Page:Grigory Zinoviev - Twelve Days in Germany (1921).pdf/52

 I had scarcely time to reach himehome [sic] when three representatives of the "political police" entered my room and announced that they had received orders to take me immediately to the police presidium. A doctor who attended me and was present at the time, protested against my being taken away on account of my illness, they started long arguments on the telephone. The representative of the Soviet Government in Berlin intervened in the matter. Kurt Rosenfeld also arrived on the scene. He is a lawyer who took part in the negotiations concerning my permission to enter Germany, and is a member of the Central Committee oi the Right Independents. Two sentries were all the time standing at my door. Finally they succeeded in securing the abandonment of the demand for my appearance at the police presidium, and the decision which they had to announce was to be communicated to me personally at home.

This decision was announced to me by a pompous Social-Democratic commissary. He was very polite and solemn in his manners. He seemed to be performing a religious ceremony, trying not to omit any formalities. He began by asking how old I was, whether I could read and write, etc.

The decision practically came to this. I was regarded as a lastiger Auslander (undesirable alien)—this classical term was inherited by the German Republic from William the Bloody. I was forbidden to appear at any meeting or even go out of my room to speak on the telephone, or to grant any interviews. But I was not forbidden to receive visitors. A considerable discussion was caused by the question of how I was to visit the lavatory. At first the functionary, who acted in the name of the police presidium, insisted that each time I was to go there I must specially inform the "officer" (this was the polite term used to denote spies): and only after the latter's sanction could I proceed there. Later on the commissary who conducted these negotiations (I was told he was a Social Democrat) gathered sufficient courage to say: "After all, one must be a fatalist; I will take the whole matter on my own responsibility" (Auf meine eigene koppe). I could go to the lavatory "solo," i.e., in "revolutionary" fashion, without giving previous notice to the spy in question. This "commissary" seemed to be honestly convinced that he was thereby