were heading back to Katwijk themselves. The answer surprised the skipper even more. “God himself destroyed Katwijk and made it vanish. We will not return to Katwijk, we are heading to Jerusalem, where God came down from heaven.” When the men climbed back in their jolly, one of them, who so far had stayed aside, grabbed the skippers arm, begging him to stay aboard with him. The skipper did not see the urge to grant his wis hand send the man back in the jolly. While the crew menbers of the KW 171 rowed back to their boat, the skipper of the KW 171 shouted tot them: “If I were you, I would go back to Katwijk. You are saying crazy things, I think you are going out of your mind!” Some time later, one of the seaman of the 171, Arie Vlieland, shouted back tot he skipper of the 151: “Cut your nets, get rid of the crap! Believe in God’s justice, for you are all doomed!”

It is obvious that by that time, things were terribly wrong aboard of the KW 171. According to the Katwijk-born author Robert Haasnoot, who based his novel ‘Waanzee’ on this history, the crew had been practicing their religion for weeks. Religion, superstition and the side effects of long time isolation at sea were a perfect breeding ground fort he upcoming evil.

There are two testimonies about the days following the encounter with the KW 151. In some details they contradict, but the whole stories are more or less the same. One of the youngest aboard, 13 year old Arie Ros, is interviewed by a newspaper, two weeks after the happening. Seaman Arie Vlieland, the evil genius of the drama, later talks tot he captain of RMS Prof. Buys, the vessel that takes him back tot he Netherlands.

The skipper of the KW 151 later tells the owner of the KW 171, director N. Haasnoot from North Sea Fishing, that during the mysterious meeting at sea, he got the impression that it wasn’t skipper Nicolaas de Haas, but seaman Arie Vlieland that was in actual command of the 171. Vlieland is known to have been an extraordinary strong man, huge and charismatic. All that made him a dominant personality. He mastered the Tale Kanaäs, a traditional, biblish way of speaking, that allowed him to manipulate his god-fearing ship mates. Katwijk had a culture of chosen ones and concerneds. The chosen ones were believers who claimed to get signs of God, what made them superiour tho the concerneds, who lacked such relevations.

Probabely madness creeped into chosen Vlieland’s mind during the voyage. According to witness Arie Ros, Vlieland said on Sunday September 5th that he felt the Holy Spirit within him. Next came four days of praying and discussing the Bible, followed by the killings. Vlieland himself stated that he wake up shortly before the first murder to talk with God, who ordered him to purify the ship from Satan’s presence. He was busy throwing overboard anything that could possibly contain demons, when Leen Vlieland and Van der Pals woke up. They claimed to have seen a red star and took that for a confirmation of Arie’s assertions. Sails, masts and ropes were thrown overboard.

Next morning, most of the crew joined the exorcism. Only Pieter van Duijn, Jacob Jonker and Klaas Kuijt refused. Their disbelief was not appreciated by Arie Vlieland, who forced Kuijt to alternating dance and stand still on deck for hours. It must have been an insane scene. “He looked as if he was posessed by the devil,” Arie Ros stated afterwards. For the crew it was reason enough to throw Kuijt overboard the next morning. When he tried to hold on to a rope, one of his mates chopped off his hand. Screaming from pain Kuijt disappeared in the water.

Or at least, that is Arie Ros’ statement. Vlieland told the captain of the Prof. Buys that they beheaded Kuijt before throwing his body in the sea, while singing psalms.

According to Arie Ros, navigator Pieter van Duijn went lower deck to beat up his father, Reijn Ros. But Ros Sr. Turned out to be tougher than Van Duijn and he kicked the latter under a bench. The rest of the crew mixed in though and beat Van Duijn with spades to death. Jonker chopped off his head with an axe.

After the murder Jonker went back on deck, where he bumped into skipper De Haas. “You have all gone crazy, do you really belive this nonsense!”, De Haas shouted, while Jonker kicked him down the stairs. De Haas locked himself in a berth, but the remaining crew dragged him out again to beat him to death with poles, brought tot hem by the young boys Arie Ros and D. de Mol. Arie Rol however said that the last two victims were stabbed to death. In both versions the bodies were thrown overboard.

