Hard upon this came a second rush telegram from Bonn: ‘Norddeutscher Rundfunk reports Eick repeat Eick killed by mob.’ But this was in turn immediately contradicted, for Bradfield, through the good offices of Herr Siebkron of the Ministry of the Interior (‘with whom I have a close relationship’), had by then succeeded in obtaining direct contact with the Hanover police. According to their latest assessment, the British Library had been sacked and its books burned before a large crowd. Printed posters had appeared with anti-British slogans such as ‘The Farmers won’t Pay for your Empire!’ and ‘Work for your own bread, don’t steal ours!’ Fräulein Gerda Eich [sic] aged fifty-one of 4 Hohenzollernweg, Hanover, had been dragged down two flights of stone steps, kicked and punched in the face and made to throw her own books into the fire. Police with horses and anti-riot equipment were being brought in from neighbouring towns.
A marginal annotation by Shawn stated that Tracing Section had turned up a record of the unfortunate Fräulein Eich. She was a retired school teacher, sometime in British Occupational employment, sometime secretary of the Hanover Branch of the Anglo-German Society, who in 1962 had been awarded a British decoration for services to international understanding.
‘Another anglophile bites the dust,’ Turner muttered.
There followed a long if hastily compiled summary of broadcasts and bulletins. This, too, Turner studied with close application. No one, it seemed, and least of all those who had been present, was able to say precisely what had triggered off the riot, nor what had attracted the crowd towards the library in the first place. Though demonstrations were now a commonplace of the German scene, a riot on this scale was not; Federal authorities had confessed themselves ‘deeply concerned’. Herr Ludwig Siebkron of the Ministry of the Interior had broken his habitual silence to remark to a Press Conference that there was ’cause for very real anxiety’. An immediate decision had been taken to provide additional protection for all official and quasi-official British buildings and residences throughout the Federal Republic. The British Ambassador, after some initial hesitation, had agreed to impose a voluntary curfew on his staff.
Accounts of the incident by police, press and even delegates themselves were hopelessly confused. Some declared it was spontaneous; a collective gesture aggravated by the word ‘British’ which happened to be exhibited on the side of the library building. It was natural, they said, that as the day of decision in Brussels drew rapidly closer, the Movement’s policy of opposition to the Common Market should assume a specifically anti-British form. Others swore they had seen a sign, a white handkerchief that fluttered from a window; one witness even claimed that a rocket had risen behind the town hall and emitted stars of red and gold. For some the crowd had surged with a positive impulse, for others it had ‘flowed’; for others again it had trembled. ‘It was led from the centre,’ one senior police officer reported. ‘The periphery was motionless until the centre moved.’ ‘Those at the centre,’ Western Radio maintained, ‘kept their composure. The outrage was perpetrated bya few hooligans at the front. The others were then obliged to follow.’ On one point only they seemed to agree: the incident had taken place when the music was loudest. It was even suggested by a woman witness that the music itself had been the sign which started the crowd running.
The Spiegel correspondent, on the other hand, speaking on Northern Radio, had a circumstantial account of how a grey omnibus chartered by a mysterious Herr Meyer of Luneburg conveyed ‘a bodyguard of thirty picked men’ to the town centre of Hanover one hour before the demonstration began and that this bodyguard, drawn partly from students and partly from young farmers, had formed a ‘protective ring’ round the Speaker’s podium. It was these ‘picked men’ who had started the rush. The entire action had therefore been inspired by Karfeld himself. ‘It is an open declaration,’ he insisted, ‘that from now on, the Movement proposes to march to its own music.’
‘This Eich,’ Turner said at last. ‘What’s the latest?’
‘She’s as well as can be expected.’
‘How well’s that?’
‘That’s all they said.’