So, it was this friend whom I instructed to take my affairs as forcefully as possible into his hands, and he did it as well as he could. He hired a lawyer from Dresden to conduct the lawsuit and informed the entire German press that I was momentarily in Asia, but would not hesitate, after my return home, to defend myself against the intended gross violation of my rights. More could not be done for the moment, because it had been impossible for me to abort my journey. From my wife, I received no news. She was incapable of dealing with such serious business matters. But the Plöhns wrote, though those letters only caught up with me in Padang, on the island of Sumatra. They contained alarming news. The press had started to write about my Münchmeyer novels, and had done this in a manner which was unfavourable for me. Rumours were spread about me, which were partially ridiculous, partially unscrupulous. The newspapers wrote that I was not in the Orient at all, but that I was hiding, on account of a malignant disease, in the iodine resort Bad Tölz, in upper Bavaria. If I had suspected that this would go on in this deceitful, hateful, and vicious manner for an entire decade, I would have interrupted my journey after all and would have returned home as quickly as possible. If I had done this, I would have been spared all this inhumane torture and pains, which I have suffered during this long time. But unfortunately, I did not know yet at this time what had happened to my novels and what had been the guiding ideas concerning me, which were going around in Münchmeyer's business and are still going around today. I believed that I could still settle the matter from afar and thought that I needed to do nothing more than to get precise information, from which the steps to be taken would have to result. Thus, I wrote home that my wife should come to Egypt with the Plöhns, where I would meet them in Cairo. They came, though much later than planned, because Plöhn had become ill on the way. What I found out from them did not sound favourable at all, and it furthermore struck me as very unspecific. The lawyer was still in the earliest stages of preparing the case. Fischer had declared that he would fight back with all possible means; he had bought my novels from Mrs. Münchmeyer; they were his righteously purchased property, payed for in cash, with which he could do whatever he wanted. The newspapers were biased against me. My Münchmeyer novels were described as trashy. I realised that a lawsuit against the Münchmeyers was unavoidable, and asked my wife for the documents I would need for this.
I have already said that I had kept Münchmeyer's letters. Their contents had constituted such strong evidence in a lawsuit against Münchmeyer that I simply had to win it. These letters were, together with other thing of equal importance, kept in a specific drawer of my desk. Before my departure, I had especially informed my wife about this drawer and its contents, I had especially explained the purpose of the letters and had instructed her to make sure that not even the smallest piece of paper would get lost. When I now in Cairo asked her about these documents, she reassured me that they were still lying there just as I had entrusted them to her. Nobody had touched them. This calmed me down, because it meant a sure victory in the lawsuit. When my wife assured me of this, Mrs. Plöhn was with us and heard it. She gave her an astonished look, but said nothing. At this time, I did not particularly notice this; but later, remembering this astonished, wide-eyed, disapproving look, I knew just too well what it was meant to say. What had happened was that one evening my wife had come to Mrs. Plöhn and had told her that she had just burnt our marriage certificate, on account of the omen it constituted. And some time later, she had told her in the same laughing manner that she had now also taken the documents from the desk drawer and had burnt them; by this, she wanted to prevent me from suing the Münchmeyers. Mrs. Plöhn had been horrified by this, but was unable to change the fait accompli. Now, when she had to listen to this assurance of my wife that the letters still existed untouched, the first rupture of that internal split occurred in her, which did not become externally evident until nothing could be kept secret any more. We travelled to Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and returned home via Constantinople, Greece, and Italy. During this time, my wife had, upon repeated questions, always stuck to her story that the documents were still lying, perfectly unharmed, in the drawer in question. She finally became angry and refused to permit any further mentioning of the subject. But when I came home and the first thing I did was to go to desk, I found the drawer -- -- -- empty! Being held responsible for this, she declared that she had indeed burnt and destroyed the letters. She had always been a friend of the Münchmeyers and still was their friend today. Though she knew that I was right, she would not stand for me suing the Münchmeyers. Therefore, she had burnt the papers. You can imagine how I felt, but I controlled myself and did what I was already in the habit of doing for many years in such cases: I was quiet, took my hat, and left.