On Sunday September 12th, the KW 171 was found by the Norwegian steamer and towed to Tyne. It was obvious that the whole crew had gone insane and the men were precautionary chained up on board of their own vessel.

The story of the fool’s lugger has always been unmentionnable in the Katwijk community. Although no-one else than the crew itself could be held responsible for their crimes, it seemed that the closed, religious people felt ashamed for them. During the first period after the disaster the people felt a sort of fear. Had it not been normal Katwijkers out there? If this could happen tot hem, it could happen to anyone.

That most survivors were back in town only a year after the massacre made even more difficult fort he people to get over. Also, almost everyone was related to everyone. A niece of the killed navigator Pieter van Duijn said many years later that her mother told her father off when he greeted one of the surviving crew members on the street. “Gerrit, how can you say hello to a man that killed your brother?”

The two 13 year old boys went straight back to Katwijk, the other eight were brought to mental hospitals. Within a year they were all back home in Katwijk, except for Arie Vlieland. He moved with his wife and children to Wassenaar near The Hague, where he died in 1966 at the age of 79.

And the KW 171? The lugger was restored, but no Katwijk fisherman dared to sail on it. The vessel was sold to a shipowner from IJmuiden. Registered IJM 251, it struck a mine two years later, taking eight sailormen tot he bottom of the North Sea.

Dead Flight: the mystery of Neptune 212

In 1965, two aircraft mechanics without any flying experience stole a dutch Lockheed Neptune 212. They managed to get it airborne, but must have known that there was no way they could ever get it back on the ground safely. They crashed at sea, only a few hundred feet out of a sleeping fishing town. Katwijk threaded the eye of the needle. What drove these young men?

It is Friday night, January 22th 1965. It is the middle of the Cold War. Twelve Lockheed Neptunes SP-2H submarine hunters are based on the dutch military airbase of Valkenburg, near The Hague. Five of them are parked on the platform, standby to take-off for emergencies. Aircraft mechanic Ad Meulenberg is on duty, together with his mate Tom Boel. More than half a century later he still remembers that night: “It was cold and rainy.” Just before midnight, Boel comes running towards him, asking him if he knows anything about an emergency: “I answered that I was not aware of that. Boel said that two mechanics, Frans Bolk and Huib van Oostende, had just arrived at the platform, saying that they were told to prepare one of the Neptunes for take-off to assist a perishing ship on the North Sea.”

No clue
Meulenberg calls his supervisor, who has no clue either but promises to inquire. Ad returns to the platform, finding Bolk and Van Oostende on the wings, removing the covers from the engines. He asks where the pilots are, Bolk answers that they are on their way.
That makes Boel and Meulenberg supersticious. Unlike regular emergencies, the runway lights are off. “I returned to my supervisor, only to learn that he had no answer yet,” Meuelberg says. Back at the platform, he sees Bolk sitting in the cockpit, starting engine 1. Now he knows something is definately wrong: “That was the pilot’s job.”
Once more, Meulenberg hurries to his superior, who knows more this time: there is no such thing as an emergency. Meulenberg rushes back to the platform, where the Neptune is rolling. Both surveillants run to their superior, who orders them to halt the plane whatever it takes. Meulenberg crosses the field towards the plane, that is heading for the runway.

Neptune running by
Once there, Meulenberg stares right into the headlights of the plane. Since he has no ammunition, he realises that all there is left to do is trying to pierce the tires of the plane, so he mounts the bayonet on his rifle. While doing so, he hears the engines revving and by the swinging of the lightbeams he knows the hijackers have released the brakes.
The accellerating plane runs towards Meulenberg, who jumps in the wet grass to save his life, gazing at the Neptune running by. His sits up, only to watch the plane taking off.

