I

ON THE MORNING OF SEPTEMBER 20, 1920, in the Saxon city of Plauen, an auxiliary policeman by the name of Rettig presented himself to his superior to make an extraordinary report. The night before, in the center of the town of Falkenstein, he had met, talked, and walked with the notorious revolutionary, Max Hoelz, who had been unaccounted for since August.

The authorities in Saxony had been hunting Hoelz since his political career began, in early 1919, with a series of local putsches (Putsche): his “movement of the unemployed” attacked the city halls of Plauen and Falkenstein, opened the jails, and established a shadow government in Falkenstein sworn to protect the rights and welfare of the town's poorest citizens. Newspaper coverage of the subsequent hunt for Hoelz—which would not end until the spring of 1921—concentrated on his ability to disappear seemingly at will. Jailed twice in 1919, he had escaped twice. “The Communist Hölz,” the Vogtländischer Anzeiger reported after one such incident, “is no longer in Hannover [where he had been arrested], and has appeared at a Communist assembly in Falkenstein. After this, he disappeared once more into the darkness of the night, out of which he had appeared.” A number of military dragnets sent to the Vogtland to capture him failed, and local children began to taunt soldiers on the hunt for him: “You’re looking for Max Hölz? Here, we have him in our pockets!”

On March 16, 1920, when fourteen of Hoelz's comrades were put on trial for the insurrection of 1919, the Anzeiger, whose printing presses had been attacked by a group of Hoelz-supporters the previous year, clearly resented Hoelz's absence in the dock. “The evil spirit upon whom all the blame should be shifted,” the Anzeiger noted, “remains Hoelz, the invisible one [der Unsichtbare].”

Consistent with the Anzeiger's view of him, the Hoelz Rettig encountered that September evening was ethereal, even preternatural. Hoelz was accompanied, Rettig claimed, by “two veiled women” who followed him “a few steps behind.” The women retreated when Rettig approached, but he “immediately and without a doubt recognized Hölz, who wore a soft, dark, felt hat and a glued-on, false, two-part goatee.”