In the meantime, the attacks in the press against me had been getting more and more numerous and direct. I was accused of having written piously and indecently at the same time. I had a look at the novels, which Mrs. Münchmeyer had bound for me, and found that they diverged from my original manuscripts, they had been changed. So, that was why the manuscripts had been burnt, instead of being preserved for me! I was not supposed to be able to prove the changes! The first thing I did was that I informed the press of this and asked them to wait for the decision of the court. Then, I most quickly filed the complaint. I did not want to pursue the matter in a civil, but rather a criminal trial, but met with such an opposition from my wife in this that I gave it up. I sought advice from several lawyers, not just in Dresden, but also in Berlin and elsewhere. I would have like so much to sue them directly on account of the "abysmal indecencies", I had been accused of, but I was assured unanimously that this was impossible. A suit could not be concerned with abstract concepts, but would have to be based on material reason. Most of all, I would have to prove that I was the legitimate owner of the novels concerned, and that I therefore had the right to sue. The best thing would be to sue for a "rendering of the account". This was done.
It was about at this time that the buyer of Münchmeyer's business, Mr. Fischer, called on me. I had no reasonable reason for sending him away; he was allowed to enter. The conversation was highly interesting, from a psychological point of view as well as concerning the lawsuit. Fischer did not at all conceal the fact that he knew that I had been to prison. He remarked that whoever had such a skeleton in his closet would do very well to refrain from going to court, otherwise the matter might very easily come out differently than one might think. My novels would now be his property. They had already been changed before, and now he would have them rewritten once more, just as it would please him. If I would conduct a lawsuit against him, this could take more than ten years; but until then, I would be long since ruined. But he had come to extend his hand to me, to avoid all this trouble. I was supposed to pay him seventy thousand marks, then he would give my novels up and surrender them to me with all rights included. Then, it would be easy for me to silence the entire excitement of the press against me with a single stroke. He would be offering me his help in this. He would know more than I would suspect. He knew the entire Münchmeyer business. He had been told everything. But he could not give the rights up for less than seventy thousand marks, since he had payed one hundred and seventy-five thousand marks.
It goes without saying that I did not go along with this suggestion. I made clear to him that I would not give a single pfennig and that I was firmly resolved to sue. So, he wanted to know whom I would sue, him or Münchmeyer's widow. He would advise me to do the latter, because, in this case, he could probably testify in my favour, for he was not at all satisfied with this woman, but was rather constantly arguing with her. After this, he left with the warning that I should be so very careful concerning my prior convictions.
I was willing to sue Mrs. Münchmeyer. But my wife and, probably as a consequence of this, my lawyer also urged me to refrain from this. Thus, Fischer was sued. But as it seemed, the widow did not feel like having herself excluded from this legal action. She joined in as a co-intervener [a] and has remained my opponent up to this day. I succeeded in obtaining an injunction against Fischer, which prohibited him from continuing to print my novels. He was only allowed to complete the series. Being in this situation, which was very critical for him, he came to talk to my lawyer and complained about the loss he was going to suffer on account of this; it would already amount to forty thousand marks. If this would not stop, he would even have to use very different means to defend himself than he had used up to now, and he would have to destroy me in the eyes of all of Germany by publishing my prior convictions in all the newspapers. When my lawyer informed me of this threat, it all became so very clear to me; I started to comprehend and felt obliged to probe this terrain. A meeting between Fischer and myself was arranged, in a private room of a wine-tavern, just the two of us. There, he talked openly. He told me everything he had found out from the Münchmeyers about me and my novels during the negotiation of the sale. I found out about their entire battle plan, of which I did not have a clue before. He had been let to believe that I had been to prison for having had intimate contact with schoolgirls as a teacher. This would fit perfectly with the allegations in the newspapers that I had written indecent novels. This only had to be published, then I would be destroyed forever. Now, I was a famous man and would have to avoid such publications; they knew this just as well I did. What I had agreed upon with Münchmeyer concerning my novels would be irrelevant. Münchmeyer was dead. It would all just depend on who would have to testify under oath. And they would know how to make sure that May would not get this opportunity. His prior convictions would be the best help there could be for this. He would only have to be threatened with their publication, then he would surely give up every lawsuit. Two lines written to him are enough, and he will be quiet. "Him, we've got in our hands!"
[a] Intervener: A third party in a civil trial aside from the plaintiff and the defendant. German law further distinguishes between a "Hauptintervenient" <main intervener> and a "Nebenintervenient" <co-intervener>. (I do not know, whether there are any more proper legal terms for this in English.) A "main intervener" sues both parties and thus starts a new trial. A "co-intervener" joins an existing trial to defend his or her own interests, without joining either one of the two main parties.