Mushroom cloud
Meulenberg notices that the plane is climbing far too steep, so it doesn’t take long before it stalls. For a moment it seems frozen in the air, next it faces downwards, commencing a fatal dive. Meulenberg realises that the Neptune might crash on the sleeping town of Katwijk within seconds. Next there is a flash on the horizon, followed by the sound of an explosion and a ghostly lit mushroom cloud.

That night, Katwijk threaded the eye of the needle. It was midnight, everyone was at home asleep and the Neptune, filled with 10,000 liters of fuel a flying molotov cocktail that just missed the village. Hitting it would have killed hundreds, but the plane crashed in the North Sea, less than half a mile out.

Rescue boats
The following days the beach of Katwijk is crowded. Rescue boats, helicopters and planes are searching for the wreck and the bodies, while the navy are wondering what got into these guys. Bolk and Van Oostende were reliable men. Being mechanics, they must have known that without any flying experience they had no chance whatsoever to land the plane safe and sound. Besides to fly a Neptune it takesthree men in the cockpit. And the starting procedure costs about 45 minutes for warming up the engines; this time it took only six minutes.

The answer is alcohol
Leader of the investigations is captain Jo Petschi, who believes the answer is obvious: alcohol. The aftermath, he states to a reporter that a witness declared that the hijackers had drunk about six glasses of beer in the airbase canteen before their deed. Also, he says that they might have drunk before arriving at the canteen. “I won’t say that they were completely drunk, but they had enough alcohol to eliminate a part of their common sense.”
Petschi also wonders why the men did not go home. It was Friday night and they were off duty that weekend. By 11 PM, they had left the canteen to go to the sleeping barrack instead, where they chatted with other guys. A witness later stated that one had said to the other something like ‘Well, let’s do it then?’. Next thing, both men left the place to be never seen again.

Report is questionable
Two young men, drunk, hijacking a plane for a nightly joyflight. Two lives and a fife million dollar plane lost: case closed.
Reading the official report, one might believe it all seems clear enough. But is it really? I talked with people who were there that fatal night and dicovered that the offical report is questionable, to say the least. Some of the witnesses claim they had noticed that Bolk and Van Oostende were acting weird during the day before they died. Gijs Eversen was Van Oostende’s sleeping neighbour, he says: “Something was going on that day. I still remember that after more than fifty years.” According to Eversen, Bolk was changing a cockpit windshield on the Neptune 212, the very plane that crashed: “His mate Van Oostende dropped by several times. After the job was done, the plane was towed to the platform.”

Weird behaviour
Later that day, in the barrack where marines were getting ready to return home for the weekend, Evertsen noticed that Van Oostende was behaving in a rather unusual way. He gave away personal belongings or sold them for little. Evertsen himself paid 25 cents for a book titled Famous Combat Aircraft of the World, featuring a dutch Lockheed Neptune that crashed earlier. Van Oostende had marked the picture with a black cross. “When I asked him what that meant, he answered that the navy was about to lose yet another Neptune.”

Official statement
After half a century that is not much of a clue. But the official statement of the navy is, to say the least, as weak. The waiter in the canteen had strict instructions not to serve more than three bottles of beer per person per day. Even if Bolk and Van Oostende had drunk before arriving there, people would have noticed. All witnesses say that both men made a sober impression, which is also stated in the official report. Both knew that there was no way they could ever land a Neptune safely and unhurt. From the barrack it was a more than two miles a walk to the platform. The cold and rain would have sobered them up more than enough to realise their mission was impossible and doomed.

Hard to believe
Also, the investigation is doubtable. Captain Petschi was in charge of security at the airbase. The same man was commissioned with the inquiries and press communication. That is weird, but it does explain why Petschi was so sure about the innocense of the guards. They had acted precisely according to his protocol. Also, the fact that Petschi, even before the bodies were recovered, declared that drunkenness was the cause, makes his conclusion hard to believe.

No stunt
What if it was not a drunk man’s stunt, but Bolk and Van Oostende got on that plane completely sober and aware of their fate, what made them still do it? A double suicide is hard to believe, but that counts for any other explanation. Gijs Evertsen thinks that the men were paid by some foreign power to steal the plane, together with a skilled pilot that didn’t show up, forcing them to flee in panic. Others find that hard to believe. Why these two fine young men really died, is still a mystery after more than fifty years. Their death nightflight is long forgotten, but if their plane had stalled seconds earlier, the town of Katwijk would have been swallowed by an inferno with hundreds of fatalties.

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Recovery
Tuesday evening January 16th the wreckage of the plane is located at the bottom of the sea. The following days it is lifted in pieces. That same morning, Van Oostende’s body washes ashore at the beach between Katwijk and The Hague. Wednesday morrning, Bolk’s corpse drifts ashore in Scheveningen.

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Bad example
The weird stunt by Bolk en Van Oostende was even more embarassing for the dutch navy since it was not the first time that they saw an unqualified person fly off with one of their planes. Less than a year before, a 21 year mechanic named Theo van Eijck had hijacked a Grumman S-2 Tracker from their base on Malta, to fly it to Lybia. Van Eijck had failed the enttrance test to become a pilot and wanted to prove that he was capable of flying anyway. Likewise, Frans Bolk had the ambition to become a pilot. Perhaps he took a bad example from Van Eijk.

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This article was published in the dutch magazine Quest Historie, issue 3/2017

Quandt: an obscure family history

The Quandts are considered the wealthiest family in Germany, but they prefer living out of the footlight. For a reason: although car maker BMW owes its existence after the fifties to the Quandts, their family history is a sequence of dark secrets, extortion, messing with stakes and forced labour.

During the late 1950’s car maker BMW is close to bankrupcy. A hostile takeover by rival Daimler seems inevitable and is feared by shareholders and the unions. But rescue comes by surprise. The industrial tycoon Herbert Quandt stands up for an independent BMW, thus saving the brand from wreckage. Up to present BMW owe their unique, independent position to Quandt’s move, and countless staff and BMW-fans should be grateful to him. But the history of Germany’s richest family has some very dark pages.

Emil Quandt is born during the later years of the industrial revolution from a family with dutch origins. They fled their homeland when emperor William I summoned Protestants who were being suppressed to come over to Prussia. These days, the Quandts aren’t particulary wealthy, but in 1883, Emil obtains a confection-factory by marrying the owner’s daughter. The factory produces army uniforms, amongst other products. By overtaking a second company in 1900, he consolidates the basis for a new, industrial dynasty.

His son Günther turns out to be a runner up in the family business and gets to become main supplier of uniforms during the Great War. After the war, Quandt steps into chemical industry and he acquires a majority share in the battery producer AFA (that would later become Varta). Quandt launches negative gossip on AFA, thus devaluating the shares, so he can obtain them cheap. Shortly after, AFA presents new technology, causing the shares to rise again. It is with these kind of tricks that Günther Quandt survives the 1929 recession that hits the entire world, and Germany in particular. The weapon industry attracts his interest as well and soon, Quandt is a big name there.

In January 1920, Günther get acquainted with 19 years old Magda Friedländer. In spite of her young age, she has been through a lot. Born from an unmarried mother, she sees her stepfather and biological father quarreling for her attention. To Magda, Günther is a ticket to the jetset, although he is more than twice her age. One and a half year later they get married, but not before Magda changes the surname she obtained from her stepfather to that of her biological daddy, Ritschel, because Friedländer sounds too Jewish to her husband to be. The marriage brings them a son they call Harald, but no fortune. Their difference in age is too much of a gap. Magda soons starts seeking delight elsewhere, having affairs with the likes of Helmuth, Quandt’s eldest son from with first wife, a cousin of the later American president Hoover and a Jewish-Russian lawyer. Soon, Günther is fed up with her infidelity and he throws Magda out.

Joseph Goebbels’s wedding. Next to him young Günther Quandt, behind him Adolf Hitler.

Magda obtains a lucrative settlement by threatening her ex-husband with compromising documents. She moves to Berlin, to work for the nazi party NSDAP, where she meets Joseph Goebbels. In December 1931 they get married. Her new husband introduces her to the nazi top, whilst her son Harald is inflicted with a particulary uneasy stepfather. Young Harald Quandt is one of the guests at the wedding where Adolf Hitler is Goebbels’s best man. It is believed by some historians that Magda later became Hitler’s mistress.

It is to 23 years old Harald Quandt that Magda Goebbels adresses her last letter, before killing all her other children and herself in the führerbunker, one of the last days of WW2.

Indelicat as it is, this relation between the nazis and Quandt is not the only one. Quite the opposite: in 1931 already, Günther Quandt is one of the captains of industry supporting Adolf Hitler financially. He invests 25,000 Reichsmark in Hitler’s campaign. In return, Hitler appoints him Wehrwirtschaftführer, just like Wilhelm Messerschmidt, father and son Krupp and Ferdinand Porsche. Although the title is mostly symbolic, lucrative orders are to come soon.

The Quandt company supplies army uniforms, ammunition and batteries for submarines and the V2 flying bombs. They employ prisoners of war and inmates from concentration camps. Two of the Quandt factories even get their own concentration camp, named ‘aussenlager’ (auxiliary camp), including an execution court. Quandt consolidates his position by buying dispossessed Jewish companies cheaply.

Perhaps the most disturbing example of that is the case of the Luxembourgs businessman Léon Laval. After he refused to sell his battery-factory to Quandt, the Gestapo arrest him to be detained in a concentration camp.

After the german defeat, Günther Quandt is captured by the Americans and he is kept in preliminary custody for two years. Some of the evidence is kept by the British and never handed over to the Americans. As a result, no charges are leveled against him in the Nuremberg trials. He is considered a follower during the Thirth Reich, not collaborating out of political conviction, but driven by opportunism. A poor excuse perhaps, but in his memoirs Quandt states believing that prior to the war, too little people had read Mein Kampf: “Else, the most cruel chapter in german history might have been saved. I blame myself for not having taken Hitler more seriously.”

The regretful man dies in 1954, aged 73. The company and family capital are divided equally between his sons, Herbert from his first marriage and Harald from the late Mrs. Goebbels. Harald will look after the metal and machinery industry, Herbert gets in charge of textile, chemistry, electric and automotive. In particular automotive turns out to be a tough job. The Quandts hold 10 percent Daimler-Benz and 30 percent BMW. The latter is in deep trouble during the late fifties and the management sees no other way out than selling to rival Daimler-Benz. Initially, Herbert Quandt tends to agree, but the resistance of the staff and the unions impress him. Instead of selling, he buys 50 percent of BMW, enough to veto the takeover. The risk is huge, but he convinces the banks and his rescue plan works. A whole new range of car models, Neue Klasse, turns out to be very successful. In 1964 BMW is back on track, and will only get better.

His half brother Harald is mainly successful as a hobby pilot and that eventually kills him. In 1967, during a flight in northwest Italy, he hits a mountain, presumably caused by instrumental failure. The precise cause of the crash is never cleared. From that moment, Harald’s five daughters control his share of the family capital.

Although a busy man, Herbert Quandt is enjoying life. He gets married three times and has four daughters and two sons: Sylvia, Sonja, Sabina, Sven, Susanne and Stefan. He must have loved the letter S.

After Herbert Quandt passes away, his thirth wife Johanna takes over control. Born Johanna Maria Bruhn in 1926 in Berlin, she walked into Quandt’s office as his new assistant in the mid 1950’s. Soon, she started influencing her boss. In 1960 they get married and the couple has two children, Susanne and Stefan. Herbert’s bad sight slowly turns into total blindness, so every morning Johanna reads the financial papers to him, thus developing a very bright financial insight. As a widow she obtains 16.7 percent share at BMW and she becomes a member of the supervisory board and, after a while, vice president.

Johanna in particular is very keen on anonymity, but unfortunately that is not granted to her. 2007, german television broadcast a documentary named ‘Das Schweigen der Quandts’, in English ‘The Silence of the Quandts’, reveiling the involvement of the family in nazi-crime during World War 2. Countless documents prove that most of the family fortune is obtained by abusing war victims. Forced labour in the battery factories were exposed to deadly gasses and Günther Quandt would ‘order’ 80 fresh prisoners each month to replace the deceased. Only Sven Quandt, a son from Herbert’s second marriage, is willing to comment, but he makes the outrage even worse by rejecting any guild. “We ought to forget these things finally. In other countries things alike happend, but no one ever mentions that.” The fact that Sven is enjoying his dirty money with his expensive racing hobby (X-Raid, Dakar Rally), is not soothing it either. Stefan Quandt later tries to mitigate his cousin’s words in Handelsblatt: “He was not prepared to that question.”

Trouble hardly ever comes alone. Shortly before the embarrasing broadcast, Susanne gets involved with a swiss playboy, who manages with his smooth talk to make her spend a lot of money on him. Susanne has no clue that Heig Sgarbi is a professional at extorting wealthy, bored ladies, and that he had a complice filming and photographing their love acts. After Susanne puts an end to the affair, Sgarbi confrontates her with the footage and pictures, demanding more money.

Susanne Quandt and het husband Jan Klatten

This time though, Susanne has the guts you’d expect from Germany’s most successful busines woman. She confesses the affair to her husband, thus frustrating the blackmailing. Arriving at the hand over-location, Sgarbi runs into an arrest team. The judges are not impressed with his explanation that he did it to revenge his Jewish grandfather, and Sgarbi is convicted to six years imprisonment. Nevertheless, the affair makes headlines and even leads to a tv-movie, named ‘In der Falle’ (trapped).

Her love life might be a disaster, but her businesses are flourishing more than ever. According to the german Manager Magazin, Susanne and her brother Stephan are worth 30 billion euros. That leaves some headroom in case a shifty playboy tries to blackmail one. Though the Quandts have never really expressed their regrets about the origin of their fortune, Susanne recently donated 100 million euros to help less fortunate people to a better future. Now that’s some pardon and would be a good example for her racing half brother Sven.

In the meantime, the power of the Quandts at BMW is as huge as it had been for many years. You will not find one Quandt in the board of directors, but both Susanne and Stefan are members of the supervisory board since 1997, Stefan as the vice president since 1999. He owns 29 percent of the shares, his sister 21 percent, which adds exactly to half of BMW. The other half is owned by institutional and private investors. BMW shares are fine shares: the car builder is flourishing better than ever. That would have been completely different if Herbert Quandt would not have vetoed the Daimler-takeover back in 1959.

Influencers: clowns of the internet

The hospitality lounge opens its doors. A dozen girls enter the room. Most of them wearing a Picasso-cap or some rediculous, but probably trendy hat over their duckfaces. Some are wearing fur coats, they all look like they are desperate to defecate. Or else, they might think of themselves as extremely important. The lady by my side pokes me, nodding at this circus: “A fortune on handbags is entering”, she grins. Here are the social influencers.

We’re at the press launch of a new car, meet the social influencers. We, the conventional press, are paid by our audience for our professional review on the new car. These clowns get paid by the manufacturer to attend the event. I must admid, their graft is well hidden: whilst their host is proudly explaining his latest product, all they care about is their product placed smartphones. Decency is more expensive.

Instagram and YouTube

I have been in this business for almost a quarter of a century. It strikes me that a branche that used to be as pregressive as whitchhunters, completely turns around. Recently I went to the press launch of a new model of a brand that is mainly bought by elderies. In our company, there was a girl with an Instagram-account, but without a drivers licence. Her boyfriend was on the same trip, since he had a YouTube-account. In the end, ther lady posted ten photographs on het Instagram-account. Nine of them showing the hotel and one showing the car. Hashtag the brand. Unfortunately spelled wrong. That’s what you payed two plane tickets, a hotel room and catering for.

Pathetic

Social influencers. It rather pathetic that so many young people seem to need them to tell what tot like. An entire generation, unable to decide for themselves. Every generation has its losers, but if it comes to the number of followers these influencers claim, this generation is completely retarded.

Duckfaced girls

I understand that selling lipgloss or sanitary pads can be helped by social influencers. Their audience just had their first menstrual flow and are dying to appear on Tinder like a russian callgirl. But they are years away from buying their first car. Car brand seem not to realise that. Just like they don’t know that followers are for sale. A dutch importer of a main stream branche is told by its manufacturer to spend 80 percent of its PR-budget on duckfaced girls. A premium brand considers to stop delivering test cars to motoring magazines because they are too critical. They prefer vloggers and social influencers to review their cars. They don’t have a clue, but say exactly as they are told, to a price.

Pay peanuts, get monkeys

In the end, it is all about market mechanism. Readers refuse to pay for content, but those who make content, still have a mortgage and shoppings to pay for. Thus, producers start paying for their content and audience have to cope with journalists telling them what the manufacturers tell them what to tell.

You pay peanuts, you get monkeys. Or girls with duckfaces. I truly hope that their advice will help you to decide on which new car you will spend your next 40 grand.

Influencers: like me or shut up

Internet is a great stage for anyone to climb on. The new democracy is a blessing, but it has a dark side. Self-announced stars are begging for comments, but are incapable of dealing with it.

It’s business as usual on YouTube: teenage girls in their parential bedroom, dressed up like russian prostitutes, begging for likes. Occasionally one breaks through and turns into exactly the kind of person that pushes the weak underdogs into sorrow by influencing them: fill your lips, botox your eyelids; be like me. And buy my sponsor’s mascara. Like me like I love myself.

It has become business as usual on YouTube: young girls dressed up like russian prostitutes in their parantial bedroom, begging for likes. Ocasionally one of them breaks through and turns out to be just like all those bags of bones from the catwalk, influencing weak teenagers to do like they do: fill your lips, botox your eyebrows, be like me. Buy my advertiser’s mascara. And like me like I love myself.

The fine art of writing is suffering from devaluation, too. As a fanatical reader and professional journalist, I am convinced there have to be quite some undiscovered authors out there. I started to visit some facebookgroups where these people are supposed to hang around and support each other, only to discover that writing talent and self reflection are qualities that usually leave the room hand in hand.

‘You are obviously not here to make new friends’

Every now and then I bump into something with potential quality, but those texts disappear quickly under new postings by people who are on the edge of publishing their first bestseller, previewing bits of it, asking the others how they like what they read. Some time ago, I started answering some of them, avoiding the very worst. I drafted some of these fragments by removing the spelling mistakes and reconstructing the worst sentences.

You won’t believe the amount of abuse that came over me. ‘You are obviously not here to make new friends’, someone wrote back (absolutely true, by the way). ‘If you don’t like it, why read it?’. ‘Who is that arrogant motherf*cker?’ In shock, I scrolled through the reactions. After a while, it occurred to me that amongst all these self called bestseller-writers I was the only one to ever react. No reactions, no likes whatsoever.

Neither of these about to break through bestseller-writers are open for constructive critisism or advice, I learned. No way they can deal with that. They ask for comments, but they wish for confirmation. Confirmation of exactly what they bear so badly: writing talent. Read me and like me, or else close your mouth.

Like me or shut up.

Blackface: how a nation goes nuts

I don’t care about Blackface. That’s odd, since I usually have a rather clear opinion about anything. Still, although everyone goes wild on Blackface, I can’t be bothered. Yet, I do have an opinion on people who have an opinion on Blackface.

I believe that people who bother about Blackface are lacking something in their lives. Some real problems to worry about, like they have in Raqqa, for instance. Perhaps people who bother about Blackface should go to Syria and do some reconstruction labour. And have a decent reconciliation shag.

People who believe that Blackface means racism, are troubled. People who believe being traumatized by slavery, 154 years after its abolition, are nuts. I might as well hate the Germans for demolishing my village in WW2, only 77 years ago.

Yet, people who are pro-Blackface can be as pathetic. A picture of Saint Nicholas with a swastika on his hat is all around the internet. Some pro-Blackface activist got a sheet of paper, stole his child’s pencils and made a drawing of a children’s hero with Hitler’s face.

Is that pathetic? It sure is. Is it bad? Well, drawing can have this therapeutic effect: not bad. A fool making an ugly drawing is hardly worse than a fool making himself a cup of tea. In the old days, his drawing would never have left the kitchen table of this miserable creature.

It did get bad though through all these angry people on social media, tweeting and retweeting that poor drawing from the kitchen table into the entire world. Burning oil should never be extinguished with water, since water spreads the fire. The lonesome pro-Blackface activist is a drop of oil. All these angry twitter-people are water. Thanks to their tweets and retweets, the miserable hatred of a frustrated loner gets a huge stage. Through their social platforms, racial polarization reaches the next level. Our right populist politicians are most grateful.

Burning oil should not be extinguished with water, but covered with sand. Or else, let it burn until it stops.

Blackface? Bury the discussion.

A Day at the Beach

At some 18 kilometers out, there’s a group of wind turbines. Visual pollution, according to some, mostly beachclub owners and hotelkeepers. But spending a summer’s day at the Katwijk beach will teach you that the real pollution is a lot closer by than those hardly visible turbines.

“Do you serve fresh orange juice?”
“Certainly, sir,” the waiter nods. He enters my order in his smartphone and walks to the bar. I lean backward and start observing the smoking and sweating crowd. Although it’s fairly AM, all seats of Beachclub 14 are taken. It’s Sunday and the weather report promised temeratures well beyond 30 degrees Celsius for this afternoon. Next to me, I notice a group of mid-aged men. Hard to tell what brought them together; I don’t believe they’re heart surgeons. But they do have something in common: they all, all ten, now I count them, a large collection of tattoos on their massive bodies. I try to read the pictures and words. Runic and gothic letters, chinese characters: cultural reconciliation starts on the bodies of simple minds. One of them has a massive stetson-wearing scull covering his back. Between his mates shoulder blades I perceive some creature even Tolkien and J.K. Rowling could not have invented after a night on booze and drugs.

“Fresh juice, sir.” The waiter puts a glass on my table. I say thanks, take out the straw and take a sup. Is this what they call fresh juice? If you would put this in a spectrometer, the screen would show a Minute Maid commercial. Or rather, some budget brand. I check the menu once more: it really says ‘fresh’ orange juice. Besides, at this price (4,75 euros) you’d expect the club’s owner to squeeze the oranges at your table, his wife rubbing your shoulders with coconut oil and the local bigband playing your favourite music live at your table.

But I don’t believe the boss is in today. He must be attending some kind of workshop, learning what music is appropriate at beachclubs. The boom-boom-crap from the outside speakers is hardly standable. Is this their way to empty tables for new customers as quickly as possible? One thing is for sure: it doesn’t help getting rid of the heart surgeons. They swing their sweaty bodies to the music, waving their beer bottles and cigarettes in the air. Only then I realise the music is not from the beachclub’s speakers, but from their gettoblaster. Beachclub 14 is tough enough to charge me 4.75 for a tiny glass of Minute Maid, but for a bunch of tattooed drunk, they switch off their own music.

I decide that I’ve seen enough. I pay for my Minute Maid and even tip the child that served it, since I know that from all beachclubs around, the wages here are by far the lowest. I down what’s left of my juice and head for the beach. Like at the beachclub, the people here are kind enough to share their tobacco and music with me. But at least, it’s not as loud as the gettoblaster of the cardiologists.

After a while, I hardly perceive it any more, because a massive speedboat starts running in circles just in front of me. The skipper, who looks like a perfect match with the cardiologists, misses some swimming kids only by meters. The life guard looks away, though. Only 75 years ago, brave men used this very beach as a starting point for their 150 km crossing to England in small canoes, risking being shot by german patrol boats. This guy takes himself for a hero revving around in a floating moped.

I grab my things and go home. Perhaps I’ll come back tonight for a walk on the beach, when only their empty beer cans, filled nappies and cigarette butts are left.
I can’t wait for autumn to come.